Chapter Ten
My Own Confession
The “Lion” Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlooking the bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze. My room was small and clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religious texts upon the walls. As I sat at the window in the hour before my dinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those past few days – a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and to entangle me.
Lucie Miller – the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadly one – had actually known my Ella. That very fact seemed somehow as a further link between us. What, I wondered, did she know of those later days of my dead love’s life? To me they were shrouded in mystery.
That cold winter’s night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her in secret at the corner of Queen’s Gardens, would ever remain in my memory. She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had always preserved the secret of our affection. She came dressed in black, wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch of violets. Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same. Quick to recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason. Had she had any difference with her father or her aunt – as she sometimes had? No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.
And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wet shining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares of Bayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behind her spotted veil. At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon my wrist, and halting she turned to me. In hoarse tones quite unusual to her she blurted forth the truth – the bitter truth that froze my heart. I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at the corner of Chepstow Place. There the greatest blow of all my life fell upon me; and we parted.
I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears. She was to wed the very last man she ought to have chosen. The coarse, fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won in gambles on the Stock Exchange. Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably off. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life, she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her portraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often, alas! is a man deceived! I was but one of thousands, after all. And yet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.
Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise of her – she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of the flowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself. Love to the looker-on may be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime; yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, is worth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift of earth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured and divine.
I was crushed, benumbed, broken. At first my brain refused to accept her declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told me the truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow her engagement was to be announced in the Morning Post. I opened my lips to upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach. I only bit my lips in silence. Ah! yes, I loved her! – I loved her!
From that moment we never again met. Next day I saw the announcement in the papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and it was a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, a lieutenant on board the Cornwall, in a letter which I received at a lonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia, wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me: —
“You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up at the Grainger’s shoot two years ago? The poor little girl was engaged to some City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caught typhoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago. A pity, isn’t it? I rather liked her – so did you, I remember.”
I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter in my hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row of telegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to the grey horizon. My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper, for both saw that I had received bad news. The man in sheepskins who kept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass of vodka. I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, and mounting into the sledge drove on – on, whither I did not care. Ella – my own dear Ella was dead!
All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinner alone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunset strolled by the sea – that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I had so long ago declared my love. She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving. But now, alas! she was no more. Of her memory there only remained that shadowy picture that I had seen in Miller’s drawing-room, the portrait of the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.
I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purple of the summer afterglow. Yes, the face of the world was for me now changed. The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered, did the future contain? Ah! if I could have but known at that moment! Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from us the happiness and tragedy that lie before.
Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before the sea, smoking and thinking. The dark vista of silent waters before me harmonised with my thoughts. Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, I had never known one moment’s financial worry, and yet I had somehow never found happiness. In my life where I might be, at home or abroad, there was always something wanting – the love of a good woman.
Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was too hot for walking. But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and, unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb into the smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the direction of the Manor.
Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout, round-faced innkeeper: —
“I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now. I learnt so yesterday.”
“An’ so did I,” was his reply. “Dear me! wonders ’ull never cease. Fancy Mr Miller coming back again! An’ they say that Miss Lucie’s a-comin’, too.”
“Is she his daughter?” I inquired, as though in ignorance.
“Of course she is; an’ a very good girl, too. When she’s ’ere – which ain’t very often, more’s the pity – she does a great deal of good in the village – visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and gives away quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute. I only wish there were more like ’er in these ’ere parts.”
“Does she often come here?”
“Oh! two or three times a year,” answered the landlord. “Some say she lives up in London with ’er aunt, and others declare that she’s mostly abroad with ’er father. I believe the latter story. She ’as a foreign way about ’er, and I’ve ’eard the servants say as ’ow all ’er things are made abroad.”
“Then nobody knows her address?” I said.
“Seems not. But she’s very fond of ’er father, and no doubt is always with him.”
“Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughter are at home?”
“Not many. Dr Haviland often dines with ’em.”
“I don’t mean local friends – visitors from London.”
“Very few. I’ve known one or two, but they’ve all been forriners. Mr Miller seems to like them forriners some’ow. But I don’t,” declared the old fellow. “They’re too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em for a pint o’ beer.”
“They were gentlemen, I suppose?”
“Oh, dear, yes – full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoes like women, and shirts pleated like women’s blouses – great swells, I can assure you.”
“You never heard of any of their names?”
“No, how was I to ’ear? Once two of ’em came in one hot day and jabbered, sayin’ ‘boch! boch!’ an’ grinnin’ all over their faces. It was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two half-pints o’ bitter. I suppose boch is what they calls it in French.”
“Yes,” I laughed. “You’re quite right.”
The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected. Had they been Italian they would have asked for birra.
Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart. My host did not know the visitor’s name. He described him, however, as tall and thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned up at the ends.
“They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the post-office, and I ’eard ’em talking in some gibberish,” added the old fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips. Like all his race in the rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he might. In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was “a froggie.”
That evening I went for my usual lonely stroll by the sea, while all next day I spent in watchful vigil in the vicinity of the Manor. Though for hours I idled concealed in the park, within view of the stately old home of the Millers, my patience was unrewarded. No sign of Lucie did I see, either at any of the windows or in the old rose-garden.
Next evening, however, having learnt from the landlord that she was much interested in a decrepit old woman who had been her nurse, and who lived in a cottage at the farther end of Studland, I idled in wait for her in a narrow green lane which ran at the back of the church, and was at length rewarded by seeing her approaching. She was dressed in white muslin with a large lace garden hat, and beside her walked her pet dog, a beautiful fawn collie.
Boldly I went towards her, my hat in my hand in respectful greeting.
In an instant she recognised me, and drew back, half in surprise, half in alarm.
Her countenance went white as death.
“You – Why – Mr Leaf!” she gasped, attempting to smile. “Only fancy – to meet you here!”
“Miss Miller,” I said calmly, taking the hand she offered me, and glancing around in order to see that we were not observed, “I came here on purpose to meet you – to speak with you!”
“With me?” she cried in cold surprise, her brows contracting in marked displeasure. “What have you to say? Explain quickly, for we must not be seen together here.” And I recognised from her trembling lips how anxious and agitated she had become. She was in some great fear. I was convinced of that.
She tried to smile me welcome, but it died from her white lips. The expression upon her face told me that she was in deadly fear lest I should discover her secret.
I was, I felt certain, the very last person whom she desired to meet.
The very fact of my presence there told her that I knew something concerning her – something concerning the past that she intended at all costs to hide from me.
Chapter Eleven
Lucie is Confidential
“This is not altogether an accidental meeting, Miss Miller,” I confessed at once to her. “The fact is I have waited in vain for your return to Granville Gardens, and at length have thought it wise to come here in search of you.”
“Who told you that we lived here?” she inquired breathlessly.
“No one told me, I discovered the fact quite accidentally,” was my answer. “Remember that your family is an old one, and in Debrett, therefore it was easy to find out the home of the Dorsetshire Millers.” My rather plausible explanation apparently satisfied her, for looking sharply around, she said: —
“If we are to talk, Mr Leaf, let us cross yonder stile and slip across the fields. We shall not be seen there.” So I helped her over the stile she indicated and we passed together along a steep path beside a high hawthorn hedge, and a few minutes later descended into the hollow where the village and sea were lost to view.
“I certainly expected you to return,” I said, half reproachfully. “I believed that you would wish to hear something further regarding the dead man. You refused to tell me his name, but I have discovered it. He was Nardini, the absconding ex-Minister of Justice in Rome.”
“Who told you so?” she inquired, looking at me with considerable suspicion.
“I took possession of his papers. They explained everything,” I replied simply. “And now,” I added, “the reason I am here is to inquire if I can assist you in any way, and to repeat my readiness to do so.”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head sadly. “No assistance that you could render me, Mr Leaf, would, I regret to say, be of any avail,” and I saw tears welling in her eyes.
“But you must not give up like this,” I urged. “You must endeavour to shield yourself, even if you fail, after all. The man is dead; his mouth is closed.”
“Ah, yes. That is just it. If he lived he might, perhaps, have had compassion upon me.”
“He refused to tell the truth – that you were at his villa at Tivoli on that evening, and therefore could not have been in Rome, eh?”
She halted, glaring at me open-mouthed. She saw that I knew the truth, and after a few moments’ silence with her eyes fixed upon mine, she exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice: —
“He preserved silence because he dared not tell the truth. He was a cur and a coward.”
“And also a thief, it would seem,” I added.
“Yes – you have seen what the papers are saying about him, I suppose? The police are searching for him all over Europe. They have no idea that he is already dead and buried.”
“Perhaps it is as well; otherwise the papers would have fallen into their hands. As it is I took possession of them all and restored them to the Italian Embassy – all but this,” and I drew out her letter of appeal, and, opening it, handed it to her.
She glanced at it, crushed it in her hand with a sigh, her dark eyes still fixed upon mine, as though she were trying to read my innermost thoughts.
“Who are your enemies?” I asked in a kindly tone of sympathy. “Tell me, Miss Miller, what have they alleged against you?”
Her brows again contracted. She set her lips hard but remained silent, determined not to satisfy me regarding the charge against her.
I pressed her to speak, but she was firm and quite immovable.
“Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous enemies,” was her low, inert answer.
“That letter is best destroyed,” I said. Then with murmured thanks she tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.
I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which Nardini had preserved with her letter.
On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her father and myself had become friends.
At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the beautiful old place, she became reassured. Did she know the secret of her father’s double life? In any case I could see that she was prepared to go to any length in order to shield him.
“I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card,” she said. “She will probably be wondering whoever you can be.”
“If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent to her.”
“A most excellent excuse,” she laughed. “I’ll tell her so, and then if you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call.”
“I shall be only too delighted,” I assured her. “Your father I found a most charming man – almost as charming as his daughter.”
“Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf,” she exclaimed, flushing slightly.
“It is not an idle one, I assure you,” I said. “The compliment is equally to your father as to yourself.” And then we strolled forward again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and hawthorns. Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness, was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be? No, I could not bring myself to believe it. She spoke with such feeling and sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.
Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of Lucie’s to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?
The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry and discover the disgraceful truth.
Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and looking straight into her face, said: —
“Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery – one that utterly astounded me.”
Her countenance went ashen grey.
“A discovery!” she faltered. “What – what do you mean?”
Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and hastened to set her at her ease.
“I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear friend – Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. How curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!”
“Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?” she exclaimed quickly, reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.
“I knew her very well indeed,” was my slow response. “When were you acquainted with her?”
“Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacré Coeur at Evreux, and both left the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, and once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays together.”
“She actually visited here!” I exclaimed in surprise.
“Several times. Mr Murray was my father’s friend. As you know, he lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirely abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her. She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhere admired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her ‘The Little Madonna,’ for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck’s Madonna in the Pitti in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel.”
“Ah, of course!” I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, I recognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read this chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression of sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. “What do you know further concerning her?” I asked. “Tell me all – for she was my friend.”
“About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray died. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who lived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt’s house in Porchester Terrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. She would not tell me the man’s name, but only said that her father and her aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious, and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father, who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret lover and give him his congé. Who he was or what became of him I do not know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has ever loved a man – poor little Ella!”
I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true? Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already broken heart?
“Miss Miller!” I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, “what you tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved Ella Murray. He was none other than myself – I who loved her, ay better than my own life – I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so adored – the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me.”
“You – Mr Leaf!” she cried. “Impossible. You were actually Ella’s secret lover!”
“Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years,” I said, half-choked. “You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say, perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of parting is a very severe one – often more so to the man than to the woman. But,” I added quickly, “pardon me, I am talking to you as though you were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced the bitterness of a blighted love.”
“Unfortunately I have,” she answered, in a low, trembling voice. “I, too, loved once – and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks of affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved was cruelly snatched from me for ever.” And she sighed and tears welled in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her – her mind filled with painful recollections.
She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young heart.
Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the girlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.
But she had told me one truth – a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my dear dead love! She had still loved me – she had still been mine – in heart my own!