CHAPTER V
Audrey stared at the doctor.
“Thank you,” said she, “I don’t want either a prescription or a sleeping draught. I’m quite well, quite sane. I can’t have been deceived. I saw the woman, I heard her speak, I saw and heard, not so well, but still I did see and hear him—a man who dragged her out of this room and into the next.”
The doctor looked puzzled, as well he might. He rose from the chair which he had taken in order to feel her pulse and inquire into her symptoms, and he walked across the room and peered into the empty fitting-room.
Then he looked at her again, and then at Mademoiselle Laure, who was standing motionless, with her arms folded, and her thin lips tightly pressed together, a few paces away from them.
Audrey looked at her too.
“If,” said Audrey, “Mademoiselle Laure would speak out, probably she could tell us something.”
The Frenchwoman, whether she understood this or not, looked as if she caught only her own name, and she at once said, in French, that she had felt sure Madame must be mistaken when she told her extraordinary story. The doctor bowed his head, but it was evident that his command of colloquial French was not equal to discussion of the matter in any language but his own.
There was a rather awkward pause, and then Audrey said impatiently that she supposed there was nothing more to be done, if Mademoiselle Laure would not speak.
“I shall consult my friends to-morrow, and take legal advice upon this, if necessary,” she said. “Dr.——”
“Fendall, my name is Fendall,” said he, supplying the name when she paused.
“I am sorry to have disturbed you for nothing, as it appears. But you will be satisfied presently that I was justified in sending for you, and you will be a witness to the fact that I took the proper steps at once.”
“Certainly. I hope you will let me persuade you, however, to take a sleeping draught to-night. Or at least to consult your own medical man about your health. You seem, if I may say so, to be in a highly nervous condition, and I feel sure that both rest and careful diet are imperatively necessary for you.”
“Thank you,” said Audrey shortly. There was his fee to be paid, and she added as he turned with a bow to the door: “Your address, Dr. Fendall, please, and I will write to you in the morning.”
He waved his hand.
“Oh, no, no, I have done nothing, and I am only sorry I could not be of use.”
The next moment he was gone, and Audrey, after in vain trying to summon courage enough to make another examination of the fitting-room, which would, she felt sure, have revealed some trace of the recent presence of the unhappy woman in the white dress, hastily bade Mademoiselle Laure good-night without further conversation with that reticent and astute-looking person, and went home to her rooms in Earl Street, Oxford Street.
What should she do? Whom should she consult?
Never before had she realised so fully how desperately lonely was her position in the world. Never before had she understood how the unhappy situation of her unfortunate husband had cut her off from every old friend, from the sympathy as well as the support even of her own relations.
From the first the aunt, with whom she had been living at Lytham, had opposed her marriage. It was during a short visit to some friends in London that Audrey had met Gerard, who fell in love with her straightway, followed her on her return to the north, and never rested till he had won her for his wife.
Miss Hester Claughton, Audrey’s maiden aunt, had disapproved of him from the first, as frivolous and worldly, and now that this terrible charge had been brought against the young man, and had resulted in the sentence which condemned him in the eyes of the world, Miss Hester did not hesitate to write long letters to her unhappy niece, professedly to express her sympathy, but really containing nothing but variations of the old theme, “I told you so”.
Audrey’s two brothers were settled, the one in Canada and the other in Hong-Kong, so that rapid communication with them, even if it had been advisable, was out of the question.
The solicitor whom they had employed in the forgery case had earned Audrey’s ferocious enmity and disapproval by allowing it to be seen that, while doing his best for his client, he had little doubt as to his guilt.
The only other person whom she could think of whose advice and help might be of assistance was Mr. Candover. And although he was very kind now, Audrey had not yet forgiven him for what she considered his neglect of Gerard during his trial. Besides, carefully courteous and chivalrous as Mr. Candover was, charmingly as he had allayed a certain vague mistrust of hers by introducing his daughters to her, Audrey was clear-sighted enough to understand that it would not do to let this handsome, attractive man of the world become, what he was apparently not unwilling to be, her only adviser and confidant.
What was she then to do? Sure as she felt of her facts as to the occurrences of the previous evening, she hesitated, when she had time to think the matter over, to court publicity of a hideous kind by calling in the police to investigate the matter.
On the other hand, she felt that she could not rest satisfied with the meagre knowledge she had at present. How could she go back to these rooms, with the remembrance of that strange and dreadful scene full in her mind, without one effort to elucidate the mystery?
If Mademoiselle Laure would speak, no doubt something would be learnt. But how to make her open her lips, in the face of her present obstinate determination to know nothing?
Against her will, poor Audrey was at last obliged to acknowledge that there was only one person to whom she could make known her difficulty, with any prospect of advice and help. In desperation she wrote a few lines to Mr. Candover, telling him that something so strange had happened at the showrooms that she did not like even to return to them without consulting some one, and asking if he would meet her at an Oxford Street confectioner’s, whose name she gave, at nine o’clock on the following morning.
She sent this note by messenger to Mr. Candover’s flat in Victoria Street, and got the answer by the morning’s post:—
“Dear Madame Rocada,
“Of course I will be there. I hope it is nothing serious which is troubling you so much.
“Yours always,
“Reginald Candover.”
Audrey frowned when she saw the address. She had taken her rooms in the name of Madame Rocada, “Angmering” being too uncommon a name not to be recognised and commented on. Absolutely sure as she felt of her husband’s innocence of the supposed crime for which he was suffering, Audrey preferred not to be the object of the gossip which would certainly have centred round her if her identity had been known.
But she disliked the alias, as she called it, and wished that she had been allowed to take some simpler, less pretentious name than the high-sounding mock-title by which she was now known. Of course, as Mr. Candover said, nobody supposed that the title of “Countess” was anything but a trade fiction, but the whole surroundings of her new calling, combining unlimited show with narrow capital, were distasteful to Audrey.
At nine o’clock punctually Mr. Candover met her, and she at once, having ordered coffee and a roll as an excuse for her presence in the shop, told him the whole story of the events of the previous evening.
He thrust aside as absurd the suggestion of the Frenchwoman and the doctor that Audrey had been misled by her imagination.
“You saw a woman, a stranger, undoubtedly,” said he. “People don’t imagine such things. And no doubt you saw her dragged away, and saw her lying in the fitting-room. The only thing I doubt is that she can have been dead.”
“Don’t you think Mademoiselle Laure may have found the dead body and, in her anxiety to hush things up, have removed it?”
“No doubt she could. The old Frenchwoman is artful enough for anything, and clever enough too—but to do such a thing, and to remove all traces of such a tragedy, requires time. Now, by your account, she had no time. You say you were only left alone about twenty minutes or half an hour, and that in that time she had fetched a doctor?”
“Ye-es, but——”
“Well, she might very well have removed the body, but it’s impossible, absolutely impossible, that she could have removed all traces, so as to deceive even the doctor!”
“Well, who do you think the woman could have been? She was not English. What could she want with me to be so angry as she was?”
“Impossible to say. Most likely it was not you but old Laure she was angry with—some business rival perhaps, who had wanted the post of forewoman for herself.”
“Oh, I never thought of that! But then the man who drew her back, and then locked her in the room, and ran away?”
“Are you sure it was a man?”
“Yes. I just saw enough of his figure to be sure of that. And I saw his hand drawing the curtain. Besides, she called him ‘Eugène,’ pronouncing the name in the French fashion ‘Eugène’. Can you find out who this Eugène was?”
“If he was a Frenchman I should hazard the guess that he also was a friend—perhaps a relation, of Marie Laure’s. My advice is that you should not worry yourself about this unpleasant incident, should try to forget it in fact——”
“How can I? It’s the sort of thing it’s impossible to forget!”
“Well, well, don’t think about it more than you can help. Keep your thoughts on your business, and on the good beginning you’ve made. Now all that remains is for you to keep it up, and you’ll soon make your fortune. Did you have many people at the rooms yesterday?”
“They were crammed all the afternoon. But oh, I didn’t like it! I don’t like these ‘smart’ and would-be smart people at all. The women are loud-voiced, aggressive, horrid. And the men—well, they’re worse. City men buying dresses and hats for actresses, not real actresses, you know, but chorus-girls or what they call ‘show’ girls, who can’t even sing in a chorus.”
“Hush. You mustn’t criticise your clients. All you have to do is to see they pay well for what they buy.”
“Ah, but my poor Gerard wouldn’t like it. I know how furious he would be if he knew!”
“Gerard would like you to make money, for both your sakes. You needn’t tell him any more than you like about these people. You can tell him about the duchesses, and say nothing about the chorus-girls. And by-the-bye, the Duchess de Vicenza is going abroad; that’s the woman who stood bail for your husband, you know.”
“Who is she? I’ve never seen her.”
“She’s a dear, kind creature, and very rich. But she’s very old, and doesn’t go about at all. She wants to let her place ‘The Briars’. Now you want a change, and it would be good for your business to have a place near town where you could invite your more important clients.”
“Oh, no, no. I——”
“Listen. If Madame de Vicenza would let this place for a song, as I think she would, you must take my advice, and rent it for the summer. I have an idea that by-and-by you might turn your business into a company—when you’ve worked it up a bit, you know, and make something out of the sale. You must just let them know, therefore, that you’re at ‘The Briars,’ and I bet you anything you like you’ll have a circle of some sort round you in no time, out of which you shall form your company.”
But poor Audrey shrank in alarm from these glowing enterprises, which Mr. Candover appeared to evolve so easily, and to realise so quickly.
For a long time it was in vain he talked to her, pointed out how right he had been about her taking the business world by storm with her showrooms, insisted on the duty which devolved upon her of making money for Gerard’s sake.
But it was inevitable that, alone as she was but for his help and advice, she should yield at last to his representations; and when he had ascertained for her that the rent she would have to pay for “The Briars” was a mere nominal one, provided she would consent to take on the duchess’s servants, Audrey reluctantly consented to take the pretty house at Epsom from the first week in August, when the London season ended and her showrooms were practically shut up, to the first week in October, which was, so Mademoiselle Laure assured her, early enough to begin the autumn fashion campaign.
Young and inexperienced as she was, Audrey could not help thinking, when she found herself in possession at “The Briars,” which was a charming house, roomy and tastefully furnished, without any appearance of ostentatious luxury, that she had found everything wonderfully easy so far in her new career.
Mademoiselle Laure was disagreeable, it was true, but she was undoubtedly something of a genius, and she had taken all the real work off her employer’s hands. Nothing transpired to clear up the mystery of the lady in white, but not the most minute search on Audrey’s part revealed any trace of the tragedy she believed herself to have discovered, nor did anything appear in the daily papers, which she scanned closely for the next week, to throw light upon the affair.
And scarcely was Audrey settled in the house at Epsom, when callers began to arrive in sufficient numbers to justify Mr. Candover’s prediction that she would soon have a circle of her own.
Audrey did not care for many of her visitors. Most of them were gentlemen, which she thought strange. But to the pointed inquiries she made to some of them they invariably replied that their wives, daughters and sisters were all away at the seaside or on the continent, which was, she reflected, natural enough in the month of August.
Those ladies who called upon her were of the ultra-smart and aggressive type which Audrey thought more desirable as customers than as friends.
There was Lady Lavering, with the mahogany-coloured hair, whose husband, Sir Richard Lavering, looked old enough to be her great-grandfather. And there was the Hon. Mrs. Lydd, who looked old enough to be her husband’s grandmother.
But Audrey, bewildered by her new circumstances, and anxious to profit by the advice given her, was civil to them all, and was such a pathetically attractive figure, in the black she generally wore, with her girlish face and modest manners, that whatever she might think of the style of her new acquaintances, she could not complain of lack of attention, even of enthusiasm, on their part towards her.
She returned the calls of the ladies who lived within calling distance, and within a very short time she had the suggestion made that she should be at home to some of her new acquaintances in the evening. Old Mrs. Lydd and young Lady Lavering both came to the very first of these, and so did Mr. Candover, with his alert young American secretary with the green and gold teeth, and so did quite a dozen gentlemen.
While poor Audrey, not at all pleased to find herself coerced into entertaining against her will, sat with the two ladies in the verandah, enjoying the cool evening air after the hot August day, sounds of the shuffling of tables and the rattling of dice reached her ears, and rising from her chair and peeping into the long drawing-room, she saw that card tables had been produced and opened, and that while poker was being played at the table nearest to where she stood, baccarat was engaging the attention of another group.
She turned, frowning, to her companions.
“I wish they wouldn’t play cards,” she said. “I have a horror of them.”
Instead of expressing agreement or making any comment on her words, Mrs. Lydd and Lady Lavering exchanged a demure look of amusement, which irritated and puzzled her. Presently Lady Lavering indeed joined the baccarat group, and Audrey was left with old Mrs. Lydd, who appeared rather troubled by the enthusiasm which her young husband showed over poker, and vainly tried—being somewhat deaf—to catch the chances of the game from where she sat.
When the old lady got up and went indoors to hear better, Audrey found herself swiftly joined by one of the gentlemen, who paid her such fervent compliments about her beauty, and gazed at her with so much bold admiration that Audrey, with a few chilling words, got up and followed the other ladies into the drawing-room.
By this time the players at the different tables were far too much excited to take any notice of her, and it was with horror that she made the discovery that they were playing for high stakes.
Unable to obtain any attention to her evident displeasure, she looked round for Mr. Candover, whom she found in a corner by himself, an unlighted cigarette between his fingers, pensive and apparently melancholy.
“Mr. Candover,” said she, “this is your fault. I think you, who always profess to know so much better than I do what is the right thing, ought to have known better than to expose your friend’s wife to this!”
He sprang to his feet, with a look of tender reproach, not wholly unmixed with confusion, in his eyes.
“What—what have I done?” stammered he.
She repeated his words impatiently.
“What have you done? You have brought to my house—or rather you have suggested my bringing there—men whom Gerard would never have allowed me to meet.”
“Madame, you astonish me! These men are all of them either very well born or very rich. They are all in the best society, they all belong to the Army and Navy, the Carlton, or——”
“Yes, yes, I daresay. But that’s not what I mean. Men without their wives don’t count as society at all.”
“Sir Richard Lavering and Mr. Lydd, Lord Barre’s son, have brought their wives.”
Audrey frowned. She did not quite like to say what she thought about either of those ladies.
“It’s very difficult to get ladies at all at this time of year.”
“Then I don’t want their husbands without them,” said Audrey sharply.
“You are difficult to please, Madame, to-night. Supposing that the poor fellows are in my own sad plight, and have no wives to bring?”
“Then I should like them to stay away,” retorted Audrey. “At any rate I won’t have my house used as if it were a gambling club.”
“But you used to play poker yourself with Gerard and me and my friends!” objected Mr. Candover rather piteously.
Her face quivered.
“That was very different. Between what I did when Gerard was with me and what I do now, there is, or there ought to be, a wide gulf. I can’t understand how a clever man like you can fail to see that.”
He looked down at her with an expression of infinite solicitude.
“Perhaps I do see it. Perhaps, seeing it clearly, I yet feel that the course I have proposed to you, the course of conciliating the people who may be of use to you, the making to yourself friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness in fact, is the best course.”
“But I don’t like them!” pleaded Audrey. “I don’t like the way they behave to me. They think, because I am engaged in business, trade in fact, that they can use my house as they please, and treat me as they please.”
“Scarcely that, Madame. You know nobody would dare to treat you in any but the right way in my presence,” said Mr. Candover, growing more earnest as he bent to speak low in her ear.
Audrey frowned, finding a difficulty in defining her grievance.
“Of course, they’re not openly insulting, I don’t mean that. But—there’s a subtle difference. Oh, you’re a man, why do you pretend not to know between the civility with which a man of this sort treats the women of his own set, and the manner he uses to women whom he looks upon as—as not belonging to his world?”
“Look here, Madame, you must lay aside some of these fine feelings, or you must lay aside the hope of getting on in business. If you like, instead of the men of the Carlton, the Beefsteak and the Jockey Club, I’ll bring down next time the members of the Athenæum, including the whole bench of bishops. They won’t play cards, they won’t pay compliments, but they’ll all be too deaf to answer what you say to them, and they won’t buy so much as a bonnet,” retorted Mr. Candover, impatiently.
“Very well,” said Audrey, with spirit, “please bring the bishops next Wednesday.”
But when next Wednesday came the bishops did not appear, and the same set as before dropped in one by one. With this difference, that one or two more ladies came.
Audrey, however, liked the members of her own sex still less than she did those of the other who were her guests, and told Mr. Candover so.
But one of the ladies had a beautiful voice, and her husband accompanied her on the piano. Audrey herself played well, and to her great relief the card-tables did not, on this occasion, make their appearance in the drawing-room, where songs from the musical comedies, piquantly rendered, formed the evening’s entertainment.
But there was a fine smoking-room with a vaulted ceiling at the other end of the house, where most of the gentlemen spent the evening.
And when, on the following morning, Audrey entered that apartment before the servants did, she found open card-tables, packs of cards and dice, in sufficient numbers to let her know how the majority of her guests had spent, not only the evening, but great part of the night.