CHAPTER XV
“Eugène!” repeated Audrey, with faltering lips.
The strange woman looked at her intently.
“Ah! You don’t know him by that name perhaps!”
Audrey, trembling, returned the woman’s keen look with one as penetrating.
“What makes you think he is here?” she asked sharply.
The visitor, thus recalled to the object of her visit, hesitated for the first time.
“Since you know the girls,” she said, “I presume you know their father too.”
“Yes.”
“And as I find you are a very beautiful woman, my suspicion is confirmed. You are one of his victims, or his tools, as all the pretty women whom he meets become.”
Audrey, with fears which she could not express tightening round her heart, signed to the weird woman to sit down. Drawing a chair close to that which her visitor took, she sat down by her, and lowering her voice, said:—
“Tell me everything, everything. I am in a maze; I am in a position in which I can’t move hand or foot without coming to some corner from which I can’t escape. If you can tell me anything to help me, I shall be grateful, more grateful than I can express. Now who is the man you mean? What is his other name? If you are his wife and those girls are your children and his, you can trust me. I am a wife myself——”
“Whose?” said the woman shortly.
“My husband’s name is Gerard Angmering, and he is the nephew of Lord Clanfield,” she answered simply.
“Why isn’t he here with you? Why are you alone? Where is he?”
She poured out the questions one after the other, so quickly that it was impossible to answer any of them until she stopped speaking.
Audrey bit her lip.
“Never mind that,” she said. “Let it be enough for you that he is all the world to me, and that, if you find me here alone, it is neither by his wish nor by mine.”
The strange woman was peering into her face with a penetration which was uncanny. When she had finished her inspection and Audrey, irritated and perplexed, paused, the visitor laughed harshly.
“I see, I see. You are one of the victims! Now tell me, what are you doing here? What goes on here? Is it gambling, or——”
With the blood rushing to her cheeks Audrey rose up with a cry.
“Oh, how did you know?” she cried breathlessly.
The visitor said nothing for a moment, but stared at her in the same piercing way. Then she got up, went softly across the room to the door, opened it quickly, and looked out.
“What are you doing?” said Audrey.
“Eugène uses spies,” replied the visitor briefly, as she walked slowly round the room, apparently examining the furniture, the very walls, to see whether there was any possibility of their being overheard by unseen ears. Having satisfied herself, she came back to her seat. “And so,” she said bluntly, “this is a gambling-house, and you are the decoy?”
“How dare you call me that?” panted Audrey, more angry than she could express.
But the woman went steadily on: “You, with your pretty face and figure, your well-bred air and your handsome dresses, are the nominal head of this house, I suppose?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, don’t be offended. Why should you be, when what I say is true? Listen. I was his wife, you know. He was a rich man when I married him, and I brought him money myself. All went well while the money lasted, and we could live well and ostentatiously, keep horses and carriages—there were no motor-cars in those days—and a yacht and every luxury. Then the money ran short—the times changed, difficulties grew. Things grew worse and worse and presently they began to mend again, mend mysteriously. It was some time before I knew that there was anything wrong about the new prosperity, but when the knowledge did come, when I understood that I was expected to share in the vile work—to help in ugly schemes—cheating at cards—forgery—fraud—he was clever at them all—I stood firm, I refused.”
She paused, and the remembrance of the far-away time she referred to seemed to increase the intense melancholy of her worn face, to render her deep voice more hollow. When she went on speaking, there came again over her face that wild look which had made the servants at Miss Willett’s, and Audrey herself, take her for a madwoman.
“When he found he could do nothing with me, he changed his plans. Since I would not help him, I must go. By every cruel device, every wicked stratagem he tried to drive me out of my mind; he sent my two children away from me, he worked upon my nerves until I became hysterical, used threats which nobody would believe, threats of abandoning my little children, of murdering me.”
“Why didn’t you tell some one?” said Audrey.
“Because nobody would have believed me. He was gentle, handsome, with a caressing voice and charming manner. I was hysterical, irritable, proud, perhaps overbearing and too unhappy to be liked. Everybody took his part, and said how hard it was for genial, charming Eugène Reynolds to be tied to such an unamiable wife.”
“Why didn’t you run away from him?”
“I tried, but he was too clever for me. He knew that I would have moved heaven and earth to find my children, that I would have exposed, denounced him, once safely away from his diabolical influence, once free to breathe and to act for myself. For, though I hated him, I feared him too, and dared scarcely move without his permission. I don’t know how I managed to keep firm in refusing to help him. I think now it was his fear that I should break down and blunder that saved me. For I used to feel that, if he had gone on insisting, I should have yielded at last. As it was, I was of no use to him, so he hated me, and again and again I thought he would kill me. And I told his friends so, and that was my undoing. He, with his sweet voice and caressing ways, to attempt to kill me, a tall, strong, powerful woman! The thing was absurd. And then the way was smooth for what he did. He got two doctors to certify that I was insane—one of them believed it, I’m sure, and the other was the sort of flabby man who can be led to believe anything—and I was shut up in a lunatic asylum.”
There was a pause, and then she said in a hollow whisper:—
“I’ve been there fourteen years!”
“What!” cried Audrey, aghast, incredulous, horror-struck.
“Fourteen years,” repeated the woman, “ever since my elder child, Pamela, was four years old. I knew they were told—both of them—that I was dead, and that was all I was allowed to know. Can you wonder that there was no difficulty in believing me insane? But I never was insane, no, not for an hour. Always, always I had the idea in my mind that I must get out, I must find them, I must save them from such a father. But the years went by, and I could never get away. It was in the west country, close to the Welsh border, that I was shut up, and I was out of the world, out of touch with everything. I never got a chance of escape till six months ago, when they thought I had worn out my old longings to be free, and then I came straight to London, and hunted, and hunted, till I found out where Eugène had hidden himself, and the new name by which he was known.”
“And what is that?” asked Audrey.
“Reginald Candover,” replied the woman quickly.
Although she had been prepared for this, Audrey could not hear it without a fresh shudder.
“How can I believe all this?” she asked suddenly, turning pale as certain possibilities connected with this terrible discovery occurred to her. “I can’t, I won’t believe it!”
The visitor shrugged her shoulders.
“Why should you believe it? It is no affair of mine whether you do or not,” she said simply. “All I came here for was to learn something of my children. Pamela sent me your name and address as a friend of theirs, and all I ask of you is to tell me all you can about them. What are they going to do? They are nearly grown up, and want a mother’s care. Who is going to give it them?”
Audrey listened with blanching cheeks. This insistence on the one point, the girls, always the two girls, was to her mind more convincing than anything else of the truth of the woman’s story.
“I don’t know anything about that,” said Audrey. “They are getting impatient at being left at school, and are always importuning to be taken away. Pamela wants to come to me. But I don’t want her here, and to do him justice, their father seems just as unwilling to bring them away from school as they are anxious to come.”
A look of relief came over the poor woman’s face.
“You really believe that?” she said eagerly.
“I do indeed. I’ve had proof of it. Remember, even bad men are generally good to their own children!”
The stranger sighed.
“Some are, I know. But if you have received as much ill treatment from a man as I have from my husband, you find it difficult to believe any good of him. Besides——” A new thought seemed to fill her with new horror, and again she looked cautiously round, and lowered her voice still further. “There’s his sister. Even if he were to wish to keep his daughters from harm, his sister is such a wicked woman that, if he were to put them into her care, they would be worse off than ever.”
“His sister! Has he a sister?”
“A half-sister. A woman without heart or conscience, and with no passion but for money, and no affection for any one but her half-brother. She hated me because I was English, and so were all my ways and all my tastes.”
“Wasn’t she English then?”
“No, nor he either. They are both of mixed nationality, and speak three or four languages equally well. And each is as clever and as wicked as the other. Do you mean to say you have never met her?”
And again both her look and tone grew incredulous.
“Never to my knowledge,” said Audrey. “Perhaps she is dead.”
The stranger heaved a sigh which Audrey could not but think was one of hope. She gazed long and earnestly at the younger woman.
“I’m sorry I said what I did—about your being too beautiful to be good,” she said suddenly. “I think you are good; I think I could trust you! Will you keep an eye on my girls?”
Audrey’s face puckered with distress.
“There’s nothing I would do more willingly,” said she, “but how am I to do it? He is their father; I can’t interfere with his wishes; it would even do more harm than good for me to tell them the truth about you. The advice I strongly give you is to refrain from trying to see them, since their knowing the whole truth, or even a part of it, could only lead to dissensions, and might perhaps change their father’s feelings towards them, which seem at present to be right and natural ones, to anger and bitterness.”
The poor woman’s face grew dark with distress.
“I know quite well you’re right,” said she. “But it’s so hard, so very hard.” She paused and appeared to reflect deeply for some moments. Then she went on abruptly: “If I do as you suggest, if I go back, away, without trying to see them again, will you write to me and let me know what they are doing, and how they are?”
Her tone was so humble, so imploring, that, absorbed as she was in her own anxieties, suggested by her visitor’s revelations, Audrey felt the tears rising to her eyes.
“I will do what I can,” she said earnestly. “But it is so little! For now that I know so much, I shall at once break off acquaintance with him.”
The other laughed mockingly.
“You may think you will, but you will not,” she said, with confidence. “Once in his net, no one gets away so easily. You will try and you will think you have succeeded; but you will feel the meshes about your feet, and you will be brought back, brought safely back into the net—every time!”
The words filled Audrey with unspeakable horror. For even while she would have contradicted, have protested, have scouted the idea presented to her, there rose up in her mind the terrible fear that it was a true one! Had she not tried already more than once to escape from the net, and had she not always been brought back, surely yet so gently that she was hardly aware of the compelling force at all?
She burst out into violence, clenching her teeth.
“I will escape,” she said. “I will not continue my acquaintance with a man whom I know to be wicked!”
The stranger laughed again.
“You have only my word for it, you know, the word of a woman who has been declared mad! Better forget what I have said, or disregard it, and go on as if nothing had happened to open your eyes even the least bit. You can do no good by protesting, and may do yourself harm. You little guess how strong the forces are which you would have to fight against.”
But there she was wrong. Gradually Audrey’s instincts had been telling her what her visitor now openly confirmed, and the knowledge of the strength of the organisation she would have to contend against was growing every moment more profound.
“Where shall you go,” she asked abruptly, “when you leave here? You want me to write to you. Where shall I write to? And how shall I address you?”
The visitor replied after a moment’s hesitation; perhaps some lingering doubts of Audrey still had to be overcome or some suspicion as to whether Eugène’s influence might not be strong enough to extract from this beautiful, gentle-mannered woman the information he might want about his hated wife.
At last, however, she made up her mind suddenly, and answered:—
“I am living in Hertfordshire with a maiden sister, and openly under the name in which Eugène married me—Mrs. Reynolds. I’ve lived there nearly six months now, ever since I got away from the asylum. Probably the asylum people haven’t told him of my escape, and are still taking the money for my maintenance. At any rate I’ve been so cautious in my inquiries to find out him and my daughters, that I don’t think he knows where I am. Now he will find out of course. I’ve no doubt there are spies in this house who will inform him of my visit. But,” she added with confidence, “as I’ve been living in freedom for so long, it would take some formalities to get me back again, and—well, I can afford to risk it. I’ve learnt something about my girls, and I have, I hope, found that they’ve got a friend.”
Quite suddenly she turned upon Audrey such an imploring, piteous look that the younger woman was deeply moved.
“I have need of friends myself,” said she, in a broken voice, “and I have no power, no influence with anybody. But if I could do anything for them, believe me I would, oh, I would!”
The stranger rose, held out her long, slim hand, and grasped that of Audrey.
“I thank you, and I trust you,” she said simply under her breath. Then she turned to the door, but paused to say: “No. I won’t go out like that. Better not. These people will let him know who has been here. For both our sakes we must play them a trick. Ring the bell, and let them find you cowering in a corner of the room, as if you were frightened. Tell the servants I’m a madwoman who has been raving incoherently, and that you can’t make out who I am.”
“But,” said Audrey, “might that not help him to get you back to the asylum again?”
The visitor laughed shrewdly.
“He won’t trouble about putting me in if he thinks I really am mad,” she replied quietly.
There was strong sense in this view, and Audrey carried out her suggestion to the letter, rang the bell, then withdrew into a corner of the room, behind an armchair, while the visitor stood, gaunt and forbidding, in the middle of the floor.
When Barnard appeared in answer to her summons, Audrey told him, with an appearance of alarm, to show the lady out, and made gestures to him to intimate that she was mad. The gaunt visitor went with a wild laugh, muttering to herself, and carried out her part of the stratagem so well that Barnard himself closed the door very quickly behind her, under the impression that he was indeed shutting out a dangerous lunatic.
Then Audrey, suffering from the reaction after the intense excitement caused by the interview with her visitor, went shuddering and shivering up the stairs, locked herself into her room, and at once began to pack up for immediate departure.
Whether she were brought back into the net or not, she would at any rate make a valiant attempt to get clear of it!