A Woman Martyr

by Alice M. Diehl

Good heavens, she was going to faint! With an effort of will she fought against unconsciousness; gasped for breath, struggled to maintain her senses, and was rewarded by coming slowly back out of the mists, and seeing the plain, clever face of the dramatic critic appear opposite, seemingly from nowhere. Then she heard that Vansittart was expressing disapprobation of the play.

"I only happened to glance at the plot in your article in the Parthenon just before we came," he was saying. "It was the very last kind of play I should have chosen for Miss Thorne to see had I known the story."

"Indeed?" Mr. Hunt smiled, but Joan thought he gave her a suspicious, enquiring look. It was enquiring; he was wondering whether this beautiful girl were not the prey of some latent but awful disease--her ghastliness, the expression of anguish on her face, was undeniably the effect of some secret suffering. But Joan could not read his thoughts. She was frightened into bravado.

"I certainly prefer comedies to tragedies," she hazarded, and there was slight defiance in her glance at the dramatic critic. As for her voice, she wondered if it sounded as unnatural in her lover's ears as in her own. "A tragedy is such an exception in everyday life; and when it does occur, one would rather not hear about it."

"You differ from the bulk of humanity, Miss Thorne," said Mr. Hunt, good humouredly. "And I cannot agree with you that tragedy is such an exceptional thing in ordinary existence. My own belief, and it is shared by many others, is that the under-current of most lives has an element of the tragic in it. There are scores of crimes, too, that never come to light; myriads of unsuspected criminals. This I think is shown to be the case by the interest the public have for what is called the 'sensational.' They recognize instincts they possess themselves, although those instincts may be undeveloped, or held in check."

"Hunt! You suggest that we are all of us potential murderers," said Lord Vansittart, with an amused laugh.

Mr. Hunt shrugged his shoulders. "I suggest nothing; I assume a Socratian attitude; I encourage others to suggest," he somewhat dryly returned. "What do you think of this much-belauded actress, Miss Thorne? I confess I am not infatuated, like the rest. She leaves me utterly cold; hasn't the power to quicken my pulse by a single beat, even in her most impassioned moments. I was wishing just now that the part had been played by a little girl I saw for the first time the other night--singularly enough, on the very night she became the heroine of a tragedy in real life. You must have read about it, Vansittart. You are not 'one who battens on offal?' I daresay not. Nor am I. I should not have been so interested in this affair if I had not been mixed up in it, and if a friend of mine were not destined, innocently enough, to become one of the strands of the rope which will assuredly hang the murderer, or, I should say, the murderess."

"Please, Hunt, don't let us talk of such horrible things," cried Lord Vansittart. He had seen his darling shudder.

"Oh, pray go on!" said Joan, with a sudden mad effort to hear what there was to hear without a shriek of agony. So--so--something more had been discovered--was known.

"You have probably followed the case, Miss Thorne. There was the romantic element in it which appeals to most ladies," said Mr. Hunt, smiling at Joan. "Ah! I see; you know all about it. Well, to put it as briefly as I can, I was urged to go and see the performance of a young lady, a Miss Vera Anerley, who had made quite a commotion in the provinces. Her company, a touring one, was coming to a suburban theatre for a couple of weeks, and already the reporter of a London evening paper had fallen a victim to her fascination. Well, I went, and I was so astonished at the spontaneity of the girl, at the natural art which, imitating nature, we call genius, that I asked to be introduced. She refused; the manager said she must have a lover waiting round the corner. True enough, she had a lover, but not waiting for her round the corner, as it happened, but waiting for her at home, on the sofa, dead! He was a bad lot, it seems, that Victor Mercier. You must have read the case, Lord Vansittart, it was 'starred' a bit because of its association with a girl rumour says is bound to make her mark, sooner or later. But even if he was the blackest of black sheep, justice is justice. One doesn't care for assassinations done in cold blood in the very heart of civilized London. I know it was brought in 'death by misadventure'; some of those jurymen were the densest of idiots. But the ball has not stopped rolling. As I said, a friend of mine has come into the case. I must tell you; it is so odd; it so proves the old saying that 'truth is stranger than fiction.' A fellow I know very well, one of your circle, I fancy, went with me to see Vera Anerley act, but left me when I went round to the stage door, and, finding it a fine night, elected to walk home. As he was making his way westwards by Westminster Bridge, his attention was attracted by a feminine figure in front, because, besides being tall and well made, there was a cachet of belonging to a smart set about her, or he chose to think so. Then, every now and then the girl tottered. Was she drunk? he thought. What was she doing there? He followed her, and presently, seeing her peering here and there and glancing furtively about, felt sure he was on the track of something peculiar, especially when she flitted up some steps in the shadow, stooped, and seemed to deposit something she was carrying in the corner.