CHAPTER XIV
It was one of the terrible evenings which Audrey had begun to hate, pleasant though every one tried to make them to her. The guests were lively and bright, always complimentary and sympathetic to herself, and observant of the rules of decorum in her presence, however high the play might be in the next room. They even broke up earlier now than they had done at first, and before one o’clock they were all gone.
Audrey, however, was restless, ill at ease, full of vain longings for another sight of her husband’s face, and unable to sleep for the dreams in which she saw again, as she had seen that afternoon, the pitiful, white, drawn features, the sad, sunken eyes, or else the transformed, flushed countenance and brilliant, almost feverish eyes which had looked into hers and told her more plainly than he could with his lips that he had loved her and longed for her as she had for him.
She walked up and down her room, in soft-soled slippers that made no noise, wrapping her dressing-gown tightly round her—for she felt chilly and the night air was cold—hoping to tire herself out, to be able to forget her misery and her anxiety for a time in sound sleep.
And as she walked, she fancied that she heard, very faintly and as if muffled by distance, the sound of an altercation of some sort. She stopped, went closer to her locked door, and listened. She was sure, quite sure that she heard men’s voices, angry, excited, violently vociferous.
She gently turned the key, then the handle, and peeped out.
She was shocked to see that one of the men-servants, the very Barnard whom she had caught following her that day, was quietly sitting on the wide ledge, which made a fairly good seat, of the window at the extreme north end of the corridor.
This corridor ran the whole length of the main building of the house, with bedrooms on one side, and a row of tall, deep-set windows on the other. These windows overlooked the courtyard, and the billiard-room, an annexe to the main building and at right angles with it, which was kept shut up by the Duchess de Vicenza’s order.
In consequence of the ugliness of the outlook the lower part of all these windows was filled in with painted glass, and any eyes less sharp than those of Audrey might have failed to descry the servant in the corner, leaning back as he was against the darkened panes.
Perhaps even Audrey might have failed to see him if she had not had her attention attracted by a deep-drawn breath, almost a snore, which announced that the watcher was asleep.
Waking suddenly to the fact that this man, who had been a spy by day, was a spy by night also, Audrey left her door ajar, in order to make as little noise as possible, and gliding along the corridor in the direction of the front staircase, ran quickly down into the hall, and listened again.
She heard the sound of angry voices intermittently as she went; and divining that they proceeded from the side of the house nearest to the road, which was shut out by a high wall, she drew back the bolts of the front-door, and slipped out into the covered passage which led thence to the outer door in the wall.
In this outer door there was a little grating with a sliding panel, and hearing voices and footsteps, some of which she recognised in the road outside, Audrey slid back the panel and looked out.
She could see but little, for it was only four o’clock, and the morning was dark. She, however, could distinguish the figure of Johnson, the duchess’s secretary, and that of one of the young Angmerings.
By what she heard in the confused talk of half a dozen men, all of whose voices she had heard before and who were, therefore, as she knew, habitués of the house, she gathered that there had been a quarrel, a dispute something indeed very much of the nature of a “row,” that Johnson was the person who had been accused of unfair practices, and that his accuser was Edgar Angmering.
Where did they all come from?
They passed from right to left, quickly, not talking loudly, though they were all much excited, alike in accusation and in denial.
In a very few moments they had all passed out of hearing, and Audrey, cold, shivering more with horror than from the chill morning air, crept softly upstairs, saw that the man Barnard had disappeared, and, locking herself in her own room, understood fully for the first time for what sort of organisation she had been entrapped into playing hostess.
Durley Diggs accused, and now Johnson. Whether or not this latest disturbance were only the result of some gambler’s quarrel in which Johnson himself was not more to blame than the rest, Audrey could not help being struck by the coincidence that the accusation should be brought against the representative of the duchess.
Who was this duchess? Was she a lady of rank? Or was she only the bearer of a fancy title, such as that which had been forced upon Audrey herself?
Was she, in short, the proprietor of a gaming-house, of which the management had ostensibly passed out of her hands and into those of Audrey herself?
The poor young wife was overwhelmed by these suspicions, which involved so many others that she scarcely dared to face any one of them.
After a short and uneasy sleep towards morning, she rose to find herself called upon to take some decisive action, and began by making an exhaustive tour of the premises, which ended in her feeling sure that the room which was used by the gamblers, probably night after night, and certainly till the early hours of the morning, must be that which was called the billiard-room.
This was a long and wide apartment, built out between the house itself and the outer wall, and having, as she now noted for the first time, a door leading straight into the road.
Audrey tried the inner door, found it locked, as usual, and demanded the key of the housekeeper.
She was, of course, met by a point-blank refusal. At this Audrey’s tone changed. The housekeeper, a thin, dry-eyed woman, was not insolent; she only stated that she had been forbidden to open this room for anybody, by the duchess’s express desire. Audrey looked her straight in the eyes.
“Well,” she said, “I can’t force you to give me the key. But, as I have reason to know that some persons got into that room during the night, I shall, if you persist in refusing, call in the police and have the lock forced.”
The woman’s face grew grey with alarm.
“You would not do that, Madame, without consulting—Mr.—Mr.—Mr. Johnson, surely?” she stammered.
“Without consulting anybody,” replied Audrey calmly.
Only for a moment did the woman hesitate; then she handed the key with a shrug of desperation to Audrey, who at once opened the door, and found herself, as she had expected, face to face with abundant evidences of the fact that it was there that the card-playing had been going on. Stray coins, soiled and torn cards, overturned chairs, a broken candlestick which looked as if it had been used as a missile, proved conclusively the uses to which the room had been put, while the billiard-table, which gave the name to it, was only a small one, six feet in length, which stood across one end of the apartment, and looked as if it had been but little used.
Audrey was quite sure, to begin with, that it had not been used during her tenancy of the house, as the click of the balls is unmistakable, and could not have failed to reach her ears through the skylights with which the room was furnished instead of windows.
Now she understood why Lord Clanfield had not believed her assertion that his sons had been refused the house. She could not doubt—nay, she had the evidence of her own ears to prove—that they had only gone out by the front-door, to come in again by that which led direct into this room. And with a heightened colour and a fast-beating heart she returned to the morning-room, after having returned the keys to the housekeeper in significant silence, and wrote this letter:—
“My Lord,
“I regret very much to have to admit that, in telling you as I did that your sons were not allowed to enter this house, I unintentionally said what was not true. I had prevented their entering by the front-door of the house; but I have discovered, during the past few hours, that advantage has been taken of my ignorance of the full extent of these premises, and that a room, which I had never been allowed to see, and which I was assured was unused, has been devoted—probably night after night—to the purpose of gambling. I recognised the voice of one of your sons among several persons who came out of that room at about four o’clock this morning, and I insisted upon being allowed to enter and examine it.
“As I have some reason to suspect that my movements are watched here—by whose order I have yet to discover—I shall put this letter into the town post-box with my own hands.
“I am going to venture to enclose a few lines for Gerard in this letter to you, and I shall be deeply grateful if you will allow him to have this enclosure. I am going to put it into an unsealed envelope, so that you may be convinced that I am keeping faith, and that I will not hold any communication with him but such as you may allow. I venture to think you will agree with me in thinking that a few words of vague encouragement, such as I am sending him, can do no harm whatever, and may help to make him resigned to a separation which, whatever you may think, I am sure he feels no less keenly than I do.
“Yours with gratitude for your kindness to my husband,
“Audrey Angmering.”
She posted this letter herself with the enclosure, but she could not be sure that she was not followed and observed, and although she knew the letter would be delivered intact, she guessed that the billiard-room would not be used that night.
Her surmise was a shrewd one. Not only was Barnard, the spy, absent from the corridor, where she did not doubt he had always been posted to give the alarm in case of need, but certain dimly seen figures whom she descried in the shrubbery on the opposite side of the road, and guessed to be watchers sent by Lord Clanfield, neither saw nor heard anything to intimate that “The Briars” was other than what it pretended to be, a quiet and most decorous country house the inhabitants of which passed their long nights in innocent sleep, as decent folk should.
Poor Audrey was disappointed not to have received any acknowledgment of her letter. She had hoped that such a clear proof that she had been misled would have extorted some sort of reply from the viscount. He might at least have objected to her writing to Gerard, or have said that he had handed him her little, loving, harmless letter.
When the next morning came, and the post still brought no news from Lord Clanfield, her spirits, which had risen with a little flicker of hope, fell again.
Would he come that day? If only he would condescend to pay her another visit, she felt that what she would be able to show him might perhaps move even him to see that she was, in her way, scarcely less an object of pity than her husband, scarcely less in need of help and advice than he.
And the tears blinded her so much, when she saw that there was only one letter for her, and that one in Pamela’s big, sprawling, would-be-masculine but very girlish handwriting, that for some minutes she could not see to open the letter.
When she did so, however, the interest if not the consternation she felt dried her tears.
“Dear Mrs. A——” the letter began; for it was thus that Pamela compromised between the real name her father had forbidden her to use, and the sham title which Audrey had refused to allow:—
“I am now going to beg you to do what you so sweetly promised you would, and to see the woman who persists that she is our mother. I have not been allowed to see her myself, nor, of course, has Babs. But Miss Willett has spoken to her, and says she is sure she is quite mad, and that if she even understands what she says, it isn’t true. Do, do see her, and tell us what you think. I managed to send out this message to her by one of the servants, that you were a great friend of ours, and that you would see her and tell her anything she wanted to know. I thought I might say all that, and I do hope you won’t be angry. I don’t think you will. I sent her your address too, and as this was to-day, I daresay you will see something of her soon after you get this. That is, if there is anything that is worth hearing in what she says. Although of course I can’t believe that what she says is true, yet, never having known our mother, you may guess how sad and how strange it has made both us girls feel. Do, do let me hear at once, if you see her, what you think.
“Ever yours,
“Pamela.”
Audrey, miserable and lonely herself, was touched by the misery and loneliness of these two bright, sweet young girls, as expressed so ingenuously in this letter. Though she felt rather nervous as to the possible visit of the woman, she was interested, too, and anxious if she could to clear up the mystery for the young creatures.
On many accounts, however, she dreaded as much as she wished for the visit which she felt sure would soon follow.
And before the morning was over her expectation was realised. A servant announced that “some one” wished to see “Madame Rocada”.
Audrey, with an impatient frown, such as now always crossed her face at the mention of the name, told the man to show the visitor into the morning-room.
Audrey, who was only waiting to get this visit over, before going up to town to see Mrs. Webster, and to ask to be put up for the night at her flat, went at once to the room in question, where she found, standing in the middle of the floor, a woman whom she at once set down, in her own mind, as mad.
Very tall, very thin, with good if somewhat large features, and white cheeks so sunken as to be filled with black shadow, the nameless visitor stared at her intently out of two large, deep-set black eyes that seemed to pierce like a knife. Her black hair, which was streaked with grey, was arranged in an old-fashioned way in a long curtain on each side of her haggard face, and her dress, which was almost as old-fashioned as the coiffure, was rusty black also.
A small black bonnet, almost as plain as that of a nurse, tied with black ribbons under the chin, added to her gaunt and funereal appearance.
She spoke at once, and her voice sounded hollow and unnatural, corresponding in all respects to her appearance. Staring intently at Audrey, she said solemnly, almost as if it had been an accusation:—
“Madame Rocada, I believe.”
In spite of the oddity of her appearance and dress, there was something in the woman’s deportment which convinced Audrey that she was a lady by birth and breeding, wreck though she had become. She could not have defined her reasons for believing this, nevertheless the consciousness of the fact was strong upon her, and helped to give her a sympathetic interest in her strange visitor.
To the first words, however, Audrey replied sharply:—
“No. That is not my name. It is Angmering, Mrs. Angmering.”
The visitor frowned.
“But you are the lady the girls—my daughters—sent me to see?”
“Yes, oh, yes. I had a letter from one of them, and I’ve been expecting you.”
As she spoke, she held out the letter, without, however, intending to give it up.
Rather to her dismay, the woman snatched it out of her hand.
“From my girl, my own girl! One of my own daughters, whom I’m not allowed to see! Who don’t believe in my existence! Oh, it’s more than I can bear!”
She broke down suddenly into a sort of hysterical sobbing without tears, and Audrey watched her with mingled sympathy and dismay.
Suddenly as she had broken out, she recovered, and, still with the same wild, intent look in her eyes, stared round the room until her gaze had taken in every object within her view. Then she turned abruptly to Audrey, who was getting alarmed by her behaviour.
Taking a great stride towards her, the woman in black put her face close to that of the younger woman, and said in a dictatorial tone:—
“You are very beautiful, too beautiful to be good! Who are you?”
Amazed at this address, Audrey could only stammer out an incoherent reply which her visitor did not heed. Staring once more round the room, and then bringing her eyes quickly to bear once again upon her victim, she asked as suddenly as before:—
“Now answer me truly. Is he here?”
“He! Who?” stammered Audrey.
The woman shook her head, as if dismissing the question as childish.
“Because,” she went on, “if he were to know I have come, if he were to know I’ve tried to see my girls, he would murder me, yes, murder me, with as little compunction as if I were the cat!”
“Who do you mean? Who would do this?” cried Audrey, with sudden shrillness.
The woman fixed the great black eyes in another lugubrious stare upon her face:—
“Who? Why, my husband—Eugène.”
Eugène! It was the name by which the White Countess had called out to her assailant on the terrible evening at the showrooms!
Audrey held her breath; she knew that the key to more than one mystery would, in another moment, be in her hands.