Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net










                               THE GHOST

                           A Modern Fantasy



                                  BY

                            ARNOLD BENNETT

           AUTHOR OF "THE OLD WIVES' TALES," "CLAYHANGER,"
           ETC., ETC.



                                BOSTON
                       SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
                                 1911

                            Copyright, 1907
                      By HERBERT B. TURNER & CO.

                            Copyright, 1911

              BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. MY SPLENDID COUSIN

II. AT THE OPERA

III. THE CRY OF ALRESCA

IV. ROSA'S SUMMONS

V. THE DAGGER AND THE MAN

VI. ALRESCA'S FATE

VII. THE VIGIL BY THE BIER

VIII. THE MESSAGE

IX. THE TRAIN

X. THE STEAMER

XI. A CHAT WITH ROSA

XII. EGG-AND-MILK

XIII. THE PORTRAIT

XIV. THE VILLA

XV. THE SHEATH OF THE DAGGER

XVI. THE THING IN THE CHAIR

XVII. THE MENACE

XVIII. THE STRUGGLE

XIX. THE INTERCESSION




THE GHOST

CHAPTER I

MY SPLENDID COUSIN


I am eight years older now. It had never occurred to me that I am
advancing in life and experience until, in setting myself to recall
the various details of the affair, I suddenly remembered my timid
confusion before the haughty mien of the clerk at Keith Prowse's.

I had asked him:

"Have you any amphitheatre seats for the Opera to-night?"

He did not reply. He merely put his lips together and waved his hand
slowly from side to side.

Not perceiving, in my simplicity, that he was thus expressing a
sublime pity for the ignorance which my demand implied, I innocently
proceeded:

"Nor balcony?"

This time he condescended to speak.

"Noth--ing, sir."

Then I understood that what he meant was: "Poor fool! why don't you
ask for the moon?"

I blushed. Yes, I blushed before the clerk at Keith Prowse's, and
turned to leave the shop. I suppose he thought that as a Christian it
was his duty to enlighten my pitiable darkness.

"It's the first Rosa night to-night," he said with august affability.
"I had a couple of stalls this morning, but I've just sold them over
the telephone for six pound ten."

He smiled. His smile crushed me. I know better now. I know that clerks
in box-offices, with their correct neckties and their air of
continually doing wonders over the telephone, are not, after all, the
grand masters of the operatic world. I know that that manner of theirs
is merely a part of their attire, like their cravats; that they are
not really responsible for the popularity of great sopranos; and that
they probably go home at nights to Fulham by the white omnibus, or to
Hammersmith by the red one--and not in broughams.

"I see," I observed, carrying my crushed remains out into the street.
Impossible to conceal the fact that I had recently arrived from
Edinburgh as raw as a ploughboy!

If you had seen me standing irresolute on the pavement, tapping my
stick of Irish bog-oak idly against the curbstone, you would have
seen a slim youth, rather nattily dressed (I think), with a shadow of
brown on his upper lip, and a curl escaping from under his hat, and
the hat just a little towards the back of his head, and a pretty good
chin, and the pride of life in his ingenuous eye. Quite unaware that
he was immature! Quite unaware that the supple curves of his limbs had
an almost feminine grace that made older fellows feel paternal! Quite
unaware that he had everything to learn, and that all his troubles lay
before him! Actually fancying himself a man because he had just taken
his medical degree....

The June sun shone gently radiant in a blue sky, and above the roofs
milky-bosomed clouds were floating in a light wind. The town was
bright, fresh, alert, as London can be during the season, and the
joyousness of the busy streets echoed the joyousness of my heart (for
I had already, with the elasticity of my years, recovered from the
reverse inflicted on me by Keith Prowse's clerk). On the opposite side
of the street were the rich premises of a well-known theatrical club,
whose weekly entertainments had recently acquired fame. I was, I
recollect, proud of knowing the identity of the building--it was one
of the few things I did know in London--and I was observing with
interest the wondrous livery of the two menials motionless behind the
glass of its portals, when a tandem equipage drew up in front of the
pile, and the menials darted out, in their white gloves, to prove that
they were alive and to justify their existence.

It was an amazingly complete turnout, and it well deserved all the
attention it attracted, which was considerable. The horses were
capricious, highly polished grays, perhaps a trifle undersized, but
with such an action as is not to be bought for less than twenty-five
guineas a hoof; the harness was silver-mounted; the dog-cart itself a
creation of beauty and nice poise; the groom a pink and priceless
perfection. But the crown and summit of the work was the driver--a
youngish gentleman who, from the gloss of his peculiarly shaped collar
to the buttons of his diminutive boots, exuded an atmosphere of
expense. His gloves, his scarf-pin, his watch-chain, his mustache, his
eye-glass, the crease in his nether garments, the cut of his
coat-tails, the curves of his hat--all uttered with one accord the
final word of fashion, left nothing else to be said. The correctness
of Keith Prowse's clerk was as naught to his correctness. He looked as
if he had emerged immaculate from the outfitter's boudoir, an
achievement the pride of Bond Street.

As this marvellous creature stood up and prepared to alight from the
vehicle, he chanced to turn his eye-glass in my direction. He scanned
me carelessly, glanced away, and scanned me again with a less detached
stare. And I, on my part, felt the awakening of a memory.

"That's my cousin Sullivan," I said to myself. "I wonder if he wants
to be friends."

Our eyes coquetted. I put one foot into the roadway, withdrew it,
restored it to the roadway, and then crossed the street.

It was indeed the celebrated Sullivan Smith, composer of those so
successful musical comedies, "The Japanese Cat," "The Arabian Girl,"
and "My Queen." And he condescended to recognize me! His gestures
indicated, in fact, a warm desire to be cousinly. I reached him. The
moment was historic. While the groom held the wheeler's head, and the
twin menials assisted with dignified inactivity, we shook hands.

"How long is it?" he said.

"Fifteen years--about," I answered, feeling deliciously old.

"Remember I punched your head?"

"Rather!" (Somehow I was proud that he had punched my head.)

"No credit to me," he added magnanimously, "seeing I was years older
than you and a foot or so taller. By the way, Carl, how old did you
say you were?"

He regarded me as a sixth-form boy might regard a fourth-form boy.

"I didn't say I was any age," I replied. "But I'm twenty-three."

"Well, then, you're quite old enough to have a drink. Come into the
club and partake of a gin-and-angostura, old man. I'll clear all this
away."

He pointed to the equipage, the horses, and the groom, and with an
apparently magic word whispered into the groom's ear he did in fact
clear them away. They rattled and jingled off in the direction of
Leicester Square, while Sullivan muttered observations on the groom's
driving.

"Don't imagine I make a practice of tooling tandems down to my club,"
said Sullivan. "I don't. I brought the thing along to-day because I've
sold it complete to Lottie Cass. You know her, of course?"

"I don't."

"Well, anyhow," he went on after this check, "I've sold her the entire
bag of tricks. What do you think I'm going to buy?"

"What?"

"A motor-car, old man!"

In those days the person who bought a motor-car was deemed a fearless
adventurer of romantic tendencies. And Sullivan so deemed himself. The
very word "motor-car" then had a strange and thrilling romantic sound
with it.

"The deuce you are!" I exclaimed.

"I am," said he, happy in having impressed me. He took my arm as though
we had been intimate for a thousand years, and led me fearlessly past
the swelling menials within the gate to the club smoking-room, and put
me into a grandfather's chair of pale heliotrope plush in front of an
onyx table, and put himself into another grandfather's chair of
heliotrope plush. And in the cushioned quietude of the smoking-room,
where light-shod acolytes served gin-and-angostura as if serving
gin-and-angostura had been a religious rite, Sullivan went through an
extraordinary process of unchaining himself. His form seemed to be
crossed and re-crossed with chains--gold chains. At the end of one gold
chain was a gold cigarette-case, from which he produced gold-tipped
cigarettes. At the end of another was a gold matchbox. At the end of
another, which he may or may not have drawn out by mistake, were all
sorts of things--knives, keys, mirrors, and pencils. A singular
ceremony! But I was now in the world of gold.

And then smoke ascended from the gold-tipped cigarettes as incense from
censers, and Sullivan lifted his tinted glass of gin-and-angostura, and
I, perceiving that such actions were expected of one in a theatrical
club, responsively lifted mine, and the glasses collided, and Sullivan
said:

"Here's to the end of the great family quarrel."

"I'm with you," said I.

And we sipped.

My father had quarrelled with his mother in an epoch when even musical
comedies were unknown, and the quarrel had spread, as family quarrels
do, like a fire or the measles. The punching of my head by Sullivan in
the extinct past had been one of its earliest consequences.

"May the earth lie lightly on them!" said Sullivan.

He was referring to the originators of the altercation. The tone in
which he uttered this wish pleased me--it was so gentle. It hinted
that there was more in Sullivan than met the eye, though a great deal
met the eye. I liked him. He awed me, and he also seemed to me
somewhat ridiculous in his excessive pomp. But I liked him.

The next instant we were talking about Sullivan Smith. How he
contrived to switch the conversation suddenly into that channel I
cannot imagine. Some people have a gift of conjuring with
conversations. They are almost always frankly and openly interested in
themselves, as Sullivan was interested in himself. You may seek to
foil them; you may even violently wrench the conversation into other
directions. But every effort will be useless. They will beat you. You
had much better lean back in your chair and enjoy their legerdemain.

In about two minutes Sullivan was in the very midst of his career.

"I never went in for high art, you know. All rot! I found I could
write melodies that people liked and remembered." (He was so used to
reading interviews with himself in popular weeklies that he had caught
the formalistic phraseology, and he was ready apparently to mistake
even his cousin for an interviewer. But I liked him.) "And I could get
rather classy effects out of an orchestra. And so I kept on. I didn't
try to be Wagner. I just stuck to Sullivan Smith. And, my boy, let me
tell you it's only five years since 'The Japanese Cat' was produced,
and I'm only twenty-seven, my boy! And now, who is there that doesn't
know me?" He put his elbows on the onyx. "Privately, between cousins,
you know, I made seven thousand quid last year, and spent half that. I
live on half my income; always have done; always shall. Good
principle! I'm a man of business, I am, Carl Foster. Give the public
what they want, and save half your income--that's the ticket. Look at
me. I've got to act the duke; it pays, so I do it. I am a duke. I get
twopence apiece royalty on my photographs. That's what you'll never
reach up to, not if you're the biggest doctor in the world." He
laughed. "By the way, how's Jem getting along? Still practising at
Totnes?"

"Yes," I said.

"Doing well?"

"Oh! So--so! You see, we haven't got seven thousand a year, but we've
got five hundred each, and Jem's more interested in hunting than in
doctoring. He wants me to go into partnership with him. But I don't
see myself."

"Ambitious, eh, like I was? Got your degree in Edinburgh?"

I nodded, but modestly disclaimed being ambitious like he was.

"And your sister Lilian?"

"She's keeping house for Jem."

"Pretty girl, isn't she?"

"Yes," I said doubtfully. "Sings well, too."

"So you cultivate music down there?"

"Rather!" I said. "That is, Lilian does, and I do when I'm with her.
We're pretty mad on it. I was dead set on hearing Rosetta Rosa in
'Lohengrin' to-night, but there isn't a seat to be had. I suppose I
shall push myself into the gallery."

"No, you won't," Sullivan put in sharply. "I've got a box. There'll be
a chair for you. You'll see my wife. I should never have dreamt of
going. Wagner bores me, though I must say I've got a few tips from
him. But when we heard what a rush there was for seats Emmeline
thought we ought to go, and I never cross her if I can help it. I made
Smart give us a box."

"I shall be delighted to come," I said. "There's only one Smart, I
suppose? You mean Sir Cyril?"

"The same, my boy. Lessee of the Opera, lessee of the Diana, lessee of
the Folly, lessee of the Ottoman. If any one knows the color of his
cheques I reckon it's me. He made me--that I will say; but I made him,
too. Queer fellow! Awfully cute of him to get elected to the County
Council. It was through him I met my wife. Did you ever see Emmeline
when she was Sissie Vox?"

"I'm afraid I didn't."

"You missed a treat, old man. There was no one to touch her in boys'
parts in burlesque. A dashed fine woman she is--though I say it,
dashed fine!" He seemed to reflect a moment. "She's a spiritualist. I
wish she wasn't. Spiritualism gets on her nerves. I've no use for it
myself, but it's her life. It gives her fancies. She got some sort of
a silly notion--don't tell her I said this, Carlie--about Rosetta
Rosa. Says she's unlucky--Rosa, I mean. Wanted me to warn Smart
against engaging her. Me! Imagine it! Why, Rosa will be the making of
this opera season! She's getting a terrific salary, Smart told me."

"It's awfully decent of you to offer me a seat," I began to thank him.

"Stuff!" he said. "Cost me nothing." A clock struck softly.
"Christopher! it's half-past twelve, and I'm due at the Diana at
twelve. We're rehearsing, you know."

We went out of the club arm in arm, Sullivan toying with his
eye-glass.

"Well, you'll toddle round to-night, eh? Just ask for my box. You'll
find they'll look after you. So long!"

He walked off.

"I say," he cried, returning hastily on his steps, and lowering his
voice, "when you meet my wife, don't say anything about her
theatrical career. She don't like it. She's a great lady now. See?"

"Why, of course!" I agreed.

He slapped me on the back and departed.

It is easy to laugh at Sullivan. I could see that even then--perhaps
more clearly then than now. But I insist that he was lovable. He had
little directly to do with my immense adventure, but without him it
could not have happened. And so I place him in the forefront of the
narrative.




CHAPTER II

AT THE OPERA


It was with a certain nervousness that I mentioned Sullivan's name to
the gentleman at the receipt of tickets--a sort of transcendantly fine
version of Keith Prowse's clerk--but Sullivan had not exaggerated his
own importance. They did look after me. They looked after me with such
respectful diligence that I might have been excused for supposing that
they had mistaken me for the Shah of Persia in disguise. I was
introduced into Sullivan's box with every circumstance of pomp. The
box was empty. Naturally I had arrived there first. I sat down, and
watched the enormous house fill, but not until I had glanced into the
mirror that hung on the crimson partition of the box to make sure that
my appearance did no discredit to Sullivan and the great lady, his
wife.

At eight o'clock, when the conductor appeared at his desk to an
accompaniment of applauding taps from the musicians, the house was
nearly full. The four tiers sent forth a sparkle of diamonds, of silk,
and of white arms and shoulders which rivalled the glitter of the vast
crystal chandelier. The wide floor of serried stalls (those stalls of
which one pair at least had gone for six pound ten) added their more
sombre brilliance to the show, while far above, stretching away
indefinitely to the very furthest roof, was the gallery (where but for
Sullivan I should have been), a mass of black spotted with white
faces.

Excitement was in the air: the expectation of seeing once again
Rosetta Rosa, the girl with the golden throat, the mere girl who, two
years ago, had in one brief month captured London, and who now, after
a period of petulance, had decided to recapture London. On ordinary
nights, for the inhabitants of boxes, the Opera is a social
observance, an exhibition of jewels, something between an F.O.
reception and a conversazione with music in the distance. But to-night
the habitués confessed a genuine interest in the stage itself,
abandoning their rôle of players. Dozens of times since then have I
been to the Opera, and never have I witnessed the candid enthusiasm
of that night. If London can be naïve, it was naïve then.

The conductor raised his baton. The orchestra ceased its tuning. The
lights were lowered. Silence and stillness enwrapped the auditorium.
And the quivering violins sighed out the first chords of the
"Lohengrin" overture. For me, then, there existed nothing save the
voluptuous music, to which I abandoned myself as to the fascination of
a dream. But not for long. Just as the curtain rose, the door behind
me gave a click, and Sullivan entered in all his magnificence. I
jumped up. On his arm in the semi-darkness I discerned a tall,
olive-pale woman, with large handsome features of Jewish cast, and
large, liquid black eyes. She wore a dead-white gown, and over this a
gorgeous cloak of purple and mauve.

"Emmeline, this is Carl," Sullivan whispered.

She smiled faintly, giving me her finger-tips, and then she suddenly
took a step forward as if the better to examine my face. Her strange
eyes met mine. She gave a little indefinable unnecessary "Ah!" and
sank down into a chair, loosing my hand swiftly. I was going to say
that she loosed my hand as if it had been the tail of a snake that she
had picked up in mistake for something else. But that would leave the
impression that her gesture was melodramatic, which it was not. Only
there was in her demeanor a touch of the bizarre, ever so slight; yes,
so slight that I could not be sure that I had not imagined it.

"The wife's a bit overwrought," Sullivan murmured in my ear. "Nerves,
you know. Women are like that. Wait till you're married. Take no
notice. She'll be all right soon."

I nodded and sat down. In a moment the music had resumed its sway over
me.

I shall never forget my first sight of Rosetta Rosa as, robed with the
modesty which the character of Elsa demands, she appeared on the stage
to answer the accusation of Ortrud. For some moments she hesitated in
the background, and then timidly, yet with what grandeur of mien,
advanced towards the king. I knew then, as I know now, that hers was a
loveliness of that imperious, absolute, dazzling kind which banishes
from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, all considerations of
right and wrong, and leaves therein nothing but worship and desire.
Her acting, as she replied by gesture to the question of the king,
was perfect in its realization of the simplicity of Elsa. Nevertheless
I, at any rate, as I searched her features through the lorgnon that
Mrs. Sullivan had silently handed to me, could descry beneath the
actress the girl--the spoilt and splendid child of Good Fortune, who
in the very spring of youth had tasted the joy of sovereign power,
that unique and terrible dominion over mankind which belongs to beauty
alone.

Such a face as hers once seen is engraved eternally on the memory of
its generation. And yet when, in a mood of lyrical and rapt ecstasy,
she began her opening song, "In Lichter Waffen Scheine," her face was
upon the instant forgotten. She became a Voice--pure, miraculous,
all-compelling; and the listeners seemed to hold breath while the
matchless melody wove round them its persuasive spell.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first act was over, and Rosetta Rosa stood at the footlights
bowing before the rolling and thunderous storms of applause, her hand
in the hand of Alresca, the Lohengrin. That I have not till this
moment mentioned Alresca, and that I mention him now merely as the
man who happened to hold Rosa's hand, shows with what absolute
sovereignty Rosa had dominated the scene. For as Rosa was among
sopranos, so was Alresca among tenors--the undisputed star. Without
other aid Alresca could fill the opera-house; did he not receive two
hundred and fifty pounds a night? To put him in the same cast as Rosa
was one of Cyril Smart's lavish freaks of expense.

As these two stood together Rosetta Rosa smiled at him; he gave her a
timid glance and looked away.

When the clapping had ceased and the curtain hid the passions of the
stage, I turned with a sigh of exhaustion and of pleasure to my
hostess, and I was rather surprised to find that she showed not a
trace of the nervous excitement which had marked her entrance into the
box. She sat there, an excellent imitation of a woman of fashion,
languid, unmoved, apparently a little bored, but finely conscious of
doing the right thing.

"It's a treat to see any one enjoy anything as you enjoy this music,"
she said to me. She spoke well, perhaps rather too carefully, and with
a hint of the cockney accent.

"It runs in the family, you know, Mrs. Smith," I replied, blushing for
the ingenuousness which had pleased her.

"Don't call me Mrs. Smith; call me Emmeline, as we are cousins. I
shouldn't at all like it if I mightn't call you Carl. Carl is such a
handsome name, and it suits you. Now, doesn't it, Sully?"

"Yes, darling," Sullivan answered nonchalantly. He was at the back of
the box, and clearly it was his benevolent desire to give me fair
opportunity of a tête-à-tête with his dark and languorous lady.
Unfortunately, I was quite unpractised in the art of maintaining a
tête-à-tête with dark and languorous ladies. Presently he rose.

"I must look up Smart," he said, and left us.

"Sullivan has been telling me about you. What a strange meeting! And
so you are a doctor! You don't know how young you look. Why, I am old
enough to be your mother!"

"Oh, no, you aren't," I said. At any rate, I knew enough to say that.

And she smiled.

"Personally," she went on, "I hate music--loathe it. But it's
Sullivan's trade, and, of course, one must come here."

She waved a jewelled arm towards the splendid animation of the
auditorium.

"But surely, Emmeline," I cried protestingly, "you didn't 'loathe'
that first act. I never heard anything like it. Rosa was simply--well,
I can't describe it."

She gazed at me, and a cloud of melancholy seemed to come into her
eyes. And after a pause she said, in the strangest tone, very quietly:

"You're in love with her already."

And her eyes continued to hold mine.

"Who could help it?" I laughed.

She leaned towards me, and her left hand hung over the edge of the
box.

"Women like Rosetta Rosa ought to be killed!" she said, with
astonishing ferocity. Her rich, heavy contralto vibrated through me.
She was excited again, that was evident. The nervous mood had
overtaken her. The long pendent lobes of her ears crimsoned, and her
opulent bosom heaved. I was startled. I was rather more than
startled--I was frightened. I said to myself, "What a peculiar
creature!"

"Why?" I questioned faintly.

"Because they are too young, too lovely, too dangerous," she responded
with fierce emphasis. "And as for Rosa in particular--as for Rosa in
particular--if you knew what I knew, what I've seen----"

"What have you seen?" I was bewildered. I began to wish that Sullivan
had not abandoned me to her.

"Perhaps I'm wrong," she laughed.

She laughed, and sat up straight again, and resumed her excellent
imitation of the woman of fashion, while I tried to behave as though I
had found nothing singular in her behavior.

"You know about our reception?" she asked vivaciously in another
moment, playing with her fan.

"I'm afraid I don't."

"Where have you been, Carl?"

"I've been in Edinburgh," I said, "for my final."

"Oh!" she said. "Well, it's been paragraphed in all the papers.
Sullivan is giving a reception in the Gold Rooms of the Grand Babylon
Hotel. Of course, it will be largely theatrical,--Sullivan has to mix
a good deal with that class, you know; it's his business,--but there
will be a lot of good people there. You'll come, won't you? It's to
celebrate the five hundredth performance of 'My Queen.' Rosetta Rosa
is coming."

"I shall be charmed. But I should have thought you wouldn't ask Rosa
after what you've just said."

"Not ask Rosa! My dear Carl, she simply won't go anywhere. I know for
a fact she declined Lady Casterby's invitation to meet a Serene
Highness. Sir Cyril got her for me. She'll be the star of the show."

The theatre darkened once more. There were the usual preliminaries,
and the orchestra burst into the prelude of the second act.

"Have you ever done any crystal-gazing?" Emmeline whispered.

And some one on the floor of the house hissed for silence.

I shook my head.

"You must try." Her voice indicated that she was becoming excited
again. "At my reception there will be a spiritualism room. I'm a
believer, you know."

I nodded politely, leaning over the front of the box to watch the
conductor.

Then she set herself to endure the music.

Immediately the second act was over, Sullivan returned, bringing with
him a short, slight, bald-headed man of about fifty. The two were
just finishing a conversation on some stage matter.

"Smart, let me introduce to you my cousin, Carl Foster. Carl, this is
Sir Cyril Smart."

My first feeling was one of surprise that a man so celebrated should
be so insignificant to the sight. Yet as he looked at me I could
somehow feel that here was an intelligence somewhat out of the common.
At first he said little, and that little was said chiefly to my
cousin's wife, but there was a quietude and firmness in his speech
which had their own effect.

Sir Cyril had small eyes, and small features generally, including
rather a narrow forehead. His nostrils, however, were well curved, and
his thin, straight lips and square chin showed the stiffest
determination. He looked fatigued, weary, and harassed; yet it did not
appear that he complained of his lot; rather accepted it with sardonic
humor. The cares of an opera season and of three other simultaneous
managements weighed on him ponderously, but he supported the burden
with stoicism.

"What is the matter with Alresca to-night?" Sullivan asked. "Suffering
the pangs of jealousy, I suppose."

"Alresca," Sir Cyril replied, "is the greatest tenor living, and
to-night he sings like a variety comedian. But it is not jealousy.
There is one thing about Alresca that makes me sometimes think he is
not an artist at all--he is incapable of being jealous. I have known
hundreds of singers, and he is the one solitary bird among them of
that plumage. No, it is not jealousy."

"Then what is it?"

"I wish I knew. He asked me to go and dine with him this afternoon.
You know he dines at four o'clock. Of course, I went. What do you
think he wanted me to do? He actually suggested that I should change
the bill to-night! That showed me that something really was the
matter, because he's the most modest and courteous man I have ever
known, and he has a horror of disappointing the public. I asked him if
he was hoarse. No. I asked him if he felt ill. No. But he was
extremely depressed.

"'I'm quite well,' he said, 'and yet--' Then he stopped. 'And yet
what?' It seemed as if I couldn't drag it out of him. Then all of a
sudden he told me. 'My dear Smart,' he said, 'there is a misfortune
coming to me. I feel it.' That's just what he said--'There's a
misfortune coming to me. I feel it.' He's superstitious. They all are.
Naturally, I set to work to soothe him. I did what I could. I talked
about his liver in the usual way. But it had less than the usual
effect. However, I persuaded him not to force me to change the bill."

Mrs. Sullivan struck into the conversation.

"He isn't in love with Rosa, is he?" she demanded brusquely.

"In love with Rosa? Of course he isn't, my pet!" said Sullivan.

The wife glared at her husband as if angry, and Sullivan made a comic
gesture of despair with his hands.

"Is he?" Mrs. Sullivan persisted, waiting for Smart's reply.

"I never thought of that," said Sir Cyril simply. "No; I should say
not, decidedly not.... He may be, after all. I don't know. But if
he were, that oughtn't to depress him. Even Rosa ought to be flattered
by the admiration of a man like Alresca. Besides, so far as I know,
they've seen very little of each other. They're too expensive to sing
together often. There's only myself and Conried of New York who would
dream of putting them in the same bill. I should say they hadn't sung
together more than two or three times since the death of Lord
Clarenceux; so, even if he has been making love to her, she's scarcely
had time to refuse him--eh?"

"If he has been making love to Rosa," said Mrs. Sullivan slowly,
"whether she has refused him or not, it's a misfortune for him, that's
all."

"Oh, you women! you women!" Sullivan smiled. "How fond you are of each
other."

Mrs. Sullivan disdained to reply to her spouse.

"And, let me tell you," she added, "he has been making love to her."

The talk momentarily ceased, and in order to demonstrate that I was
not tongue-tied in the company of these celebrities, I ventured to
inquire what Lord Clarenceux, whose riches and eccentricities had
reached even the Scottish newspapers, had to do with the matter.

"Lord Clarenceux was secretly engaged to Rosa in Vienna," Sir Cyril
replied. "That was about two and a half years ago. He died shortly
afterwards. It was a terrible shock for her. Indeed, I have always
thought that the shock had something to do with her notorious quarrel
with us. She isn't naturally quarrelsome, so far as I can judge,
though really I have seen very little of her."

"By the way, what was the real history of that quarrel?" said
Sullivan. "I only know the beginning of it, and I expect Carl doesn't
know even that, do you, Carl?"

"No," I murmured modestly. "But perhaps it's a State secret."

"Not in the least," Sir Cyril said, turning to me. "I first heard Rosa
in Genoa--the opera-house there is more of a barn even than this, and
a worse stage than this used to be, if that's possible. She was
nineteen. Of course, I knew instantly that I had met with the chance
of my life. In my time I have discovered eleven stars, but this was a
sun. I engaged her at once, and she appeared here in the following
July. She sang twelve times, and--well, you know the sensation there
was. I had offered her twenty pounds a night in Genoa, and she seemed
mighty enchanted.

"After her season here I offered her two hundred pounds a night for
the following year; but Lord Clarenceux had met her then, and she
merely said she would think it over. She wouldn't sign a contract. I
was annoyed. My motto is, 'Never be annoyed,' but I was. Next to
herself, she owed everything to me. She went to Vienna to fulfil an
engagement, and Lord Clarenceux after her. I followed. I saw her, and
I laid myself out to arrange terms of peace.

"I have had difficulties with prime donne before, scores of times.
Yes; I have had experience." He laughed sardonically. "I thought I
knew what to do. Generally a prima donna has either a pet dog or a pet
parrot--sopranos go in for dogs, contraltos seem to prefer parrots. I
have made a study of these agreeable animals, and I have found that
through them their mistresses can be approached when all other avenues
are closed. I can talk doggily to poodles in five languages, and in
the art of administering sugar to the bird I am, I venture to think,
unrivalled. But Rosa had no pets. And after a week's negotiation, I
was compelled to own myself beaten. It was a disadvantage to me that
she wouldn't lose her temper. She was too polite; she really was
grateful for what I had done for her. She gave me no chance to work on
her feelings. But beyond all this there was something strange about
Rosa, something I have never been able to fathom. She isn't a child
like most of 'em. She's as strong-headed as I am myself, every bit!"

He paused, as if inwardly working at the problem.

"Well, and how did you make it up?" Sullivan asked briskly.

(As for me, I felt as if I had come suddenly into the centre of the
great world.)

"Oh, nothing happened for a time. She sang in Paris and America, and
took her proper place as the first soprano in the world. I did without
her, and managed very well. Then early this spring she sent her agent
to see me, and offered to sing ten times for three thousand pounds.
They can't keep away from London, you know. New York and Chicago are
all very well for money, but if they don't sing in London people ask
'em why. I wanted to jump at the offer, but I pretended not to be
eager. Up till then she had confined herself to French operas; so I
said that London wouldn't stand an exclusively French repertoire from
any one, and would she sing in 'Lohengrin.' She would. I suggested
that she should open with 'Lohengrin,' and she agreed. The price was
stiffish, but I didn't quarrel with that. I never drive bargains. She
is twenty-two now, or twenty-three; in a few more years she will want
five hundred pounds a night, and I shall have to pay it."

"And how did she meet you?"

"With just the same cold politeness. And I understand her less than
ever."

"She isn't English, I suppose?" I put in.

"English!" Sir Cyril ejaculated. "No one ever heard of a great English
soprano. Unless you count Australia as England, and Australia wouldn't
like that. No. That is another of her mysteries. No one knows where
she emerged from. She speaks English and French with absolute
perfection. Her Italian accent is beautiful. She talks German freely,
but badly. I have heard that she speaks perfect Flemish,--which is
curious,--but I do not know."

"Well," said Sullivan, nodding his head, "give me the theatrical as
opposed to the operatic star. The theatrical star's bad enough, and
mysterious enough, and awkward enough. But, thank goodness, she isn't
polite--at least, those at the Diana aren't. You can speak your mind
to 'em. And that reminds me, Smart, about that costume of Effie's in
the first act of 'My Queen.' Of course you'll insist--"

"Don't talk your horrid shop now, Sullivan," his wife said; and
Sullivan didn't.

The prelude to the third act was played, and the curtain went up on
the bridal chamber of Elsa and Lohengrin. Sir Cyril Smart rose as if
to go, but lingered, eying the stage as a general might eye a
battle-field from a neighboring hill. The music of the two processions
was heard approaching from the distance. Then, to the too familiar
strains of the wedding march, the ladies began to enter on the right,
and the gentlemen on the left. Elsa appeared amid her ladies, but
there was no Lohengrin in the other crowd. The double chorus
proceeded, and then a certain excitement was visible on the stage, and
the conductor made signs with his left hand.

"Smart, what's wrong? Where's Alresca?" It was Sullivan who spoke.

"He'll sail in all right," Sir Cyril said calmly. "Don't worry."

The renowned impresario had advanced nearer to the front of our box,
and was standing immediately behind my chair. My heart was beating
violently with apprehension under my shirt-front. Where was Alresca?
It was surely impossible that he should fail to appear! But he ought
to have been on the stage, and he was not on the stage. I stole a
glance at Sir Cyril's face. It was Napoleonic in its impassivity.

And I said to myself:

"He is used to this kind of thing. Naturally slips must happen
sometimes."

Still, I could not control my excitement.

Emmeline's hand was convulsively clutching at the velvet-covered
balustrade of the box.

"It'll be all right," I repeated to myself.

But when the moment came for the king to bless the bridal pair, and
there was no Lohengrin to bless, even the impassive Sir Cyril seemed
likely to be disturbed, and you could hear murmurs of apprehension
from all parts of the house. The conductor, however, went doggedly on,
evidently hoping for the best.

At last the end of the procession was leaving the stage, and Elsa was
sitting on the bed alone. Still no Lohengrin. The violins arrived at
the muted chord of B flat, which is Lohengrin's cue. They hung on it
for a second, and then the conductor dropped his baton. A bell rang.
The curtain descended. The lights were turned up, and there was a
swift loosing of tongues in the house. People were pointing to Sir
Cyril in our box. As for him, he seemed to be the only unmoved person
in the audience.

"That's never occurred before in my time," he said. "Alresca was not
mistaken. Something has happened. I must go."

But he did not go. And I perceived that, though the calm of his
demeanor was unimpaired, this unprecedented calamity had completely
robbed him of his power of initiative. He could not move. He was
nonplussed.

The door of the box opened, and an official with a blazing diamond in
his shirt-front entered hurriedly.

"What is it, Nolan?"

"There's been an accident to Monsieur Alresca, Sir Cyril, and they
want a doctor."

It was the chance of a lifetime! I ought to have sprung up and proudly
announced, "I'm a doctor." But did I? No! I was so timid, I was so
unaccustomed to being a doctor, that I dared not for the life of me
utter a word. It was as if I was almost ashamed of being a doctor. I
wonder if my state of mind will be understood.

"Carl's a doctor," said Sullivan.

How I blushed!

"Are you?" said Sir Cyril, suddenly emerging from his condition of
suspended activity. "I never guessed it. Come along with us, will
you?"

"With pleasure," I answered as briskly as I could.




CHAPTER III

THE CRY OF ALRESCA


As I left the box in the wake of Sir Cyril and Mr. Nolan, Sullivan
jumped up to follow us, and the last words I heard were from Emmeline.

"Sullivan, stay here. You shall not go near that woman," she exclaimed
in feverish and appealing tones: excitement had once more overtaken
her. And Sullivan stayed.

"Berger here?" Sir Cyril asked hurriedly of Nolan.

"Yes, sir."

"Send some one for him. I'll get him to take Alresca's part. He'll
have to sing it in French, but that won't matter. We'll make a new
start at the duet."

"But Rosa?" said Nolan.

"Rosa! She's not hurt, is she?"

"No, sir. But she's upset."

"What the devil is she upset about?"

"The accident. She's practically useless. We shall never persuade her
to sing again to-night."

"Oh, damn!" Sir Cyril exclaimed. And then quite quietly: "Well, run
and tell 'em, then. Shove yourself in front of the curtain, my lad,
and make a speech. Say it's nothing serious, but just sufficient to
stop the performance. Apologize, grovel, flatter 'em, appeal to their
generosity--you know."

"Yes, Sir Cyril."

And Nolan disappeared on his mission of appeasing the audience.

We had traversed the flagged corridor. Sir Cyril opened a narrow door
at the end.

"Follow me," he called out. "This passage is quite dark, but quite
straight."

It was not a passage; it was a tunnel. I followed the sound of his
footsteps, my hands outstretched to feel a wall on either side. It
seemed a long way, but suddenly we stepped into twilight. There was a
flight of steps which we descended, and at the foot of the steps a
mutilated commissionaire, ornamented with medals, on guard.

"Where is Monsieur Alresca?" Sir Cyril demanded.

"Behind the back-cloth, where he fell, sir," answered the
commissionaire, saluting.

I hurried after Sir Cyril, and found myself amid a most extraordinary
scene of noise and confusion on the immense stage. The entire
personnel of the house seemed to be present: a crowd apparently
consisting of thousands of people, and which really did comprise some
hundreds. Never before had I had such a clear conception of the
elaborate human machinery necessary to the production of even a
comparatively simple lyric work like "Lohengrin." Richly clad pages
and maids of honor, all white and gold and rouge, mingled with
shirt-sleeved carpenters and scene-shifters in a hysterical rabble;
chorus-masters, footmen in livery, loungers in evening dress, girls in
picture hats, members of the orchestra with instruments under their
arms, and even children, added variety to the throng. And, round
about, gigantic "flats" of wood and painted canvas rose to the flies,
where their summits were lost in a maze of ropes and pulleys. Beams of
light, making visible great clouds of dust, shot forth from hidden
sources. Voices came down from the roof, and from far below ascended
the steady pulsation of a dynamo. I was bewildered.

Sir Cyril pushed ahead, without saying a word, without even
remonstrating when his minions omitted to make way for him. Right at
the back of the stage, and almost in the centre, the crowd was much
thicker. And at last, having penetrated it, we came upon a sight which
I am not likely to forget. Rosa, in all the splendor of the bridal
costume, had passed her arms under Alresca's armpits, and so raised
his head and shoulders against her breast. She was gazing into the
face of the spangled knight, and the tears were falling from her eyes
into his.

"My poor Alresca! My poor Alresca!" she kept murmuring.

Pressing on these two were a distinguished group consisting of the
King, the Herald, Ortrud, Telramund, and several more. And Ortrud was
cautiously feeling Alresca's limbs with her jewel-laden fingers. I saw
instantly that Alresca was unconscious.

"Please put him down, mademoiselle."

These were the first words that I ever spoke to Rosetta Rosa, and, out
of sheer acute nervousness, I uttered them roughly, in a tone of
surly command. I was astonished at myself. I was astonished at my own
voice. She glanced up at me and hesitated. No doubt she was
unaccustomed to such curt orders.

"Please put him down at once," I repeated, trying to assume a bland,
calm, professional, authoritative manner, and not in the least
succeeding. "It is highly dangerous to lift an unconscious person from
a recumbent position."

Why I should have talked like an article in a medical dictionary
instead of like a human being I cannot imagine.

"This is a doctor--Mr. Carl Foster," Sir Cyril explained smoothly, and
she laid Alresca's head gently on the bare planks of the floor.

"Will everyone kindly stand aside, and I will examine him."

No one moved. The King continued his kingly examination of the prone
form. Not a fold of Ortrud's magnificent black robe was disturbed.
Then Sir Cyril translated my request into French and into German, and
these legendary figures of the Middle Ages withdrew a little, fixing
themselves with difficulty into the common multitude that pressed on
them from without. I made them retreat still further. Rosetta Rosa
moved gravely to one side.

Almost immediately Alresca opened his eyes, and murmured faintly, "My
thigh."

I knelt down, but not before Rosa had sprung forward at the sound of
his voice, and kneeling close by my side had clasped his hand. I tried
to order her away, but my tongue could not form the words. I could
only look at her mutely, and there must have been an effective appeal
in my eyes, for she got up, nodding an acquiescence, and stood silent
and tense a yard from Alresca's feet. With a violent effort I nerved
myself to perform my work. The voice of Nolan, speaking to the
audience, and then a few sympathetic cheers, came vaguely from the
other side of the big curtain, and then the orchestra began to play
the National Anthem.

The left thigh was broken near the knee-joint. So much I ascertained
at once. As I manipulated the limb to catch the sound of the crepitus
the injured man screamed, and he was continually in very severe pain.
He did not, however, again lose consciousness.

"I must have a stretcher, and he must be carried to a room. I can't
do anything here," I said to Sir Cyril. "And you had better send for a
first-rate surgeon. Sir Francis Shorter would do very well--102
Manchester Square, I think the address is. Tell him it's a broken
thigh. It will be a serious case."

"Let me send for my doctor--Professor Eugene Churt," Rosa said. "No
one could be more skilful."

"Pardon me," I protested, "Professor Churt is a physician of great
authority, but he is not a surgeon, and here he would be useless."

She bowed--humbly, as I thought.

With such materials as came to hand I bound Alresca's legs together,
making as usual the sound leg fulfil the function of a splint to the
other one, and he was placed on a stretcher. It was my first case, and
it is impossible for me to describe my shyness and awkwardness as the
men who were to carry the stretcher to the dressing-room looked
silently to me for instructions.

"Now," I said, "take short steps, keep your knees bent, but don't on
any account keep step. As gently as you can--all together--lift."

Rosa followed the little procession as it slowly passed through the
chaotic anarchy of the stage. Alresca was groaning, his eyes closed.
Suddenly he opened them, and it seemed as though he caught sight of
her for the first time. He lifted his head, and the sweat stood in
drops on his brow.

"Send her away!" he cried sharply, in an agony which was as much
mental as physical. "She is fatal to me."

The bearers stopped in alarm at this startling outburst; but I ordered
them forward, and turned to Rosa. She had covered her face with her
hands, and was sobbing.

"Please go away," I said. "It is very important he should not be
agitated."

Without quite intending to do so, I touched her on the shoulder.

"Alresca doesn't mean that!" she stammered.

Her blue eyes were fixed on me, luminous through her tears, and I
feasted on all the lovely curves of that incomparable oval which was
her face.

"I am sure he doesn't," I answered. "But you had better go, hadn't
you?"

"Yes," she said, "I will go."

"Forgive my urgency," I murmured. Then she drew back and vanished in
the throng.

In the calm of the untidy dressing-room, with the aid of Alresca's
valet, I made my patient as comfortable as possible on a couch. And
then I had one of the many surprises of my life. The door opened, and
old Toddy entered. No inhabitant of the city of Edinburgh would need
explanations on the subject of Toddy MacWhister. The first surgeon of
Scotland, his figure is familiar from one end of the town to the
other--and even as far as Leith and Portobello. I trembled. And my
reason for trembling was that the celebrated bald expert had quite
recently examined me for my Final in surgery. On that dread occasion I
had made one bad blunder, so ridiculous that Toddy's mood had passed
suddenly from grim ferociousness to wild northern hilarity. I think I
am among the few persons in the world who have seen and heard Toddy
MacWhister laugh.

I hoped that he would not remember me, but, like many great men, he
had a disconcertingly good memory for faces.

"Ah!" he said, "I've seen ye before."

"You have, sir."

"You are the callant who told me that the medulla oblongata--"

"Please--" I entreated.

Perhaps he would not have let me off had not Sir Cyril stood
immediately behind him. The impresario explained that Toddy MacWhister
(the impresario did not so describe him) had been in the audience, and
had offered his services.

"What is it?" asked Toddy, approaching Alresca.

"Fracture of the femur."

"Simple, of course."

"Yes, sir, but so far as I can judge, of a somewhat peculiar nature.
I've sent round to King's College Hospital for splints and bandages."

Toddy took off his coat.

"We sha'n't need ye, Sir Cyril," said he casually.

And Sir Cyril departed.

In an hour the limb was set--a masterly display of skill--and, except
to give orders, Toddy had scarcely spoken another word. As he was
washing his hands in a corner of the dressing-room he beckoned to me.

"How was it caused?" he whispered.

"No one seems to know, sir."

"Doesn't matter much, anyway! Let him lie a wee bit, and then get him
home. Ye'll have no trouble with him, but there'll be no more warbling
and cutting capers for him this yet awhile."

And Toddy, too, went. He had showed not the least curiosity as to
Alresca's personality, and I very much doubt whether he had taken the
trouble to differentiate between the finest tenor in Europe and a
chorus-singer. For Toddy, Alresca was simply an individual who sang
and cut capers.

I made the necessary dispositions for the transport of Alresca in an
hour's time to his flat in the Devonshire Mansion, and then I sat down
near him. He was white and weak, but perfectly conscious. He had
proved himself to be an admirable patient. Even in the very crisis of
the setting his personal distinction and his remarkable and finished
politeness had suffered no eclipse. And now he lay there, with his
silky mustache disarranged and his hair damp, exactly as I had once
seen him on the couch in the garden by the sea in the third act of
"Tristan," the picture of nobility. He could not move, for the
sufficient reason that a strong splint ran from his armpit to his
ankle, but his arms were free, and he raised his left hand, and
beckoned me with an irresistible gesture to come quite close to him.

I smiled encouragingly and obeyed.

"My kind friend," he murmured, "I know not your name."

His English was not the English of an Englishman, but it was beautiful
in its exotic quaintness.

"My name is Carl Foster," I said. "It will be better for you not to
talk."

He made another gesture of protest with that wonderful left hand of
his.

"Monsieur Foster, I must talk to Mademoiselle Rosa."

"Impossible," I replied. "It really is essential that you should keep
quiet."

"Kind friend, grant me this wish. When I have seen her I shall be
better. It will do me much good."

There was such a desire in his eyes, such a persuasive plaintiveness
in his voice, that, against my judgment, I yielded.

"Very well," I said. "But I am afraid I can only let you see her for
five minutes."

The hand waved compliance, and I told the valet to go and inquire for
Rosa.

"She is here, sir," said the valet on opening the door. I jumped up.
There she was, standing on the door-mat in the narrow passage! Yet I
had been out of the room twice, once to speak to Sir Cyril Smart, and
once to answer an inquiry from my cousin Sullivan, and I had not seen
her.

She was still in the bridal costume of Elsa, and she seemed to be
waiting for permission to enter. I went outside to her, closing the
door.

"Sir Cyril would not let me come," she said. "But I have escaped him.
I was just wondering if I dared peep in. How is he?"

"He is getting on splendidly," I answered. "And he wants to have a
little chat with you."

"And may he?"

"If you will promise to be very, very ordinary, and not to excite
him."

"I promise," she said with earnestness.

"Remember," I added, "quite a little, tiny chat!"

She nodded and went in, I following. Upon catching sight of her,
Alresca's face broke into an exquisite, sad smile. Then he gave his
valet a glance, and the valet crept from the room. I, as in
professional duty bound, remained. The most I could do was to retire
as far from the couch, and pretend to busy myself with the rolling up
of spare bandages.

"My poor Rosa," I heard Alresca begin.

The girl had dropped to her knees by his side, and taken his hand.

"How did it happen, Alresca? Tell me."

"I cannot tell you! I saw--saw something, and I fell, and caught my
leg against some timber, and I don't remember any more."

"Saw something? What did you see?"

There was a silence.

"Were you frightened?" Rosa continued softly.

Then another silence.

"Yes," said Alresca at length, "I was frightened."

"What was it?"

"I say I cannot tell you. I do not know."

"You are keeping something from me, Alresca," she exclaimed
passionately.

I was on the point of interfering in order to bring the colloquy to an
end, but I hesitated. They appeared to have forgotten that I was
there.

"How so?" said Alresca in a curious whisper. "I have nothing to keep
from you, my dear child."

"Yes," she said, "you are keeping something from me. This afternoon
you told Sir Cyril that you were expecting a misfortune. Well, the
misfortune has occurred to you. How did you guess that it was coming?
Then, to-night, as they were carrying you away on that stretcher, do
you remember what you said?"

"What did I say?"

"You remember, don't you?" Rosa faltered.

"I remember," he admitted. "But that was nonsense. I didn't know what
I was saying. My poor Rosa, I was delirious. And that is just why I
wished to see you--in order to explain to you that that was nonsense.
You must forget what I said. Remember only that I love you."

("So Emmeline was right," I reflected.)

Abruptly Rosa stood up.

"You must not love me, Alresca," she said in a shaking voice. "You ask
me to forget something; I will try. You, too, must forget
something--your love."

"But last night," he cried, in accents of an almost intolerable
pathos--"last night, when I hinted--you did not--did not speak like
this, Rosetta."

I rose. I had surely no alternative but to separate them. If I allowed
the interview to be prolonged the consequences to my patient might be
extremely serious. Yet again I hesitated. It was the sound of Rosa's
sobbing that arrested me.

Once more she dropped to her knees.

"Alresca!" she moaned.

He seized her hand and kissed it.

And then I came forward, summoning all my courage to assert the
doctor's authority. And in the same instant Alresca's features, which
had been the image of intense joy, wholly changed their expression,
and were transformed into the embodiment of fear. With a look of
frightful terror he pointed with one white hand to the blank wall
opposite. He tried to sit up, but the splint prevented him. Then his
head fell back.

"It is there!" he moaned. "Fatal! My Rosa--"

The words died in his mouth, and he swooned.

As for Rosetta Rosa, I led her from the room.




CHAPTER IV

ROSA'S SUMMONS


Everyone knows the Gold Rooms at the Grand Babylon on the Embankment.
They are immense, splendid, and gorgeous; they possess more gold leaf
to the square inch than any music-hall in London. They were designed
to throw the best possible light on humanity in the mass, to
illuminate effectively not only the shoulders of women, but also the
sombreness of men's attire. Not a tint on their walls that has not
been profoundly studied and mixed and laid with a view to the great
aim. Wherefore, when the electric clusters glow in the ceiling, and
the "after-dinner" band (that unique corporation of British citizens
disguised as wild Hungarians) breathes and pants out its after-dinner
melodies from the raised platform in the main salon, people regard
this coup d'oeil with awe, and feel glad that they are in the dazzling
picture, and even the failures who are there imagine that they have
succeeded. Wherefore, also, the Gold Rooms of the Grand Babylon are
expensive, and only philanthropic societies, plutocrats, and the
Titans of the theatrical world may persuade themselves that they can
afford to engage them.

It was very late when I arrived at my cousin Sullivan's much
advertised reception. I had wished not to go at all, simply because I
was inexperienced and nervous; but both he and his wife were so
good-natured and so obviously anxious to be friendly, that I felt
bound to appear, if only for a short time. As I stood in the first
room, looking vaguely about me at the lively throng of resplendent
actresses who chattered and smiled so industriously and with such
abundance of gesture to the male acquaintances who surrounded them, I
said to myself that I was singularly out of place there.

I didn't know a soul, and the stream of arrivals having ceased,
neither Sullivan nor Emmeline was immediately visible. The moving
picture was at once attractive and repellent to me. It became
instantly apparent that the majority of the men and women there had
but a single interest in life, that of centring attention upon
themselves; and their various methods of reaching this desirable end
were curious and wonderful in the extreme. For all practical purposes,
they were still on the boards which they had left but an hour or two
before. It seemed as if they regarded the very orchestra in the light
of a specially contrived accompaniment to their several actions and
movements. As they glanced carelessly at me, I felt that they held me
as a foreigner, as one outside that incredible little world of theirs
which they call "the profession." And so I felt crushed, with a faint
resemblance to a worm. You see, I was young.

I walked through towards the main salon, and in the doorway between
the two rooms I met a girl of striking appearance, who was followed by
two others. I knew her face well, having seen it often in photograph
shops; it was the face of Marie Deschamps, the popular divette of the
Diana Theatre, the leading lady of Sullivan's long-lived musical
comedy, "My Queen." I needed no second glance to convince me that Miss
Deschamps was a very important personage indeed, and, further, that a
large proportion of her salary of seventy-five pounds a week was
expended in the suits and trappings of triumph. If her dress did not
prove that she was on the topmost bough of the tree, then nothing
could. Though that night is still recent history, times have changed.
Divettes could do more with three hundred a month then than they can
with eight hundred now.

As we passed she examined me with a curiosity whose charm was its
frankness. Of course, she put me out of countenance, particularly when
she put her hand on my sleeve. Divettes have the right to do these
things.

"I know who you are," she said, laughing and showing her teeth. "You
are dear old Sully's cousin; he pointed you out to me the other night
when you were at the Diana. Now, don't say you aren't, or I shall look
such a fool; and for goodness' sake don't say you don't know
me--because everyone knows me, and if they don't they ought to."

I was swept away by the exuberance of her attack, and, blushing
violently, I took the small hand which she offered, and assured her
that I was in fact Sullivan Smith's cousin, and her sincere admirer.

"That's all right," she said, raising her superb shoulders after a
special manner of her own. "Now you shall take me to Sullivan, and he
shall introduce us. Any friend of dear old Sully's is a friend of
mine. How do you like my new song?"

"What new song?" I inquired incautiously.

"Why, 'Who milked the cow?' of course."

I endeavored to give her to understand that it had made an indelible
impression on me; and with such like converse we went in search of
Sullivan, while everyone turned to observe the unknown shy young man
who was escorting Marie Deschamps.

"Here he is," my companion said at length, as we neared the orchestra,
"listening to the band. He should have a band, the little dear!
Sullivan, introduce me to your cousin."

"Charmed--delighted." And Sullivan beamed with pleasure. "Ah, my young
friend," he went on to me, "you know your way about fairly well. But
there! medical students--they're all alike. Well, what do you think of
the show?"

"Hasn't he done it awfully well, Mr. Foster?" said Miss Deschamps.

I said that I should rather think he had.

"Look here," said Sullivan, becoming grave and dropping his voice,
"there are four hundred invitations, and it'll cost me seven hundred
and fifty pounds. But it pays. You know that, don't you, Marie? Look
at the advertisement! And I've got a lot of newspaper chaps here.
It'll be in every paper to-morrow. I reckon I've done this thing on
the right lines. It's only a reception, of course, but let me tell you
I've seen after the refreshments--not snacks--refreshments, mind you!
And there's a smoke-room for the boys, and the wife's got a
spiritualism-room, and there's the show in this room. Some jolly good
people here, too--not all chorus girls and walking gents. Are they,
Marie?"

"You bet not," the lady replied.

"Rosetta Rosa's coming, and she won't go quite everywhere--not quite!
By the way, it's about time she did come." He looked at his watch.

"Ah, Mr. Foster," the divette said, "you must tell me all about that
business. I'm told you were there, and that there was a terrible
scene."

"What business?" I inquired.

"At the Opera the other night, when Alresca broke his thigh. Didn't
you go behind and save his life?"

"I didn't precisely save his life, but I attended to him."

"They say he is secretly married to Rosa. Is that so?"

"I really can't say, but I think not."

"What did she say to him when she went into his dressing-room? I know
all about it, because one of our girls has a sister who's in the Opera
chorus, and her sister saw Rosa go in. I do want to know what she
said, and what he said."

An impulse seized me to invent a harmless little tale for the
diversion of Marie Deschamps. I was astonished at my own enterprise. I
perceived that I was getting accustomed to the society of greatness.

"Really?" she exclaimed, when I had finished.

"I assure you."

"He's teasing," Sullivan said.

"Mr. Foster wouldn't do such a thing," she observed, drawing herself
up, and I bowed.

A man with an eye-glass came and began to talk confidently in
Sullivan's ear, and Sullivan had to leave us.

"See you later," he smiled. "Keep him out of mischief, Marie. And I
say, Carl, the wife said I was to tell you particularly to go into
her crystal-gazing room. Don't forget."

"I'll go, too," Miss Deschamps said. "You may take me there now, if
you please. And then I must go down to where the champagne is flowing.
But not with you, not with you, Mr. Foster. There are other gentlemen
here very anxious for the post. Now come along."

We made our way out of the stir and noise of the grand salon, Marie
Deschamps leaning on my arm in the most friendly and confiding way in
the world, and presently we found ourselves in a much smaller
apartment crowded with whispering seekers after knowledge of the
future. This room was dimly lighted from the ceiling by a single
electric light, whose shade was a queer red Japanese lantern. At the
other end of it were double curtains. These opened just as we entered,
and Emmeline appeared, leading by the hand a man who was laughing
nervously.

"Your fortune, ladies and gentlemen, your fortune!" she cried
pleasantly. Then she recognized me, and her manner changed, or I
fancied that it did.

"Ah, Carl, so you've arrived!" she exclaimed, coming forward and
ignoring all her visitors except Marie and myself.

"Yes, Emmeline, dear," said Marie, "we've come. And, please, I want to
see something in the crystal. How do you do it?"

Emmeline glanced around.

"Sullivan said my crystal-gazing would be a failure," she smiled. "But
it isn't, is it? I came in here as soon as I had done receiving, and
I've already had I don't know how many clients. I sha'n't be able to
stop long, you know. The fact is, Sullivan doesn't like me being here
at all. He thinks it not right of the hostess...."

"But it's perfectly charming of you!" some one put in.

"Perfectly delicious!" said Marie.

"Now, who shall I take first?" Emmeline asked, puzzled.

"Oh, me, of course!" Marie Deschamps replied without a hesitation or a
doubt, though she and I had come in last. And the others acquiesced,
because Marie was on the topmost bough of all.

"Come along, then," said Emmeline, relieved.

I made as if to follow them.

"No, Mr. Foster," said Marie. "You just stay here, and don't listen."

The two women disappeared behind the portière, and a faint giggle,
soon suppressed, came through the portière from Marie.

I obeyed her orders, but as I had not the advantage of knowing a
single person in that outer room, I took myself off for a stroll, in
the hope of encountering Rosetta Rosa. Yes, certainly in the hope of
encountering Rosetta Rosa! But in none of the thronged chambers did I
discover her.

When I came back, the waiting-room for prospective crystal-gazers was
empty, and Emmeline herself was just leaving it.

"What!" I exclaimed. "All over?"

"Yes," she said; "Sullivan has sent for me. You see, of course, one
has to mingle with one's guests. Only they're really Sullivan's
guests."

"And what about me?" I said. "Am I not going to have a look into the
crystal?"

I had, as a matter of fact, not the slightest interest in her crystal
at that instant. I regarded the crystal as a harmless distraction of
hers, and I was being simply jocular when I made that remark.
Emmeline, however, took it seriously. As her face had changed when
she first saw me in the box at the Opera, and again to-night when she
met me and Marie Deschamps on my arm, so once more it changed now.

"Do you really want to?" she questioned me, in her thrilling voice.

My soul said: "It's all rubbish--but suppose there is something in it,
after all?"

And I said aloud:

"Yes."

"Come, then."

We passed through the room with the red Japanese lantern, and lo! the
next room was perfectly dark save for an oval of white light which
fell slantingly on a black marble table. The effect was rather
disconcerting at first; but the explanation was entirely simple. The
light came from an electric table-lamp (with a black cardboard shade
arranged at an angle) which stood on the table. As my eyes grew
accustomed to the obscurity I discovered two chairs.

"Sit down," said Emmeline.

And she and I each took one of the chairs, at opposite sides of the
table.

Emmeline was magnificently attired. As I looked at her in the dimness
across the table, she drummed her fingers on the marble, and then she
bent her face to glance within the shade of the lamp, and for a second
her long and heavy, yet handsome, features were displayed to the
minutest part in the blinding ray of the lamp, and the next second
they were in obscurity again. It was uncanny. I was impressed; and all
the superstition which, like a snake, lies hidden in the heart of
every man, stirred vaguely and raised its head.

"Carl--" Emmeline began, and paused.

The woman indubitably did affect me strangely. Hers was a lonely soul,
an unusual mixture of the absolutely conventional and of something
quite else--something bizarre, disturbing, and inexplicable. I was
conscious of a feeling of sympathy for her.

"Well?" I murmured.

"Do you believe in the supernatural?"

"I neither believe nor disbelieve," I replied, "for I have never met
with anything that might be a manifestation of it. But I may say that
I am not a hard and fast materialist." And I added: "Do you believe in
it?"

"Of course," she snapped.

"Then, if you really believe, if it's so serious to you, why do you
make a show of it for triflers?".

"Ah!" she breathed. "Some of them do make me angry. They like to play
at having dealings with the supernatural. But I thought the crystal
would be such a good thing for Sullivan's reception. It is very
important to Sullivan that this should be a great success--our first
large public reception, you know. Sullivan says we must advertise
ourselves."

The explanation of her motives was given so naïvely, so simply and
unaffectedly, that it was impossible to take exception to it.

"Where's the crystal?" I inquired.

"It is here," she said, and she rolled a glass ball with the
suddenness that had the appearance of magic from the dark portion of
the table's surface into the oval of light. And it was so exactly
spherical, and the table top was so smooth that it would not stay
where it was put, and she had to hold it there with her ringed hand.

"So that's it," I remarked.

"Carl," she said, "it is only right I should warn you. Some weeks ago
I saw in the crystal the face of a man whom I did not know. I saw it
again and again--and always the same scene. Then I saw you at the
Opera last week, and Sullivan introduced you as his cousin that he
talks about sometimes. Did you notice that night that I behaved rather
queerly?"

"Yes." I spoke shortly.

"You are the man whom I saw in the crystal."

"Really?" I ejaculated, smiling, or at least trying to smile. "And
what is the scene of which I am part?"

"You are standing--But no!"

She abruptly ceased speaking and coughed, clearing her throat, and she
fixed her large eyes on me. Outside I could hear the distant strain of
the orchestra, and the various noises of a great crowd of people. But
this little dark room, with its sharply defined oval of light, was
utterly shut off from the scene of gaiety. I was aware of an
involuntary shiver, and for the life of me I could not keep my gaze
steadily on the face of the tall woman who sat so still, with such
impressiveness, on the other side of the table. I waited for her to
proceed, and after what seemed a long interval she spoke again:

"You aren't afraid, are you?" she demanded.

"Of course I'm not."

"Then you shall look into the crystal and try to see what I saw. I
will not tell you. You shall try to see for yourself. You may succeed,
if I help you. Now, try to free your mind from every thought, and look
earnestly. Look!"

I drew the globe towards me from under her fingers.

"Rum!" I murmured to myself.

Then I strenuously fixed my eyes on the glinting depths of the
crystal, full of strange, shooting fires; but I could see nothing
whatever.

"No go!" I said. "You'll have to tell me what you saw."

"Patience. There is time yet. Look again. Take my hand in your right
hand."

I obeyed, and we sat together in the tense silence. After a few
minutes, the crystal darkened and then slowly cleared. I trembled with
an uneasy anticipation.

"You see something," she breathed sorrowfully in my ear.

"Not yet, not yet," I whispered. "But it is coming. Yes, I see
myself, and--and--a woman--a very pretty woman. I am clasping her
hand."

"Don't you recognize the woman?" Again Emmeline's voice vibrated like
a lamentation in my ear. I did recognize the woman, and the sweat
stood on my brow.

"It is Rosetta Rosa!"

"And what else do you see?" my questioner pursued remorselessly.

"I see a figure behind us," I stammered, "but what figure I cannot
make out. It is threatening me. It is threatening me! It is a horrible
thing. It will kill me! Ah--!"

I jumped up with a nervous movement. The crystal, left to itself,
rolled off the table to the floor, and fell with a thud unbroken on
the soft carpet. And I could hear the intake of Emmeline's breath.

At that moment the double portière was pulled apart, and some one
stood there in the red light from the Japanese lantern.

"Is Mr. Foster here? I want him to come with me," said a voice. And it
was the voice of Rosa.

Just behind her was Sullivan.

"I expected you'd be here," laughed Sullivan.




CHAPTER V

THE DAGGER AND THE MAN


Rosetta Rosa and I threaded through the crowd towards the Embankment
entrance of the Gold Rooms. She had spoken for a few moments with
Emmeline, who went pale with satisfaction at the candid friendliness
of her tone, and she had chatted quite gaily with Sullivan himself;
and we had all been tremendously impressed by her beauty and fine
grace--I certainly not the least. And then she had asked me, with a
quality of mysteriousness in her voice, to see her to her carriage.

And, with her arm in mine, it was impossible for me to believe that
she could influence, in any evil way, my future career. That she might
be the cause of danger to my life seemed ridiculous. She was the
incarnation of kindliness and simplicity. She had nothing about her of
the sinister, and further, with all her transcendent beauty and charm,
she was also the incarnation of the matter-of-fact. I am obliged to
say this, though I fear that it may impair for some people the vision
of her loveliness and her unique personality. She was the incarnation
of the matter-of-fact, because she appeared to be invariably quite
unconscious of the supremacy of her talents. She was not weighed down
by them, as many artists of distinction are weighed down. She carried
them lightly, seemingly unaware that they existed. Thus no one could
have guessed that that very night she had left the stage of the Opera
after an extraordinary triumph in her greatest rôle--that of Isolde in
"Tristan."

And so her presence by my side soothed away almost at once the
excitation and the spiritual disturbance of the scene through which I
had just passed with Emmeline; and I was disposed, if not to laugh at
the whole thing, at any rate to regard it calmly, dispassionately, as
one of the various inexplicable matters with which one meets in a
world absurdly called prosaic. I was sure that no trick had been
played upon me. I was sure that I had actually seen in the crystal
what I had described to Emmeline, and that she, too, had seen it. But
then, I argued, such an experience might be the result of hypnotic
suggestion, or of thought transference, or of some other imperfectly
understood agency.... Rosetta Rosa an instrument of misfortune! No!

When I looked at her I comprehended how men have stopped at nothing
for the sake of love, and how a woman, if only she be beautiful
enough, may wield a power compared to which the sway of a Tsar, even a
Tsar unhampered by Dumas, is impotence itself. Even at that early
stage I had begun to be a captive to her. But I did not believe that
her rule was malign.

"Mr. Foster," she said, "I have asked you to see me to my carriage,
but really I want you to do more than that. I want you to go with me
to poor Alresca's. He is progressing satisfactorily, so far as I can
judge, but the dear fellow is thoroughly depressed. I saw him this
afternoon, and he wished, if I met you here to-night, that I should
bring you to him. He has a proposition to make to you, and I hope you
will accept it."

"I shall accept it, then," I said.

She pulled out a tiny gold watch, glistening with diamonds.

"It is half-past one," she said. "We might be there in ten minutes.
You don't mind it being late, I suppose. We singers, you know, have
our own hours."

In the foyer we had to wait while the carriage was called. I stood
silent, and perhaps abstracted, at her elbow, absorbed in the pride
and happiness of being so close to her, and looking forward with a
tremulous pleasure to the drive through London at her side. She was
dressed in gray, with a large ermine-lined cloak, and she wore no
ornaments except a thin jewelled dagger in her lovely hair.

All at once I saw that she flushed, and, following the direction of
her eyes, I beheld Sir Cyril Smart, with a startled gaze fixed
immovably on her face. Except the footmen and the attendants attached
to the hotel, there were not half a dozen people in the entrance-hall
at this moment. Sir Cyril was nearly as white as the marble floor. He
made a step forward, and then stood still. She, too, moved towards
him, as it seemed, involuntarily.

"Good evening, Miss Rosa," he said at length, with a stiff
inclination. She responded, and once more they stared at each other. I
wondered whether they had quarrelled again, or whether both were by
some mischance simultaneously indisposed. Surely they must have
already met during the evening at the Opera!

Then Rosa, with strange deliberation, put her hand to her hair and
pulled out the jewelled dagger.

"Sir Cyril," she said, "you seem fascinated by this little weapon. Do
you recognize it?"

He made no answer, nor moved, but I noticed that his hands were
tightly clenched.

"You do recognize it, Sir Cyril?"

At last he nodded.

"Then take it. The dagger shall be yours. To-night, within the last
minute, I think I have suddenly discovered that, next to myself, you
have the best right to it."

He opened his lips to speak, but made no sound.

"See," she said. "It is a real dagger, sharp and pointed."

Throwing back her cloak with a quick gesture, she was about to prick
the skin of her left arm between the top of her long glove and the
sleeve of her low-cut dress. But Sir Cyril, and I also, jumped to stop
her.

"Don't do that," I said. "You might hurt yourself."

She glanced at me, angry for the instant; but her anger dissolved in
an icy smile.

"Take it, Sir Cyril, to please me."

Her intonation was decidedly peculiar.

And Sir Cyril took the dagger.

"Miss Rosa's carriage," a commissionaire shouted, and, beckoning to
me, the girl moved imperiously down the steps to the courtyard. There
was no longer a smile on her face, which had a musing and withdrawn
expression. Sir Cyril stood stock-still, holding the dagger. What the
surrounding lackeys thought of this singular episode I will not guess.
Indeed, the longer I live, the less I care to meditate upon what
lackeys do think. But that the adventures of their employers provide
them with ample food for thought there can be no doubt.

Rosa's horses drew us swiftly away from the Grand Babylon Hotel, and
it seemed that she wished to forget or to ignore the remarkable
incident. For some moments she sat silent, her head slightly bent, her
cloak still thrown back, but showing no sign of agitation beyond a
slightly hurried heaving of the bosom.

I was discreet enough not to break in upon her reflections by any
attempt at conversation, for it seemed to me that what I had just
witnessed had been a sudden and terrible crisis, not only in the life
of Sir Cyril, but also in that of the girl whose loveliness was dimly
revealed to me in the obscurity of the vehicle.

We had got no further than Trafalgar Square when she aroused herself,
looked at me, and gave a short laugh.

"I suppose," she remarked, "that a doctor can't cure every disease?"

"Scarcely," I replied.

"Not even a young doctor?" she said with comical gravity.

"Not even a young doctor," I gravely answered.

Then we both laughed.

"You must excuse my fun," she said. "I can't help it, especially when
my mind is disturbed."

"Why do you ask me?" I inquired. "Was it just a general observation
caused by the seriousness of my countenance, or were you thinking of
something in particular?"

"I was thinking of Alresca," she murmured, "my poor Alresca. He is the
rarest gentleman and the finest artist in Europe, and he is
suffering."

"Well," I said, "one can't break one's thigh for nothing."

"It is not his thigh. It is something else."

"What?"

She shook her head, to indicate her inability to answer.

Here I must explain that, on the morning after the accident, I had
taken a hansom to the Devonshire Mansion with the intention of paying
a professional visit to Alresca. I was not altogether certain that I
ought to regard the case as mine, but I went. Immediately before my
hansom, however, there had drawn up another hansom in front of the
portals of the Devonshire, and out of that other hansom had stepped
the famous Toddy MacWhister. Great man as Toddy was, he had an eye on
"saxpences," and it was evident that, in spite of the instructions
which he had given me as to the disposal of Alresca, Toddy was
claiming the patient for his own. I retired. It was the only thing I
could do. Two doctors were not needed, and I did not see myself, a
young man scarcely yet escaped from the fear of examinations,
disputing cases with the redoubtable Toddy. I heard afterwards that he
had prolonged his stay in London in order to attend Alresca. So that
I had not seen the tenor since his accident.

"What does Monsieur Alresca want to see me about?" I demanded
cautiously.

"He will tell you," said Rosa, equally cautious.

A silence followed.

"Do you think I upset him--that night?" she asked.

"You wish me to be frank?"

"If I had thought you would not be frank I would not have asked you.
Do you imagine it is my habit to go about putting awkward questions
like that?"

"I think you did upset him very much."

"You think I was wrong?"

"I do."

"Perhaps you are right," she admitted.

I had been bold. A desire took me to be still bolder. She was in the
carriage with me. She was not older than I. And were she Rosetta Rosa,
or a mere miss taken at hazard out of a drawing-room, she was feminine
and I was masculine. In short--Well, I have fits of rashness
sometimes.

"You say he is depressed," I addressed her firmly. "And I will
venture to inform you that I am not in the least surprised."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "And why?"

"After what you said to him that night in the dressing-room. If I had
been in Alresca's place I know that I should be depressed, and very
much depressed, too."

"You mean--" she faltered.

"Yes," I said, "I mean that."

I thought I had gone pretty far, and my heart was beating. I could not
justly have protested had she stopped the carriage and deposited me on
the pavement by the railings of Green Park. But her character was
angelic. She accepted my treatment of her with the most astounding
meekness.

"You mean," she said, "that he is in love with me, and I chose just
that night to--refuse him."

I nodded.

"That is emotional cause enough, isn't it, to account for any
mysterious depression that any man is ever likely to have?"

"You are mistaken," she said softly. "You don't know Alresca. You
don't know his strength of mind. I can assure you that it is
something more than unreturned love that is destroying him."

"Destroying him?"

"Yes, destroying him. Alresca is capable of killing a futile passion.
His soul is too far removed from his body, and even from his mind, to
be seriously influenced by the mistakes and misfortunes of his mind
and body. Do you understand me?"

"I think so."

"What is the matter with Alresca is something in his most secret
soul."

"And you can form no idea of what it is?"

She made no reply.

"Doctors certainly can't cure such diseases as that," I said.

"They can try," said Rosetta Rosa.

"You wish me to try?" I faced her.

She inclined her head.

"Then I will," I said with sudden passionateness, forgetting even that
I was not Alresca's doctor.

The carriage stopped. In the space of less than a quarter of an hour,
so it seemed to me, we had grown almost intimate--she and I.

Alresca's man was awaiting us in the portico of the Devonshire, and
without a word he led us to his master. Alresca lay on his back on a
couch in a large and luxuriously littered drawing-room. The pallor of
his face and the soft brilliance of his eyes were infinitely pathetic,
and again he reminded me of the tragic and gloomy third act of
"Tristan." He greeted us kindly in his quiet voice.

"I have brought the young man," said Rosa, "and now, after I have
inquired about your health, I must go. It is late. Are you better,
Alresca?"

"I am better now that you are here," he smiled. "But you must not go
yet. It is many days since I heard a note of music. Sing to me before
you go."

"To-night?"

"Yes, to-night."

"What shall I sing?"

"Anything, so that I hear your voice."

"I will sing 'Elsa's Dream.' But who will accompany? You know I simply
can't play to my own singing."

I gathered together all my courage.

"I'm an awful player," I said, "but I know the whole score of
'Lohengrin.'"

"How clever of you!" Rosa laughed. "I'm sure you play beautifully."

Alresca rewarded me with a look, and, trembling, I sat down to the
piano. I was despicably nervous. Before the song was finished I had
lost everything but honor; but I played that accompaniment to the most
marvellous soprano in the world.

And what singing! Rosa stood close beside me. I caught the golden
voice at its birth. Every vibration, every shade of expression, every
subtlety of feeling was mine; and the experience was unforgettable.
Many times since then have I heard Rosa sing, many times in my hearing
has she excited a vast audience to overwhelming enthusiasm; but never,
to my mind, has she sung so finely as on that night. She was
profoundly moved, she had in Alresca the ideal listener, and she sang
with the magic power of a goddess. It was the summit of her career.

"There is none like you," Alresca said, and the praise of Alresca
brought the crimson to her cheek. He was probably the one person
living who had the right to praise her, for an artist can only be
properly estimated by his equals.

"Come to me, Rosa," he murmured, as he took her hand in his and kissed
it. "You are in exquisite voice to-night," he said.

"Am I?"

"Yes. You have been excited; and I notice that you always sing best
under excitement."

"Perhaps," she replied. "The fact is, I have just met--met some one
whom I never expected to meet. That is all. Good night, dear friend."

"Good night."

She passed her hand soothingly over his forehead.

When we were alone Alresca seemed to be overtaken by lassitude.

"Surely," I said, "it is not by Toddy--I mean Dr. Todhunter
MacWhister's advice that you keep these hours. The clocks are striking
two!"

"Ah, my friend," he replied wearily, in his precise and rather
elaborate English, "ill or well, I must live as I have been accustomed
to live. For twenty years I have gone to bed promptly at three o'clock
and risen at eleven o'clock. Must I change because of a broken thigh?
In an hour's time, and not before, my people will carry this couch and
its burden to my bedroom. Then I shall pretend to sleep; but I shall
not sleep. Somehow of late the habit of sleep has left me. Hitherto, I
have scorned opiates, which are the refuge of the weak-minded, yet I
fear I may be compelled to ask you for one. There was a time when I
could will myself to sleep. But not now, not now!"

"I am not your medical adviser," I said, mindful of professional
etiquette, "and I could not think of administering an opiate without
the express permission of Dr. MacWhister."

"Pardon me," he said, his eyes resting on me with a quiet satisfaction
that touched me to the heart, "but you are my medical adviser, if you
will honor me so far. I have not forgotten your neat hand and skilful
treatment of me at the time of my accident. To-day the little
Scotchman told me that my thigh was progressing quite admirably, and
that all I needed was nursing. I suggested to him that you should
finish the case. He had, in fact, praised your skill. And so, Mr.
Foster, will you be my doctor? I want you to examine me thoroughly,
for, unless I deceive myself, I am suffering from some mysterious
complaint."

I was enormously, ineffably flattered and delighted, and all the boy
in me wanted to caper around the room and then to fall on Alresca's
neck and dissolve in gratitude to him. But instead of these feats, I
put on a vast seriousness (which must really have been very funny to
behold), and then I thanked Alresca in formal phrases, and then, quite
in the correct professional style, I began to make gentle fun of his
idea of a mysterious complaint, and I asked him for a catalogue of his
symptoms. I perceived that he and Rosa must have previously arranged
that I should be requested to become his doctor.

"There are no symptoms," he replied, "except a gradual loss of
vitality. But examine me."

I did so most carefully, testing the main organs, and subjecting him
to a severe cross-examination.

"Well?" he said, as, after I had finished, I sat down to cogitate.

"Well, Monsieur Alresca, all I can say is that your fancy is too
lively. That is what you suffer from, an excitable fan--"

"Stay, my friend," he interrupted me with a firm gesture. "Before you
go any further, let me entreat you to be frank. Without absolute
candor nothing can be done. I think I am a tolerable judge of faces,
and I can read in yours the fact that my condition has puzzled you."

I paused, taken aback. It had puzzled me. I thought of all that
Rosetta Rosa had said, and I hesitated. Then I made up my mind.

"I yield," I responded. "You are not an ordinary man, and it was
absurd of me to treat you as one. Absolute candor is, as you say,
essential, and so I'll confess that your case does puzzle me. There is
no organic disease, but there is a quite unaccountable organic
weakness--a weakness which fifty broken thighs would not explain. I
must observe, and endeavor to discover the cause. In the meantime I
have only one piece of advice. You know that in certain cases we have
to tell women patients that a successful issue depends on their own
willpower: I say the same thing to you."

"Receive my thanks," he said. "You have acted as I hoped. As for the
willpower, that is another matter," and a faint smile crossed his
handsome, melancholy face.

I rose to leave. It was nearly three o'clock.

"Give me a few moments longer. I have a favor to ask."

After speaking these words he closed his eyes, as though to recall the
opening sentences of a carefully prepared speech.

"I am entirely at your service," I murmured.

"Mr. Foster," he began, "you are a young man of brilliant
accomplishments, at the commencement of your career. Doubtless you
have made your plans for the immediate future, and I feel quite sure
that those plans do not include any special attendance upon myself,
whom until the other day you had never met. I am a stranger to you,
and on the part of a stranger it would be presumptuous to ask you to
alter your plans. Nevertheless, I am at this moment capable of that
presumption. In my life I have not often made requests, but such
requests as I have made have never been refused. I hope that my good
fortune in this respect may continue. Mr. Foster, I wish to leave
England. I wish to die in my own place--"

I shrugged my shoulders in protest against the word "die."

"If you prefer it, I wish to live in my own place. Will you accompany
me as companion? I am convinced that we should suit each other--that I
should derive benefit from your skill and pleasure from your society,
while you--you would tolerate the whims and eccentricities of my
middle age. We need not discuss terms; you would merely name your
fee."

There was, as a matter of fact, no reason in the world why I should
have agreed to this suggestion of Alresca's. As he himself had said,
we were strangers, and I was under no obligation to him of any kind.

Yet at once I felt an impulse to accept his proposal. Whence that
impulse sprang I cannot say. Perhaps from the aspect of an adventure
that the affair had. Perhaps from the vague idea that by attaching
myself to Alresca I should be brought again into contact with Rosetta
Rosa. Certainly I admired him immensely. None who knew him could avoid
doing so. Already, indeed, I had for him a feeling akin to affection.

"I see by your face," he said, "that you are not altogether unwilling.
You accept?"

"With pleasure;" and I smiled with the pleasure I felt.

But it seemed to me that I gave the answer independently of my own
volition. The words were uttered almost before I knew.

"It is very good of you."

"Not at all," I said. "I have made no plans, and therefore nothing
will be disarranged. Further, I count it an honor; and, moreover, your
'case'--pardon the word--interests me deeply. Where do you wish to
go?"

"To Bruges, of course."

He seemed a little surprised that I should ask the question.

"Bruges," he went on, "that dear and wonderful old city of Flanders,
is the place of my birth. You have visited it?"

"No," I said, "but I have often heard that it is the most picturesque
city in Europe, and I should like to see it awfully."

"There is nothing in the world like Bruges," he said. "Bruges the Dead
they call it; a fit spot in which to die."

"If you talk like that I shall reconsider my decision."

"Pardon, pardon!" he laughed, suddenly wearing an appearance of
gaiety. "I am happier now. When can we go? To-morrow? Let it be
to-morrow."

"Impossible," I said. "The idea of a man whose thigh was broken less
than a fortnight since taking a sea voyage to-morrow! Do you know that
under the most favorable circumstances it will be another five or six
weeks before the bone unites, and that even then the greatest care
will be necessary?"

His gaiety passed.

"Five more weeks here?"

"I fear so."

"But our agreement shall come into operation at once. You will visit
me daily? Rather, you will live here?"

"If it pleases you. I am sure I shall be charmed to live here."

"Let the time go quickly--let it fly! Ah, Mr. Foster, you will like
Bruges. It is the most dignified of cities. It has the picturesqueness
of Nuremburg, the waterways of Amsterdam, the squares of Turin, the
monuments of Perugia, the cafés of Florence, and the smells of
Cologne. I have an old house there of the seventeenth century; it is
on the Quai des Augustins."

"A family affair?" I questioned.

"No; I bought it only a few years ago from a friend. I fear I cannot
boast of much family. My mother made lace, my father was a
schoolmaster. They are both dead, and I have no relatives."

Somewhere in the building a clock struck three, and at that instant
there was a tap at the door, and Alresca's valet discreetly entered.

"Monsieur rang?"

"No, Alexis. Leave us."

Comprehending that it was at last Alresca's hour for retiring, I rose
to leave, and called the man back.

"Good night, dear friend," said Alresca, pressing my hand. "I shall
expect you to-morrow, and in the meantime a room shall be prepared for
you. Au revoir."

Alexis conducted me to the door. As he opened it he made a civil
remark about the beauty of the night. I glanced at his face.

"You are English, aren't you?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir."

"I only ask because Alexis is such a peculiar name for an Englishman."

"It is merely a name given to me by Monsieur Alresca when I entered
his service several years ago. My name is John Smedley."

"Well, Mr. Smedley," I said, putting half a sovereign into his hand,
"I perceive that you are a man of intelligence."

"Hope so, sir."

"I am a doctor, and to-morrow, as I dare say you heard, I am coming to
live here with your master in order to attend him medically."

"Yes, sir."

"He says he is suffering from some mysterious complaint, Smedley."

"He told me as much, sir."

"Do you know what that complaint is?"

"Haven't the least idea, sir. But he always seems low like, and he
gets lower, especially during the nights. What might the complaint be,
sir?"

"I wish I could tell you. By the way, haven't you had trained nurses
there?"

"Yes, sir. The other doctor sent two. But the governor dismissed 'em
yesterday. He told me they worried him. Me and the butler does what's
necessary."

"You say he is more depressed during the nights--you mean he shows the
effects of that depression in the mornings?"

"Just so, sir."

"I am going to be confidential, Smedley. Are you aware if your master
has any secret trouble on his mind, any worry that he reveals to no
one?"

"No, sir, I am not."

"Thank you, Smedley. Good night."

"Good night, sir, and thank you."

I had obtained no light from Alexis, and I sought in vain for an
explanation of my patient's condition. Of course, it was plausible
enough to argue that his passion for Rosa was at the root of the evil;
but I remembered Rosa's words to me in the carriage, and I was
disposed to agree with them. To me, as to her, it seemed that, though
Alresca was the sort of man to love deeply, he was not the sort of man
to allow an attachment, however profound or unfortunate, to make a
wreck of his existence. No. If Alresca was dying, he was not dying of
love.

As Alexis had remarked, it was a lovely summer night, and after
quitting the Devonshire I stood idly on the pavement, and gazed about
me in simple enjoyment of the scene.

The finest trees in Hyde Park towered darkly in front of me, and above
them was spread the star-strewn sky, with a gibbous moon just showing
over the housetops to the left. I could not see a soul, but faintly
from the distance came the tramp of a policeman on his beat. The
hour, to my busy fancy, seemed full of fate. But it was favorable to
meditation, and I thought, and thought, and thought. Was I at the
beginning of an adventure, or would the business, so strangely
initiated, resolve itself into something prosaic and mediocre? I had a
suspicion--indeed, I had a hope--that adventures were in store for me.
Perhaps peril also. For the sinister impression originally made upon
me by that ridiculous crystal-gazing scene into which I had been
entrapped by Emmeline had returned, and do what I would I could not
dismiss it.

My cousin's wife was sincere, with all her vulgarity and inborn
snobbishness. And that being assumed, how did I stand with regard to
Rosetta Rosa? Was the thing a coincidence, or had I indeed crossed her
path pursuant to some strange decree of Fate--a decree which Emmeline
had divined or guessed or presaged? There was a certain weirdness
about Emmeline that was rather puzzling.

I had seen Rosa but twice, and her image, to use the old phrase, was
stamped on my heart. True! Yet the heart of any young man who had
talked with Rosa twice would in all probability have been similarly
affected. Rosa was not the ordinary pretty and clever girl. She was
such a creature as grows in this world not often in a century. She was
an angel out of Paradise--an angel who might pass across Europe and
leave behind her a trail of broken hearts to mark the transit. And if
angels could sing as she did, then no wonder that the heavenly choirs
were happy in nothing but song. (You are to remember that it was three
o'clock in the morning.) No, the fact that I was already half in love
with Rosa proved nothing.

On the other hand, might not the manner in which she and Alresca had
sought me out be held to prove something? Why should such exalted
personages think twice about a mere student of medicine who had had
the good fortune once to make himself useful at a critical juncture?
Surely, I could argue that here was the hand of Fate.

Rubbish! I was an ass to stand there at that unearthly hour, robbing
myself of sleep in order to pursue such trains of thought. Besides,
supposing that Rosa and myself were, in fact, drawn together by chance
or fate, or whatever you like to call it, had not disaster been
prophesied in that event? It would be best to leave the future alone.
My aim should be to cure Alresca, and then go soberly to Totnes and
join my brother in practice.

I turned down Oxford Street, whose perspective of gas-lamps stretched
east and west to distances apparent infinite, and as I did so I
suddenly knew that some one was standing by the railings opposite,
under the shadow of the great trees. I had been so sure that I was
alone that this discovery startled me a little, and I began to whistle
tunelessly.

I could make out no details of the figure, except that it was a man
who stood there, and to satisfy my curiosity I went across to inspect
him. To my astonishment he was very well, though very quietly,
dressed, and had the appearance of being a gentleman of the highest
distinction. His face was clean-shaven, and I noticed the fine, firm
chin, and the clear, unblinking eyes. He stood quite still, and as I
approached looked me full in the face. It was a terrible gaze, and I
do not mind confessing that, secretly, I quailed under it; there was
malice and a dangerous hate in that gaze. Nevertheless I was young,
careless, and enterprising.

"Can you tell me if I am likely to get a cab at this time of night?" I
asked as lightly as I could. I wanted to hear his voice.

But he returned no answer, merely gazing at me as before, without a
movement.

"Strange!" I said, half to myself. "The fellow must be deaf, or mad,
or a foreigner."

The man smiled slightly, his lips drooping to a sneer. I retreated,
and as I stepped back on the curb my foot touched some small object. I
looked down, and in the dim light, for the dawn was already heralded,
I saw the glitter of jewels. I stooped and picked the thing up. It was
the same little dagger which but a few hours before I had seen Rosa
present with so much formality to Sir Cyril Smart. But there was this
difference--the tiny blade was covered with blood!




CHAPTER VI

ALRESCA'S FATE


The house was large, and its beautiful façade fronted a narrow canal.
To say that the spot was picturesque is to say little, for the whole
of Bruges is picturesque. This corner of the Quai des Augustins was
distinguished even in Bruges. The aspect of the mansion, with its wide
entrance and broad courtyard, on which the inner windows looked down
in regular array, was simple and dignified in the highest degree. The
architecture was an entirely admirable specimen of Flemish domestic
work of the best period, and the internal decoration and the furniture
matched to a nicety the exterior. It was in that grave and silent
abode, with Alresca, that I first acquired a taste for bric-â-brac.
Ah! the Dutch marquetry, the French cabinetry, the Belgian brassware,
the curious panellings, the oak-frames, the faience, the silver
candlesticks, the Amsterdam toys in silver, the Antwerp incunables,
and the famous tenth-century illuminated manuscript in half-uncials!
Such trifles abounded, and in that antique atmosphere they had the
quality of exquisite fitness.

And on the greenish waters of the canal floated several gigantic
swans, with insatiable and endless appetites. We used to feed them
from the dining-room windows, which overhung the canal.

I was glad to be out of London, and as the days passed my gladness
increased. I had not been pleased with myself in London. As the weeks
followed each other, I had been compelled to admit to myself that the
case of Alresca held mysteries for me, even medical mysteries. During
the first day or two I had thought that I understood it, and I had
despised the sayings of Rosetta Rosa in the carriage, and the
misgivings with which my original examination of Alresca had inspired
me. And then I gradually perceived that, after all, the misgivings had
been justified. The man's thigh made due progress; but the man, slowly
failing, lost interest in the struggle for life.

Here I might proceed to a technical dissertation upon his physical
state, but it would be useless. A cloud of long words will not cover
ignorance; and I was most emphatically ignorant. At least, such
knowledge as I had obtained was merely of a negative character. All
that I could be sure of was that this was by no means an instance of
mysterious disease. There was no disease, as we understand the term.
In particular, there was no decay of the nerve-centres. Alresca was
well--in good health. What he lacked was the will to live--that
strange and mystic impulse which alone divides us from death. It was,
perhaps, hard on a young G.P. to be confronted by such a medical
conundrum at the very outset of his career; but, then, the Maker of
conundrums seldom considers the age and inexperience of those who are
requested to solve them.

Yes, this was the first practical proof that had come to me of the
sheer empiricism of the present state of medicine.

We had lived together--Alresca and I--peaceably, quietly, sadly. He
appeared to have ample means, and the standard of luxury which existed
in his flat was a high one. He was a connoisseur in every department
of art and life, and took care that he was well served. Perhaps it
would be more correct to say that he had once taken care to be well
served, and that the custom primarily established went on by its own
momentum. For he did not exercise even such control as a sick man
might have been expected to exercise. He seemed to be concerned with
nothing, save that occasionally he would exhibit a flickering
curiosity as to the opera season which was drawing to a close.

Unfortunately, there was little operatic gossip to be curious about.
Rosa had fulfilled her engagement and gone to another capital, and
since her departure the season had, perhaps inevitably, fallen flat.
Of course, the accident to and indisposition of Alresca had also
contributed to this end. And there had been another factor in the
case--a factor which, by the way, constituted the sole item of news
capable of rousing Alresca from his torpor. I refer to the
disappearance of Sir Cyril Smart.

Soon after my cousin Sullivan's reception, the papers had reported Sir
Cyril to be ill, and then it was stated that he had retired to a
remote Austrian watering-place (name unmentioned) in order to rest and
recuperate. Certain weekly papers of the irresponsible sort gave
publicity to queer rumors--that Sir Cyril had fought a duel and been
wounded, that he had been attacked one night in the streets, even that
he was dead. But these rumors were generally discredited, and
meanwhile the opera season ran its course under the guidance of Sir
Cyril's head man, Mr. Nolan, so famous for his diamond shirt-stud.

Perhaps I could have thrown some light upon the obscurity which
enveloped the doings of Sir Cyril Smart. But I preferred to remain
inactive. Locked away in my writing-case I kept the jewelled dagger so
mysteriously found by me outside the Devonshire Mansion.

I had mentioned the incidents of that night to no one, and probably
not a soul on the planet guessed that the young doctor in attendance
upon Alresca had possession of a little toy-weapon which formed a
startling link between two existences supposed to be unconnected save
in the way of business--those of Sir Cyril and Rosetta Rosa. I
hesitated whether to send the dagger to Rosa, and finally decided that
I would wait until I saw her again, if ever that should happen, and
then do as circumstances should dictate. I often wondered whether the
silent man with the fixed gaze, whom I had met in Oxford Street that
night, had handled the dagger, or whether his presence was a mere
coincidence. To my speculations I discovered no answer.

Then the moment had come when Alresca's thigh was so far mended that,
under special conditions, we could travel, and one evening, after a
journey full of responsibilities for me, we had arrived in Bruges.

Soon afterwards came a slight alteration.

Alresca took pleasure in his lovely house, and I was aware of an
improvement in his condition. The torpor was leaving him, and his
spirits grew livelier. Unfortunately, it was difficult to give him
outdoor exercise, since the roughly paved streets made driving
impossible for him, and he was far from being able to walk. After a
time I contrived to hire a large rowing boat, and on fine afternoons
it was our custom to lower him from the quay among the swans into this
somewhat unwieldy craft, so that he might take the air as a Venetian.
The idea tickled him, and our progress along the disused canals was
always a matter of interest to the towns-people, who showed an
unappeasable inquisitiveness concerning their renowned fellow
citizen.

It was plain to me that he was recovering; that he had lifted himself
out of the circle of that strange influence under which he had nearly
parted with his life. The fact was plain to me, but the explanation of
the fact was not plain. I was as much puzzled by his rise as I had
been puzzled by his descent. But that did not prevent me from trying
to persuade myself that this felicitous change in my patient's state
must be due, after all, to the results of careful dieting, a proper
curriculum of daily existence, supervision of mental tricks and
habits--in short, of all that minute care and solicitude which only a
resident doctor can give to a sick man.

One evening he was especially alert and gay, and I not less so. We
were in the immense drawing-room, which, like the dining-room,
overlooked the canal. Dinner was finished--we dined at six, the Bruges
hour--and Alresca lay on his invalid's couch, ejecting from his mouth
rings of the fine blue smoke of a Javanese cigar, a box of which I had
found at the tobacco shop kept by two sisters at the corner of the
Grande Place. I stood at the great central window, which was wide
open, and watched the whiteness of the swans moving vaguely over the
surface of the canal in the oncoming twilight. The air was warm and
heavy, and the long, high-pitched whine of the mosquito swarms--sole
pest of the city--had already begun.

"Alresca," I said, "your days as an invalid are numbered."

"Why do you say that?"

"No one who was really an invalid could possibly enjoy that cigar as
you are enjoying it."

"A good cigar--a glass of good wine," he murmured, savoring the
perfume of the cigar. "What would life be without them?"

"A few weeks ago, and you would have said: 'What is life even with
them?'"

"Then you really think I am better?" he smiled.

"I'm sure of it."

"As for me," he returned, "I confess it. That has happened which I
thought never would happen. I am once more interested in life. The
wish to live has come back. I am glad to be alive. Carl, your first
case has been a success."

"No thanks to me," I said. "Beyond seeing that you didn't displace the
broken pieces of your thigh-bone, what have I done? Nothing. No one
knows that better than you do."

"That's your modesty--your incurable modesty."

I shook my head, and went to stand by his couch. I was profoundly
aware then, despite all the efforts of my self-conceit to convince
myself to the contrary, that I had effected nothing whatever towards
his recovery, that it had accomplished itself without external aid.
But that did not lessen my intense pleasure in the improvement. By
this time I had a most genuine affection for Alresca. The rare
qualities of the man--his serenity, his sense of justice, his
invariable politeness and consideration, the pureness of his soul--had
captured me completely. I was his friend. Perhaps I was his best
friend in the world. The singular circumstances of our coming together
had helped much to strengthen the tie between us. I glanced down at
him, full of my affection for him, and minded to take advantage of the
rights of that affection for once in a way.

"Alresca," I said quietly.

"Well?"

"What was it?"

"What was what?"

I met his gaze.

"What was that thing that you have fought and driven off? What is the
mystery of it? You know--you must know. Tell me."

His eyelids fell.

"Better to leave the past alone," said he. "Granting that I had formed
an idea, I could not put it into proper words. I have tried to do so.
In the expectation of death I wrote down certain matters. But these I
shall now destroy. I am wiser, less morbid. I can perceive that there
are fields of thought of which it is advisable to keep closed the
gates. Do as I do, Carl--forget. Take the credit for my recovery, and
be content with that."

I felt that he was right, and resumed my position near the window,
humming a tune.

"In a week you may put your foot to the ground; you will then no
longer have to be carried about like a parcel." I spoke in a casual
tone.

"Good!" he ejaculated.

"And then our engagement will come to an end, and you will begin to
sing again."

"Ah!" he said contemplatively, after a pause, "sing!"

It seemed as if singing was a different matter.

"Yes," I repeated, "sing. You must throw yourself into that. It will
be the best of all tonics."

"Have I not told you that I should never sing again?"

"Perhaps you have," I replied; "but I don't remember. And even if you
have, as you yourself have just said, you are now wiser, less morbid."

"True!" he murmured. "Yes, I must sing. They want me at Chicago. I
will go, and while there I will spread abroad the fame of Carl
Foster."

He smiled gaily, and then his face became meditative and sad.

"My artistic career has never been far away from tragedy," he said at
length. "It was founded on a tragedy, and not long ago I thought it
would end in one."

I waited in silence, knowing that if he wished to tell me any private
history, he would begin of his own accord.

"You are listening, Carl?"

I nodded. It was growing dusk.

"You remember I pointed out to you the other day the little house in
the Rue d'Ostende where my parents lived?"

"Perfectly."

"That," he proceeded, using that curiously formal and elaborate
English which he must have learned from reading-books, "that was the
scene of the tragedy which made me an artist. I have told you that my
father was a schoolmaster. He was the kindest of men, but he had moods
of frightful severity--moods which subsided as quickly as they arose.
At the age of three, just as I was beginning to talk easily, I became,
for a period, subject to fits; and in one of these I lost the power of
speech. I, Alresca, could make no sound; and for seven years that
tenor whom in the future people were to call 'golden-throated,' and
'world-famous,' and 'unrivalled,' had no voice." He made a deprecatory
gesture. "When I think of it, Carl, I can scarcely believe it--so
strange are the chances of life. I could hear and understand, but I
could not speak.

"Of course, that was forty years ago, and the system of teaching mutes
to talk was not then invented, or, at any rate, not generally
understood. So I was known and pitied as the poor dumb boy. I took
pleasure in dumb animals, and had for pets a silver-gray cat, a goat,
and a little spaniel. One afternoon--I should be about ten years
old--my father came home from his school and sitting down, laid his
head on the table and began to cry. Seeing him cry, I also began to
cry; I was acutely sensitive.

"'What is the matter?' asked my good mother.

"'Alas!' he said, 'I am a murderer!'

"'Nay, that cannot be,' she replied.

"'I say it is so,' said my father. 'I have murdered a child--a little
girl. I grumbled at her yesterday. I was annoyed and angry--because
she had done her lessons ill. I sent her home, but instead of going
home she went to the outer canal and drowned herself. They came and
told me this afternoon. Yes, I am a murderer!'

"I howled, while my mother tried to comfort my father, pointing out
to him that if he had spoken roughly to the child it was done for the
child's good, and that he could not possibly have foreseen the
catastrophe. But her words were in vain.

"We all went to bed. In the middle of the night I heard my dear
silver-gray cat mewing at the back of the house. She had been locked
out. I rose and went down-stairs to let her in. To do so it was
necessary for me to pass through the kitchen. It was quite dark, and I
knocked against something in the darkness. With an inarticulate
scream, I raced up-stairs again to my parents' bedroom. I seized my
mother by her night-dress and dragged her towards the door. She
stopped only to light a candle, and hand-in-hand we went down-stairs
to the kitchen. The candle threw around its fitful, shuddering glare,
and my mother's eyes followed mine. Some strange thing happened in my
throat.

"'Mother!' I cried, in a hoarse, uncouth, horrible voice, and, casting
myself against her bosom, I clung convulsively to her. From a hook in
the ceiling beam my father's corpse dangled. He had hanged himself in
the frenzy of his remorse. So my speech came to me again."

All the man's genius for tragic acting, that genius which had made him
unique in "Tristan" and in "Tannhauser," had been displayed in this
recital; and its solitary auditor was more moved by it than
superficially appeared. Neither of us spoke a word for a few minutes.
Then Alresca, taking aim, threw the end of his cigar out of the
window.

"Yes," I said at length, "that was tragedy, that was!"

He proceeded:

"The critics are always praising me for the emotional qualities in my
singing. Well, I cannot use my voice without thinking of the dreadful
circumstance under which Fate saw fit to restore that which Fate had
taken away."

And there fell a long silence, and night descended on the canal, and
the swans were nothing now but pale ghosts wandering soundlessly over
the water.

"Carl," Alresca burst out with a start--he was decidedly in a mood to
be communicative that evening--"have you ever been in love?"

In the gloom I could just distinguish that he was leaning his head on
his arm.

"No," I answered; "at least, I think not;" and I wondered if I had
been, if I was, in love.

"You have that which pleases women, you know, and you will have
chances, plenty of chances. Let me advise you--either fall in love
young or not at all. If you have a disappointment before you are
twenty-five it is nothing. If you have a disappointment after you are
thirty-five, it is--everything."

He sighed.

"No, Alresca," I said, surmising that he referred to his own case,
"not everything, surely?"

"You are right," he replied. "Even then it is not everything. The
human soul is unconquerable, even by love. But, nevertheless, be
warned. Do not drive it late. Ah! Why should I not confess to you, now
that all is over? Carl, you are aware that I have loved deeply. Can
you guess what being in love meant to me? Probably not. I am aging
now, but in my youth I was handsome, and I have had my voice. Women,
the richest, the cleverest, the kindest--they fling themselves at
such as me. There is no vanity in saying so; it is the simple fact. I
might have married a hundred times; I might have been loved a thousand
times. But I remained--as I was. My heart slept like that of a young
girl. I rejected alike the open advances of the bold and the shy,
imperceptible signals of the timid. Women were not for me. In secret I
despised them. I really believe I did.

"Then--and it is not yet two years ago--I met her whom you know. And
I--I the scorner, fell in love. All my pride, my self-assurance
crumbled into ruin about me, and left me naked to the torment of an
unrequited passion. I could not credit the depth of my misfortune, and
at first it was impossible for me to believe that she was serious in
refusing me. But she had the right. She was an angel, and I only a
man. She was the most beautiful woman in the world."

"She was--she is," I said.

He laughed easily.

"She is," he repeated. "But she is nothing to me. I admire her beauty
and her goodness, that is all. She refused me. Good! At first I
rebelled against my fate, then I accepted it." And he repeated: "Then
I accepted it."

I might have made some reply to his flattering confidences, but I
heard some one walk quickly across the foot-path outside and through
the wide entrance porch. In another moment the door of the salon was
thrown open, and a figure stood radiant and smiling in the doorway.
The antechamber had already been lighted, and the figure was
silhouetted against the yellow radiance.

"So you are here, and I have found you, all in the dark!"

Alresca turned his head.

"Rosa!" he cried in bewilderment, put out his arms, and then drew them
sharply back again.

It was Rosetta. She ran towards us, and shook hands with kind
expressions of greeting, and our eyes followed her as she moved about,
striking matches and applying them to candles. Then she took off her
hat and veil.

"There! I seemed to know the house," she said. "Immediately I had
entered the courtyard I felt that there was a corridor running to the
right, and at the end of that corridor some steps and a landing and a
door, and on the other side of that door a large drawing-room. And
so, without ringing or waiting for the faithful Alexis, I came in."

"And what brings you to Bruges, dear lady?" asked Alresca.

"Solicitude for your health, dear sir," she replied, smiling. "At
Bayreuth I met that quaint person, Mrs. Sullivan Smith, who told me
that you were still here with Mr. Foster; and to-day, as I was
travelling from Cologne to Ostend, the idea suddenly occurred to me to
spend one night at Bruges, and make inquiries into your condition--and
that of Mr. Foster. You know the papers have been publishing the most
contradictory accounts."

"Have they indeed?" laughed Alresca.

But I could see that he was nervous and not at ease. For myself, I
was, it must be confessed, enchanted to see Rosa again, and so
unexpectedly, and it was amazingly nice of her to include myself in
her inquiries, and yet I divined that it would have been better if she
had never come. I had a sense of some sort of calamity.

Alresca was flushed. He spoke in short, hurried sentences. Alternately
his tones were passionate and studiously cold. Rosa's lovely
presence, her musical chatter, her gay laughter, filled the room. She
seemed to exhale a delightful and intoxicating atmosphere, which
spread itself through the chamber and enveloped the soul of Alresca.
It was as if he fought against an influence, and then gradually
yielded to the sweetness of it. I observed him closely--for was he not
my patient?--and I guessed that a struggle was passing within him. I
thought of what he had just been saying to me, and I feared lest the
strong will should be scarcely so strong as it had deemed itself.

"You have dined?" asked Alresca.

"I have eaten," she said. "One does not dine after a day's
travelling."

"Won't you have some coffee?"

She consented to the coffee, which Alexis John Smedley duly brought
in, and presently she was walking lightly to and fro, holding the tiny
white cup in her white hand, and peering at the furniture and
bric-a-brac by the light of several candles. Between whiles she
related to Alresca all the news of their operatic acquaintances--how
this one was married, another stranded in Buenos Ayres, another ill
with jealousy, another ill with a cold, another pursued for debt, and
so on through the diverting category.

"And Smart?" Alresca queried at length.

I had been expecting and hoping for this question.

"Oh, Sir Cyril! I have heard nothing of him. He is not a person that
interests me."

She shut her lips tight and looked suddenly across in my direction,
and our eyes met, but she made no sign that I could interpret. If she
had known that the little jewelled dagger lay in the room over her
head!

Her straw hat and thin white veil lay on a settee between two windows.
She picked them up, and began to pull the pins out of the hat. Then
she put the hat down again.

"I must run away soon, Alresca," she said, bending over him, "but
before I leave I should like to go through the whole house. It seems
such a quaint place. Will you let Mr. Foster show me? He shall not be
away from you long."

"In the dark?"

"Why not? We can have candles."

And so, a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, I presently found
myself preceding Rosa up the wide branching staircase of the house.
We had left the owner with a reading-lamp at the head of his couch,
and a copy of "Madame Bovary" to pass the time.

We stopped at the first landing to examine a picture.

"That mysterious complaint that he had, or thought he had, in London
has left him, has it not?" she asked me suddenly, in a low, slightly
apprehensive, confidential tone, moving her head in the direction of
the salon below.

For some reason I hesitated.

"He says so," I replied cautiously. "At any rate, he is much better."

"Yes, I can see that. But he is still in a very nervous condition."

"Ah," I said, "that is only--only at certain times."

As we went together from room to room I forgot everything except the
fact of her presence. Never was beauty so powerful as hers; never was
the power of beauty used so artlessly, with such a complete
unconsciousness. I began gloomily to speculate on the chances of her
ultimately marrying Alresca, and a remark from her awoke me from my
abstraction. We were nearing the top of the house.

"It is all familiar to me, in a way," she said.

"Why, you said the same down-stairs. Have you been here before?"

"Never, to my knowledge."

We were traversing a long, broad passage side by side. Suddenly I
tripped over an unexpected single stair, and nearly fell. Rosa,
however, had allowed for it.

"I didn't see that step," I said.

"Nor I," she answered, "but I knew, somehow, that it was there. It is
very strange and uncanny, and I shall insist on an explanation from
Alresca." She gave a forced laugh.

As I fumbled with the handle of the door she took hold of my hand.

"Listen!" she said excitedly, "this will be a small room, and over the
mantelpiece is a little round picture of a dog."

I opened the door with something akin to a thrill. This part of the
house was unfamiliar to me. The room was certainly a small one, but
there was no little round picture over the mantelpiece. It was a
square picture, and rather large, and a sea-piece.

"You guessed wrong," I said, and I felt thankful.

"No, no, I am sure."

She went to the square picture, and lifted it away from the wall.

"Look!" she said.

Behind the picture was a round whitish mark on the wall, showing where
another picture had previously hung.

"Let us go, let us go! I don't like the flicker of these candles," she
murmured, and she seized my arm.

We returned to the corridor. Her grip of me tightened.

"Was not that Alresca?" she cried.

"Where?"

"At the end of the corridor--there!"

"I saw no one, and it couldn't have been he, for the simple reason
that he can't walk yet, not to mention climbing three flights of
stairs. You have made yourself nervous."

We descended to the ground-floor. In the main hall Alresca's
housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a
curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went on to the salon.

The aspect of the room is vividly before me now as I write. Most of
the great chamber was in a candle-lit gloom, but the reading-lamp
burnt clearly at the head of the couch, throwing into prominence the
fine profile of Alresca's face. He had fallen asleep, or at any rate
his eyes were closed. The copy of "Madame Bovary" lay on the floor,
and near it a gold pencil-case. Quietly I picked the book up, and saw
on the yellow cover of it some words written in pencil. These were the
words:

"Carl, I love her. He has come again. This time it is ----"

I looked long at his calm and noble face, and bent and listened. At
that moment Rosa entered. Concealing the book, I held out my right
hand with a gesture.

"Softly!" I enjoined her, and my voice broke.

"Why? What?"

"He is dead," I said.

It did not occur to me that I ought to have prepared her.




CHAPTER VII

THE VIGIL BY THE BIER


We looked at each other, Rosa and I, across the couch of Alresca.

All the vague and terrible apprehensions, disquietudes, misgivings,
which the gradual improvement in Alresca's condition had lulled to
sleep, aroused themselves again in my mind, coming, as it were, boldly
out into the open from the dark, unexplored grottos wherein they had
crouched and hidden. And I went back in memory to those sinister days
in London before I had brought Alresca to Bruges, days over which a
mysterious horror had seemed to brood.

I felt myself adrift in a sea of frightful suspicions. I remembered
Alresca's delirium on the night of his accident, and his final
hallucination concerning the blank wall in the dressing-room (if
hallucination it was), also on that night. I remembered his outburst
against Rosetta Rosa. I remembered Emmeline Smith's outburst against
Rosetta Rosa. I remembered the vision in the crystal, and Rosa's
sudden and astoundingly apt breaking in upon that vision. I remembered
the scene between Rosa and Sir Cyril Smart, and her almost hysterical
impulse to pierce her own arm with the little jewelled dagger. I
remembered the glint of the dagger which drew my attention to it on
the curb of an Oxford Street pavement afterwards. I remembered the
disappearance of Sir Cyril Smart. I remembered all the inexplicable
circumstances of Alresca's strange decay, and his equally strange
recovery. I remembered that his recovery had coincided with an entire
absence of communication between himself and Rosa.... And then she
comes! And within an hour he is dead! "I love her. He has come again.
This time it is--" How had Alresca meant to finish that sentence? "He
has come again." Who had come again? Was there, then, another man
involved in the enigma of this tragedy? Was it the man I had seen
opposite the Devonshire Mansion on the night when I had found the
dagger? Or was "he" merely an error for "she"? "I love her. She has
come again." That would surely make better sense than what Alresca
had actually written? And he must have been mentally perturbed. Such a
slip was possible. No, no! When a man, even a dying man, is writing a
message which he has torn out of his heart, he does not put "he" for
"she" ... "I love her...." Then, had he misjudged her heart when he
confided in me during the early part of the evening? Or had the sudden
apparition of Rosa created his love anew? Why had she once refused
him? She seemed to be sufficiently fond of him. But she had killed
him. Directly or indirectly she had been the cause of his death.

And as I looked at her, my profound grief for Alresca made me her
judge. I forgot for the instant the feelings with which she had once
inspired me, and which, indeed, had never died in my soul.

"How do you explain this?" I demanded of her in a calm and judicial
and yet slightly hostile tone.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "How sad it is! How terribly sad!"

And her voice was so pure and kind, and her glance so innocent, and
her grief so pitiful, that I dismissed forever any shade of a
suspicion that I might have cherished against her. Although she had
avoided my question, although she had ignored its tone, I knew with
the certainty of absolute knowledge that she had no more concern in
Alresca's death than I had.

She came forward, and regarded the corpse steadily, and took the
lifeless hand in her hand. But she did not cry. Then she went abruptly
out of the room and out of the house. And for several days I did not
see her. A superb wreath arrived with her card, and that was all.

But the positive assurance that she was entirely unconnected with the
riddle did nothing to help me to solve it. I had, however, to solve it
for the Belgian authorities, and I did so by giving a certificate that
Alresca had died of "failure of the heart's action." A convenient
phrase, whose convenience imposes perhaps oftener than may be imagined
on persons of an unsuspecting turn of mind! And having accounted for
Alresca's death to the Belgian authorities, I had no leisure (save
during the night) to cogitate much upon the mystery. For I was made
immediately to realize, to an extent to which I had not realized
before, how great a man Alresca was, and how large he bulked in the
world's eye.

The first announcement of his demise appeared in the "Etoile Belgi,"
the well-known Brussels daily, and from the moment of its appearance
letters, telegrams, and callers descended upon Alresca's house in an
unending stream. As his companion I naturally gave the whole of my
attention to his affairs, especially as he seemed to have no relatives
whatever. Correspondents of English, French, and German newspapers
flung themselves upon me in the race for information. They seemed to
scent a mystery, but I made it my business to discourage such an idea.
Nay, I went further, and deliberately stated to them, with a false air
of perfect candor, that there was no foundation of any sort for such
an idea. Had not Alresca been indisposed for months? Had he not died
from failure of the heart's action? There was no reason why I should
have misled these excellent journalists in their search for the
sensational truth, except that I preferred to keep the mystery wholly
to myself.

Those days after the death recur to me now as a sort of breathless
nightmare, in which, aided by the admirable Alexis, I was forever
despatching messages and uttering polite phrases to people I had never
seen before.

I had two surprises, one greater and one less. In the first place, the
Anglo-Belgian lawyer whom I had summoned informed me, after Alresca's
papers had been examined and certain effects sealed in the presence of
an official, that my friend had made a will, bearing a date
immediately before our arrival in Bruges, leaving the whole of his
property to me, and appointing me sole executor. I have never
understood why Alresca did this, and I have always thought that it was
a mere kind caprice on his part.

The second surprise was a visit from the Burgomaster of the city. He
came clothed in his official robes. It was a call of the most rigid
ceremony. Having condoled with me and also complimented me upon my
succession to the dead man's estate, he intimated that the city
desired a public funeral. For a moment I was averse to this, but as I
could advance no argument against it I concurred in the proposal.

There was a lying-in-state of the body at the cathedral, and the whole
city seemed to go in mourning. On the second day a priest called at
the house on the Quai des Augustins, and said that he had been sent by
the Bishop to ask if I cared to witness the lying-in-state from some
private vantage-ground. I went to the cathedral, and the Bishop
himself escorted me to the organ-loft, whence I could see the silent
crowds move slowly in pairs past Alresca's bier, which lay in the
chancel. It was an impressive sight, and one which I shall not forget.

On the afternoon of the day preceding the funeral the same priest came
to me again, and I received him in the drawing-room, where I was
writing a letter to Totnes. He was an old man, a very old man, with a
quavering voice, but he would not sit down.

"It has occurred to the Lord Bishop," he piped, "that monsieur has not
been offered the privilege of watching by the bier."

The idea startled me, and I was at a loss what to say.

"The Lord Bishop presents his profound regrets, and will monsieur care
to watch?"

I saw at once that a refusal would have horrified the ecclesiastic.

"I shall regard it as an honor," I said. "When?"

"From midnight to two o'clock," answered the priest. "The later
watches are arranged."

"It is understood," I said, after a pause.

And the priest departed, charged with my compliments to the Lord
Bishop.

I had a horror of the duty which had been thrust upon me. It went
against not merely my inclinations but my instincts. However, there
was only one thing to do, and of course I did it.

At five minutes to twelve I was knocking at the north door of the
cathedral. A sacristan, who carried in his hand a long lighted taper,
admitted me at once. Save for this taper and four candles which stood
at the four corners of the bier, the vast interior was in darkness.

The sacristan silently pointed to the chancel, and I walked
hesitatingly across the gloomy intervening space, my footsteps echoing
formidably in the silence. Two young priests stood, one at either side
of the lofty bier. One of them bowed to me, and I took his place. He
disappeared into the ambulatory. The other priest was praying for the
dead, a slight frown on his narrow white brow. His back was
half-turned towards the corpse, and he did not seem to notice me in
any way.

I folded my arms, and as some relief from the uncanny and troublous
thoughts which ran in my head I looked about me. I could not bring
myself to gaze on the purple cloth which covered the remains of
Alresca. We were alone--the priest, Alresca, and I--and I felt afraid.
In vain I glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the
stained-glass windows, now illumined by September starlight, at the
beautiful carving of the choir-stalls, at the ugly rococo screen. I
was afraid, and there was no disguising my fear.

Suddenly the clock chimes of the belfry rang forth with startling
resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillness. Then followed
upon the bells a solemn and funereal melody.

"How comes that?" I asked the priest, without stopping to consider
whether I had the right to speak during my vigil.

"It is the carilloneur," my fellow watcher said, interrupting his
whispered and sibilant devotions, and turning to me, as it seemed,
unwillingly. "Have you not heard it before? Every evening since the
death he has played it at midnight in memory of Alresca." Then he
resumed his office.

The minutes passed, or rather crawled by, and, if anything, my
uneasiness increased. I suffered all the anxieties and tremors which
those suffer who pass wakeful nights, imagining every conceivable ill,
and victimized by the most dreadful forebodings. Through it all I was
conscious of the cold of the stone floor penetrating my boots and
chilling my feet....

The third quarter after one struck, and I began to congratulate myself
that the ordeal by the bier was coming to an end. I looked with a sort
of bravado into the dark, shadowed distances of the fane, and smiled
at my nameless trepidations. And then, as my glance sought to
penetrate the gloom of the great western porch, I grew aware that a
man stood there. I wished to call the attention of the priest to this
man, but I could not--I could not.

He came very quietly out of the porch, and walked with hushed
footfall up the nave; he mounted the five steps to the chancel; he
approached us; he stood at the foot of the bier; he was within a yard
of me. The priest had his back to him. The man seemed to ignore me; he
looked fixedly at the bier. But I knew him. I knew that fine, hard,
haughty face, that stiff bearing, that implacable eye. It was the man
whom I had seen standing under the trees opposite the Devonshire
Mansion in London.

For a few moments his countenance showed no emotion. Then the features
broke into an expression of indescribable malice. With gestures of
demoniac triumph he mocked the solemnity of the bier, and showered
upon it every scornful indignity that the human face can convey.

I admit that I was spellbound with astonishment and horror. I ought to
have seized the author of the infamous sacrilege--I ought, at any
rate, to have called to the priest--but I could do neither. I trembled
before this mysterious man. My frame literally shook. I knew what fear
was. I was a coward.

At length he turned away, casting at me as he did so one indefinable
look, and with slow dignity passed again down the length of the nave
and disappeared. Then, and not till then, I found my voice and my
courage. I pulled the priest by the sleeve of his cassock.

"Some one has just been in the cathedral," I said huskily. And I told
him what I had seen.

"Impossible! Retro me, Sathanas! It was imagination."

His tone was dry, harsh.

"No, no," I said eagerly. "I assure you...."

He smiled incredulously, and repeated the word "Imagination!"

But I well knew that it was not imagination, that I had actually seen
this man enter and go forth.




CHAPTER VIII

THE MESSAGE


When I returned to Alresca's house--or rather, I should say, to my own
house--after the moving and picturesque ceremony of the funeral, I
found a note from Rosetta Rosa, asking me to call on her at the Hôtel
du Commerce. This was the first news of her that I had had since she
so abruptly quitted the scene of Alresca's death. I set off instantly
for the hotel, and just as I was going I met my Anglo-Belgian lawyer,
who presented to me a large envelope addressed to myself in the
handwriting of Alresca, and marked "private." The lawyer, who had been
engaged in the sorting and examination of an enormous quantity of
miscellaneous papers left by Alresca, informed me that he only
discovered the package that very afternoon. I took the packet, put it
in my pocket, and continued on my way to Rosa. It did not occur to me
at the time, but it occurred to me afterwards, that I was extremely
anxious to see her again.

Everyone who has been to Bruges knows the Hôtel du Commerce. It is
the Ritz of Bruges, and very well aware of its own importance in the
scheme of things. As I entered the courtyard a waiter came up to me.

"Excuse me, monsieur, but we have no rooms."

"Why do you tell me that?"

"Pardon. I thought monsieur wanted a room. Mademoiselle Rosa, the
great diva, is staying here, and all the English from the Hôtel du
Panier d'Or have left there in order to be in the same hotel with
Mademoiselle Rosa."

Somewhere behind that mask of professional servility there was a
smile.

"I do not want a room," I said, "but I want to see Mademoiselle Rosa."

"Ah! As to that, monsieur, I will inquire." He became stony at once.

"Stay. Take my card."

He accepted it, but with an air which implied that everyone left a
card.

In a moment another servant came forth, breathing apologies, and led
me to Rosa's private sitting-room. As I went in a youngish, dark-eyed,
black-aproned woman, who, I had no doubt, was Rosa's maid, left the
room.

Rosa and I shook hands in silence, and with a little diffidence.
Wrapped in a soft, black, thin-textured tea-gown, she reclined in an
easy-chair. Her beautiful face was a dead white; her eyes were
dilated, and under them were dark semicircles.

"You have been ill," I exclaimed, "and I was not told."

She shrugged her shoulders in denial, and shivered.

"No," she said shortly. There was a pause. "He is buried?"

"Yes."

"Let me hear about it."

I wished to question her further about her health, but her tone was
almost imperious, and I had a curious fear of offending her.
Nevertheless I reminded myself that I was a doctor, and my concern for
her urged me to be persistent.

"But surely you have been ill?" I said.

She tapped her foot. It was the first symptom of nervous impatience
that I had observed in her.

"Not in body," she replied curtly. "Tell me all about the funeral."

And I gave her an account of the impressive incidents of the
interment--the stately procession, the grandiose ritual, the symbols
of public grief. She displayed a strange, morbid curiosity as to it
all.

And then suddenly she rose up from her chair, and I rose also, and she
demanded, as it were pushed by some secret force to the limit of her
endurance:

"You loved him, didn't you, Mr. Foster?"

It was not an English phrase; no Englishwoman would have used it.

"I was tremendously fond of him," I answered. "I should never have
thought that I could have grown so fond of any one in such a short
time. He wasn't merely fine as an artist; he was so fine as a man."

She nodded.

"You understood him? You knew all about him? He talked to you openly,
didn't he?"

"Yes," I said. "He used to tell me all kinds of things."

"Then explain to me," she cried out, and I saw that tears brimmed in
her eyes, "why did he die when I came?"

"It was a coincidence," I said lamely.

Seizing my hands, she actually fell on her knees before me, flashing
into my eyes all the loveliness of her pallid, upturned face.

"It was not a coincidence!" she passionately sobbed. "Why can't you be
frank with me, and tell me how it is that I have killed him? He said
long ago--do you not remember?--that I was fatal to him. He was
getting better--you yourself said so--till I came, and then he died."

What could I reply? The girl was uttering the thoughts which had
haunted me for days.

I tried to smile a reassurance, and raising her as gently as I could,
I led her back to her chair. It was on my part a feeble performance.

"You are suffering from a nervous crisis," I said, "and I must
prescribe for you. My first prescription is that we do not talk about
Alresca's death."

I endeavored to be perfectly matter-of-fact in tone, and gradually she
grew calmer.

"I have not slept since that night," she murmured wearily. "Then you
will not tell me?"

"What have I to tell you, except that you are ill? Stop a moment. I
have an item of news, after all. Poor Alresca has made me his heir."

"That was like his kind heart."

"Yes, indeed. But I can't imagine why he did it!"

"It was just gratitude," said she.

"A rare kind of gratitude," I replied.

"Is no reason given in the will?"

"Not a word."

I remembered the packet which I had just received from the lawyer, and
I mentioned it to her.

"Open it now," she said. "I am interested--if you do not think me too
inquisitive."

I tore the envelope. It contained another envelope, sealed, and a
letter. I scanned the letter.

"It is nothing," I said with false casualness, and was returning it to
my pocket. The worst of me is that I have no histrionic instinct; I
cannot act a part.

"Wait!" she cried sharply, and I hesitated before the appeal in her
tragic voice. "You cannot deceive me, Mr. Foster. It is something. I
entreat you to read to me that letter. Does it not occur to you that I
have the right to demand this from you? Why should he beat about the
bush? You know, and I know that you know, that there is a mystery in
this dreadful death. Be frank with me, my friend. I have suffered much
these last days."

We looked at each other silently, I with the letter in my hand. Why,
indeed, should I treat her as a child, this woman with the compelling
eyes, the firm, commanding forehead? Why should I pursue the silly
game of pretence?

"I will read it," I said. "There is, certainly, a mystery in
connection with Alresca's death, and we may be on the eve of solving
it."

The letter was dated concurrently with Alresca's will--that is to say,
a few days before our arrival in Bruges--and it ran thus:

     "My dear Friend:--It seems to me that I am to die, and from
     a strange cause--for I believe I have guessed the cause. The
     nature of my guess and all the circumstances I have written
     out at length, and the document is in the sealed packet
     which accompanies this. My reason for making such a record
     is a peculiar one. I should desire that no eye might ever
     read that document. But I have an idea that some time or
     other the record may be of use to you--possibly soon. You,
     Carl, may be the heir of more than my goods. If matters
     should so fall out, then break the seal, and read what I
     have written. If not, I beg of you, after five years have
     elapsed, to destroy the packet unread. I do not care to be
     more precise.


                                                   Always yours,
                                                       "Alresca."

"That is all?" asked Rosa, when I had finished reading it.

I passed her the letter to read for herself. Her hand shook as she
returned it to me.

And we both blushed. We were both confused, and each avoided the
glance of the other. The silence between us was difficult to bear. I
broke it.

"The question is, What am I to do? Alresca is dead. Shall I respect
his wish, or shall I open the packet now? If he could have foreseen
your anxiety, he probably would not have made these conditions.
Besides, who can say that the circumstances he hints at have not
already arisen? Who can say"--I uttered the words with an emphasis the
daring of which astounded even myself--"that I am not already the heir
of more than Alresca's goods?"

I imagined, after achieving this piece of audacity, that I was
perfectly calm, but within me there must have raged such a tumult of
love and dark foreboding that in reality I could scarcely have known
what I was about.

Rosa's eyes fixed themselves upon me, but I sustained that gaze. She
stretched forth a hand as if to take the packet.

"You shall decide," I said. "Am I to open it, or am I not to open it?"

"Open it," she whispered. "He will forgive us."

I began to break the seal.

"No, no!" she screamed, standing up again with clenched hands. "I was
wrong. Leave it, for God's sake! I could not bear to know the truth."

I, too, sprang up, electrified by that terrible outburst. Grasping
tight the envelope, I walked to and fro in the room, stamping on the
carpet, and wondering all the time (in one part of my brain) why I
should be making such a noise with my feet. At length I faced her. She
had not moved. She stood like a statue, her black tea-gown falling
about her, and her two hands under her white drawn face.

"It shall be as you wish," I said. "I won't open it."

And I put the envelope back into my pocket.

We both sat down.

"Let us have some tea, eh?" said Rosa. She had resumed her
self-control more quickly than I could. I was unable to answer her
matter-of-fact remark. She rang the bell, and the maid entered with
tea. The girl's features struck me; they showed both wit and cunning.

"What splendid tea!" I said, when the refection was in progress. We
had both found it convenient to shelter our feelings behind small
talk. "I'd no idea you could get tea like this in Bruges."

"You can't," Rosa smiled. "I never travel without my own brand. It is
one of Yvette's special cares not to forget it."

"Your maid?"

"Yes."

"She seems not quite the ordinary maid," I ventured.

"Yvette? No! I should think not. She has served half the sopranos in
Europe--she won't go to contraltos. I possess her because I outbid all
rivals for her services. As a hairdresser she is unequalled. And it's
so much nicer not being forced to call in a coiffeur in every town! It
was she who invented my 'Elsa' coiffure. Perhaps you remember it?"

"Perfectly. By the way, when do you recommence your engagements?"

She smiled nervously. "I--I haven't decided."

Nothing with any particle of significance passed during the remainder
of our interview. Telling her that I was leaving for England the next
day, I bade good-by to Rosa. She did not express the hope of seeing me
again, and for some obscure reason, buried in the mysteries of love's
psychology, I dared not express the hope to her. And so we parted,
with a thousand things unsaid, on a note of ineffectuality, of
suspense, of vague indefiniteness.

And the next morning I received from her this brief missive, which
threw me into a wild condition of joyous expectancy: "If you could
meet me in the Church of St. Gilles at eleven o'clock this morning, I
should like to have your advice upon a certain matter.--Rosa."

Seventy-seven years elapsed before eleven o'clock.

St. Gilles is a large church in a small deserted square at the back of
the town. I waited for Rosa in the western porch, and at five minutes
past the hour she arrived, looking better in health, at once more
composed and vivacious. We sat down in a corner at the far end of one
of the aisles. Except ourselves and a couple of cleaners, there seemed
to be no one in the church.

"You asked me yesterday about my engagements," she began.

"Yes," I said, "and I had a reason. As a doctor, I will take leave to
tell you that it is advisable for you to throw yourself into your work
as soon as possible, and as completely as possible." And I remembered
the similar advice which, out of the plenitude of my youthful wisdom,
I had offered to Alresca only a few days before.

"The fact is that I have signed a contract to sing 'Carmen' at the
Paris Opéra Comique in a fortnight's time. I have never sung the rôle
there before, and I am, or rather I was, very anxious to do so. This
morning I had a telegram from the manager urging me to go to Paris
without delay for the rehearsals."

"And are you going?"

"That is the question. I may tell you that one of my objects in
calling on poor Alresca was to consult him about the point. The truth
is, I am threatened with trouble if I appear at the Opéra Comique,
particularly in 'Carmen.' The whole matter is paltry beyond words, but
really I am a little afraid."

"May I hear the story?"

"You know Carlotta Deschamps, who always takes Carmen at the Comique?"

"I've heard her sing."

"By the way, that is her half-sister, Marie Deschamps, who sings in
your cousin's operas at the London Diana."

"I have made the acquaintance of Marie--a harmless little thing!"

"Her half-sister isn't quite so harmless. She is the daughter of a
Spanish mother, while Marie is the daughter of an English mother, a
Cockney woman. As to Carlotta, when I was younger"--oh, the
deliciously aged air with which this creature of twenty-three referred
to her youth--"I was singing at the Opéra Comique in Paris, where
Carlotta was starring, and I had the misfortune to arouse her
jealousy. She is frightfully jealous, and get worse as she gets older.
She swore to me that if I ever dared to appear at the Comique again
she would have me killed. I laughed. I forgot the affair, but it
happens that I never have sung at the Comique since that time. And now
that I am not merely to appear at the Comique, but am going to sing
'Carmen' there, her own particular rôle, Deschamps is furious. I
firmly believe she means harm. Twice she has written to me the most
formidable threats. It seems strange that I should stand in awe of a
woman like Carlotta Deschamps, but so it is. I am half-inclined to
throw up the engagement."

That a girl of Rosa's spirit should have hesitated for an instant
about fulfilling her engagement showed most plainly, I thought, that
she was not herself. I assured her that her fears were groundless,
that we lived in the nineteenth century, and that Deschamps' fury
would spend itself in nothing worse than threats. In the end she said
she would reconsider the matter.

"Don't wait to reconsider," I urged, "but set off for Paris at once.
Go to-day. Act. It will do you good."

"But there are a hundred things to be thought of first," she said,
laughing at my earnestness.

"For example?"

"Well, my jewels are with my London bankers."

"Can't you sing without jewels?"

"Not in Paris. Who ever heard of such a thing?"

"You can write to your bankers to send them by registered post."

"Post! They are worth thousands and thousands of pounds. I ought
really to fetch them, but there would scarcely be time."

"Let me bring them to you in Paris," I said. "Give me a letter to your
bankers, and I will undertake to deliver the jewels safely into your
hands."

"I could not dream of putting you to so much trouble."

The notion of doing something for her had, however, laid hold of me.
At that moment I felt that to serve even as her jewel-carrier would be
for me the supreme happiness in the world.

"But," I said, "I ask it as a favor."

"Do you?" She gave me a divine smile, and yielded.

At her request we did not leave the church together. She preceded me.
I waited a few minutes, and then walked slowly out. Happening to look
back as I passed along the square, I saw a woman's figure which was
familiar to me, and, dominated by a sudden impulse, I returned quickly
on my steps. The woman was Yvette, and she was obviously a little
startled when I approached her.

"Are you waiting for your mistress?" I said sharply. "Because...."

She flashed me a look.

"Did monsieur by any chance imagine that I was waiting for himself?"

There was a calm insolence about the girl which induced me to retire
from that parley.

In two hours I was on my way to London.




CHAPTER IX

THE TRAIN


The boat-train was due to leave in ten minutes, and the platform at
Victoria Station (how changed since then!) showed that scene of
discreet and haughty excitement which it was wont to exhibit about
nine o'clock every evening in those days. The weather was wild. It had
been wet all day, and the rain came smashing down, driven by the great
gusts of a genuine westerly gale. Consequently there were fewer
passengers than usual, and those people who by choice or compulsion
had resolved to front the terrors of the Channel passage had a
preoccupied look as they hurried importantly to and fro amid piles of
luggage and groups of loungers on the wind-swept platform beneath the
flickering gas-lamps. But the porters, and the friends engaged in the
ceremony of seeing-off, and the loungers, and the bookstall
clerks--these individuals were not preoccupied by thoughts of intimate
inconveniences before midnight. As for me, I was quite alone with my
thoughts. At least, I began by being alone.

As I was registering a particularly heavy and overfed portmanteau to
Paris, a young woman put her head close to mine at the window of the
baggage-office.

"Mr. Foster? I thought it was. My cab set down immediately after
yours, and I have been trying to catch your eye on the platform. Of
course it was no go!"

The speech was thrown at me in a light, airy tone from a tiny, pert
mouth which glistened red behind a muslin veil.

"Miss Deschamps!" I exclaimed.

"Glad you remember my name. As handsome and supercilious as ever, I
observe. I haven't seen you since that night at Sullivan's reception.
Why didn't you call on me one Sunday? You know I asked you to."

"Did you ask me?" I demanded, secretly flattered in the extremity of
my youthfulness because she had called me supercilious.

"Well, rather. I'm going to Paris--and in this weather!"

"I am, too."

"Then, let's go together, eh?"

"Delighted. But why have you chosen such a night?"

"I haven't chosen it. You see, I open to-morrow at the Casino de
Paris for fourteen nights, and I suppose I've got to be there. You
wouldn't believe what they're paying me. The Diana company is touring
in the provinces while the theatre is getting itself decorated. I hate
the provinces. Leeds and Liverpool and Glasgow--fancy dancing there!
And so my half-sister--Carlotta, y'know--got me this engagement, and
I'm going to stay with her. Have you met Carlotta?"

"No--not yet." I did not add that I had had reason to think a good
deal about her.

"Well, Carlotta is--Carlotta. A terrific swell, and a bit of a Tartar.
We quarrel every time we meet, which isn't often. She tries to play
the elder sister game on me, and I won't have it. Though she is
elder--very much elder, you now. But I think her worst point is that
she's so frightfully mysterious. You can never tell what she's up to.
Now, a man I met at supper last night told me he thought he had seen
Carlotta in Bloomsbury yesterday. However, I didn't believe that,
because she is expecting me in Paris; we happen to be as thick as
thieves just now, and if she had been in London, she would have looked
me up."

"Just so," I replied, wondering whether I should endeavor to obtain
from Marie Deschamps information which would be useful to Rosa.

By the time that the star of the Diana had said goodbye to certain
male acquaintances, and had gone through a complicated dialogue with
her maid on the subject of dress-trunks, the clock pointed almost to
nine, and a porter rushed us--Marie and myself--into an empty
compartment of a composite coach near to the engine. The compartment
was first class, but it evidently belonged to an ancient order of
rolling stock, and the vivacious Marie criticized it with considerable
freedom. The wind howled, positively howled, in the station.

"I wish I wasn't going," said the lady. "I shall be horribly ill."

"You probably will," I said, to tease her, idly opening the Globe. "It
seems that the morning steamer from Calais wasn't able to make either
Dover or Folkestone, and has returned to Calais. Imagine the state of
mind of the passengers!"

"Ugh! Oh, Mr. Foster, what is that case by your side?"

"It is a jewel-case."

"What a big one!"

She did not conceal her desire to see the inside of it, but I felt
that I could not, even to satisfy her charming curiosity, expose the
interior of Rosa's jewel-case in a railway carriage, and so I edged
away from the topic with as much adroitness as I was capable of.

The pretty girl pouted, and asked me for the Globe, behind which she
buried herself. She kept murmuring aloud extracts from the Globe's
realistic description of the weather, and then she jumped up.

"I'm not going."

"Not going?"

"No. The weather's too awful. These newspaper accounts frighten me."

"But the Casino de Paris?"

"A fig for it! They must wait for me, that's all. I'll try again
to-morrow. Will you mind telling the guard to get my boxes out,
there's a dear Mr. Foster, and I'll endeavor to find that maid of
mine?"

The train was already five minutes late in starting; she delayed it
quite another five minutes, and enjoyed the process. And it was I who
meekly received the objurgations of porters and guard. My reward was a
smile, given with a full sense of its immense value.

"Good-by, Mr. Foster. Take care of your precious jewel-case."

I had carried the thing in my hand up and down the platform. I ran to
my carriage, and jumped in breathless as the train whistled.

"Pleasant journey!" the witch called out, waving her small hand to me.

I bowed to her from the window, laughing. She was a genial soul, and
the incident had not been without amusement.

After I had shut the carriage door, and glanced out of the window for
a moment in the approved way, I sank, faintly smiling at the episode,
into my corner, and then I observed with a start that the opposite
corner was occupied. Another traveller had got into the compartment
while I had been coursing about the platform on behalf of Marie, and
that traveller was the mysterious and sinister creature whom I had met
twice before--once in Oxford Street, and once again during the night
watch in the cathedral at Bruges. He must have made up his mind to
travel rather suddenly, for, in spite of the weather, he had neither
overcoat nor umbrella--merely the frock coat and silk hat of
Piccadilly. But there was no spot of rain on him, and no sign of
disarray.

As I gazed with alarmed eyes into the face of that strange, forbidding
personality, the gaiety of my mood went out like a match in a breeze.
The uncomfortable idea oppressed me that I was being surely caught and
enveloped in a net of adverse circumstances, that I was the
unconscious victim of a deep and terrible conspiracy which proceeded
slowly forward to an inevitable catastrophe. On each of the previous
occasions when this silent and malicious man had crossed my path I had
had the same feeling, but in a less degree, and I had been able to
shake it off almost at once. But now it overcame and conquered me.

The train thundered across Grosvenor Bridge through the murky weather
on its way to the coast, and a hundred times I cursed it for its lack
of speed. I would have given much to be at the journey's end, and away
from this motionless and inscrutable companion. His eyes were
constantly on my face, and do what I would I could not appear at ease.
I tried to read the paper, I pretended to sleep, I hummed a tune, I
even went so far as to whistle, but my efforts at sang-froid were
ridiculous. The worst of it was that he was aware of my despicable
condition; his changeless cynical smile made that fact obvious to me.

At last I felt that something must happen. At any rate, the silence of
the man must be broken. And so I gathered together my courage, and
with a preposterous attempt at a friendly smile remarked:

"Beastly weather we're having. One would scarcely expect it so early
in September."

It was an inane speech, so commonplace, so entirely foolish. And the
man ignored it absolutely. Only the corners of his lips drooped a
little to express, perhaps, a profounder degree of hate and scorn.

This made me a little angry.

"Didn't I see you last in the cathedral at Bruges?" I demanded curtly,
even rudely.

He laughed. And his laugh really alarmed me.

The train stopped at that moment at a dark and deserted spot, which
proved to be Sittingbourne. I hesitated, and then, giving up the
struggle, sped out of the compartment, and entered another one lower
down. My new compartment was empty. The sensation of relief was
infinitely soothing. Placing the jewel-case carefully on my knees, I
breathed freely once more, and said to myself that another quarter of
an hour of that detestable presence would have driven me mad.

I began to think about Rosetta Rosa. As a solace after the
exasperating companionship of that silent person in the other
compartment, I invited from the back of my mind certain thoughts about
Rosetta Rosa which had been modestly waiting for me there for some
little time, and I looked at them fairly, and turned them over, and
viewed them from every side, and derived from them a rather thrilling
joy. The fact is, I was beginning to be in love with Rosa. Nay, I was
actually in love with her. Ever since our first meeting my meditations
had been more or less busy with her image. For a long period, largely
owing to my preoccupation with Alresca, I had dreamed of her but
vaguely. And now, during our interviews at her hotel and in the church
of St. Gilles, she had, in the most innocent way in the world, forged
fetters on me which I had no desire to shake off.

It was a presumption on my part. I acknowledged frankly that it was a
presumption. I was a young doctor, with nothing to distinguish me from
the ruck of young doctors. And she was--well, she was one of those
rare and radiant beings to whom even monarchs bow, and the whole earth
offers the incense of its homage.

Which did not in the least alter the fact that I was in love with her.
And, after all, she was just a woman; more, she was a young woman. And
she had consulted me! She had allowed me to be of use to her! And,
months ago in London, had she not permitted me to talk to her with an
extraordinary freedom? Lovely, incomparable, exquisite as she was, she
was nevertheless a girl, and I was sure that she had a girl's heart.

However, it was a presumption.

I remembered her legendary engagement to Lord Clarenceux, an
engagement which had interested all Europe. I often thought of that
matter. Had she loved him--really loved him? Or had his love for her
merely flattered her into thinking that she loved him? Would she not
be liable to institute comparisons between myself and that renowned,
wealthy, and gifted nobleman?

Well, I did not care if she did. Such is the egoism of untried love
that I did not care if she did! And I lapsed into a reverie--a reverie
in which everything went smoothly, everything was for the best in the
best of all possible worlds, and only love and love's requital
existed....

Then, in the fraction of a second, as it seemed, there was a grating,
a horrible grind of iron, a bump, a check, and my head was buried in
the cushions of the opposite side of the carriage, and I felt
stunned--not much, but a little.

"What--what?" I heard myself exclaim. "They must have plumped the
brakes on pretty sudden."

Then, quite after an interval, it occurred to me that this was a
railway accident--one of those things that one reads of in the papers
with so much calmness. I wondered if I was hurt, and why I could hear
no sound; the silence was absolute--terrifying.

In a vague, aimless way, I sought for my matchbox, and struck a
light. I had just time to observe that both windows were smashed, and
the floor of the compartment tilted, when the match went out in the
wind. I had heard no noise of breaking glass.

I stumbled slowly to the door, and tried to open it, but the thing
would not budge. Whereupon I lost my temper.

"Open, you beast, you beast, you beast!" I cried to the door, kicking
it hard, and yet not feeling the impact.

Then another thought--a proud one, which served to tranquillize me: "I
am a doctor, and they will want me to attend to the wounded."

I remembered my flask, and unscrewing the stopper with difficulty,
clutched the mouth with my teeth and drank. After that I was sane and
collected. Now I could hear people tramping on the ground outside, and
see the flash of lanterns. In another moment a porter, whose silver
buttons gleamed in the darkness, was pulling me through the window.

"Hurt?"

"No, not I. But if any one else is, I'm a doctor."

"Here's a doctor, sir," he yelled to a gray-headed man near by. Then
he stood still, wondering what he should do next. I perceived in the
near distance the lights of a station.

"Is that Dover?"

"No, sir; Dover Priory. Dover's a mile further on. There was a goods
wagon got derailed on the siding just beyond the home signal, and it
blocked the down line, and the driver of the express ran right into
it, although the signal was against him--ran right into it, 'e did."

Other people were crawling out of the carriages now, and suddenly
there seemed to be scores of spectators, and much shouting and running
about. The engine lay on its side, partly overhanging a wrecked wagon.
Immense clouds of steam issued from it, hissing above the roar of the
wind. The tender was twisted like a patent hairpin in the middle. The
first coach, a luggage-van, stood upright, and seemed scarcely
damaged. The second coach, the small, old-fashioned vehicle which
happily I had abandoned at Sittingbourne, was smashed out of
resemblance to a coach. The third one, from which I had just emerged,
looked fairly healthy, and the remaining three had not even left the
rails.

All ran to the smashed coach.

"There were two passengers in that coach," said the guard, who, having
been at the rear of the train, was unharmed.

"Are you counting me?" I asked. "Because I changed carriages at
Sittingbourne."

"Praise God for that, sir!" he answered. "There's only one, then--a
tall, severe-looking gent--in the first-class compartment."

Was it joy or sorrow that I felt at the thought of that man buried
somewhere in the shapeless mass of wood and iron? It certainly was not
unmixed sorrow. On the contrary, I had a distinct feeling of elation
at the thought that I was probably rid forever of this haunter of my
peace, this menacing and mysterious existence which (if instinctive
foreboding was to be trusted) had been about to cross and thwart and
blast my own.

The men hammered and heaved and chopped and sawed, and while they were
in the midst of the work some one took me by the sleeve and asked me
to go and attend to the engine-driver and stoker, who were being
carried into a waiting-room at the station. It is symptomatic of the
extraordinary confusion which reigns in these affairs that till that
moment the question of the fate of the men in charge of the train had
not even entered my mind, though I had of course noticed that the
engine was overturned. In the waiting-room it was discovered that two
local doctors had already arrived. I preferred to leave the
engine-driver to them. He was unconscious as he lay on a table. The
stoker, by his side, kept murmuring in a sort of delirium:

"Bill, 'e was all dazed like--'e was all dazed like. I told him the
signal wasn't off. I shouted to him. But 'e was all dazed like."

I returned to the train full of a horrible desire to see with my own
eyes a certain corpse. Bit by bit the breakdown gang had removed the
whole of the centre part of the shattered carriage. I thrust myself
into the group, and--we all looked at each other. Nobody, alive or
dead, was to be found.

"He, too, must have got out at Sittingbourne," I said at length.

"Ay!" said the guard.

My heard swam, dizzy with dark imaginings and unspeakable suspicions.
"He has escaped; he is alive!" I muttered savagely, hopelessly. It was
as if a doom had closed inevitably over me. But if my thoughts had
been legible and I had been asked to explain this attitude of mine
towards a person who had never spoken to me, whom I had seen but
thrice, and whose identity was utterly unknown, I could not have done
so. I had no reasons. It was intuition.

Abruptly I straightened myself, and surveying the men and the
background of ruin lighted by the fitful gleams of lanterns and the
pale glitter of a moon half-hidden by flying clouds, I shouted out:

"I want a cab. I have to catch the Calais boat. Will somebody please
direct me!"

No one appeared even to hear me. The mental phenomena which accompany
a railway accident, even a minor one such as this, are of the most
singular description. I felt that I was growing angry again. I had a
grievance because not a soul there seemed to care whether I caught the
Calais boat or not. That, under the unusual circumstances, the steamer
would probably wait did not occur to me. Nor did I perceive that there
was no real necessity for me to catch the steamer. I might just as
well have spent the night at the Lord Warden, and proceeded on my
journey in the morning. But no! I must hurry away instantly!

Then I thought of the jewel-box.

"Where's my jewel-box?" I demanded vehemently from the guard, as
though he had stolen it.

He turned to me.

"What's that you're carrying?" he replied.

All the time I had been carrying the jewel-box. At the moment of the
collision I must have instinctively clutched it, and my grasp had not
slackened. I had carried it to the waiting-room and back without
knowing that I was doing so!

This sobered me once more. But I would not stay on the scene. I was
still obsessed by the desire to catch the steamer. And abruptly I set
off walking down the line. I left the crowd and the confusion and the
ruin, and hastened away bearing the box.

I think that I must have had no notion of time, and very little notion
of space. For I arrived at the harbour without the least recollection
of the details of my journey thither. I had no memory of having been
accosted by any official of the railway, or even of having encountered
any person at all. Fortunately it had ceased to rain, and the wind,
though still strong, was falling rapidly.

Except for a gatekeeper, the bleak, exposed pier had the air of being
deserted. The lights of the town flickered in the distance, and above
them rose dimly the gaunt outlines of the fortified hills. In front
was the intemperate and restless sea. I felt that I was at the
extremity of England, and on the verge of unguessed things. Now, I had
traversed about half the length of the lonely pier, which seems to
curve right out into the unknown, when I saw a woman approaching me in
the opposite direction. My faculties were fatigued with the crowded
sensations of that evening, and I took no notice of her. Even when she
stopped to peer into my face I thought nothing of it, and put her
gently aside, supposing her to be some dubious character of the night
hours. But she insisted on speaking to me.

"You are Carl Foster," she said abruptly. The voice was harsh,
trembling, excited, yet distinguished.

"Suppose I am?" I answered wearily. How tired I was!

"I advise you not to go to Paris."

I began to arouse my wits, and I became aware that the woman was
speaking with a strong French accent. I searched her face, but she
wore a thick veil, and in the gloom of the pier I could only make out
that she had striking features, and was probably some forty years of
age. I stared at her in silence.

"I advise you not to go to Paris," she repeated.

"Who are you?"

"Never mind. Take my advice."

"Why? Shall I be robbed?"

"Robbed!" she exclaimed, as if that was a new idea to her. "Yes," she
said hurriedly. "Those jewels might be stolen."

"How do you know that I have jewels?"

"Ah! I--I saw the case."

"Don't trouble yourself, madam; I shall take particular care not to be
robbed. But may I ask how you have got hold of my name?"

I had vague ideas of an ingenious plan for robbing me, the particulars
of which this woman was ready to reveal for a consideration.

She ignored my question.

"Listen!" she said quickly. "You are going to meet a lady in Paris. Is
it not so?"

"I must really--"

"Take advice. Move no further in that affair."

I attempted to pass her, but she held me by the sleeve. She went on
with emphasis:

"Rosetta Rosa will never be allowed to sing in 'Carmen' at the Opéra
Comique. Do you understand?"

"Great Scott!" I said, "I believe you must be Carlotta Deschamps."

It was a half-humorous inspiration on my part, but the remark produced
an immediate effect on the woman, for she walked away with a highly
theatrical scowl and toss of the head. I recalled what Marie Deschamps
had said in the train about her stepsister, and also my suspicion that
Rosa's maid was not entirely faithful to her mistress--spied on her,
in fact; and putting the two things together, it occurred to me that
this strange lady might actually be Carlotta.

Many women of the stage acquire a habitual staginess and
theatricality, and it was quite conceivable that Carlotta had
relations with Yvette, and that, ridden by the old jealousy which had
been aroused through the announcement of Rosa's return to the Opéra
Comique, she was setting herself in an indefinite, clumsy, stealthy,
and melodramatic manner to prevent Rosa's appearance in "Carmen."

No doubt she had been informed of Rosa's conference with me in the
church of St. Gilles, and, impelled by some vague, obscure motive, had
travelled to London to discover me, and having succeeded, was
determined by some means to prevent me from getting into touch with
Rosa in Paris. So I conjectured roughly, and subsequent events
indicated that I was not too far wrong.

I laughed. The notion of the middle-aged prima donna going about in
waste places at dead of night to work mischief against a rival was
indubitably comic. I would make a facetious narrative of the meeting
for the amusement of Rosa at breakfast to-morrow in Paris. Then,
feeling all at once at the end of my physical powers, I continued my
way, and descended the steps to the Calais boat.

All was excitement there. Had I heard of the railway accident? Yes, I
had. I had been in it. Instantly I was surrounded by individuals who
raked me fore and aft with questions. I could not endure it; my
nervous energy, I realized, was exhausted, and having given a brief
outline of the disaster, I fled down the saloon stairs.

My sole desire was to rest; the need of unconsciousness, of
forgetfulness, was imperious upon me; I had had too many experiences
during the last few hours. I stretched myself on the saloon cushions,
making a pillow of the jewel-box.

"Shall we start soon?" I murmured to a steward.

"Yes, sir, in another five minutes. Weather's moderating, sir."

Other passengers were in the saloon, and more followed. As this would
be the first steamer to leave Dover that day, there was a good number
of voyagers on board, in spite of adverse conditions. I heard people
talking, and the splash of waves against the vessel's sides, and then
I went to sleep. Nothing could have kept me awake.




CHAPTER X

THE STEAMER


I awoke with a start, and with wavering eyes looked at the saloon
clock. I had slept for one hour only, but it appeared to me that I was
quite refreshed. My mind was strangely clear, every sense
preternaturally alert. I began to wonder what had aroused me. Suddenly
the ship shuddered through the very heart of her, and I knew that it
was this shuddering, which must have occurred before, that had wakened
me.

"Good God! We're sinking!" a man cried. He was in the next berth to
me, and he sat up, staring wildly.

"Rubbish!" I answered.

The electric lights went out, and we were left with the miserable
illumination of one little swinging oil-lamp. Immediately the score or
so persons in the saloon were afoot and rushing about, grasping their
goods and chattels. The awful shuddering of the ship continued.
Scarcely a word was spoken.

A man flew, or rather, tumbled, down the saloon stairs, shouting:
"Where's my wife? Where's my wife?" No one took the slightest notice
of him, nor did he seem to expect any answer. Even in the
semi-darkness of the single lamp I distinctly saw that with both hands
he was tearing handfuls of hair from his head. I had heard the phrase
"tearing one's hair" some thousands of time in my life, but never till
that moment had I witnessed the action itself. Somehow it made an
impression on me. The man raced round the saloon still shouting, and
raced away again up-stairs and out of sight. Everyone followed him
pell-mell, helter-skelter, and almost in a second I found myself
alone. I put on my overcoat, and my mackintosh over that, and seizing
Rosa's jewel-box, I followed the crowd.

As I emerged on deck a Bengal light flared red and dazzling on the
bridge, and I saw some sailors trying to lower a boat from its davits.
Then I knew that the man who had cried "We're sinking!" even if he was
not speaking the exact truth, had at any rate some grounds for his
assertion.

A rather pretty girl, pale with agitation, seized me by the
buttonhole.

"Where are we going?" she questioned earnestly.

"Don't know, madam," I replied; and then a young man dragged her off
by the arm.

"Come this way, Lottie," I heard him say to her, "and keep calm."

I was left staring at the place where the girl's head had been. Then
the head of an old man filled that place. I saw his mouth and all his
features working in frantic endeavor to speak to me, but he could not
articulate. I stepped aside; I could not bear to look at him.

"Carl," I said to myself, "you are undoubtedly somewhat alarmed, but
you are not in such an absolutely azure funk as that old chap. Pull
yourself together."

Of what followed immediately I have no recollection. I knew vaguely
that the ship rolled and had a serious list to starboard, that orders
were being hoarsely shouted from the bridge, that the moon was shining
fitfully, that the sea was black and choppy; I also seemed to catch
the singing of a hymn somewhere on the forward deck. I suppose I knew
that I existed. But that was all. I had no exact knowledge of what I
myself was doing. There was a hiatus in my consciousness of myself.

The proof of this is that, after a lapse of time, I suddenly
discovered that I had smoked half-way through a cigarette, and that I
was at the bows of the steamer. For a million sovereigns I could not
explain under what circumstances I had moved from one end of the ship
to the other, nor how I had come to light that cigarette. Such is the
curious effect of perturbation.

But the perturbation had now passed from me, just as mysteriously as
it had overtaken me. I was cool and calm. I felt inquisitive, and I
asked several people what had happened. But none seemed to know. In
fact, they scarcely heard me, and answered wildly, as if in delirium.
It seemed strange that anything could have occurred on so small a
vessel without the precise details being common property. Yet so it
was, and those who have been in an accident at sea will support me
when I say that the ignorance on the part of the passengers of the
events actually in progress is not the least astounding nor the least
disconcerting item in such an affair. It was the psychology of the
railway accident repeated.

I began to observe. The weather was a little murky, but beyond doubt
still improving. The lights of the French coast could clearly be seen.
The ship rolled in a short sea; her engines had stopped; she still had
the formidable list to starboard; the captain was on the bridge,
leaning over, and with his hands round his mouth was giving orders to
an officer below. The sailors were still struggling to lower the boat
from the davits. The passengers stood about, aimless, perhaps
terror-struck, but now for the most part quiet and self-contained.
Some of them had life-belts. That was the sum of my observations.

A rocket streamed upwards into the sky, and another and another, then
one caught the rigging, and, deflected, whizzed down again within a
few feet of my head, and dropped on deck, spluttering in a silly,
futile way. I threw the end of my cigarette at it to see whether that
might help it along.

"So this is a shipwreck," I ejaculated. "And I'm in it. I've got
myself safely off the railway only to fall into the sea. What a d----d
shame!"

Queerly enough, I had ceased to puzzle myself with trying to discover
how the disaster had been brought about. I honestly made up my mind
that we were sinking, and that was sufficient.

"What cursed ill-luck!" I murmured philosophically.

I thought of Rosa, with whom I was to have breakfasted on the morrow,
whose jewels I was carrying, whose behest it had been my pleasure to
obey. At that moment she seemed to me in my mind's eye more beautiful,
of a more exquisite charm, than ever before. "Am I going to lose her?"
I murmured. And then: "What a sensation there'll be in the papers if
this ship does go down!" My brain flitted from point to point in a
quick agitation. I decided suddenly that the captain and crew must be
a set of nincompoops, who had lost their heads, and, not knowing what
to do, were unserenely doing nothing. And quite as suddenly I reversed
my decision, and reflected that no doubt the captain was doing
precisely the correct thing, and that the crew were loyal and
disciplined.

Then my mind returned to Rosa. What would she say, what would she
feel, when she learnt that I had been drowned in the Channel? Would
she experience a grief merely platonic, or had she indeed a
profounder feeling towards me? Drowned! Who said drowned? There were
the boats, if they could be launched, and, moreover, I could swim. I
considered what I should do at the moment the ship foundered--for I
still felt she would founder. I was the blackest of pessimists. I said
to myself that I would spring as far as I could into the sea, not only
to avoid the sucking in of the vessel, but to get clear of the other
passengers.

Suppose that a passenger who could not swim should by any chance seize
me in the water, how should I act? This was a conundrum. I could not
save another and myself, too. I said I would leave that delicate point
till the time came, but in my heart I knew that I should beat off such
a person with all the savagery of despair--unless it happened to be a
woman. I felt that I could not repulse a drowning woman, even if to
help her for a few minutes meant death for both of us.

How insignificant seemed everything else--everything outside the ship
and the sea and our perilous plight! The death of Alresca, the
jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps, the plot (if there was one) against
Rosa--what were these matters to me? But Rosa was something. She was
more than something; she was all. A lovely, tantalizing vision of her
appeared to float before my eyes.

I peered over the port rail to see whether we were in fact gradually
sinking. The heaving water looked a long way off, and the idea of this
raised my spirits for an instant. But only for an instant. The
apparent inactivity of those in charge annoyed while it saddened me.
They were not even sending up rockets now, nor burning Bengal lights.
I had no patience left to ask more questions. A mood of disgust seized
me. If the captain himself had stood by my side waiting to reply to
requests for information, I doubt if I should have spoken. I felt like
the spectator who is compelled to witness a tragedy which both wounds
and bores him. I was obsessed by my own ill-luck and the stupidity of
the rest of mankind. I was particularly annoyed by the spasmodic
hymn-singing that went on in various parts of the deck.

The man who had burst into the saloon shouting "Where is my wife?"
reappeared from somewhere, and standing near to me started to undress
hastily. I watched him. He had taken off his coat, waistcoat, and
boots, when a quiet, amused voice said: "I shouldn't do that if I were
you. It's rather chilly, you know. Besides, think of the ladies."

Without a word he began with equal celerity to reassume his clothes. I
turned to the speaker. It was the youth who had dragged the girl away
from me when I first came up on deck. She was on his arm, and had a
rug over her head. Both were perfectly self-possessed. The serenity of
the young man's face particularly struck me. I was not to be out-done.

"Have a cigarette?" I said.

"Thanks."

"Do you happen to know what all this business is?" I asked him.

"It's a collision," he said. "We were struck on the port paddle-box.
That saved us for the moment."

"How did it occur?"

"Don't know."

"And where's the ship that struck us?"

"Oh, somewhere over there--two or three miles away." He pointed
vaguely to the northeast. "You see, half the paddle-wheel was knocked
off, and when that sank, of course the port side rose out of the
water. I believe those paddle-wheels weigh a deuce of a lot."

"Are we going to sink?"

"Don't know. Can tell you more in half an hour. I've got two
life-belts hidden under a seat. They're rather a nuisance to carry
about. You're shivering, Lottie. We must take some more exercise. See
you later, sir."

And the two went off again. The girl had not looked at me, nor I at
her. She did not seem to be interested in our conversation. As for her
companion, he restored my pride in my race.

I began to whistle. Suddenly the whistle died on my lips. Standing
exactly opposite to me, on the starboard side, was the mysterious
being whom I had last seen in the railway carriage at Sittingbourne.
He was, as usual, imperturbable, sardonic, terrifying. His face, which
chanced to be lighted by the rays of a deck lantern, had the pallor
and the immobility of marble, and the dark eyes held me under their
hypnotic gaze.

Again I had the sensation of being victimized by a conspiracy of which
this implacable man was the head. I endured once more the mental
tortures which I had suffered in the railway carriage, and now, as
then, I felt helpless and bewildered. It seemed to me that his
existence overshadowed mine, and that in some way he was connected
with the death of Alresca. Possibly there was a plot, in which the
part played by the jealousy of Carlotta Deschamps was only a minor
one. Possibly I had unwittingly stepped into a net of subtle intrigue,
of the extent of whose boundaries and ramifications I had not the
slightest idea. Like one set in the blackness of an unfamiliar
chamber, I feared to step forward or backward lest I might encounter
some unknown horror.

It may be argued that I must have been in a highly nervous condition
in order to be affected in such a manner by the mere sight of a man--a
man who had never addressed to me a single word of conversation.
Perhaps so. Yet up to that period of my life my temperament and habit
of mind had been calm, unimpressionable, and if I may say so, not
specially absurd.

What need to inquire how the man had got on board that ship--how he
had escaped death in the railway accident--how he had eluded my sight
at Dover Priory? There he stood. Evidently he had purposed to pursue
me to Paris, and little things like railway collisions were
insufficient to deter him. I surmised that he must have quitted the
compartment at Sittingbourne immediately after me, meaning to follow
me, but that the starting of the train had prevented him from entering
the same compartment as I entered. According to this theory, he must
have jumped into another compartment lower down the train as the train
was moving, and left it when the collision occurred, keeping his eye
on me all the time, but not coming forward. He must even have walked
after me down the line from Dover Priory to the pier.

However, a shipwreck was a more serious affair than a railway
accident. And if the ship were indeed doomed, it would puzzle even him
to emerge with his life. He might seize me in the water, and from
simple hate drag me to destruction,--yes, that was just what he would
do,--but he would have a difficulty in saving himself. Such were my
wild and fevered notions!

On the starboard bow I saw the dim bulk and the masthead lights of a
steamer approaching us. The other passengers had observed it, too,
and there was a buzz of anticipation on the slanting deck. Only the
inimical man opposite to me seemed to ignore the stir. He did not even
turn round to look at the object which had aroused the general
excitement. His eyes never left me.

The vessel came nearer, till we could discern clearly the outline of
her, and a black figure on her bridge. She was not more than a hundred
yards away when the beat of her engines stopped. She hailed us. We
waited for the answering call from our own captain, but there was no
reply. Twice again she hailed us, and was answered only by silence.

"Why don't our people reply?" an old lady asked, who came up to me at
that moment, breathing heavily.

"Because they are d----d fools," I said roughly. She was a most
respectable and prim old lady; yet I could not resist shocking her
ears by an impropriety.

The other ship moved away into the night.

Was I in a dream? Was this a pantomime shipwreck? Then it occurred to
me that the captain was so sure of being ultimately able to help
himself that he preferred from motives of economy to decline
assistance which would involve a heavy salvage claim.

My self-possessed young man came along again in the course of his
peregrinations, the girl whom he called Lottie still on his arm. He
stopped for a chat.

"Most curious thing!" he began.

"What now?"

"Well, I found out about the collision."

"How did it occur?"

"In this way. The captain was on duty on the bridge, with the
steersman at the wheel. It was thickish weather then, much thicker
than it is now--in fact, there'll soon be no breeze left, and look at
the stars! Suddenly the lookout man shouted that there was a sail on
the weather bow, and it must have been pretty close, too. The captain
ordered the man at the wheel to put the boat to port--I don't know the
exact phraseology of the thing--so that we could pass the other ship
on our starboard side. Instead of doing that, the triple idiot shoved
us to starboard as hard as he could, and before the captain could do
anything, we were struck on the port paddle. The steersman had sent us
right into the other ship. If he had wanted specially to land us into
a good smash-up, he could scarcely have done it better. A good thing
we got caught on the paddle; otherwise we should have been cut clean
in two. As it was, the other boat recoiled and fell away."

"Was she damaged?"

"Probably not."

"How does the man at the wheel explain his action?"

"Well, that's the curious part. I was just coming to that. Naturally
he's in a great state of terror just now, but he can just talk. He
swears that when the captain gave his order a third person ran up the
steps leading to the bridge, and so frightened him that he was sort of
dazed, and did exactly the wrong thing."

"A queer tale!"

"I should think so. But he sticks to it. He even says that this highly
mysterious third person made him do the wrong thing. But that's
absolute tommy-rot."

"The man must be mad."

"I should have said he had been drunk, but there doesn't seem to be
any trace of that. Anyhow, he sees visions, and I maintain that the
Chatham and Dover people oughtn't to have their boats steered by men
who see visions, eh?"

"I agree with you. I suppose we aren't now in any real danger?"

"I should hardly think so. We might have been. It was pure luck that
we happened to get struck on the paddle-box, and also it was pure luck
that the sea has gone down so rapidly. With a list like this, a really
lively cross-sea would soon have settled us."

We were silent for a few moments. The girl looked idly round the ship,
and her eyes encountered the figure of the mysterious man. She seemed
to shiver.

"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "what a terrible face that man
has!"

"Where?" said her friend.

"Over there. And how is it he's wearing a silk hat--here?"

His glance followed hers, but my follower had turned abruptly round,
and in a moment was moving quickly to the after-part of the ship. He
passed behind the smoke-stack, and was lost to our view.

"The back of him looks pretty stiff," the young man said. "I wonder if
he's the chap that alarmed the man at the wheel."

I laughed, and at the same time I accidentally dropped Rosa's
jewel-case, which had never left my hand. I picked it up hurriedly.

"You seem attached to that case," the young man said, smiling. "If we
had foundered, should you have let it go, or tried to swim ashore with
it?"

"The question is doubtful," I replied, returning his smile. In
shipwrecks one soon becomes intimate with strangers.

"If I mistake not, it is a jewel-case."

"It is a jewel-case."

He nodded with a moralizing air, as if reflecting upon the sordid love
of property which will make a man carry a jewel-case about with him
when the next moment he might find himself in the sea. At least, that
was my interpretation of the nodding. Then the brother and sister--for
such I afterwards discovered they were--left me to take care of my
jewel-case alone.

Why had I dropped the jewel-case? Was it because I was startled by the
jocular remark which identified the mysterious man with the person who
had disturbed the steersman? That remark was made in mere jest. Yet I
could not help thinking that it contained the truth. Nay, I knew that
it was true; I knew by instinct. And being true, what facts were
logically to be deduced from it? What aim had this mysterious man in
compelling, by his strange influences, the innocent sailor to guide
the ship towards destruction--the ship in which I happened to be a
passenger?... And then there was the railway accident. The stoker had
said that the engine-driver had been dazed--like the steersman. But
no. There are avenues of conjecture from which the mind shrinks. I
could not follow up that train of thought.

Happily, I did not see my enemy again--at least, during that journey.
And my mind was diverted, for the dawn came--the beautiful September
dawn. Never have I greeted the sun with deeper joy, and I fancy that
my sentiments were shared by everyone on board the vessel. As the
light spread over the leaden waters, and the coast of France was
silhouetted against the sky, the passengers seemed to understand that
danger was over, and that we had been through peril, and escaped. Some
threw themselves upon their knees, and prayed with an ecstasy of
thankfulness. Others re-commenced their hymning. Others laughed
rather hysterically, and began to talk at a prodigious rate. A few,
like myself, stood silent and apparently unmoved.

Then the engines began to beat. There was a frightful clatter of
scrap-iron and wood in the port paddle-box, and they stopped
immediately, whereupon we noticed that the list of the vessel was
somewhat more marked than before. The remainder of the port paddle
had, in fact, fallen away into the water. The hymn-singers ceased
their melodies, absorbed in anticipating what would happen next. At
last, after many orders and goings to and fro, the engines started
again, this time, of course, the starboard paddle, deeply immersed,
moved by itself. We progressed with infinite slowness, and in a most
peculiar manner, but we did progress, and that was the main thing. The
passengers cheered heartily.

We appeared to go in curves, but each curve brought us nearer to
Calais. As we approached that haven of refuge, it seemed as if every
steamer and smack of Calais was coming out to meet us. The steamers
whistled, the owners of smacks bawled and shouted. They desired to
assist; for were we not disabled, and would not the English railway
company pay well for help so gallantly rendered? Our captain,
however, made no sign, and, like a wounded, sullen animal, from whom
its companions timidly keep a respectful distance, we at length
entered Calais harbor, and by dint of much seamanship and polyglottic
swearing brought up safely at the quay.

Then it was that one fully perceived, with a feeling of shame, how
night had magnified the seriousness of the adventure; how it had been
nothing, after all; how it would not fill more than half a column in
the newspapers; how the officers of the ship must have despised the
excited foolishness of passengers who would not listen to reasonable,
commonplace explanations.

The boat was evacuated in the twinkling of an eye. I have never seen a
Channel steamer so quickly empty itself. It was as though the people
were stricken by a sudden impulse to dash away from the poor craft at
any cost. At the Customs, amid all the turmoil and bustle, I saw
neither my young friend and his sister, nor my enemy, who so far had
clung to me on my journey.

I learned that a train would start in about a quarter of an hour. I
had some coffee and a roll at the buffet. While I was consuming that
trifling refection the young man and his sister joined me. The girl
was taciturn as before, but her brother talked cheerfully as he sipped
chocolate; he told me that his name was Watts, and he introduced his
sister. He had a pleasant but rather weak face, and as for his manner
and bearing, I could not decide in my own mind whether he was a
gentleman or a buyer from some London drapery warehouse on his way to
the city of modes. He gave no information as to his profession or
business, and as I had not even returned his confidence by revealing
my name, this was not to be wondered at.

"Are you going on to Paris?" he said presently.

"Yes; and the sooner I get there the better I shall be pleased."

"Exactly," he smiled. "I am going, too. I have crossed the Channel
many times, but I have never before had such an experience as last
night's."

Then we began to compare notes of previous voyages, until a railway
official entered the buffet with a raucous, "Voyageurs pour Paris, en
voiture."

There was only one first-class carriage, and into this I immediately
jumped, and secured a corner. Mr. Watts followed me, and took the
other corner of the same seat. Miss Watts remained on the platform. It
was a corridor carriage, and the corridor happened to be on the far
side from the platform. Mr. Watts went out to explore the corridor. I
arranged myself in my seat, placed the jewel-case by my side, and my
mackintosh over my knees. Miss Watts stood idly in front of the
carriage door, tapping the platform with her umbrella.

"You do not accompany your brother, then?" I ventured.

"No. I'm staying in Calais, where I have an--an engagement." She
smiled plaintively at me.

Mr. Watts came back into the compartment, and, standing on the step,
said good-by to his sister, and embraced her. She kissed him
affectionately. Then, having closed the carriage door, he stolidly
resumed his seat, which was on the other side away from the door. We
had the compartment to ourselves.

"A nice girl," I reflected.

The train whistled, and a porter ran along to put the catches on all
the doors.

"Good-by; we're off," I said to Miss Watts.

"Monsieur," she said, and her face seemed to flush in the cold morning
light,--"monsieur." Was she, then, French, to address me like that?

She made a gesture as if she would say something to me of importance,
and I put my head out of the window.

"May I ask you to keep an eye on my brother?" she whispered.

"In what way?" I asked, somewhat astonished.

The train began to move, and she walked to keep level with me.

"Do not let him drink at any of the railway buffets on the journey; he
will be met at the Gare du Nord. He is addicted--"

"But how can I stop him if he wants to--"

She had an appealing look, and she was running now to keep pace with
the train.

"Ah, do what you can, sir. I ask it as a favor. Pardon the request
from a perfect stranger."

I nodded acquiescence, and, waving a farewell to the poor girl, sank
back into my seat. "This is a nice commission!" I thought.

Mr. Watts was no longer in his corner. Also my jewel-case was gone.

"A deliberate plant!" I exclaimed; and I could not help admiring the
cleverness with which it had been carried out.

I rushed into the corridor, and looked through every compartment; but
Mr. Watts, whom I was to keep from drunkenness, had utterly departed.
Then I made for the handle of the communication cord. It had been
neatly cut off. The train was now travelling at a good speed, and the
first stop would be Amiens. I was too ashamed of my simplicity to give
the news of my loss to the other passengers in the carriage.

"Very smart indeed!" I murmured, sitting down, and I smiled--for,
after all, I could afford to smile.




CHAPTER XI

A CHAT WITH ROSA


"And when I sat down it was gone, and the precious Mr. Watts had also
vanished."

"Oh!" exclaimed Rosa. That was all she said. It is impossible to deny
that she was startled, that she was aghast. I, however, maintained a
splendid equanimity.

We were sitting in the salon of her flat at the Place de la Concorde
end of the Rue de Rivoli. We had finished lunch, and she had offered
me a cigarette. I had had a bath, and changed my attire, and eaten a
meal cooked by a Frenchman, and I felt renewed. I had sunned myself in
the society of Rosetta Rosa for an hour, and I felt soothed. I forgot
all the discomforts and misgivings of the voyage. It was nothing to
me, as I looked at this beautiful girl, that within the last
twenty-four hours I had twice been in danger of losing my life. What
to me was the mysterious man with the haunting face of implacable
hate? What to me were the words of the woman who had stopped me on the
pier at Dover? Nothing! A thousand times less than nothing! I loved,
and I was in the sympathetic presence of her whom I loved.

I had waited till lunch was over to tell Rosa of the sad climax of my
adventures.

"Yes," I repeated, "I was never more completely done in my life. The
woman conspirator took me in absolutely."

"What did you do then?"

"Well, I wired to Calais immediately we got to Amiens, and told the
police, and did all the things one usually does do when one has been
robbed. Also, since arriving in Paris, I have been to the police
here."

"Do they hold out any hope of recovery?"

"I'm afraid they are not sanguine. You see, the pair had a good start,
and I expect they belong to one of the leading gangs of jewel thieves
in Europe. The entire business must have been carefully planned.
Probably I was shadowed from the moment I left your bankers'."

"It's unfortunate."

"Yes, indeed. I felt sure that you would attach some importance to
the jewel-case. So I have instructed the police to do their utmost."

She seemed taken aback by the lightness of my tone.

"My friend, those jewels were few, but they were valuable. They were
worth--I don't know what they were worth. There was a necklace that
must have cost fifteen thousand pounds."

"Yes--the jewels."

"Well! Is it not the jewels that are missing?"

"Dear lady," I said, "I aspire to be thought a man of the world--it is
a failing of youth; but, then, I am young. As a man of the world, I
cogitated a pretty good long time before I set out for Paris with your
jewels."

"You felt there was a danger of robbery?"

"Exactly."

"And you were not mistaken." There was irony in her voice.

"True! But let me proceed. A man of the world would see at once that a
jewel-case was an object to attract the eyes of those who live by
their wits."

"I should imagine so."

"Therefore, as a man of the world, I endeavored to devise a scheme of
safeguarding my little cargo."

"And you--"

"I devised one."

"What was it?"

"I took all the jewels out of the case, and put them into my various
pockets; and I carried the case to divert attention from those
pockets."

She looked at me, her face at first all perplexity; gradually the
light broke upon her.

"Simple, wasn't it?" I murmured.

"Then the jewels are not stolen?"

"Certainly not. The jewels are in my pockets. If you recollect, I said
it was the jewel-case that was stolen."

I began to smile.

"Mr. Foster," she said, smiling too, "I am extremely angry."

"Forgive the joke," I entreated. "Perhaps it is a bad one--but I hope
not a very bad one, because very bad jokes are inexcusable. And here
are your jewels."

I put on the expression of a peccant but hopeful schoolboy, as I
emptied one pocket after another of the scintillating treasures. The
jewels lay, a gorgeous heap, on her lap. The necklace which she had
particularly mentioned was of pearls. There were also rubies and
emeralds, upon which she seemed to set special store, and a brooch in
the form of a butterfly, which she said was made expressly for her by
Lalique. But not a diamond in the collection! It appeared that she
regarded diamonds as some men regard champagne--as a commodity not
appealing to the very finest taste.

"I didn't think you were so mischievous," she laughed, frowning.

To transfer the jewels to her possession I had drawn my chair up to
hers, and we were close together, face to face.

"Ah!" I replied, content, unimaginably happy. "You don't know me yet.
I'm a terrible fellow."

"Think of my state of mind during the last fifteen minutes."

"Yes, but think of the joy which you now experience. It is I who have
given you that joy--the joy of losing and gaining all that in a
quarter of an hour."

She picked up the necklace, and as she gazed at the stones her glance
had a rapt expression, as though she were gazing through their depths
into the past.

"Mr. Foster," she said at length, without ceasing to look at the
pearls, "I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are in Paris. Shall
you stay till I have appeared at the Opéra Comique?"

"I was hoping to, and if you say you would like me to--"

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I do." And she looked up.

Her lovely eyes had a suspicion of moisture. The blood rushed through
my head, and I could feel its turbulent throb-throb across the temples
and at my heart.

I was in heaven, and residence in heaven makes one bold.

"You really would like me to stay?" I almost whispered, in a tone that
was equivalent to a declaration.

Her eyes met mine in silence for a few instants, and then she said,
with a touch of melancholy:

"In all my life I've only had two friends--I mean since my mother's
death; and you are the third."

"Is that all?"

"You don't know what a life like mine is," she went on, with feeling.
"I'm only a prima donna, you know. People think that because I can
make as much money in three hours as a milliner's girl can make in
three years, and because I'm always in the midst of luxuries, and
because I have whims and caprices, and because my face has certain
curves in it, and because men get jealous with each other about
kissing my hand, that therefore I've got all I want."

"Certain curves!" I burst out. "Why, you're the most beautiful
creature I ever saw!"

"There!" she cried. "That's just how they all talk. I do hate it."

"Do you?" I said. "Then I'll never call you beautiful again. But I
should have thought you were fairly happy."

"I'm happy when I'm singing well," she answered--"only then. I like
singing. I like to see an audience moved. I must sing. Singing is my
life. But do you know what that means? That means that I belong to the
public, and so I can't hide myself. That means that I am
always--always--surrounded by 'admirers.'"

"Well?"

"Well, I don't like them. I don't like any of them. And I don't like
them in the mass. Why can't I just sing, and then belong simply to
myself? They are for ever there, my 'admirers.' Men of wealth, men of
talent, men of adventure, men of wits--all devoted, all respectful,
all ready to marry me. Some honorable, according to the accepted
standard, others probably dishonorable. And there is not one but whose
real desire is to own me. I know them. Love! In my world, peculiar in
that world in which I live, there is no such thing as love--only a
showy imitation. Yes, they think they love me. 'When we are married
you will not sing any more; you will be mine then,' says one. That is
what he imagines is love. And others would have me for the gold-mine
that is in my throat. I can read their greed in their faces."

Her candid bitterness surprised as much as it charmed me.

"Aren't you a little hard on them?" I ventured.

"Now, am I?" she retorted. "Don't be a hypocrite. Am I?"

I said nothing.

"You know perfectly well I'm not," she answered for me.

"But I admire you," I said.

"You're different," she replied. "You don't belong to my world. That's
what pleases me in you. You haven't got that silly air of always being
ready to lay down your life for me. You didn't come in this morning
with a bunch of expensive orchids, and beg that I should deign to
accept them." She pointed to various bouquets in the room. "You just
came in and shook hands, and asked me how I was."

"I never thought of bringing any flowers," I said awkwardly.

"Just so. That's the point. That's what I like. If there is one thing
that I can't tolerate, and that I have to tolerate, it's 'attentions,'
especially from people who copy their deportment from Russian
Archdukes."

"There are Archdukes?"

"Why! the air is thick with them. Why do men think that a woman is
flattered by their ridiculous 'attentions?' If they knew how sometimes
I can scarcely keep from laughing! There are moments when I would
give anything to be back again in the days when I knew no one more
distinguished than a concierge. There was more sincerity at my
disposal then."

"But surely all distinguished people are not insincere?"

"They are insincere to opera singers who happen to be young,
beautiful, and rich, which is my sad case. The ways of the people who
flutter round a theatre are not my ways. I was brought up simply, as
you were in your Devonshire home. I hate to spend my life as if it was
one long diplomatic reception. Ugh!"

She clenched her hands, and one of the threads of the necklace gave
way, and the pearls scattered themselves over her lap.

"There! That necklace was given to me by one of my friends!" She
paused.

"Yes?" I said tentatively.

"He is dead now. You have heard--everyone knows--that I was once
engaged to Lord Clarenceux. He was a friend. He loved me--he died--my
friends have a habit of dying. Alresca died."

The conversation halted. I wondered whether I might speak of Lord
Clarenceux, or whether to do so would be an indiscretion. She began
to collect the pearls.

"Yes," she repeated softly, "he was a friend."

I drew a strange satisfaction from the fact that, though she had said
frankly that he loved her, she had not even hinted that she loved him.

"Lord Clarenceux must have been a great man," I said.

"That is exactly what he was," she answered with a vague enthusiasm.
"And a great nobleman too! So different from the others. I wish I
could describe him to you, but I cannot. He was immensely rich--he
looked on me as a pauper. He had the finest houses, the finest
judgment in the world. When he wanted anything he got it, no matter
what the cost. All dealers knew that, and any one who had 'the best'
to sell knew that in Lord Clarenceux he would find a purchaser. He
carried things with a high hand. I never knew another man so
determined, or one who could be more stern or more exquisitely kind.
He knew every sort of society, and yet he had never married. He fell
in love with me, and offered me his hand. I declined--I was afraid of
him. He said he would shoot himself. And he would have done it; so I
accepted. I should have ended by loving him. For he wished me to love
him, and he always had his way. He was a man, and he held the same
view of my world that I myself hold. Mr. Foster, you must think I'm in
a very chattering mood."

I protested with a gesture.

"Lord Clarenceux died. And I am alone. I was terribly lonely after his
death. I missed his jealousy."

"He was jealous?"

"He was the most jealous man, I think, who ever lived. His jealousy
escorted me everywhere like a guard of soldiers. Yet I liked him even
for that. He was genuine; so sincere, so masterful with it. In all
matters his methods were drastic. If he had been alive I should not be
tormented by the absurd fears which I now allow to get the better of
me."

"Fears! About what?"

"To be frank, about my debut at the Opéra Comique. I can imagine," she
smiled, "how he would have dealt with that situation."

"You are afraid of something?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I merely fear.... There is Carlotta Deschamps."

"Miss Rosa, a few minutes ago you called me your friend." My voice was
emotional; I felt it.

"I did, because you are. I have no claim on you, but you have been
very good to me."

"You have the best claim on me. Will you rely on me?"

We looked at each other.

"I will," she said. I stood before her, and she took my hand.

"You say you fear. I hope your fears are groundless--candidly, I can't
see how they can be otherwise. But suppose anything should happen.
Well, I shall be at your service."

At that moment some one knocked and entered. It was Yvette. She
avoided my glance.

"Madame will take her egg-and-milk before going to rehearsal?"

"Yes, Yvette. Bring it to me here, please."

"You have a rehearsal to-day?" I asked. "I hope I'm not detaining
you."

"Not at all. The call is for three o'clock. This is the second one,
and they fixed the hour to suit me. It is really my first rehearsal,
because at the previous one I was too hoarse to sing a note."

I rose to go.

"Wouldn't you like to come with me to the theatre?" she said with an
adorable accent of invitation.

My good fortune staggered me.

After she had taken her egg-and-milk we set out.




CHAPTER XII

EGG-AND-MILK


I was intensely conscious of her beauty as I sat by her side in the
swiftly rolling victoria. And I was conscious of other qualities in
her too--of her homeliness, her good-fellowship, her trustfulness. The
fact that she was one of the most famous personalities in Europe did
not, after our talk, in the least disturb my pleasing dreams of a
possible future. It was, nevertheless, specially forced upon me, for
as we drove along the Rue de Rivoli, past the interminable façades of
the Louvre, and the big shops, and so into the meaner quarter of the
markets--the Opéra Comique was then situated in its temporary home in
the Place du Châtelet--numberless wayfarers showed by their demeanor
of curiosity that Rosetta Rosa was known to them. They were much more
polite than English people would have been, but they did not hide
their interest in us.

The jewels had been locked away in a safe, except one gorgeous emerald
brooch which she was wearing at her neck.

"It appears," I said, "that in Paris one must not even attend
rehearsals without jewels."

She laughed.

"You think I have a passion for jewels, and you despise me for it."

"By no means. Nobody has a better right to wear precious stones than
yourself."

"Can you guess why I wear them?"

"Not because they make you look prettier, for that's impossible."

"Will you please remember that I like you because you are not in the
habit of making speeches."

"I beg pardon. I won't offend again. Well, then, I will confess that I
don't know why you wear jewels. There must be a Puritan strain in my
character, for I cannot enter into the desire for jewels. I say this
merely because you have practically invited me to be brutal."

Now that I recall that conversation I realize how gentle she was
towards my crude and callous notions concerning personal adornment.

"Yet you went to England in order to fetch my jewels."

"No, I went to England in order to be of use to a lady. But tell
me--why do you wear jewels off the stage?"

"Simply because, having them, I have a sort of feeling that they ought
to be used. It seems a waste to keep them hidden in a strong box, and
I never could tolerate waste. Really, I scarcely care more for jewels,
as jewels, than you do yourself."

"Still, for a person who doesn't care for them, you seem to have a
fair quantity of them."

"Ah! But many were given to me--and the rest I bought when I was
young, or soon afterwards. Besides, they are part of my stock in
trade."

"When you were young!" I repeated, smiling. "How long is that since?"

"Ages."

I coughed.

"It is seven years since I was young," she said, "and I was sixteen at
the time."

"You are positively venerable, then; and since you are, I must be
too."

"I am much older than you are," she said; "not in years, but in life.
You don't feel old."

"And do you?"

"Frightfully."

"What brings it on?"

"Oh! Experience--and other things. It is the soul which grows old."

"But you have been happy?"

"Never--never in my life, except when I was singing, have I been
happy. Have you been happy?"

"Yes," I said, "once or twice."

"When you were a boy?"

"No, since I have become a man. Just--just recently."

"People fancy they are happy," she murmured.

"Isn't that the same thing as being happy?"

"Perhaps." Then suddenly changing the subject: "You haven't told me
about your journey. Just a bare statement that there was a delay on
the railway and another delay on the steamer. Don't you think you
ought to fill in the details?"

So I filled them in; but I said nothing about my mysterious enemy who
had accompanied me, and who after strangely disappearing and
reappearing had disappeared again; nor about the woman whom I had met
on the Admiralty Pier. I wondered when he might reappear once more.
There was no proper reason why I should not have told Rosa about these
persons, but some instinctive feeling, some timidity of spirit,
prevented me from doing so.

"How thrilling! Were you frightened on the steamer?" she asked.

"Yes," I admitted frankly.

"You may not think it," she said, "but I should not have been
frightened. I have never been frightened at Death."

"But have you ever been near him?"

"Who knows?" she answered thoughtfully.

We were at the stage-door of the theatre. The olive-liveried footman
dismounted, and gravely opened the door of the carriage. I got out,
and gave my hand to Rosa, and we entered the theatre.

In an instant she had become the prima donna. The curious little
officials of the theatre bowed before her, and with prodigious smiles
waved us forward to the stage. The stage-manager, a small, fat man
with white hair, was drilling the chorus. As soon as he caught sight
of us he dismissed the short-skirted girls and the fatigued-looking
men, and skipped towards us. The orchestra suddenly ceased. Everyone
was quiet. The star had come.

"Good day, mademoiselle. You are here to the moment."

Rosa and the régisseur talked rapidly together, and presently the
conductor of the orchestra stepped from his raised chair on to the
stage, and with a stately inclination to Rosa joined in the
conversation. As for me, I looked about, and was stared at. So far as
I could see there was not much difference between an English stage and
a French stage, viewed at close quarters, except that the French
variety possesses perhaps more officials and a more bureaucratic air.
I gazed into the cold, gloomy auditorium, so bare of decoration, and
decided that in England such an auditorium would not be tolerated.

After much further chatter the conductor bowed again, and returned to
his seat. Rosa beckoned to me, and I was introduced to the
stage-manager.

"Allow me to present to you Mr. Foster, one of my friends."

Rosa coughed, and I noticed that her voice was slightly hoarse.

"You have taken cold during the drive," I said, pouring into the sea
of French a little stream of English.

"Oh, no. It is nothing; it will pass off in a minute."

The stage-manager escorted me to a chair near a grand piano which
stood in the wings. Then some male artists, evidently people of
importance, appeared out of the darkness at the back of the stage.
Rosa took off her hat and gloves, and placed them on the grand piano.
I observed that she was flushed, and I put it down to the natural
excitement of the artist about to begin work. The orchestra sounded
resonantly in the empty theatre, and, under the yellow glare of
unshaded electricity, the rehearsal of "Carmen" began at the point
where Carmen makes her first entry.

As Rosa came to the centre of the stage from the wings she staggered.
One would have thought she was drunk. At her cue, instead of
commencing to sing, she threw up her hands, and with an appealing
glance at me sank down to the floor. I rushed to her, and immediately
the entire personnel of the theatre was in a state of the liveliest
excitement. I thought of a similar scene in London not many months
before. But the poor girl was perfectly conscious, and even
self-possessed.

"Water!" she murmured. "I shall die of thirst if you don't give me
some water to drink at once."

There appeared to be no water within the theatre, but at last some one
appeared with a carafe and glass. She drank two glassfuls, and then
dropped the glass, which broke on the floor.

"I am not well," she said; "I feel so hot, and there is that
hoarseness in my throat. Mr. Foster, you must take me home. The
rehearsal will have to be postponed again; I am sorry. It's very
queer."

She stood up with my assistance, looking wildly about her, but
appealing to no one but myself.

"It is queer," I said, supporting her.

"Mademoiselle was ill in the same way last time," several sympathetic
voices cried out, and some of the women caressed her gently.

"Let me get home," she said, half-shouting, and she clung to me. "My
hat--my gloves--quick!"

"Yes, yes," I said; "I will get a fiacre."

"Why not my victoria?" she questioned imperiously.

"Because you must go in a closed carriage," I said firmly.

"Mademoiselle will accept my brougham?"

A tall dark man had come forward. He was the Escamillo. She thanked
him with a look. Some woman threw a cloak over Rosa's shoulders, and,
the baritone on one side of her and myself on the other, we left the
theatre. It seemed scarcely a moment since she had entered it
confident and proud.

During the drive back to her flat I did not speak, but I examined her
narrowly. Her skin was dry and burning, and on her forehead there was
a slight rash. Her lips were dry, and she continually made the motion
of swallowing. Her eyes sparkled, and they seemed to stand out from
her head. Also she still bitterly complained of thirst. She wanted,
indeed, to stop the carriage and have something to drink at the Café
de l'Univers, but I absolutely declined to permit such a proceeding,
and in a few minutes we were at her flat. The attack was passing away.
She mounted the stairs without much difficulty.

"You must go to bed," I said. We were in the salon. "In a few hours
you will be better."

"I will ring for Yvette."

"No," I said, "you will not ring for Yvette. I want Yvette myself.
Have you no other servant who can assist you?"

"Yes. But why not Yvette?"

"You can question me to-morrow. Please obey me now. I am your doctor.
I will ring the bell. Yvette will come, and you will at once go out of
the room, find another servant, and retire to bed. You can do that?
You are not faint?"

"No, I can do it; but it is very queer."

I rang the bell.

"You have said that before, and I say, 'It is queer; queerer than you
imagine.' One thing I must ask you before you go. When you had the
attack in the theatre did you see things double?"

"Yes," she answered. "But how did you know? I felt as though I was
intoxicated; but I had taken nothing whatever."

"Excuse me, you had taken egg-and-milk. Here is the glass out of which
you drank it." I picked up the glass, which had been left on the
table, and which still contained about a spoonful of egg-and-milk.

Yvette entered in response to my summons.

"Mademoiselle has returned soon," the girl began lightly.

"Yes."

The two women looked at each other. I hastened to the door, and held
it open for Rosa to pass out. She did so. I closed the door, and put
my back against it. The glass I still held in my hand.

"Now, Yvette, I want to ask you a few questions."

She stood before me, pretty even in her plain black frock and black
apron, and folded her hands. Her face showed no emotion whatever.

"Yes, monsieur, but mademoiselle will need me."

"Mademoiselle will not need you. She will never need you again."

"Monsieur says?"

"You see this glass. What did you put in it?"

"The cook put egg-and-milk into it."

"I ask what you put in it?"

"I, monsieur? Nothing."

"You are lying, my girl. Your mistress has been poisoned."

"I swear--"

"I should advise you not to swear. You have twice attempted to poison
your mistress. Why did you do it?"

"But this is absurd."

"Does your mistress use eyedrops when she sings at the Opéra?"

"Eyedrops?"

"You know what I mean. A lotion which you drop into the eye in order
to dilate the pupil."

"My mistress never uses eyedrops."

"Does Madame Carlotta Deschamps use eyedrops?"

It was a courageous move on my part, but it had its effect. She was
startled.

"I--I don't know, monsieur."

"I ask because eyedrops contain atropine, and mademoiselle is
suffering from a slight, a very slight, attack of atropine poisoning.
The dose must have been very nicely gauged; it was just enough to
produce a temporary hoarseness and discomfort. I needn't tell such a
clever girl as you that atropine acts first on the throat. It has
clearly been some one's intention to prevent mademoiselle from singing
at rehearsals, and from appearing in Paris in 'Carmen.'"

Yvette drew herself up, her nostrils quivering. She had turned
decidedly pale.

"Monsieur insults me by his suspicions. I must go."

"You won't go just immediately. I may tell you further that I have
analyzed the contents of this glass, and have found traces of
atropine."

I had done no such thing, but that was a detail.

"Also, I have sent for the police."

This, too, was an imaginative statement.

Yvette approached me suddenly, and flung her arms round my neck. I had
just time to put the glass on the seat of a chair and seize her hands.

"No," I said, "you will neither spill that glass nor break it."

She dropped at my feet weeping.

"Have pity on me, monsieur!" She looked up at me through her tears,
and the pose was distinctly effective. "It was Madame Deschamps who
asked me to do it. I used to be with her before I came to
mademoiselle. She gave me the bottle, but I didn't know it was
poison--I swear I didn't!"

"What did you take it to be, then? Jam? Two grains of atropine will
cause death."

For answer she clung to my knees. I released myself, and moved away a
few steps. She jumped up, and made a dash for the door, but I happened
to have locked it.

"Where is Madame Deschamps?" I asked.

"She returns to Paris to-morrow. Monsieur will let me go. I was only a
tool."

"I will consider that matter, Yvette," I said. "In my opinion you are
a thoroughly wicked girl, and I wouldn't trust you any further than I
could see you. For the present, you will have an opportunity to
meditate over your misdoings." I left the room, and locked the door on
the outside.

Impossible to disguise the fact that I was enormously pleased with
myself--with my sharpness, my smartness, my penetration, my success.




CHAPTER XIII

THE PORTRAIT


For the next hour or two I wandered about Rosa's flat like an
irresolute and bewildered spirit. I wished to act, yet without Rosa I
scarcely liked to do so. That some sort of a plot existed--whether
serious or trivial was no matter--there could be little doubt, and
there could be little doubt also that Carlotta Deschamps was at the
root of it.

Several half-formed schemes flitted through my head, but none of them
seemed to be sufficiently clever. I had the idea of going to see
Carlotta Deschamps in order to warn her. Then I thought the warning
might perhaps be sent through her sister Marie, who was doubtless in
Paris, and who would probably be able to control Carlotta. I had not
got Carlotta's address, but I might get it by going to the Casino de
Paris, and asking Marie for it. Perhaps Marie, suspicious, might
refuse the address. Had she not said that she and Carlotta were as
thick as thieves? Moreover, assuming that I could see Carlotta, what
should I say to her? How should I begin? Then it occurred to me that
the shortest way with such an affair was to go directly to the police,
as I had already threatened Yvette; but the appearance of the police
would mean publicity, scandal, and other things unpleasant for Rosa.
So it fell out that I maintained a discreet inactivity.

Towards nightfall I went into the street to breathe the fresh air. A
man was patrolling the pavement in a somewhat peculiar manner. I
returned indoors, and after half an hour reconnoitred once more. The
man was on the opposite side of the road, with his eyes on the windows
of the salon. When he caught sight of me he walked slowly away. He
might have been signalling to Yvette, who was still under lock and
key, but this possibility did not disturb me, as escape was out of the
question for her.

I went back to the flat, and a servant met me in the hall with a
message that mademoiselle was now quite recovered, and would like to
see me in her boudoir. I hurried to her. A fire was burning on the
hearth, and before this were two lounge chairs. Rosa occupied one, and
she motioned me to the other. Attired in a peignoir of pure white, and
still a little languorous after the attack, she looked the enchanting
perfection of beauty and grace. But in her eyes, which were unduly
bright, there shone an apprehension, the expectancy of the unknown.

"I am better," she said, with a faint smile. "Feel my pulse."

I held her wrist and took out my watch, but I forgot to count, and I
forgot to note the seconds. I was gazing at her. It seemed absurd to
contemplate the possibility of ever being able to call her my own.

"Am I not better?"

"Yes, yes," I said; "the pulse is--the pulse is--you are much better."

Then I pushed my chair a little further from the fire, and recollected
that there were several things to be said and done.

"I expected the attack would pass very quickly," I said.

"Then you know what I have been suffering from," she said, turning her
chair rapidly half-round towards me.

"I do," I answered, with emphasis.

"What is it?"

I was silent.

"Well," she said, "tell me what it is." She laughed, but her voice was
low and anxious.

"I am just wondering whether I shall tell you."

"Stuff!" she exclaimed proudly. "Am I a child?"

"You are a woman, and should be shielded from the sharp edges of
life."

"Ah!" she murmured "Not all men have thought so. And I wish you
wouldn't talk like that."

"Nevertheless, I think like that," I said. "And I'm really anxious to
save you from unnecessary annoyance."

"Then I insist that you shall tell me," she replied inconsequently. "I
will not have you adopt that attitude towards me. Do you understand? I
won't have it! I'm not a Dresden shepherdess, and I won't be treated
like one--at any rate, by you. So there!"

I was in the seventh heaven of felicity.

"If you will have it, you have been poisoned."

I told her of my suspicions, and how they had been confirmed by
Yvette's avowal. She shivered, and then stood up and came towards me.

"Do you mean to say that Carlotta Deschamps and my own maid have
conspired together to poison me simply because I am going to sing in a
certain piece at a certain theatre? It's impossible!"

"But it is true. Deschamps may not have wished to kill you; she merely
wanted to prevent you from singing, but she ran a serious risk of
murder, and she must have known it."

Rosa began to sob, and I led her back to her chair.

"I ought not to have told you to-night," I said. "But we should
communicate with the police, and I wanted your authority before doing
so."

She dried her eyes, but her frame still shook.

"I will sing 'Carmen,'" she said passionately.

"Of course you will. We must get these two arrested, and you shall
have proper protection."

"Police? No! We will have no police."

"You object to the scandal? I had thought of that."

"It is not that I object to the scandal. I despise Deschamps and
Yvette too much to take the slightest notice of either of them. I
could not have believed that women would so treat another woman." She
hid her face in her hands.

"But is it not your duty--" I began.

"Mr. Foster, please, please don't argue. I am incapable of prosecuting
these creatures. You say Yvette is locked up in the salon. Go to her,
and tell her to depart. Tell her that I shall do nothing, that I do
not hate her, that I bear her no ill-will, that I simply ignore her.
And let her carry the same message to Carlotta Deschamps."

"Suppose there should be a further plot?"

"There can't be. Knowing that this one is discovered, they will never
dare.... And even if they tried again in some other way, I would
sooner walk in danger all my life than acknowledge the existence of
such creatures. Will you go at once?"

"As you wish;" and I went out.

"Mr. Foster."

She called me back. Taking my hand with a gesture half-caressing, she
raised her face to mine. Our eyes met, and in hers was a gentle,
trustful appeal, a pathetic and entrancing wistfulness, which sent a
sudden thrill through me. Her clasp of my fingers tightened ever so
little.

"I haven't thanked you in words," she said, "for all you have done for
me, and are doing. But you know I'm grateful, don't you?"

I could feel the tears coming into my eyes.

"It is nothing, absolutely nothing," I muttered, and hurried from the
room.

At first, in the salon, I could not see Yvette, though the electric
light had been turned on, no doubt by herself. Then there was a
movement of one of the window-curtains, and she appeared from behind
it.

"Oh, it is you," she said calmly, with a cold smile. She had
completely recovered her self-possession, so much was evident; and
apparently she was determined to play the game to the end, accepting
defeat with an air of ironical and gay indifference. Yvette was by no
means an ordinary woman. Her face was at once sinister and attractive,
with lines of strength about it; she moved with a certain distinction;
she had brains and various abilities; and I imagined her to have been
capable of some large action, a first-class sin or a really dramatic
self-sacrifice--she would have been ready for either. But of her
origin I am to this day as ignorant as of her ultimate fate.

A current of air told me that a window was open.

"I noticed a suspicious-looking man outside just now," I said. "Is he
one of your confederates? Have you been communicating with him?"

She sat down in an armchair, leaned backwards, and began to hum an
air--la, la, la.

"Answer me. Come!"

"And if I decline?"

"You will do well to behave yourself," I said; and, going to the
window, I closed it, and slipped the catch.

"I hope the gendarmes will be here soon," she murmured amiably; "I am
rather tired of waiting." She affected to stifle a yawn.

"Yvette," I said, "you know as well as I do that you have committed a
serious crime. Tell me all about Deschamps' jealousy of your mistress;
make a full confession, and I will see what can be done for you."

She put her thin lips together.

"No," she replied in a sharp staccato. "I have done what I have done,
and I will answer only the juge d'instruction."

"Better think twice."

"Never. It is a trick you wish to play on me."

"Very well." I went to the door, and opened it wide. "You are free to
go."

"To go?"

"It is your mistress's wish."

"She will not send me to prison?"

"She scorns to do anything whatever."

For a moment the girl looked puzzled, and then:

"Ah! it is a bad pleasantry; the gendarmes are on the stairs."

I shrugged my shoulders, and at length she tripped quietly out of the
room. I heard her run down-stairs. Then, to my astonishment, the
footfalls approached again, and Yvette re-entered the room and closed
the door.

"I see it is not a bad pleasantry," she began, with her back to the
door. "Mademoiselle is a great lady, and I have always known that; she
is an artist; she has soul--so have I. What you could not force from
me, neither you nor any man, I will tell you of my own free will. You
want to hear of Deschamps?"

I nodded, half-admiring her--perhaps more than half.

"She is a woman to fear. I have told you I used to be her maid before
I came to mademoiselle, and even I was always afraid of her. But I
liked her. We understood each other, Deschamps and I. Mademoiselle
imagines that Deschamps became jealous of her because of a certain
affair that happened at the Opéra Comique several years ago--a mere
quarrel of artists, of which I have seen many. That was partly the
cause, but there was something else. Deschamps used to think that Lord
Clarenceux was in love with her--with her! As a fact, he was not; but
she used to think so, and when Lord Clarenceux first began to pay
attention to mademoiselle, then it was that the jealousy of Deschamps
really sprang up. Ah! I have heard Deschamps swear to--But that is
nothing. She never forgave mademoiselle for being betrothed to Lord
Clarenceux. When he died, she laughed; but her hatred of mademoiselle
was unchanged. It smouldered, only it was very hot underneath. And I
can understand--Lord Clarenceux was so handsome and so rich, the most
fine stern man I ever saw. He used to give me hundred-franc notes."

"Never mind the notes. Why has Deschamps' jealousy revived so suddenly
just recently?"

"Why? Because mademoiselle would come back to the Opéra Comique.
Deschamps could not suffer that. And when she heard it was to be so,
she wrote to me--to me!--and asked if it was true that mademoiselle
was to appear as Carmen. Then she came to see me--me--and I was
obliged to tell her it was true, and she was frightfully angry, and
then she began to cry--oh, her despair! She said she knew a way to
stop mademoiselle from singing, and she begged me to help her, and I
said I would."

"You were willing to betray your mistress?"

"Deschamps swore it would do no real harm. Do I not tell you that
Deschamps and I always liked each other? We were old friends. I
sympathized with her; she is growing old."

"How much did she promise to pay you?"

"Not a sou--not a centime. I swear it." The girl stamped her foot and
threw up her head, reddening with the earnestness of her disclaimer.
"What I did, I did from love; and I thought it would not harm
mademoiselle, really."

"Nevertheless you might have killed your mistress."

"Alas!"

"Answer me this: Now that your attempt has failed, what will Deschamps
do? Will she stop, or will she try something else?"

Yvette shook her head slowly.

"I do not know. She is dangerous. Sometimes she is like a mad woman.
You must take care. For myself, I will never see her again."

"You give your word on that?"

"I have said it. There is nothing more to tell you. So, adieu. Say to
mademoiselle that I have repented."

She opened the door, and as she did so her eye seemed by chance to
catch a small picture which hung by the side of the hearth. My back
was to the fireplace, and I did not trouble to follow her glance.

"Ah," she murmured reflectively, "he was the most fine stern man ...
and he gave me hundred-franc notes."

Then she was gone. We never saw nor heard of Yvette again.

Out of curiosity, I turned to look at the picture which must have
caught her eye. It was a little photograph, framed in black, and hung
by itself on the wall; in the ordinary way one would scarcely have
noticed it. I went close up to it. My heart gave a jump, and I seemed
to perspire. The photograph was a portrait of the man who, since my
acquaintance with Rosa, had haunted my footsteps--the mysterious and
implacable person whom I had seen first opposite the Devonshire
Mansion, then in the cathedral at Bruges during my vigil by the corpse
of Alresca, then in the train which was wrecked, and finally in the
Channel steamer which came near to sinking. Across the lower part of
it ran the signature, in large, stiff characters, "Clarenceux."

So Lord Clarenceux was not dead, though everyone thought him so. Here
was a mystery more disturbing than anything which had gone before.




CHAPTER XIV

THE VILLA


It seemed to be my duty to tell Rosa, of course with all possible
circumspection, that, despite a general impression to the contrary,
Lord Clarenceux was still alive. His lordship's reasons for effacing
himself, and so completely deceiving his friends and the world, I
naturally could not divine; but I knew that such things had happened
before, and also I gathered that he was a man who would hesitate at no
caprice, however extravagant, once it had suggested itself to him as
expedient for the satisfaction of his singular nature.

A light broke in upon me: Alresca must have been aware that Lord
Clarenceux was alive. That must have been part of Alresca's secret,
but only part. I felt somehow that I was on the verge of some tragical
discovery which might vitally affect not only my own existence, but
that of others.

I saw Rosa on the morning after my interview with Yvette. She was in
perfect health and moderately good spirits, and she invited me to dine
with her that evening. "I will tell her after dinner," I said to
myself. The project of telling her seemed more difficult as it
approached. She said that she had arranged by telephone for another
rehearsal at the Opéra Comique at three o'clock, but she did not
invite me to accompany her. I spent the afternoon at the Sorbonne,
where I had some acquaintances, and after calling at my hotel, the
little Hôtel de Portugal in the Rue Croix des Petits Champs, to dress,
I drove in a fiacre to the Rue de Rivoli. I had carefully considered
how best in conversation I might lead Rosa to the subject of Lord
Clarenceux, and had arranged a little plan. Decidedly I did not
anticipate the interview with unmixed pleasure; but, as I have said, I
felt bound to inform her that her former lover's death was a fiction.
My suit might be doomed thereby to failure,--I had no right to expect
otherwise,--but if it should succeed and I had kept silence on this
point, I should have played the part of a--well, of a man "of three
letters."

"Mademoiselle is not at home," said the servant.

"Not at home! But I am dining with her, my friend."

"Mademoiselle has been called away suddenly, and she has left a note
for monsieur. Will monsieur give himself the trouble to come into the
salon?"

The note ran thus:

     "Dear Friend:--A thousand excuses! But the enclosed will
     explain. I felt that I must go--and go instantly. She might
     die before I arrived. Will you call early to-morrow?

                                                "Your grateful
                                                         "Rosa"

And this was the enclosure, written in French:

                                      "VILLA DES HORTENSIAS,
                                 "RUE THIERS, PANTIN, PARIS.

     "Mademoiselle:--I am dying. I have wronged you deeply, and I
     dare not die without your forgiveness. Prove to me that you
     have a great heart by coming to my bedside and telling me
     that you accept my repentance. The bearer will conduct you.

                                             "Carlotta Deschamps."

"What time did mademoiselle leave?" I inquired.

"Less than a quarter of an hour ago," was the reply.

"Who brought the note to her?"

"A man, monsieur. Mademoiselle accompanied him in a cab."

With a velocity which must have startled the grave and leisurely
servant, I precipitated myself out of the house and back into the
fiacre, which happily had not gone away. I told the cabman to drive to
my hotel at his best speed.

To me Deschamps' letter was in the highest degree suspicious. Rosa, of
course, with the simplicity of a heart incapable of any baseness, had
accepted it in perfect faith. But I remembered the words of Yvette,
uttered in all solemnity: "She is dangerous; you must take care."
Further, I observed that the handwriting of this strange and dramatic
missive was remarkably firm and regular for a dying woman, and that
the composition showed a certain calculated effectiveness. I feared a
lure. Instinctively I knew Deschamps to be one of those women who,
driven by the goad of passionate feeling, will proceed to any length,
content to postpone reflection till afterwards--when the irremediable
has happened.

By chance I was slightly acquainted with the remote and sinister
suburb where lay the Villa des Hortensias. I knew that at night it
possessed a peculiar reputation, and my surmise was that Rosa had been
decoyed thither with some evil intent.

Arrived at my hotel, I unearthed my revolver and put it in my pocket.
Nothing might occur; on the other hand, everything might occur, and it
was only prudent to be prepared. Dwelling on this thought, I also took
the little jewelled dagger which Rosa had given to Sir Cyril Smart at
the historic reception of my Cousin Sullivan's.

In the hall of the hotel I looked at the plan of Paris. Certainly
Pantin seemed to be a very long way off. The route to it from the
centre of the city--that is to say, the Place de l'Opéra--followed the
Rue Lafayette, which is the longest straight thoroughfare in Paris,
and then the Rue d'Allemagne, which is a continuation, in the same
direct line, of the Rue Lafayette. The suburb lay without the
fortifications. The Rue Thiers--every Parisian suburb has its Rue
Thiers--was about half a mile past the barrier, on the right.

I asked the aged woman who fulfils the functions of hall-porter at the
Hôtel de Portugal whether a cab would take me to Pantin.

"Pantin," she repeated, as she might have said "Timbuctoo." And she
called the proprietor. The proprietor also said "Pantin" as he might
have said "Timbuctoo," and advised me to take the steam-tram which
starts from behind the Opéra, to let that carry me as far as it would,
and then, arrived in those distant regions, either to find a cab or to
walk the remainder of the distance.

So, armed, I issued forth, and drove to the tram, and placed myself on
the top of the tram. And the tram, after much tooting of horns, set
out.

Through kilometre after kilometre of gaslit clattering monotony that
immense and deafening conveyance took me. There were cafés everywhere,
thickly strewn on both sides of the way--at first large and lofty and
richly decorated, with vast glazed façades, and manned by waiters in
black and white, then gradually growing smaller and less busy. The
black and white waiters gave place to men in blouses, and men in
blouses gave place to women and girls--short, fat women and girls who
gossiped among themselves and to customers. Once we passed a café
quite deserted save for the waiter and the waitress, who sat, head on
arms, side by side, over a table asleep.

Then the tram stopped finally, having covered about three miles. There
was no sign of a cab. I proceeded on foot. The shops got smaller and
dingier; they were filled, apparently, by the families of the
proprietors. At length I crossed over a canal--the dreadful quarter of
La Villette--and here the street widened out to an immense width, and
it was silent and forlorn under the gas-lamps. I hurried under railway
bridges, and I saw in the distance great shunting-yards looking grim
in their blue hazes of electric light. Then came the city barrier and
the octroi, and still the street stretched in front of me, darker now,
more mischievous, more obscure. I was in Pantin.

At last I descried the white and blue sign of the Rue Thiers. I stood
alone in the shadow of high, forbidding houses. All seemed strange and
fearsome. Certainly this might still be called Paris, but it was not
the Paris known to Englishmen; it was the Paris of Zola, and Zola in a
Balzacian mood.

I turned into the Rue Thiers, and at once the high, forbidding houses
ceased, and small detached villas--such as are to be found in
thousands round the shabby skirts of Paris--took their place. The
Villa des Hortensias, clearly labelled, was nearly at the far end of
the funereal street. It was rather larger than its fellows, and
comprised three stories, with a small garden in front and a vast
grille with a big bell, such as Parisians love when they have passed
the confines of the city, and have dispensed with the security of a
concierge. The grille was ajar. I entered the garden, having made sure
that the bell would not sound. The façade of the house showed no light
whatever. A double stone stairway of four steps led to the front door.
I went up the steps, and was about to knock, when the idea flashed
across my mind: "Suppose that Deschamps is really dying, how am I to
explain my presence here? I am not the guardian of Rosa, and she may
resent being tracked across Paris by a young man with no claim to
watch her actions."

Nevertheless, in an expedition of this nature one must accept risks,
and therefore I knocked gently. There was no reply to the summons, and
I was cogitating upon my next move when, happening to press against
the door with my hand, I discovered that it was not latched. Without
weighing consequences, I quietly opened it, and with infinite caution
stepped into the hall, and pushed the door to. I did not latch it,
lest I might need to make a sudden exit--unfamiliar knobs and springs
are apt to be troublesome when one is in a hurry.

I was now fairly in the house, but the darkness was blacker than the
pit, and I did not care to strike a match. I felt my way along by the
wall till I came to a door on the left; it was locked. A little
further was another door, also locked. I listened intently, for I
fancied I could hear a faint murmur of voices, but I was not sure.
Then I startled myself by stepping on nothing--I was at the head of a
flight of stone steps; down below I could distinguish an almost
imperceptible glimmer of light.

"I'm in for it. Here goes!" I reflected, and I crept down the steps
one by one, and in due course reached the bottom. To the left was a
doorway, through which came the glimmer of light. Passing through the
doorway, I came into a room with a stone floor. The light, which was
no stronger than the very earliest intimation of a winter's dawn,
seemed to issue in a most unusual way from the far corner of this
apartment near the ceiling. I directed my course towards it, and in
the transit made violent contact with some metallic object, which
proved to be an upright iron shaft, perhaps three inches in diameter,
running from floor to ceiling.

"Surely," I thought, "this is the queerest room I was ever in."

Circumnavigating the pillar, I reached the desired corner, and stood
under the feeble source of light. I could see now that in this corner
the ceiling was higher than elsewhere, and that the light shone dimly
from a perpendicular pane of glass which joined the two levels of the
ceiling. I also saw that there was a ledge about two feet from the
floor, upon which a man would stand in order to look through the
pane.

I climbed on to the ledge, and I looked. To my astonishment, I had a
full view of a large apartment, my head being even with the floor of
that apartment. Lying on a couch was a woman--the woman who had
accosted me on Dover Pier--Carlotta Deschamps, in fact. By her side,
facing her in a chair, was Rosetta Rosa. I could hear nothing, but by
the movement of their lips I knew that these two were talking. Rosa's
face was full of pity; as for Deschamps, her coarse features were
inscrutable. She had a certain pallor, but it was impossible to judge
whether she was ill or well.

I had scarcely begun to observe the two women when I caught the sound
of footsteps on the stone stair. The footsteps approached; they
entered the room where I was. I made no sound. Without any hesitation
the footsteps arrived at my corner, and a pair of hands touched my
legs. Then I knew it was time to act. Jumping down from the ledge, I
clasped the intruder by the head, and we rolled over together,
struggling. But he was a short man, apparently stiff in the limbs, and
in ten seconds or thereabouts I had him flat on his back, and my hand
at his throat.

"Don't move," I advised him.

In that faint light I could not see him, so I struck a match, and held
it over the man's face. We gazed at each other, breathing heavily.

"Good God!" the man exclaimed.

It was Sir Cyril Smart.




CHAPTER XV

THE SHEATH OF THE DAGGER


That was one of those supremely trying moments which occur, I suppose,
once or twice in the lives of most men, when events demand to be fully
explained while time will on no account permit of the explanation. I
felt that I must know at once the reason and purpose of Sir Cyril's
presence with me in the underground chamber, and that I could do
nothing further until I had such knowledge. And yet I also felt that
explanations must inevitably wait until the scene enacting above us
was over. I stood for a second silent, irresolute. The match went out.

"Are you here to protect her?" whispered Sir Cyril.

"Yes, if she is in danger. I will tell you afterwards about things.
And you?"

"I was passing through Paris, and I heard that Deschamps was
threatening Rosa. Everyone is talking of it, and I heard of the
scene at the rehearsal, and I began to guess.... I know Deschamps
well. I was afraid for Rosa. Then this morning I met Yvette, Rosa's
maid--she's an old acquaintance of mine--and she told me everything. I
have many friends in Paris, and I learnt to-night that Deschamps had
sent for Rosa. So I have come up to interfere. They are up-stairs, are
they not? Let us watch."

"You know the house, then?"

"I have been here before, to one of Deschamps' celebrated suppers. She
showed me all over it then. It is one of the strangest houses round
about Paris--and that's saying something. The inside was rebuilt by a
Russian count who wanted to do the Louis Quinze revelry business over
again. He died, and Deschamps bought the place. She often stays here
quite alone."

I was putting all the questions. Sir Cyril seemed not to be very
curious concerning the origin of my presence.

"What is Rosa to you?" I queried with emphasis.

"What is she to you?" he returned quickly.

"To me she is everything," I said.

"And to me, my young friend!"

I could not, of course, see Sir Cyril's face, but the tone of his
reply impressed and silenced me. I was mystified--and yet I felt glad
that he was there. Both of us forgot to be surprised at the
peculiarity of the scene. It appeared quite natural that he should
have supervened so dramatically at precisely the correct moment, and I
asked him for no more information. He evidently did know the place,
for he crept immediately to the ledge, and looked into the room above.
I followed, and stood by his side. The two women were still talking.

"Can't we get into the room, or do something?" I murmured.

"Not yet. How do we know that Deschamps means harm? Let us wait. Have
you a weapon?"

Sir Cyril spoke as one in command, and I accepted the assumption of
authority.

"Yes," I said; "I've got a revolver, and a little dagger."

"Who knows what may happen? Give me one of them--give me the dagger,
if you like."

I passed it to him in the darkness. Astounding as it may seem, I am
prepared solemnly to assert that at that moment I had forgotten the
history of the dagger, and Sir Cyril's connection with it.

I was just going to ask of what use weapons could be, situated as we
were, when I saw Deschamps with a sudden movement jump up from her
bed, her eyes blazing. With an involuntary cry in my throat I hammered
the glass in front of us with the butt of my revolver, but it was at
least an inch thick, and did not even splinter. Sir Cyril sprang from
the ledge instantly. Meanwhile Rosa, the change of whose features
showed that she divined the shameful trick played upon her, stood up,
half-indignant, half-terrified. Deschamps was no more dying than I
was; her eyes burned with the lust of homicide, and with uplifted
twitching hands she advanced like a tiger, and Rosa retreated before
her to the middle of the room.

Then there was the click of a spring, and a square of the centre of
the floor, with Rosa standing upon it, swiftly descended into the room
where we were. The thing was as startling as a stage illusion; yes, a
thousand-fold more startling than any trick I ever saw. I may state
here, what I learnt afterwards, that the room above was originally a
dining-room, and the arrangement of the trap had been designed to
cause a table to disappear and reappear as tables were wont to do at
the notorious banquets of King Louis in the Petit Trianon. The glass
observatory enabled the kitchen attendants to watch the progress of
the meals. Sir Cyril knew of the contrivance, and, rushing to the
upright pillar, had worked it most opportunely.

The kitchen, as I may now call it, was illuminated with light from the
room above. I hastened to Rosa, who on seeing Sir Cyril and myself
gave a little cry, and fell forward fainting. She was a brave girl,
but one may have too many astonishments. I caught her, and laid her
gently on the floor. Meanwhile Deschamps (the dying Deschamps!) stood
on the edge of the upper floor, stamping and shouting in a high fever
of foiled revenge. She was mad. When I say that she was mad, I mean
that she was merely and simply insane. I could perceive it instantly,
and I foresaw that we should have trouble with her.

Without the slightest warning, she jumped down into the midst of us.
The distance was a good ten feet, but with a lunatic's luck she did
not hurt herself. She faced Sir Cyril, shaking in every limb with
passion, and he, calm, determined, unhurried, raised his dagger to
defend himself against this terrible lioness should the need arise.

But as he lifted the weapon his eye fell on it; he saw what it was; he
had not observed it before, since we had been in darkness. And as he
looked his composure seemed to desert him. He paled, and his hand
trembled and hung loosely. The mad woman, seizing her chance, snatched
the dagger from him, and like a flash of lightning drove it into his
left breast. Sir Cyril sank down, the dagger sticking out from his
light overcoat.

The deed was over before I could move. I sprang forward. Deschamps
laughed, and turned to me. I closed with her. She scratched and bit,
and she was by no means a weak woman. At first I feared that in her
fury she would overpower me. At length, however, I managed to master
her; but her strength was far from exhausted, and she would not yield.
She was mad; time was passing. I could not afford to be nice in my
methods, so I contrived to stun her, and proceeded to tie her hands
with my handkerchief. Then, panting, I stood up to survey the floor.

I may be forgiven, perhaps, if at that frightful crisis I was not
perfectly cool, and could not decide on the instant upon the wisest
course of action to pursue. Sir Cyril was insensible, and a little
circle of blood was forming round the dagger; Deschamps was
insensible, with a dark bruise on her forehead, inflicted during our
struggle; Rosa was insensible--I presumed from excess of emotion at
the sudden fright.

I gazed at the three prone forms, pondering over my handiwork and that
of Chance. What should be the next step? Save for my own breathing,
there was a deathlike silence. The light from the empty room above
rained down upon us through the trap, illuminating the still faces
with its yellow glare. Was any other person in the house? From what
Sir Cyril had said, and from my own surmises, I thought not. Whatever
people Deschamps might have employed to carry messages, she had
doubtless dismissed them. She and Rosa had been alone in the building.
I can understand now that there was something peculiarly attractive to
the diseased imagination of Deschamps in the prospect of inviting her
victim to the snare, and working vengeance upon a rival unaided,
unseen, solitary in that echoing and deserted mansion. I was horribly
perplexed. It struck me that I ought to be gloomily sorrowful, but I
was not. At the bottom of my soul I felt happy, for Rosa was saved.

It was Rosa who first recovered consciousness, and her movement in
sitting up recalled me to my duty. I ran to Sir Cyril, and, kneeling
down so as to screen his body from her sight, I drew the dagger from
its sheath, and began hastily, with such implements as I could
contrive on the spur of the moment, to attend to his wound.

"What has happened?" Rosa inquired feebly.

I considered my reply, and then, without turning towards her, I spoke
in a slow, matter-of-fact voice.

"Listen carefully to what I say. There has been a plot to--to do you
injury. But you are not hurt. You are, in fact, quite well--don't
imagine anything else. Sir Cyril Smart is here; he's hurt; Deschamps
has wounded him. Deschamps is harmless for the moment, but she may
recover and break out again. So I can't leave to get help. You must
go. You have fainted, but I am sure you can walk quite well. Go up the
stairs here, and walk along the hall till you come to the front door;
it is not fastened. Go out into the street, and bring back two
gendarmes--two, mind--and a cab, if you can. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but how--"

"Now, please go at once!" I insisted grimly and coldly. "We can talk
afterwards. Just do as you're told."

Cowed by the roughness of my tone, she rose and went. I heard her
light, hesitating step pass through the hall, and so out of the house.

In a few minutes I had done all that could be done for Sir Cyril, as
he lay there. The wound was deep, having regard to the small size of
the dagger, and I could only partially stop the extravasation of
blood, which was profuse. I doubted if he would recover. It was not
long, however, before he regained his senses. He spoke, and I remember
vividly now how pathetic to me was the wagging of his short gray beard
as his jaw moved.

"Foster," he said--"your name is Foster, isn't it? Where did you find
that dagger?"

"You must keep quiet," I said. "I have sent for assistance."

"Don't be a fool, man. You know I'm done for. Tell me how you got the
dagger."

So I told him.

"Ah!" he murmured. "It's my luck!" he sighed. Then in little detached
sentences, with many pauses, he began to relate a history of what
happened after Rosa and I had left him on the night of Sullivan's
reception. Much of it was incomprehensible to me; sometimes I could
not make out the words. But it seemed that he had followed us in his
carriage, had somehow met Rosa again, and then, in a sudden frenzy of
remorse, had attempted to kill himself with the dagger in the street.
His reason for this I did not gather. His coachman and footman had
taken him home, and the affair had been kept quiet.

Remorse for what? I burned to ask a hundred questions, but, fearing to
excite him, I shut my lips.

"You are in love with her?" he asked.

I nodded. It was a reply as abrupt as his demand. At that moment
Deschamps laughed quietly behind me. I turned round quickly, but she
lay still; though she had come to, the fire in her eyes was quenched,
and I anticipated no immediate difficulty with her.

"I knew that night that you were in love with her," Sir Cyril
continued. "Has she told you about--about me?"

"No," I said.

"I have done her a wrong, Foster--her and another. But she will tell
you. I can't talk now. I'm going--going. Tell her that I died in
trying to protect her; say that--Foster--say--" He relapsed into
unconsciousness.

I heard firm, rapid steps in the hall, and in another instant the
representatives of French law had taken charge of the house. Rosa
followed them in. She looked wistfully at Sir Cyril, and then,
flinging herself down by his side, burst into wild tears.




CHAPTER XVI

THE THING IN THE CHAIR


On the following night I sat once more in the salon of Rosa's flat.
She had had Sir Cyril removed thither. He was dying; I had done my
best, but his case was quite hopeless, and at Rosa's urgent entreaty I
had at last left her alone by his bedside.

I need not recount all the rush of incidents that had happened since
the tragedy at the Villa des Hortensias on the previous evening. Most
people will remember the tremendous sensation caused by the judicial
inquiry--an inquiry which ended in the tragical Deschamps being
incarcerated in the Charenton Asylum. For aught I know, the poor
woman, once one of the foremost figures in the gaudy world of
theatrical Paris, is still there consuming her heart with a futile
hate.

Rosa would never refer in any way to the interview between Deschamps
and herself; it was as if she had hidden the memory of it in some
secret chamber of her soul, which nothing could induce her to open
again. But there can be no doubt that Deschamps had intended to murder
her, and, indeed, would have murdered her had it not been for the
marvellously opportune arrival of Sir Cyril. With the door of the room
locked as it was, I should assuredly have been condemned, lacking Sir
Cyril's special knowledge of the house, to the anguish of witnessing a
frightful crime without being able to succor the victim. To this day I
can scarcely think of that possibility and remain calm.

As for Sir Cyril's dramatic appearance in the villa, when I had learnt
all the facts, that was perhaps less extraordinary than it had seemed
to me from our hasty dialogue in the underground kitchen of Deschamps'
house. Although neither Rosa nor I was aware of it, operatic circles
had been full of gossip concerning Deschamps' anger and jealousy, of
which she made no secret. One or two artists of the Opéra Comique had
decided to interfere, or at any rate seriously to warn Rosa, when Sir
Cyril arrived, on his way to London from the German watering-place
where he had been staying. All Paris knew Sir Cyril, and Sir Cyril
knew all Paris; he was made acquainted with the facts directly, and
the matter was left to him. A man of singular resolution, originality,
and courage, he had gone straight to the Rue Thiers, having caught a
rumor, doubtless started by the indiscreet Deschamps herself, that
Rosa would be decoyed there. The rest was mere good fortune.

In regard to the mysterious connection between Sir Cyril and Rosa, I
had at present no clue to it; nor had there been much opportunity for
conversation between Rosa and myself. We had not even spoken to each
other alone, and, moreover, I was uncertain whether she would care to
enlighten me on that particular matter; assuredly I had no right to
ask her to do so. Further, I was far more interested in another, and
to me vastly more important, question, the question of Lord Clarenceux
and his supposed death.

I was gloomily meditating upon the tangle of events, when the door of
the salon opened, and Rosa entered. She walked stiffly to a chair,
and, sitting down opposite to me, looked into my face with hard,
glittering eyes. For a few moments she did not speak, and I could not
break the silence. Then I saw the tears slowly welling up, and I was
glad for that. She was intensely moved, and less agonizing experiences
than she had gone through might easily have led to brain fever in a
woman of her highly emotional temperament.

"Why don't you leave me, Mr. Foster?" she cried passionately, and
there were sobs in her voice. "Why don't you leave me, and never see
me again?"

"Leave you?" I said softly. "Why?"

"Because I am cursed. Throughout my life I have been cursed; and the
curse clings, and it falls on those who come near me."

She gave way to hysterical tears; her head bent till it was almost on
her knees. I went to her, and gently raised it, and put a cushion at
the back of the chair. She grew calmer.

"If you are cursed, I will be cursed," I said, gazing straight at her,
and then I sat down again.

The sobbing gradually ceased. She dried her eyes.

"He is dead," she said shortly.

I made no response; I had none to make.

"You do not say anything," she murmured.

"I am sorry. Sir Cyril was the right sort."

"He was my father," she said.

"Your father!" I repeated. No revelation could have more profoundly
astonished me.

"Yes," she firmly repeated.

We both paused.

"I thought you had lost both parents," I said at length, rather
lamely.

"Till lately I thought so too. Listen. I will tell you the tale of all
my life. Not until to-night have I been able to put it together, and
fill in the blanks."

And this is what she told me:

"My father was travelling through Europe. He had money, and of course
he met with adventures. One of his adventures was my mother. She lived
among the vines near Avignon, in Southern France; her uncle was a
small grape-grower. She belonged absolutely to the people, but she was
extremely beautiful. I'm not exaggerating; she was. She was one of
those women that believe everything, and my father fell in love with
her. He married her properly at Avignon. They travelled together
through France and Italy, and then to Belgium. Then, in something less
than a year, I was born. She gave herself up to me entirely. She was
not clever; she had no social talents and no ambitions. No, she
certainly had not much brain; but to balance that she had a heart--so
large that it completely enveloped my father and me.

"After three years he had had enough of my mother. He got restive. He
was ambitious. He wanted to shine in London, where he was known, and
where his family had made traditions in the theatrical world. But he
felt that my mother wouldn't--wouldn't be suitable for London. Fancy
the absurdity of a man trying to make a name in London when hampered
by a wife who was practically of the peasant class! He simply left
her. Oh, it was no common case of desertion. He used his influence
over my mother to make her consent. She did consent. It broke her
heart, but hers was the sort of love that suffers, so she let him go.
He arranged to allow her a reasonable income.

"I can just remember a man who must have been my father. I was three
years old when he left us. Till then we had lived in a large house in
an old city. Can't you guess what house that was? Of course you can.
Yes, it was the house at Bruges where Alresca died. We gave up that
house, my mother and I, and went to live in Italy. Then my father sold
the house to Alresca. I only knew that to-day. You may guess my
childish recollections of Bruges aren't very distinct. It was part of
the understanding that my mother should change her name, and at Pisa
she was known as Madame Montigny. That was the only surname of hers
that I ever knew.

"As I grew older, my mother told me fairy-tales to account for the
absence of my father. She died when I was sixteen, and before she died
she told me the truth. She begged me to promise to go to him, and said
that I should be happy with him. But I would not promise. I was
sixteen then, and very proud. What my mother had told me made me hate
and despise my father. I left my dead mother's side hating him; I had
a loathing for him which words couldn't express. She had omitted to
tell me his real name; I never asked her, and I was glad not to know
it. In speaking of him, of course she always said 'your father', 'your
father', and she died before she got quite to the end of her story. I
buried my mother, and then I was determined to disappear. My father
might search, but he should never find me. The thought that he would
search and search, and be unhappy for the rest of his life because he
couldn't find me, gave me a kind of joy. So I left Pisa, and I took
with me nothing but the few hundred lire which my mother had by her,
and the toy dagger--my father's gift--which she had always worn in her
hair.

"I knew that I had a voice. Everyone said that, and my mother had had
it trained up to a certain point. I knew that I could make a
reputation. I adopted the name of Rosetta Rosa, and I set to work.
Others have suffered worse things than I suffered. I made my way. Sir
Cyril Smart, the great English impresario, heard me at Genoa, and
offered me an engagement in London. Then my fortune was made. You know
that story--everyone knows it.

"Why did I not guess at once that he was my father? I cannot tell. And
not having guessed it at once, why should I ever have guessed it? I
cannot tell. The suspicion stole over me gradually. Let me say that I
always was conscious of a peculiar feeling towards Sir Cyril Smart,
partly antagonistic, yet not wholly so--a feeling I could never
understand. Then suddenly I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that
Sir Cyril was my father, and in the same moment he knew that I was his
daughter. You were there; you saw us in the portico of the
reception-rooms at that London hotel. I caught him staring at the
dagger in my hair just as if he was staring at a snake--I had not worn
it for some time--and the knowledge of his identity swept over me like
a--like a big wave. I hated him more than ever.

"That night, it seems, he followed us in his carriage to Alresca's
flat. When I came out of the flat he was waiting. He spoke. I won't
tell you what he said, and I won't tell you what I said. But I was
very curt and very cruel." Her voice trembled. "I got into my
carriage. My God! how cruel I was! To-night he--my father--has told me
that he tried to kill himself with my mother's dagger, there on the
pavement. I had driven him to suicide."

She stopped. "Do you blame me?" she murmured.

"I do not blame you," I said. "But he is dead, and death ends all
things."

"You are right," she said. "And he loved me at the last. I know that.
And he saved my life--you and he. He has atoned--atoned for his
conduct to my poor mother. He died with my kiss on his lips."

And now the tears came into my eyes.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, and the pathos of her ringing tones was
intolerable to me. "You may well weep for me." Then with abrupt change
she laughed. "Don't you agree that I am cursed? Am I not cursed? Say
it! say it!"

"I will not say it," I answered. "Why should you be cursed? What do
you mean?"

"I do not know what I mean, but I know what I feel. Look back at my
life. My mother died, deserted. My father has died, killed by a mad
woman. My dear friend Alresca died--who knows how? Clarenceux--he too
died."

"Stay!" I almost shouted, springing up, and the suddenness of my
excitement intimidated her. "How do you know that Lord Clarenceux is
dead?"

I stood before her, trembling with apprehension for the effect of the
disclosure I was about to make. She was puzzled and alarmed by the
violent change in me, but she controlled herself.

"How do I know?" she repeated with strange mildness.

"Yes, how do you know? Did you see him die?"

I had a wild desire to glance over my shoulder at the portrait.

"No, my friend. But I saw him after he was dead. He died suddenly in
Vienna. Don't let us talk about that."

"Aha!" I laughed incredulously, and then, swiftly driven forward by an
overpowering impulse, I dropped on my knees and seized her hands with
a convulsive grasp. "Rosa! Rosa!"--my voice nearly broke--"you must
know that I love you. Say that you love me--that you would love me
whether Clarenceux were dead or alive."

An infinite tenderness shone in her face. She put out her hand, and to
calm me stroked my hair.

"Carl!" she whispered.

It was enough. I got up. I did not kiss her.

A servant entered, and said that some one from the theatre had called
to see mademoiselle on urgent business. Excusing herself, Rosa went
out. I held open the door for her, and closed it slowly with a sigh of
incredible relief. Then I turned back into the room. I was content to
be alone for a little while.

Great God! The chair which Rosa had but that instant left was not
empty. Occupying it was a figure--the figure of the man whose portrait
hung on the wall--the figure of the man who had haunted me ever since
I met Rosa--the figure of Lord Clarenceux, whom Rosa had seen dead.

At last, oh, powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood
clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of
my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and
jealous spirit--using his spectral influences to crush the mortals
bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of
Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train,
on the steamer--everything was explained. And before that coldly
sneering, triumphant face, which bore the look of life, and which I
yet knew to be impalpable, I shook with the terrified ague of a
culprit.

A minute or a thousand years might have passed. Then Rosa returned. In
an instant the apparition had vanished. But by her pallid, drawn face
and her gray lips I knew that she had seen it. Truly she was cursed,
and I with her!




CHAPTER XVII

THE MENACE


From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of
the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I
cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say
that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would
punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he
objected. I knew what fear was--the most terrible of all fears--the
fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne
of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which
did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single
glance, a single sneer.

It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me,
and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never
guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been
warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had
taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of
time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour
when a liking for Rosa had arisen in my breast, the ghost of Lord
Clarenceux, always hovering uneasily near to its former love, had
showed itself to me.

The figure opposite the Devonshire Mansion--that was the first
warning. With regard to the second appearance, in the cathedral of
Bruges, I surmised that that only indirectly affected myself.
Primarily it was the celebration of a fiendish triumph over one who
had preceded me in daring to love Rosetta Rosa, but doubtless also it
was meant in a subsidiary degree as a second warning to the youth who
followed in Alresca's footsteps. Then there were the two appearances
during my journey from London to Paris with Rosa's jewels--in the
train and on the steamer. Matters by that time had become more
serious. I was genuinely in love, and the ghost's anger was quickened.
The train was wrecked and the steamer might have been sunk, and I
could not help thinking that the ghost, in some ineffectual way, had
been instrumental in both these disasters. The engine-driver, who said
he was "dazed," and the steersman, who attributed his mistake at the
wheel to the interference of some unknown outsider--were not these
things an indication that my dreadful suspicion was well grounded? And
if so, to what frightful malignity did they not point! Here was a
spirit, which in order to appease the pangs of a supernatural
jealousy, was ready to use its immaterial powers to destroy scores of
people against whom it could not possibly have any grudge. The most
fanatical anarchism is not worse than this.

Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that
acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near
neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous
hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.

In such wise did I reason the matter out to myself. But reasoning was
quite unnecessary. I knew by a sure instinct. All the dark thoughts
of the ghost had passed into my brain, and if they had been
transcribed in words of fire and burnt upon my retina, I could not
have been more certain of their exact import.

As I sat in my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon
my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before?
Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are
continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their
existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to
perceive the truth--that is why the greatest poets are always the
greatest teachers.

As for you who are disposed to smile at the idea of a live man crushed
(figuratively) under the heel of a ghost, I beg you to look back upon
your own experience, and count up the happenings which have struck you
as mysterious. You will be astonished at their number. But nothing is
so mysterious that it is incapable of explanation, did we but know
enough. I, by a singular mischance, was put in the way of the nameless
knowledge which explains all. At any rate, I was made acquainted with
some trifle of it. I had strayed on the seashore of the unknown, and
picked up a pebble. I had a glimpse of that other world which
permeates and exists side by side with and permeates our own.

Just now I used the phrase "under the heel of a ghost," and I used it
advisedly. It indicates pretty well my mental condition. I was cowed,
mastered. The ghost of Clarenceux, driven to extremities by the brief
scene of tenderness which had passed in Rosa's drawing-room, had
determined by his own fell method to end the relations between Rosa
and myself. And his method was to assume a complete sway over me, the
object of his hatred.

How did he exercise that sway? Can I answer? I cannot. How does one
man influence another? Not by electric wires or chemical apparatus,
but by those secret channels through which intelligence meets
intelligence. All I know is that I felt his sinister authority. During
life Clarenceux, according to every account, had been masterful,
imperious, commanding; and he carried these attributes with him beyond
the grave. His was a stronger personality than mine, and I could not
hide from myself the assurance that in the struggle of will against
will I should not be the conqueror.

Not that anything had occurred, even the smallest thing! Upon
perceiving Rosa the apparition, as I have said, vanished. We did not
say much to each other, Rosa and I; we could not--we were afraid. I
went to my hotel; I sat in my room alone; I saw no ghost. But I was
aware, I was aware of the doom which impended over me. And already,
indeed, I experienced the curious sensation of the ebbing of
volitional power; I thought even that I was losing my interest in
life. My sensations were dulled. It began to appear to me unimportant
whether I lived or died. Only I knew that in either case I should love
Rosa. My love was independent of my will, and therefore the ghost of
Clarenceux, do what it might, could not tear it from me. I might die,
I might suffer mental tortures inconceivable, but I should continue to
love. In this idea lay my only consolation.

I remained motionless in my chair for hours, and then--it was soon
after the clocks struck four--I sprang up, and searched among my
papers for Alresca's letter, the seal of which, according to his
desire, was still intact. The letter had been in my mind for a long
time. I knew well that the moment for opening it had come, that the
circumstances to which Alresca had referred in his covering letter had
veritably happened. But somehow, till that instant, I had not been
able to find courage to read the communication. As I opened it I
glanced out of the window. The first sign of dawn was in the sky. I
felt a little easier.

Here is what I read:

    "My dear Carl Foster:--When you read this the words I am
    about to write will have acquired the sanction which belongs
    to the utterances of those who have passed away. Give them,
    therefore, the most serious consideration.

    "If you are not already in love with Rosetta Rosa you soon
    will be. I, too, as you know, have loved her. Let me tell you
    some of the things which happened to me.

    "From the moment when that love first sprang up in my heart I
    began to be haunted by--I will not say what; you know without
    being told, for whoever loves Rosa will be haunted as I was,
    as I am. Rosa has been loved once for all, and with a passion
    so intense that it has survived the grave. For months I
    disregarded the visitations, relying on the strength of my
    own soul. I misjudged myself, or, rather, I underestimated my
    adversary--the great man who in life had loved Rosa. I
    proposed to Rosa, and she refused me. But that did not quench
    my love. My love grew; I encouraged it; and it was against
    the mere fact of my love that the warnings were directed.

    "You remember the accident on the stage which led to our
    meeting. That accident was caused by sheer terror--the terror
    of an apparition more awful than any that had gone before.

    "Still I persisted--I persisted in my hopeless love. Then
    followed that unnamed malady which in vain you are seeking to
    cure, a malady which was accompanied by innumerable and
    terrifying phenomena. The malady was one of the mind; it
    robbed me of the desire to live. More than that, it made life
    intolerable. At last I surrendered. I believe I am a brave
    man, but it is the privilege of the brave man to surrender
    without losing honor to an adversary who has proved his
    superiority. Yes, I surrendered. I cast out love in order
    that I might live for my art.

    "But I was too late. I had pushed too far the enmity of this
    spectral and unrelenting foe, and it would not accept my
    surrender. I have dashed the image of Rosa from my heart, and
    I have done it to no purpose. I am dying. And so I write this
    for you, lest you should go unwarned to the same doom.

    "The love of Rosa is worth dying for, if you can win it. (I
    could not even win it.) You will have to choose between Love
    and Life. I do not counsel you either way. But I urge you to
    choose. I urge you either to defy your foe utterly and to the
    death, or to submit before submission is useless.

                                            "Alresca."

I sat staring at the paper long after I had finished reading it,
thinking about poor Alresca. There was a date to it, and this date
showed that it was written a few days before his mysterious disease
took a turn for the better.

The communication accordingly needs some explanation. It seems to me
that Alresca was mistaken. His foe was not so implacable as Alresca
imagined. Alresca having surrendered in the struggle between them, the
ghost of Lord Clarenceux hesitated, and then ultimately withdrew its
hateful influence, and Alresca recovered. Then Rosa came again into
his existence that evening at Bruges. Alresca, scornful of
consequences, let his passion burst once more into flame, and the
ghost instantly, in a flash of anger, worked its retribution.

Day came, and during the whole of that day I pondered upon a phrase in
Alresca's letter, "You will have to choose between love and life." But
I could not choose. Love is the greatest thing in life; one may,
however, question whether it should be counted greater than life
itself. I tried to argue the question calmly, dispassionately. As if
such questions may be argued! I could not give up my love; I could not
give up my life; that was how all my calm, dispassionate arguments
ended. At one moment I was repeating, "The love of Rosa is worth dying
for;" at the next I was busy with the high and dear ambitions of which
I had so often dreamed. Were these to be sacrificed? Moreover, what
use would Rosa's love be to me when I was dead? And what use would my
life be to me without my love for her?

A hundred times I tried to laugh, and said to myself that I was the
victim of fancy, that I should see nothing further of this prodigious
apparition; that, in short, my brain had been overtaxed by recent
events, and I had suffered from delusions. Vain and conventional
self-deceptions! At the bottom of my soul lay always the secret and
profound conviction that I was doomed, cursed, caught in the toils of
a relentless foe who was armed with all the strange terrors of the
unknown; a foe whose onslaughts it was absolutely impossible for me to
parry.

As the hours passed a yearning to see Rosa, to be near her, came upon
me. I fought against it, fearing I know not what as the immediate
consequence. I wished to temporize, or, at any rate, to decide upon a
definite course of conduct before I saw her again. But towards evening
I felt that I should yield to the impulse to behold her. I said to
myself, as though I needed some excuse, that she would have a great
deal of trouble with the arrangements for Sir Cyril's funeral, and
that I ought to offer my assistance; that, indeed, I ought to have
offered my assistance early in the day.

I presented myself after dinner. She was dressed in black, and her
manner was nervous, flurried, ill at ease. We shook hands very
formally, and then could find nothing to say to each other. Had she,
with a woman's instinct, guessed, from that instant's view of the
thing in the chair last night, all that was involved for me in our
love? If not all, she had guessed most of it. She had guessed that the
powerful spirit of Lord Clarenceux was inimical, fatally inimical, to
me. None knew better than herself the terrible strength of his
jealousy. I wondered what were her thoughts, her secret desires.

At length she began to speak of commonplace matters.

"Guess who has called," she said, with a little smile.

"I give it up," I said, with a smile as artificial as her own.

"Mrs. Sullivan Smith. She and Sullivan Smith are on their way home
from Bayreuth; they are at the Hôtel du Rhin. She wanted to know all
about what happened in the Rue Thiers, and to save trouble I told
her. She stayed a long time. There have been a lot of callers. I am
very tired. I--I expected you earlier. But you are not listening."

I was not. I was debating whether or not to show her Alresca's letter.
I decided to do so, and I handed it to her there and then.

"Read that," I murmured.

She read it in silence, and then looked at me. Her tender eyes were
filled with tears. I cast away all my resolutions of prudence, of
wariness, before that gaze. Seizing her in my arms, I kissed her again
and again.

"I have always suspected--what--what Alresca says," she murmured.

"But you love me?" I cried passionately.

"Do you need to be told, my poor Carl?" she replied, with the most
exquisite melancholy.

"Then I'll defy hell itself!" I said.

She hung passive in my embrace.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE STRUGGLE


When I got back to my little sitting-room at the Hôtel de Portugal, I
experienced a certain timid hesitation in opening the door. For
several seconds I stood before it, the key in the lock, afraid to
enter. I wanted to rush out again, to walk the streets all night; it
was raining, but I thought that anything would be preferable to the
inside of my sitting-room. Then I felt that, whatever the cost, I must
go in; and, twisting the key, I pushed heavily at the door, and
entered, touching as I did so the electric switch. In the chair which
stood before the writing-table in the middle of the room sat the
figure of Lord Clarenceux.

Yes, my tormentor was indeed waiting. I had defied him, and we were
about to try a fall. As for me, I may say that my heart sank, sick
with an ineffable fear. The figure did not move as I went in; its back
was towards me. At the other end of the room was the doorway which
led to the small bedroom, little more than an alcove, and the gaze of
the apparition was fixed on this doorway.

I closed the outer door behind me, and locked it, and then I stood
still. In the looking-glass over the mantelpiece I saw a drawn, pale,
agitated face in which all the trouble of the world seemed to reside;
it was my own face. I was alone in the room with the ghost--the ghost
which, jealous of my love for the woman it had loved, meant to revenge
itself by my death.

A ghost, did I say? To look at it, no one would have taken it for an
apparition. No wonder that till the previous evening I had never
suspected it to be other than a man. It was dressed in black; it had
the very aspect of life. I could follow the creases in the frock coat,
the direction of the nap of the silk hat which it wore in my room. How
well by this time I knew that faultless black coat and that impeccable
hat! Yet it seemed that I could not examine them too closely. I
pierced them with the intensity of my fascinated glance. Yes, I
pierced them, for showing faintly through the coat I could discern the
outline of the table which should have been hidden by the man's
figure, and through the hat I could see the handle of the French
window.

As I stood motionless there, solitary under the glow of the electric
light with this fearful visitor, I began to wish that it would move. I
wanted to face it--to meet its gaze with my gaze, eye to eye, and will
against will. The battle between us must start at once, I thought, if
I was to have any chance of victory, for moment by moment I could feel
my resolution, my manliness, my mere physical courage, slipping away.

But the apparition did not stir. Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it
was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favor.
Then I said to myself that I would cross the room, and so attain my
object. I made a step--and drew back, frightened by the sound of a
creaking board. Absurd! But it was quite a minute before I dared to
make another step. I had meant to walk straight across to the other
door, passing in my course close by the occupied chair. I did not do
so; I kept round by the wall, creeping on tiptoe and my eye never
leaving the figure in the chair. I did this in spite of myself, and
the manner of my action was the first hint of an ultimate defeat.

At length I stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom. I could feel
the perspiration on my forehead and at the back of my neck. I fronted
the inscrutable white face of the thing which had once been Lord
Clarenceux, the lover of Rosetta Rosa; I met its awful eyes, dark,
invidious, fateful. Ah, those eyes! Even in my terror I could read in
them all the history, all the characteristics, of Lord Clarenceux.
They were the eyes of one capable at once of the highest and of the
lowest. Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their
cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness,
with their spirituality a hellish turpitude. They were the eyes of two
opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the
conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I had heard from
different people.

But as far as I was concerned that night the eyes held nothing but
cruelty and disaster; though I could detect in them the other
qualities, those qualities were not for me. We faced each other, the
apparition and I, and the struggle, silent and bitter as the grave,
began. Neither of us moved. My arms were folded easily, but my nails
pressed in the palms of my clenched hands. My teeth were set, my lips
tight together, my glance unswerving. By sheer strength of endeavor I
cast aside all my forebodings of defeat, and in my heart I said with
the profoundest conviction that I would love Rosa though the seven
seas and all the continents gave up their dead to frighten me.

So we remained, for how long I do not know. It may have been hours; it
may have been only minutes; I cannot tell. Then gradually there came
over me a feeling that the ghost in the chair was growing larger. The
ghastly inhuman sneer on his thin widening lips assaulted me like a
giant's malediction. And the light in the room seemed to become more
brilliant, till it was almost blinding with the dazzle of its
whiteness. This went on for a time, and once more I pulled myself
together, collected my scattering senses, and seized again the courage
and determination which had nearly slipped from me.

But I knew that I must get away, out of sight of this moveless and
diabolic figure, which did not speak, but which made known its
commands by means of its eyes alone. "Resign her!" the eyes said.
"Tear your love for her out of your heart! Swear that you will never
see her again--or I will ruin you utterly, not only now, but forever
more!"

And though I trembled, my eyes answered "No."

For some reason which I cannot at all explain, I suddenly took off my
overcoat, and, drawing aside the screen which ran across the corner of
the room at my right hand, forming a primitive sort of wardrobe, I
hung it on one of the hooks. I had to feel with my fingers for the
hook, because I kept my gaze on the figure.

"I will go into the bedroom," I said.

And I half-turned to pass through the doorway. Then I stopped. If I
did so, the eyes of the ghost would be upon my back, and I felt that I
could only withstand that glance by meeting it. To have it on my
back!... Doubtless I was going mad. However, I went backwards through
the doorway, and then rapidly stepped out of sight of the apparition,
and sat down upon the bed.

Useless! I must return. The mere idea of the empty sitting-room--empty
with the ghost in it--filled me with a new and stranger fear. Horrible
happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see them!
Moreover, the ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too
appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something,
otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it
had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of
such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze;
my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them,
they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be
compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for
them. No, no, I must return to the sitting-room. And I returned.

The gaze met me in the doorway. And now there was something novel in
it--an added terror, a more intolerable menace, a silent imprecation
so frightful that no human being could suffer it. I sank to the
ground, and as I did so I shrieked, but it was an unheard shriek,
sounding only within the brain. And in reply to that unheard shriek I
heard the unheard voice of the ghost crying, "Yield!"

I would not yield. Crushed, maddened, tortured by a worse than any
physical torture, I would not yield. But I wanted to die. I felt that
death would be sweet and utterly desirable. And so thinking, I faded
into a kind of coma, or rather a state which was just short of coma. I
had not lost consciousness, but I was conscious of nothing but the
gaze.

"Good-by, Rosa," I whispered. "I'm beaten, but my love has not been
conquered."

The next thing I remembered was the paleness of the dawn at the
window. The apparition had vanished for that night, and I was alive.
But I knew that I had touched the skirts of death; I knew that after
another such night I should die.

The morning chocolate arrived, and by force of habit I consumed it. I
felt no interest in any earthly thing; my sole sensation was a dread
of the coming night, which all too soon would be upon me. For several
hours I sat, pale and nerveless, in my room, despising myself for a
weakness and a fear which I could not possibly avoid. I was no longer
my own master; I was the slave, the shrinking chattel of a ghost, and
the thought of my condition was a degradation unspeakable.

During the afternoon a ray of hope flashed upon me. Mrs. Sullivan
Smith was at the Hôtel du Rhin, so Rosa had said; I would call on
her. I remembered her strange demeanor to me on the occasion of our
first meeting, and afterwards at the reception. It seemed clear to me
now that she must have known something. Perhaps she might help me.

I found her in a garish apartment too full of Louis Philippe
furniture, robed in a crimson tea-gown, and apparently doing nothing
whatever. She had the calm quiescence of a Spanish woman. Yet when she
saw me her eyes burned with a sudden dark excitement.

"Carl," she said, with the most staggering abruptness, "you are
dying."

"How do you know?" I said morosely. "Do I look it?"

"Yet the crystal warned you!" she returned, with apparent but not real
inconsequence.

"I want you to tell me," I said eagerly, and with no further pretence.
"You must have known something then, when you made me look in the
crystal. What did you know--and how?"

She sat a moment in thought, stately, half-languid, mysterious.

"First," she said, "let me hear all that has happened. Then I will
tell you."

"Is Sullivan about?" I asked. I felt that if I was to speak I must not
be interrupted by that good-natured worldling.

"Sullivan," she said a little scornfully, with gentle contempt, "is
learning French billiards. You are perfectly safe." She understood.

Then I told her without the least reservation all that had happened to
me, and especially my experiences of the previous night. When I had
finished she looked at me with her large sombre eyes, which were full
of pity, but not of hope. I waited for her words.

"Now, listen," she said. "You shall hear. I was with Lord Clarenceux
when he died."

"You!" I exclaimed. "In Vienna! But even Rosa was not with him. How--"

"Patience! And do not interrupt me with questions. I am giving away a
secret which carries with it my--my reputation. Long before my
marriage I had known Lord Clarenceux. He knew many women; I was one of
them. That affair ended. I married Sullivan.

"I happened to be in Vienna at the time Lord Clarenceux was taken with
brain fever. I was performing at a music-hall on the Prater. There was
a great rage then for English singers in Vienna. I knew he was alone.
I remembered certain things that had passed between us, and I went to
him. I helped to nurse him. He was engaged to Rosa, but Rosa was far
away, and could not come immediately. He grew worse. The doctors said
one day that he must die. That night I was by his bedside. He got
suddenly up out of bed. I could not stop him: he had the strength of
delirium. He went into his dressing-room, and dressed himself fully,
even to his hat, without any assistance.

"'Where are you going?' I said to him.

"'I am going to her,' he said. 'These cursed doctors say I shall die.
But I sha'n't. I want her. Why hasn't she come? I must go and find
her.'

"Then he fell across the bed exhausted. He was dying. I had rung for
help, but no one had come, and I ran out of the room to call on the
landing. When I came back he was sitting up in bed, all dressed, and
still with his hat on. It was the last flicker of his strength. His
eyes glittered. He began to speak. How he stared at me! I shall never
forget it!

"'I am dying!' he said hoarsely. 'They were right, after all. I shall
lose her. I would sell my soul to keep her, yet death takes me from
her. She is young and beautiful, and will live many years. But I have
loved her, and where I have loved let others beware. I shall never be
far from her, and if another man should dare to cast eyes on her I
will curse him. The heat of my jealousy shall blast his very soul. He,
too, shall die. Rosa was mine in life, and she shall be mine in death.
My spirit will watch over her, for no man ever loved a woman as I
loved Rosa.' Those were his very words, Carl. Soon afterwards he
died."

She recited Clarenceux's last phrases with such genuine emotion that I
could almost hear Clarenceux himself saying them. I felt sure that she
had remembered them precisely, and that Clarenceux would, indeed, have
employed just such terms.

"And you believe," I murmured, after a long pause, during which I
fitted the remarkable narration in with my experiences, and found that
it tallied--"you believe that Lord Clarenceux could keep his word
after death?"

"I believe!" she said simply.

"Then there is no hope for me, Emmeline?"

She looked at me vaguely, absently, without speaking, and shook her
head. Her lustrous eyes filled with tears.




CHAPTER XIX

THE INTERCESSION


Just as I was walking away from the hotel I perceived Rosa's victoria
drawing up before the portico. She saw me. We exchanged a long look--a
look charged with anxious questionings. Then she beckoned to me, and
I, as it were suddenly waking from a trance, raised my hat, and went
to her.

"Get in," she said, without further greeting. "We will drive to the
Arc de Triomphe and back. I was going to call on Mrs. Sullivan
Smith,--just a visit of etiquette,--but I will postpone that."

Her manner was constrained, as it had been on the previous day, but I
could see that she was striving hard to be natural. For myself, I did
not speak. I felt nervous, even irritable, in my love for her.
Gradually, however, her presence soothed me, slackened the tension of
my system, and I was able to find a faint pleasure in the beauty of
the September afternoon, and of the girl by my side, in the smooth
movement of the carriage, and the general gaiety and color of the
broad tree-lined Champs Elysées.

"Why do you ask me to drive with you?" I asked her at length, abruptly
yet suavely. Amid the noise of the traffic we could converse with the
utmost privacy.

"Because I have something to say to you," she answered, looking
straight in front of her.

"Before you say it, one question occurs to me. You are dressed in
black; you are in mourning for Sir Cyril, your father, who is not even
buried. And yet you told me just now that you were paying a mere visit
of etiquette to my cousin Emmeline. Is it usual in Paris for ladies in
mourning to go out paying calls? But perhaps you had a special object
in calling on Emmeline."

"I had," she replied at once with dignity, "and I did not wish you to
know."

"What was it?"

"Really, Mr. Foster--"

"'Mr. Foster!'"

"Yes; I won't call you Carl any more. I have made a mistake, and it
is as well you should hear of it now. I can't love you. I have
misunderstood my feelings. What I feel for you is gratitude, not love.
I want you to forget me."

She was pale and restless.

"Rosa!" I exclaimed warningly.

"Yes," she continued urgently and feverishly, "forget me. I may seem
cruel, but it is best there should be no beating about the bush. I
can't love you."

"Rosa!" I repeated.

"Go back to London," she went on. "You have ambitions. Fulfil them.
Work at your profession. Above all, don't think of me. And always
remember that though I am very grateful to you, I cannot love
you--never!"

"That isn't true, Rosa!" I said quietly. "You have invited me into
this carriage simply to lie to me. But you are an indifferent liar--it
is not your forte. My dear child, do you imagine that I cannot see
through your poor little plan? Mrs. Sullivan Smith has been talking to
you, and it has occurred to you that if you cast me off, the anger of
that--that thing may be appeased, and I may be saved from the fate
that overtook Alresca. You were calling on Emmeline to ask her advice
finally, as she appears to be mixed up in this affair. Then, on seeing
me, you decided all of a sudden to take your courage in both hands,
and dismiss me at once. It was heroic of you, Rosa; it was a splendid
sacrifice of your self-respect. But it can't be. Nothing is going to
disturb my love. If I die under some mysterious influence, then I die;
but I shall die loving you, and I shall die absolutely certain that
you love me."

Her breast heaved, and under the carriage rug her hand found mine and
clasped it. We did not look at each other. In a thick voice I called
to the coachman to stop. I got out, and the vehicle passed on. If I
had stayed with her, I should have wept in sight of the whole street.

I ate no dinner that evening, but spent the hours in wandering up and
down the long verdurous alleys in the neighborhood of the Arc de
Triomphe. I was sure of Rosa's love, and that thought gave me a
certain invigoration. But to be sure of a woman's love when that love
means torture and death to you is not a complete and perfect
happiness. No, my heart was full of bitterness and despair, and my
mind invaded by a miserable weakness. I pitied myself, and at the
same time I scorned myself. After all, the ghost had no actual power
over me; a ghost cannot stab, cannot throttle, cannot shoot. A ghost
can only act upon the mind, and if the mind is feeble enough to allow
itself to be influenced by an intangible illusion, then--

But how futile were such arguments! Whatever the power might be, the
fact that the ghost had indeed a power over me was indisputable. All
day I had felt the spectral sword of it suspended above my head. My
timid footsteps lingering on the way to the hotel sufficiently proved
its power. The experiences of the previous night might be merely
subjective--conceptions of the imagination--but they were no less
real, no less fatal to me on that account.

Once I had an idea of not going to the hotel that night at all. But of
what use could such an avoidance be? The apparition was bound by no
fetters to that terrible sitting-room of mine. I might be put to the
ordeal anywhere, even here in the thoroughfares of the city, and upon
the whole I preferred to return to my lodging. Nay, I was the victim
of a positive desire for that scene of my torture.

I returned. It was eleven o'clock. The apparition awaited me. But this
time it was not seated in the chair. It stood with its back to the
window, and its gaze met mine as I entered the room. I did not close
the door, and my eyes never left its face. The sneer on its thin lips
was bitterer, more devilishly triumphant, than before. Erect,
motionless, and inexorable, the ghost stood there, and it seemed to
say: "What is the use of leaving the door open? You dare not escape.
You cannot keep away from me. To-night you shall die of sheer terror."

With a wild audacity I sat down in the very chair which it had
occupied, and drummed my fingers on the writing-table. Then I took off
my hat, and with elaborate aim pitched it on to a neighboring sofa. I
was making a rare pretence of carelessness. But moment by moment,
exactly as before, my courage and resolution oozed out of me, drawn
away by that mystic presence.

Once I got up filled with a brilliant notion. I would approach the
apparition; I would try to touch it. Could I but do so, it would
vanish; I felt convinced it would vanish. I got up, as I say, but I
did not approach the ghost. I was unable to move forward, held by a
nameless dread. I dropped limply back into the chair. The phenomena of
the first night repeated themselves, but more intensely, with a more
frightful torture. Once again I sought relief from the agony of that
gaze by retreating into the bedroom; once again I was compelled by the
same indescribable fear to return, and once again I fell down, smitten
by a new and more awful menace, a kind of incredible blasphemy which
no human thought can convey.

And now the ghost moved mysteriously and ominously towards me. With an
instinct of defence, cowed as I was upon the floor, I raised my hand
to ward it off. Useless attempt! It came near and nearer,
imperceptibly moving.

"Let me die in peace," I said within my brain.

But it would not. Not only must I die, but in order to die I must
traverse all the hideous tortures of the soul which that lost spirit
had learnt in its dire wanderings.

The ghost stood over me, impending like a doom. Then it suddenly
looked towards the door, startled, and the door swung on its hinges. A
girl entered--a girl dressed in black, her shoulders and bosom
gleaming white against the dark attire, a young girl with the
heavenliest face on this earth. Casting herself on her knees before
the apparition, she raised to that dreadful spectre her countenance
transfigured by the ecstasy of a sublime appeal. It was Rosa.

Can I describe what followed? Not adequately, only by imperfect hints.
These two faced each other, Rosa and the apparition. She uttered no
word. But I, in my stupor, knew that she was interceding with the
spectre for my life. Her lovely eyes spoke to it of its old love, its
old magnanimity, and in the name of that love and that magnanimity
called upon it to renounce the horrible vengeance of which I was the
victim.

For long the spectre gazed with stern and formidable impassivity upon
the girl. I trembled, all hope and all despair, for the issue. She
would not be vanquished. Her love was stronger than its hate; her love
knew not the name of fear. For a thousand nights, so it seemed, the
two remained thus, at grips, as it were, in a death-struggle. Then
with a reluctant gesture of abdication the ghost waved a hand; its
terrible features softened into a consent, and slowly it faded away.

As I lay there Rosa bent over me, and put her arms round my neck, and
I could feel on my face the caress of her hair, and the warm baptism
of her tears--tears of joy.

       *       *       *       *       *

I raised her gently. I laid her on the sofa, and with a calm, blissful
expectancy awaited the moment when her eyes should open. Ah! I may not
set down here the sensation of relief which spread through my being as I
realized with every separate brain-cell that I was no longer a victim,
the doomed slave of an evil and implacable power, but a free man--free
to live, free to love, exempt from the atrocious influences of the
nether sphere. I saw that ever since the first encounter in Oxford
Street my existence had been under a shadow, dark and malign and always
deepening, and that this shadow was now magically dissipated in the
exquisite dawn of a new day. And I gave thanks, not only to Fate, but to
the divine girl who in one of those inspirations accorded only to
genius had conceived the method of my enfranchisement, and so nobly
carried it out.

Her eyelids wavered, and she looked at me.

"It is gone?" she murmured.

"Yes," I said, "the curse is lifted."

She smiled, and only our ardent glances spoke.

       *       *       *       *       *

"How came you to think of it?" I asked.

"I was sitting in my room after dinner, thinking and thinking. And
suddenly I could see this room, and you, and the spectre, as plainly
as I see you now. I felt your terror; I knew every thought that was
passing in your brain, the anguish of it! And then, and then, an idea
struck me. I had never appealed in vain to Lord Clarenceux in
life--why should I not appeal now? I threw a wrap over my shoulders
and ran out. I didn't take a cab, I ran--all the way. I scarcely knew
what I was doing, only that I had to save you. Oh, Carl, you are
free!"

"Through you," I said.

She kissed me, and her kiss had at once the pure passion of a girl and
the satisfied solicitude of a mother.

"Take me home!" she whispered.

Outside the hotel an open carriage happened to be standing. I hailed
the driver, and we got in. The night was beautifully fine and mild. In
the narrow lane of sky left by the high roofs of the street the stars
shone and twinkled with what was to me a new meaning. For I was once
more in accord with the universe. I and Life were at peace again.

"Don't let us go straight home," said Rosa, as the driver turned
towards us for instructions. "It seems to me that a drive through
Paris would be very enjoyable to-night."

And so we told the man to proceed along the quays as far as he could,
and then through the Champs Elysées to the Bois de Boulogne. The Seine
slept by its deserted parapets like a silver snake, and only the low
rumble of the steam-car from Versailles disturbed its slumber. The
million lights of the gas-lamps, stretching away now and then into the
endless vistas of the boulevards, spoke to me of the delicious
companionship of humanity, from which I had so nearly been snatched
away. And the glorious girl by my side--what of her companionship? Ah,
that was more than a companionship; it was a perfect intercourse which
we shared. No two human beings ever understood one another more
absolutely, more profoundly, than did Rosa and myself, for we had been
through the valley and through the flood together. And so it happened
that we did not trouble much with conversation. It was our souls, not
our mouths which talked--talked softly and mysteriously in the
gracious stillness and obscurity of that Paris night. I learnt many
things during that drive--the depth of her love, the height of her
courage, the ecstasy of her bliss. And she, too, she must have learnt
many things from me--the warmth of my gratitude to her, a warmth which
was only exceeded by the transcendent fire of my affection.

Presently we had left the borders of the drowsy Seine, which is so
busy by day, so strangely silent by night. We crossed the immense
Place de la Concorde. Once again we were rolling smoothly along the
Champs Elysées. Only a few hours before we had driven through this
very avenue, Rosa and I, but with what different feelings from those
which possessed us now! How serene and quiet it was! Occasionally a
smooth-gliding carriage, or a bicyclist flitting by with a Chinese
lantern at the head of his machine--that was all. As we approached
the summit of the hill where the Arc de Triomphe is, a new phenomenon
awaited us. The moon rose--a lovely azure crescent over the houses,
and its faint mild rays were like a benediction upon us. Then we had
turned to the left, and were in the Bois de Boulogne. We stopped the
carriage under the trees, which met overhead; the delicatest breeze
stirred the branches to a crooning murmur. All around was solitude and
a sort of hushed expectation. Suddenly Rosa put her hand into mine,
and with a simultaneous impulse we got out of the carriage and
strolled along a by-path.

"Carl," she said, "I have a secret for you. But you must tell no one."
She laughed mischievously.

"What is it?" I answered, calmly smiling.

"It is that I love you," and she buried her face against my shoulder.

"Tell me that again," I said, "and again and again."

And so under the tall rustling trees we exchanged vows--vows made more
sacred by the bitterness of our experience. And then at last, much to
the driver's satisfaction, we returned to the carriage, and were
driven back to the Rue de Rivoli. I gave the man a twenty-franc
piece; certainly the hour was unconscionably late.

I bade good night, a reluctant good night, to Rosa at the entrance to
her flat.

"Dearest girl," I said, "let us go to England to-morrow. You are
almost English, you know; soon you will be the wife of an Englishman,
and there is no place like London."

"True," she answered. "There is no place like London. We'll go. The
Opéra Comique will manage without me. And I will accept no more
engagements for a very, very long time. Money doesn't matter. You have
enough, and I--oh, Carl, I've got stacks and piles of it. It's so
easy, if you have a certain sort of throat like mine, to make more
money than you can spend."

"Yes," I said. "We will have a holiday, after we are married, and that
will be in a fortnight's time. We will go to Devonshire, where the
heather is. But, my child, you will be wanting to sing again soon. It
is your life."

"No," she replied, "you are my life, aren't you?" And, after a pause:
"But perhaps singing is part of my life, too. Yes, I shall sing."

Then I left her for that night, and walked slowly back to my hotel.

THE END.