CHAPTER III.
A pleasant and novel feature of the Palatine Hotel is its wing or annexe, which consists of a long, low, semi-detached building, in which are comprised a dozen or more commodious private sitting-rooms. Each of these rooms opens by means of a French-window on to a spacious veranda, from which two steps lead down to the lawn and the shrubberies beyond. A glass-covered passage lined with shrubs and flowering plants leads from the annexe to the hotel proper. One of the largest of these private sitting-rooms had been engaged by our worthy vicar for himself and party.
Not many minutes had elapsed after the departure of Mr Richard Dulcimer, otherwise Mr Golightly, in search of a quiet nook where he could smoke his pipe without being observed, when Madame De Vigne stepped out through the open window on to the veranda, and sat down on a low wicker chair opposite a tiny work-table. She had rung the bell a moment before leaving the room, and Jules, the waiter, now appeared in answer to the summons.
‘Madame rang?’
‘I want to know at what hour the next train from Scotland is due at the station.’
Jules bowed and retired.
At this time Mora De Vigne had touched her thirtieth year. She was taller than the ordinary run of women, with a quiet, Juno-like stateliness in her every gesture and movement. She had dark-brown hair, and large, dark, luminous eyes, that to many people seemed like eyes they had seen somewhere long ago in a picture. Her complexion was still as clear and delicate as that of Clarice her sister, who was a dozen years younger; but there were lines of care about her eyes, and a touch of melancholy in the curve of her lips. In her expression there was something which told you instinctively that in years gone by she had confronted trouble and sorrow of no ordinary kind, and that if peace and quiet days were her portion now, there was that in the past which could never be forgotten.
Jules returned. ‘The next train from Scotland is due at half-past seven, madame.’
‘Thank you. That is all.’ She looked at her watch, and then she said to herself with a little thrill: ‘Two hours, and he will be here!’
Jules was still lingering, and Madame De Vigne regarded him with a little surprise.
‘Pardon, but madame does not remember me?’ said Jules, addressing her in French.
‘No; I have no recollection of having ever seen you before I came to this place,’ she answered, after regarding him attentively for a moment or two.
‘Yet I remembered madame the moment I saw her again.’
She could not repress a start. ‘Again! Where and when have you seen me before?’
‘In Paris, during the terrible days of the Commune.’
‘Ah!’ was the only answer, with a little air of relief.
‘It was my fate, madame, to be shot down in one of the many street fights that took place from house to house. I was carried to the hospital. The doctors said I should be a dead man in less than a week, but I am alive and here to-day. No thanks to the doctors for that, but to you, madame—to you!’
‘To me!’
‘You were there, madame, at the hospital to which I was taken, nursing day and night, like an angel from heaven, among the sick and wounded. You nursed me, madame, ah! so carefully, so tenderly! But for you I should have died.’
‘I am very glad to see you again; but I am afraid you make far too much of any little service I was able to render you.’
‘No, no, madame! Pardon. It was to you I owed my life, not to the doctors. I was but a poor soldier then, I am but a poor garçon now; I have nothing, nothing in the world to offer you but my thanks.’
‘I am amply repaid by them.’
‘Ah, if Jules Decroze could but show his gratitude in some other way!’
‘No other way is necessary or possible. Be satisfied to know that your thanks will dwell pleasantly in my memory for a long time to come.’
She rose and held out her hand. Jules took it as if it were the hand of a queen, bent over it, touched it respectfully with his lips, placed a hand on his heart, bowed again, then turned and went away without another word. He was only a garçon, as he had remarked, but then he was a Frenchman as well.
‘Poor fellow!’ said Madame De Vigne as she resumed her seat and took up her embroidery. ‘It is pleasant to know that there is a little gratitude left in the world; only I wish, somehow, that to-day, of all days, he had not spoken to me about a past which I so often pray that I might be able to forget. Was it not enough that the writing of that letter this morning should cause all my old wounds to bleed afresh, should call up one spectre after another which I would fain chain down for ever in the lowest dungeon of my memory! Yes, the letter is written which reveals the secret of my life—a secret unknown even to dear Clarice. What will he say, what will he do, when he has read it? I fear, and yet I hope. If I did not hope a little, I should be one of the most miserable women alive.’
She rose, opened her sunshade, and stepped down from the veranda on to the lawn. Here she paced slowly to and fro. For the time being she had that part of the grounds to herself.
‘Two months ago, he asked me to marry him, and I refused, although even then I had learned to love him. But how could I say Yes with that terrible secret clinging round me like a shroud? When he was gone, and I thought I had lost him for ever, I found out how dear he was to me. Five days ago he came again and told me that his feelings were still unchanged. My heart refused to say No, and yet I dreaded to say Yes. He went away unanswered. But to-day he is coming back—to-day must decide the happiness or misery of all my life to come.’ She sighed deeply, and closing her sunshade, went slowly back to her seat in the veranda.
‘He asks no questions, he seeks to know nothing of my past life. But if I were to marry him without telling him, and some day, by some strange chance, he were to learn the truth, would he not say that I had deceived him? Would not his love?—— No, no; I dare not. Come what may, he must know the truth before it is too late, and then if he—— O Harold, Harold! why have you taught me to love you so deeply!’
Her head drooped forward into her hands. She thought herself unseen; but her sister had entered the sitting-room unheard, and was now standing at the open window, gazing at her.
‘Mora dear, what is the matter? what is amiss? are you ill?’ she asked as she crossed to her sister. Then drawing up a footstool, she sat down on it, and took one of Mora’s hands in both hers.
‘The matter, dear! Nothing. What should be the matter?’ asked the latter with a fine assumption of indifference, but her under-lip trembled so much that she was fain to bite it.
‘That is just what I want to find out,’ answered Clarice. ‘For the last four days there has been a change in you, that puzzles me and makes me unhappy. You scarcely speak, you scarcely eat, you shut yourself up in your room; nothing seems to interest you. Since Colonel Woodruffe was here, you have been a changed woman.’
‘Colonel Woodruffe!’
‘Ah, Mora dear, you can’t deceive me. Since I began to love Archie, I see many things that I never used to think of before. One thing I see, and see plainly, that Colonel Woodruffe is very much in love with my sister.’
‘Clarice!’
‘Oh, I know quite well what I am talking about. I say again that he loves you. And, O Mora, he is so good, so kind, such a preux chevalier in every way, that if you could only find in your heart to love him a little in return, it would make me very, very happy!’
‘Why should it make you happy, dear?’
Clarice, who was still holding one of her sister’s hands, pressed it fondly to her cheek, and for a moment or two she did not speak.
‘Because—because you know, darling, that when Archie and I are married, I may be compelled to leave you,’ she said at last with a little break in her voice. ‘And think how lonely you will be then! But if you and Colonel Woodruffe were married, I’——
Madame De Vigne did not let her finish, but turning up the fair young face, bent down her own and kissed it.
‘Hush! you foolish child; you must not talk in that way,’ she said. ‘I had to live a lonely life for years while you were away at school, and should it ever become needful, I daresay I could do the same again.’
‘It will nearly break my heart if I am compelled to leave you.’
‘You must not say that, dear.’
‘Do you know, Mora, as I lay awake last night, my thoughts all at once went back to that day, now so many years ago, when poor mamma lay dying—when she took your hand and placed it on my head, and said in a voice so faint that we could scarcely hear it: “When I am gone, Mora, you must be mother and sister in one to my little Clari.” You were only a girl yourself at the time, but from that day you devoted yourself to me. I lost one mother, only to find another in you!’
‘Your love, darling, has repaid me a hundredfold for everything,’ answered Mora while her fingers touched the young girl’s hair caressingly.
‘Here comes Miss Gaisford,’ cried Clarice, a moment later, as she started to her feet.
‘Why did you stir?’ said the vicar’s sister. ‘You made such a pretty picture as I walked up from the lake, that I should like to have sketched you then and there.’ Then turning to Clarice, ‘Any news yet?’ she asked.
The answer was a doleful shake of the head. ‘I begin to think there never will be any news again.’
‘Oh, but there will. Don’t be in too great a hurry to begin the next chapter of your romance; enjoy the present one while it lasts.’
At this moment, Nanette, Madame De Vigne’s maid, put in an appearance. ‘Tea is served, madame,’ she said.
‘The very thing I was longing for,’ remarked Miss Gaisford.
Clarice followed Nanette into the room.
‘Has Colonel Woodruffe arrived yet?’ asked Miss Gaisford.
‘His train is due at seven-thirty.’
‘These are trying moments for you, my dear friend.’
‘I would not live the last five days over again for—well, not for a very great deal,’ answered Madame De Vigne as she stepped from the veranda into the room.
‘Here am I, the sister of a quiet country parson,’ remarked Miss Gaisford to herself as she lingered behind for a moment, ‘who never had a love affair of my own, made a confidant in the love affairs of two other people! It’s delightful—it’s bewildering—it’s far better than any novel. Two plots in real life working themselves out under my very eyes! My poor stories will seem dreadfully tame after this.’ She smiled and shook her curls, and then went in search of a cup of tea.
While this had been going on, a stranger had stepped out of the hotel and sauntered across the lawn, and sat down on the seat erstwhile occupied by Mr Dulcimer. There was nothing in his appearance calculated to draw the special attention of any one to him, and no one seemed to bestow more notice on him than they might have done on any other commonplace tourist. He was a tall, thin man, with sandy hair, and a reddish, close-cropped beard and moustache. An artist who might have scanned his features with a view to painting them, would probably have said that his eyes were too close together, and that they were deeper set in their orbits than is at all common. Their habitual expression, when he was not talking to any one, seemed to be one of listening watchfulness, as though he were continually expecting some tidings, or some strange event to happen of which he might hear the news at any moment. He was dressed in an ordinary tourist suit, with a large, soft felt hat. He sat down on the bench, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette.
He went on smoking for a few moments, as if in contemplative enjoyment of his cigarette. Then he extracted from his pocket a telegram in cipher, which had reached him that morning at a little country post-office some fifty miles away. The telegram was headed, ‘From John Smith, London, to Cornelius Santelle, Post-office, Morsby-in-the-Marsh.’
The stranger proceeded to read the telegram, translating it slowly word by word.
“You will take up your quarters at the Palatine Hotel, Windermere, at which place you will be joined in the course of to-morrow by B. and K., who will arrive at different times by different trains.”—B. and K. must mean Borovski and Koriloff.—“They will place themselves unreservedly at your disposal, their orders being to take the whole of their instructions from you. Meanwhile, you will make all needful inquiries as instructed, so that no unnecessary time may be lost. You are fully aware of the arrangements that are always made in circumstances of a similar kind.”’
He folded up the telegram and put it away again. ‘Well, here I am at the Palatine Hotel, and a very pretty place it is, and quiet—oh, very quiet. Perhaps before next week at this time, the good people—and they all look very good—may have something to talk about—something to wake them up a little, and stir the torpid current of their lives. Who knows?’
Although he spoke his thoughts half aloud, as men sometimes get into the habit of doing who have lived much alone, and have been debarred by circumstances from that amount of human companionship which is needful for every one’s health of mind, yet any one who might have wished to overhear what he was saying, would have had to be in very close proximity to him indeed. It is not impossible that at some period of his life this man may have undergone a long term of solitary confinement, and that his habit of talking aloud to himself dated its origin and growth from that time.
Whether this Mr Santelle was an Englishman or a foreigner was a question which might well have puzzled many people, especially those individuals whose travels had never extended beyond their own insular boundaries. If his English differed by certain fine shades from that which a cultured Londoner speaks, it was certainly in no point like the English of Northumberland or Devon. Mr Santelle spoke with very slight traces of an alien accent; the difference in his case consisted chiefly in an almost imperceptible lengthening of some of the vowels, and a slightly more emphatic enunciation of certain syllables over which the native tongue glides as if they had no separate existence.
Mr Santelle flung away the end of his cigarette and drew a small memorandum book from his pocket. ‘What was the name of the man I was to ask for?’ he said as he turned over the leaves of the book.—‘Ah, here it is. Jules Decroze, waiter at the Palatine Hotel. Good.’
He shut up the book and put it away, and then he turned his head in the direction of the main entrance to the hotel. An open carriage was standing there containing two travellers, who were on the point of departure. There too stood Jules the waiter, superintending the arrangements. ‘Yonder man looks somewhat like the one I want,’ murmured Mr Santelle. ‘We shall soon find out.’
He sat watching till the carriage which held the travellers drove away. Then he held up a finger in readiness to catch the eye of Jules, should the latter look his way. As if unwittingly magnetised, Jules a moment or two later turned and looked in the direction of the stranger. Then the finger beckoned him. He crossed the lawn leisurely with his napkin thrown over his arm after the manner of his class.
‘A votre service, m’sieur,’ he said with a little bow and a smile. He seemed instinctively to recognise that the stranger who had summoned him was not an Englishman.
‘Oblige me with your name, my friend,’ said Mr Santelle in French. ‘When I require a person, I like to know how to ask for him.’
‘My name is Jules Decroze, at monsieur’s service.’
‘Once on a time passing under the name of Jean Reboul, and previously to that known to the world as Pierre Lebrun.’
‘How! monsieur knows’—— exclaimed the little Frenchman with a gasp.
‘Perfectly,’ answered the other impassively. Then he rapidly made certain cabalistic signs with his fingers.
The face of Jules turned as white as the napkin on his arm.
Then still addressing him in French, the mysterious stranger said in his most impressive tones: ‘The right hand of the Czar is frozen.’
To which, after a moment or two, the blanched lips of Jules framed the response: ‘But Signor Sanguinetti lives and is well.’
For an instant or two the men gazed into each other’s eyes. ‘It is well,’ said the stranger presently. ‘We understand each other.’
‘Monsieur has something to say to me—some instructions to impart?’ said the other obsequiously, while his knees shook under him.
‘I have. Come to my room at midnight, and I will talk with you.’
‘I am at the service of monsieur.’
‘Till midnight, then.’
‘Till midnight.’
With a low bow, Jules turned and went. Santelle watched him with a grim smile as long as he was visible, then he lit another cigarette, and sauntered down the winding path that led from the high ground of the hotel to the level of the lake.