Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

IN THE CROWD IN FRONT OF HIM HE SAW KROOL STEALING ALONG

Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word Home she used. . . . The dire mockery of it burned his mind like iron white-heated. He had had no home since his father died years ago, his mother had died when he was very young and his eldest brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in her place at table.

He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be! The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in blue, with a face like a Dresdenchina shepherdess and hair like Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the picture, and long evenings in the wintertime, when they two would read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in which his work had place, in which his gifts were found, shaping, influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard he loved orchards-the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs, and the fine gray and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes, the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings, or the sting of the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodcock awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone.

A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of marching men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, forced him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, were alongside of him-a battalion of Volunteers, cheerily going to the war-a six months' excursion, to see "Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"

Then the crowd, as it cheered, jostled him against the wall of the shops, and presently he found himself forced down Buckingham Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach Adrian

Fellowes' apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically thrown into the street, that Krool was almost beside him. The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, if and when he saw him.

But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were, then it fell behind a little, for here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a doorway and watched him as he approached the door of the big flats where Adrian Fellowes lived.

As he came towards the building he saw a hansom standing before the door. Something made him pause for the moment, and when, in the pause, the figure of a woman emerged from the doorway and hastily got into a hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the man did who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round and rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far from the building, however, another cab -a four-wheeler-discharged its occupant at the corner of a street between him and the house. It was a woman. She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with quick and grateful emphasis, and, wheeling hist old crock round, clattered away. The woman glanced round the empty street swiftly, and then hastily went to the doorway which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers.

Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black and heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figurethere was none other like it; or the turn of her head-there was only one such head in all England. She entered the building quickly.

There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why she had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had said no word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let the worst be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she thought of him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, and they must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when the

crisis of their lives has come. Stafford claimed again, but something in the touch understood it all.

One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know the intimacy between Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in their terrible interview that morning, but he had refrained. The ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would be beyond her endurance. He understood, but he shrank at the thought of the nature of the interview which she must have, at the thought of the meeting at all.

He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had used. He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the cigars for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not soothe him. He had passed beyond the artificial.

His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly five minutes after Jasmine's entrance that she appeared in the doorway again, and, after a hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as

made him look closely at the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew.

Adrian Fellowes was dead.

Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once more and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There was no sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, only a look of sleep-a pale, motionless sleep.

But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched the shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while.

Only a little while, and in that little while Jasmine had left the house with agitated footsteps.

"He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud.

He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and then a sleepy porter came.

CHAPTER XXIII

'MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD'

ASTMINSTER HOUSE was ablaze.

she could, and, at the first corner, turned large dinner had been fixed for this

up sharply towards the Strand. Her movements had been agitated, and as she hurried on she held her head down into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain.

The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone abroad. He would soon find out.

He mounted the deserted staircase quick ly and knocked at Fellowes' door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the room. He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and looked round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of things gathered together hastily.

Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and on it lay a figure-Adrian Fellowes, straight and still-and sleeping. Stafford went over. "Fellowes!" he said, sharply.

There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" he ex

October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the butler came to her for instructions upon some details. These she gave with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at the corner of Down Street and Piccadilly.

When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being laid down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came up the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the staircase with marked deliberation.

"Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an airing on shanks' horses."

"And a quarter of an hour left to put

on the tirara," sniggered the second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." "Swells-the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an Emperor-'struth!"

"I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares on the Rand, me boy."

"I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come not forgetting th' grub and the fizz."

"What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like tips down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard-and a lot of hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political grease does. But what price a title-Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart.-wot, oh!"

"Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a coronet, 'ers! W'y-"

But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of the household.

Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of the British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning family, honoring her table-though the ladies of neither were to be present, and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of late, though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of it-and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People came almost "everybody" came to her house, and would come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of nights.

In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing, though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her

face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in its place was a new, shining strange look like a most delicate film-the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain gives.

As she had come up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted sharply-something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which came from some desolate place, distant, arid, and alien. That was not the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her marriage that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two would meet, and she knew how it would be an outward semblance, a superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit.

Yet when she was dressed,-in pure white, with only a string of pearls, the smallest she had, round her neck-she was like that white flower which had been placed on her pillow last night.

As she turned to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure again in the big pier-glass, and she seemed to herself like some other woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail, delicate appearance which did not belong to her.

As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in with a penciled note in Rudyard's handwriting.

White violets-white violets!

The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine."

White violets! How strange that he should send them! These they send for

« PředchozíPokračovat »