He wagged his tail, but when he found that that was not the right answer he frowned.
"I think I know what we shall have to do with you," I continued. "There's a lady in Ireland who'd give her eyes to get you. That's where you'll go. You always were a success with ladies, weren't you?"
I thought he would have wagged his tail at that, but he still frowned as though he caught the note beneath my voice, that note, I suppose, of final despair, when a man knows that it is all but up with him. For so it had happened to me, as I had warned that little child it would happen to her. The spirit in me was broken. I felt the suspicion in every thought that I was done for.
It is when one comes to a conclusion as definite as this that one can throw into the voice a spurious tone of cheerfulness, which is the final admission of defeat.
I rose then from my chair with a laugh and called out to Dandy that we were setting off for Chelsea. But instead of leaping about me in his dancing way, as he does whenever he hears we are going out for a walk, he crept after me, close at my heels, and all the gaiety was gone out of him. I determined then that if the worst should happen, if I could get no news of Clarissa, I would send him over to Bellwattle. She would take care of him for his own sake—perhaps for his master's, too.
It was a shabby little street in Chelsea—two rows of houses on either side, with only the number on the lintels to differentiate between them. A strange mixture of apprehension and excitement possessed me as I approached the door. What if I should find her there? What could I say if I did? What does a man say after an absence of some months to the woman who has prayed God that she will never see him again? I expect he leaves the matter as much to chance as I did.
After a moment's hesitation while these thoughts were passing through my mind, I rang the bell and waited, my heart hammering wildly in all my pulses, till I heard the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. Directly it reached me I felt quiet and ready for whatever should come to pass.
When the door was opened, there confronted me an elderly woman. She was stout, wearing a close-fitting blouse of some black material closely covered with white spots which long had lost their whiteness. There was the unmistakable lodging-house look about her which is quite different in London to any other place in England. In a moment she had taken me in. Quite wrongly, perhaps, but to her own satisfaction. My coat and hat she had priced before I had had time to open my mouth. They were priced by her standard, which I have no doubt was the pawn-shop, and probably from that point she was right to within a penny. There was that look in her, too, of suspicion. I felt it in the very way she opened the door. There had been the sense of expectation without greeting, and for one instant that expression of doubt as if she were not quite sure whether I were the person she expected to see. Directly I saw her, I knew my search there was hopeless.
"Does Mrs. Fennell live here?" I inquired.
She shook her head, still appraising me with her eyes.