Whither Thou Goest

by William Le Queux

Violet had been born in Spain and lived there up to the age of ten, but her memories of the country were faint and fragmentary. Moreno had been born in England, brought up and educated there. He spoke Spanish perfectly since his father had taught him the language, and conversed in it with him from childhood. In that father’s company he had made some dozen trips to what was really his native country, he had visited every important town—Barcelona, Toledo, Seville, Granada, Segovia, not to mention Madrid.

Still, they were both more English than foreign, and there was an unconscious sympathy between them arising from this fact. Moreno’s heart ached for the familiar haunts of Fleet Street, for the restaurants where the odour of garlic was not always greatly in evidence. And Violet sighed for the elegant flat in Mount Street, with its perfect appointments. She had grown to loathe this sun-baked Biscayan coast.

Being thrown so much in each other’s society, caution had been a little relaxed on the woman’s side—Moreno had never for a moment relaxed his. Violet Hargrave was still an enigma to him. He was not prepared to trust her in the smallest degree. But in his peculiar position he could trust nobody.

One day she had been very confidential. It had been after a good dinner, followed by one or two potent liqueurs. On such an occasion even the most cautious woman of the world may find her tongue loosened.

She had confided to Moreno a considerable portion of her family history. Her father, a ne’er-do-well, a soldier of fortune—she frankly gave this description of her male parent—had fallen in love with and married her Spanish mother, a beautiful young girl, a professional dancer, not, however, occupying a Very high position in her profession.

It peeped through the narrative, told in a rather staccato fashion, that her father had lived chiefly on his wife’s small earnings, that he did no regular work, but acted as her agent. When she was ten years of age, her mother died, and her father was thrown on his own resources.

They had come to London. James Wheeler, such was her father’s name, had at once sought out a rich financier known in business circles as Mr Jackson. His real name was Juan Jaques, he was a Spaniard, and he had at one time been desperately in love with her mother.

For the sake of that old affection, he had befriended the derelict father and the helpless child. He had set Wheeler on his legs, so far as it was possible to help such a weak and incapable creature. But Wheeler was addicted to drink and was cursed with a feeble constitution. In a few years, the drink carried him off. Violet, at the age of eighteen, was left alone in the world. Her mother, no doubt, had relatives in Spain, but she knew nothing of them. Of her father’s relations, if he had any, she had never heard him speak.

Whatever the failings of the moneylender in certain directions, he behaved with rare generosity and tenderness to the daughter of his old sweetheart. He advanced money to secure her a good education. He did his best to secure for her eligible posts.

Still, on the whole, she had experienced a rough time. She could do a little of everything fairly, but nothing very well. She had tried the concert hall, the stage, and been a failure on both. She had not even inherited her mother’s talent for dancing.