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The Betrayal, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 19. Mrs. Smith-Lessing |
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_ CHAPTER XIX. MRS. SMITH-LESSING Ray and I left the building together. As we turned into Pall Mall he glanced at his watch. "You have missed the six o'clock train," he remarked. "I suppose you know that there is nothing now till the nine-twenty. Will you come to the club with me, and have some dinner?" It was less an invitation than a command. I felt a momentary impulse of rebellion, but the innate masterfulness of the man triumphed easily. I found myself walking, a little against my will, down Pall Mall by his side. A man of some note, he was saluted every minute by passers-by, whom, however, he seemed seldom to notice. In his town clothes, his great height, his bronzed face, and black beard made him a sufficiently striking personality. I myself, though I was little short of six feet, seemed almost insignificant by his side. Until we reached the club he maintained an unbroken silence. He even ignored some passing comment of mine; but when once inside the building he seemed to remember that he was my host, and his manner became one of stiff kindness. He ordered an excellent dinner and chose the wine with care. Then he leaned a little forward across the table, and electrified me by his first remark. "Ducaine," he said, "what relatives have you with whom you are in any sort of communication?" "None at all!" I answered. "Sir Michael Trogoldy was your mother's brother," he remarked. "He is still alive." "I believe so," I admitted. "I have never approached him, nor has he ever taken any notice of me." "You did not write to him, for instance, when Heathcote absconded, and you had to leave college?" "Certainly not," I answered. "I did not choose to turn beggar." "How much," he asked, "do you know of your family history?" "I know," I told him, "that my father was cashiered from the army for misconduct, and committed suicide. I know, too, that my mother's people treated her shamefully, and that she died alone in Paris and almost in poverty. It was scarcely likely, therefore, that I was going to apply to them for help." Ray nodded. "I thought so," he remarked grimly. "I shall have to talk to you for a few minutes about your father." I said nothing. My surprise, indeed, had bereft me of words. He sipped his wine slowly, and continued. "Fate has dealt a little hardly with you," he said. "I am almost a stranger to you, and there are even reasons why you and I could never be friends. Yet it apparently falls to my lot to supplement the little you know of a very unpleasant portion of your family history. That rascal of a lawyer who absconded with your money should have told you on your twenty-first birthday." "A pleasant heritage!" I remarked bitterly; "yet I always wanted to know the whole truth." "Here goes, then," he said, filling my glass with wine. "Your father was second in command at Gibraltar. He sold a plan of the gallery forts to the French Government, and was dismissed from the army." I started as though I had been stung. Ray continued, his stern matter-of-fact tone unshaken. "He did not commit suicide as you were told. He lived, in Paris, a life of continual and painful degeneration. Your mother died of a broken heart. There was another woman, of course, whose influence over your father was unbounded, and at whose instigation he committed this disgraceful act. This woman is now at Braster." My brain was in a whirl. I was quite incapable of speech. "Her real name," he continued coolly, "God only knows. For the moment she calls herself Mrs. Smith-Lessing. She is a Franco-American, a political adventuress of the worst type, living by her wits. She is ugly enough to be Satan's mistress, and she's forty-five if she's a day, yet she has but to hold up her finger, and men tumble the gifts of their life into her lap, gold and honour, conscience and duty. At present I think it highly probable that you are her next selected victim." For several minutes Ray proceeded with his dinner. I did my best to follow his example, but my appetite was gone. I could scarcely persuade myself that the whole affair was not a dream--that the men who sat all round us in little groups, the dark liveried servants passing noiselessly backwards and forwards, were not figures in some shadowy nightmare, and that I should not wake in a moment to find myself curled up in a railway carriage on my way home. But there was no mistaking the visible presence of Colonel Mostyn Ray. Strong, stalwart, he sat within a few feet of me, calmly eating his dinner as though my agony were a thing of little account. He, at least, was real. "This woman," he continued, presently, "either is, or would like to be, mixed up with the treachery that is somewhere close upon us. Sooner or later she will approach you. You are warned." "Yes," I repeated vaguely, "I am warned." "I have finished," Colonel Ray remarked. "Go on with your dinner and think. I will answer any question presently." There were only two I put to him, and that was when my hansom had been called and I was on the point of leaving. "Is he--my father--alive now?" I asked. "I have reason to believe," Ray answered, "that he may be dead." "How is it," I asked, "that you are so well acquainted with these things? Were you at any time my father's friend?" "I was acquainted with him," Ray answered. "We were at one time in the same regiment. My friendship was--with your mother." The answer was illuming, but he never winced. "Indirectly," I said, "I seem to have a good deal to thank you for. Why do you say that you can never be my friend?" "You are your father's son," he answered curtly. "I am also my mother's son," I objected. "For which reason," he said, "I have done what I could to give you a start in life." And with these words he dismissed me. * * * * * I received Ray's warning concerning Mrs. Smith-Lessing, the new tenant of Braster Grange, somewhere between seven and eight o'clock, and barely an hour later I found myself alone in a first-class carriage with her, and a four hours' journey before us. She had arrived at King's Cross apparently only a few minutes before the departure of the train, for the platform was almost deserted when I took my seat. Just as I had changed my hat for a cap, however, wrapped my rug around my knees, and settled down for the journey, the door of my carriage was thrown open, and I saw two women looking in, one of whom I recognized at once. Mrs. Smith-Lessing, although the night was warm, was wearing a heavy and magnificent fur coat, and the guard of the train himself was attending her. Behind stood a plainly dressed woman, evidently her maid, carrying a flat dressing-case. There was a brief colloquy between the three. It ended in dressing-case, a pile of books, a reading lamp, and a formidable array of hat-boxes, and milliner's parcels being placed upon the rack and vacant seats in my compartment, and immediately afterwards Mrs. Smith-Lessing herself entered. I heard her tell her maid to enter the carriage behind. The door was closed and the guard touched off his hat. A minute later and we were off. I was alone with the adventuress. I had no doubt but that she had chosen my carriage with intent. I placed my dispatch-box on the rack above my head, and opened out a newspaper, which I had no intention of reading. She, for her part, arranged her travelling light and took out a novel. She did not apparently even glance in my direction, and seemed to become immersed at once in her reading. So we travelled for half an hour or so. At the end of that time I was suddenly conscious that she had laid down her book, and was regarding me through partially-closed eyes. I too laid down my paper. Our eyes met, and she smiled. "Forgive me," she said, "but did I not see you one day last week upon the sands at Braster with Lady Angela Harberly?" "I believe so," I answered. "You were riding, I think, with her brother." "How fortunate that I should find myself travelling with a neighbour!" she murmured. "I rather dreaded this night journey. I just missed the six o'clock, and I have been at the station ever since." I understood at once one of the charms of this woman. Her voice was deliciously soft and musical. The words seemed to leave her lips slowly, almost lingeringly, and she spoke with the precision and slight accent of a well-educated foreigner. Her eyes seemed to be wandering all over me and my possessions, yet her interest, if it amounted to that, never even suggested curiosity or inquisitiveness. "It is scarcely a pleasant journey at this time of night," I remarked. "Indeed, no," she assented. "I wonder if you know my name? I am Mrs. Smith-Lessing, of Braster Grange. And you?" "My name is Guy Ducaine," I told her. "I live at a small cottage called the 'Brand.'" "That charming little place you can just see from the sands?" she exclaimed. "I thought the Duke's head-keeper lived there." "It was a keeper's lodge before the Duke was kind enough to let it to me," I told her. She nodded. "It is a very delightful abode," she murmured. She picked up her book, and after turning over the pages aimlessly for a few minutes, she recommenced to read. I followed her example; but when a little later on I glanced across in her direction, I found that her eyes were fixed upon me, and that her novel lay in her lap. "My book is so stupid," she said apologetically. "I find, Mr. Ducaine," she added with sudden earnestness, "the elements of a much stranger story closer at hand." "That," I remarked, laying down my own book, and looking steadily across at her, "sounds enigmatic." "I think," she said, "that I am very foolish to talk to you at all about it. If you know who I am, you are probably armed against me at all points. You will weigh and measure my words, you will say to yourself, 'Lies, lies, lies!' You will not believe in me or anything I say. And, again, if you do not know, the story is too painful a one for me to tell." "Then let us both avoid it," I said, reaching again for my paper. "We shall stop at Ipswich in an hour. I will change carriages there." She turned round in her seat towards the window, as though to hide her face. My own attempt at reading was a farce. I watched her over the top of my paper. She was looking out into the darkness, and she seemed to me to be crying. Every now and then her shoulders heaved convulsively. Suddenly she faced me once more. There were traces of tears on her face; a small lace handkerchief was knotted up in her nervous fingers. "Oh, I cannot," she exclaimed plaintively. "I cannot sit here alone with you and say nothing. I know that I am judged already. It does not matter. I am your father's wife, Guy. You owe me at least some recognition of that fact." "I never knew my father," I said, "except as the cause of my own miserable upbringing and friendless life." "You never knew him," she answered, "and therefore you believe the worst. He was weak, perhaps, and, exposed to a terrible temptation, he fell! But he was not a bad man. He was never that." "Do you think, Mrs. Smith-Lessing," I said, struggling to keep my voice firm, though I felt myself trembling, "that this is a profitable discussion for either of us?" "Why not?" she exclaimed almost fiercely. "You have heard his story from enemies. You have judged him from the report of those who were never his friends. He sinned and he repented. Better and worse men than he have done that. If he were wholly bad, do you believe that after all these years I should care for him still?" I held my peace. The woman was leaning over towards me now. She seemed to have lost the desire to attract. Her voice had grown sharper and less pleasant, her carefully arranged hair was in some disorder, and the telltale blue veins by her temples and the crow's feet under her eyes were plainly visible. Her face seemed suddenly to have become pinched and wan, the flaming light in her strangely coloured eyes was a convincing assertion of her earnestness. She was not acting now, though what lay behind the storm I could not tell. "You seem afraid to talk to me," she exclaimed. "Why? I have done you no harm!" "Perhaps not," I answered, "yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up this miserable history. It is both painful and profitless." "I will say no more," she declared, with a sudden note of dignity in her tone. "I can see that I am judged already in your mind. After all, it does not really matter. No one likes to be thought worse of than they deserve, and women are all--a little foolish. But at least you must answer me one question. I have the right to ask it. You must tell me where he is." "Where who is?" I asked. Again her eyes flamed upon inc. Her lips parted a little, and I could see the white glimmer of her teeth. "Oh, you shall not fence with me like a baby!" she exclaimed. "Tell me, or lie to me, or refuse to tell me! Which is it?" "Upon my honour," I said, looking at her curiously, "I have no idea whom you mean!" She looked at inc steadily for several moments, her lips parted, her breath seeming to come sharply between her teeth. "I mean your father," she said. "Whom else should I mean?" _ |
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