THE COUNTESS DE SANTIAGO
"You don't wish to tell me the name?" Ruthven Smith was saying.
The repetition irritated the girl, whose nerves were strained to snapping
point. She could not parry the man's questions. She could not bear his
grieved or offended reproaches. If he persisted, through these moments of
suspense, she would scream or burst out crying. Trembling, with tears in
her voice, she heard herself answer. And yet it did not seem to be
herself, but something within, stronger than she, that suddenly took
control of her.
"Why should I not wish to tell you?" the Something was saying. "The name
is the same as your own--Smith. Nelson Smith." And before the words had
left her lips a taxi drew up at the door.
There was one instant of agony during which the previous suspense seemed
nothing--an instant when the girl forgot what she had said, her soul
pressing to the windows of her eyes. Was it he who had come, or----
It was he. Before she had time to finish the thought, he walked in,
confident and smiling as when she had left him a few minutes--or a few
years--ago; and in the wave of relief which overwhelmed her, Annesley
forgot Ruthven Smith's question and her answer. She remembered again,
only with the shock of hearing him address the newcomer by the name she
had given.
"I hear from Miss Grayle that we are namesakes," Mr. Ruthven Smith said,
as "Nelson Smith" sprang in and took the girl's bag from her ice-cold
hand.
"I--he asked me ... I told him," Annesley stammered, her eyes appealing,
seeking to explain, and begging pardon. "But if----"
"Quite right. Why _not_ tell?" he answered instantly, his first glance
of surprise turning to cheerful reassurance. "Now Mrs. Ellsworth is
eliminated, I'm no longer a secret. And I expect you'll like to meet Mr.
Ruthven Smith again when you have a house to entertain him in."
So speaking, he offered his hand with a smile to his "namesake"; and
Annesley realized from the outsider's point of view the peculiar
attraction of the man. Ruthven Smith felt it, as she had felt it, though
differently and in a lesser degree. Not only did he shake hands, but
actually came out to the taxi with them, asking Annesley if he should
tell his cousins of her engagement, or if she preferred to give the news
herself?
It flashed into the girl's mind that it would be perfect if she could be
married to her knight by Archdeacon Smith; but she had been imprudent too
often already. She dared not make such a suggestion without consulting
the other person most concerned, so she answered that she would write
Mrs. Smith or see her.
"To say that you, too, are going to be Mrs. Smith!" chuckled the
Archdeacon's cousin in his dry way, which made him seem even older than
he was. "Well, you can trust me with Mrs. Ellsworth. If she goes on as
she began to-night, I'm afraid I shall have to follow your example: 'fold
my tent like an Arab, and silently steal away.' Ha, ha! By the by, I dare
say she's owing you salary. I'll remind her of it if you like--tell her
you asked me. It may help with the trousseau."
"Thank you, but my wife won't need to remind Mrs. Ellsworth of her debt,"
the answer came before Annesley could speak. "And she _will_ be my wife
in a day or two at latest. Good-night! Glad to have met you, even if it
was an unpromising introduction."
Then they were off, they two alone together; and Annesley guessed that
the chauffeur must have had his instructions where to drive, as she heard
none given. Perhaps it was best that their destination should not be
published aloud, for there are walls which have ears. It occurred to the
girl that precautions might still have to be taken. But in another moment
she was undeceived.
"I thought old Ruthven Smith would be shocked if he knew the 'safe
refuge' I have for you is no more convent-like than the Savoy Hotel," her
companion laughed. "By Jove, neither you nor I dreamed when we got out of
the last taxi that we should soon be in another, going back to the place
we started from!"
"The Savoy!" exclaimed Annesley. "Oh, but we mustn't go there, of all
places! Those men----"
"I assure you it's safer now than anywhere in London!" the man cut her
short. "I can't explain why--that is, I _could_ explain if I cared to rig
up a story. But there's something about you makes me feel as if I'd like
to tell you the truth whenever I can: and the truth is, that for reasons
you may understand some day--though I hope to Heaven you'll never have
to!--my association with those men is one of the things I long to turn
the key upon. I know that that sounds like Bluebeard to Fatima, but it
isn't as bad as _that_. To me, it doesn't seem bad at all. And I swear
that whatever mystery--if you call it 'mystery'--there is about me, it
sha'n't hurt you. Will you believe this--and trust me for the rest?"
"I've told you I would!" the girl reminded him.
"I know. But things were different then--not so serious. They hadn't gone
so far. I didn't suppose that Fate would give you to me so soon. I didn't
dare hope it. I----"
"Are you _sure_ you want me?" Annesley faltered.
"Surer than I've ever been of anything in my life before. It's only of
you I'm thinking. I wanted to arrange my--business matters so as to be
fair to you. But you'll make the best of things."
"You are being noble to me," said the girl, "and I've been very foolish.
I've complicated everything. First, by what I told Mr. Ruthven Smith
about--about _us_. And then--saying your name was Nelson Smith."
"You weren't foolish!" he contradicted. "You were only--playing into
Fate's hands. You couldn't help yourself. Destiny! And all's for the
best. You were an angel to sacrifice yourself to save me, and your doing
it the way you did has made me a happy man at one stroke. As for the
name--what's in a name? We might as well be in reality what we played at
being to-night--'Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Smith.' There are even reasons why
I'm pleased that you've made me a present of the name. I thank you for
it--and for all the rest."
"Oh, but if it isn't _really_ your name, we sha'n't be legally married,
shall we?" Annesley protested.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I hadn't thought of that. It's a difficulty.
But we'll obviate it--somehow. Don't worry! Only I'm afraid we can't ask
your friend the Archdeacon to marry us, as I meant to suggest, because I
was sure you'd like it."
"I should. But it doesn't matter," said the girl. "Besides, I feel that
to-morrow I shall find I've dreamed--all this."
"Then I've dreamed you, at the same time, and I'm not going to let you
slip out of my dream, now I've got you in it. I intend to go on dreaming
you for the rest of my life. And I shall take care _you_ don't wake up!"
Afterward there came a time when Annesley called back those words and
wondered if they had held a deeper meaning than she guessed. But, having
uttered them, he seemed to put the thought out of his mind, and turn to
the next.
"About the Savoy," he went on. "I want to take you there, because I
know a woman staying in the hotel--a woman old enough to be your
mother--who'll look after you, to please me, till we're married.
Afterward you'll be nice to her, and that will be doing her a good
turn, because she's apt to be lonesome in London. She's the widow of
a Spanish Count, and has lived in the Argentine, but I met her in New
York. She knows all about me--or enough--and if she'd been in the
restaurant at dinner this evening she could have done for me what you
did. I had reason to think she would be there when I bolted in to get
out of a fix. But she was missing. Are you sorry?"
"If she'd been there, you would have gone to her table and sat down, and
we--should never have met!" Annesley thought aloud. "How strange! Just
that _little_ thing--your friend being out to dinner--and our whole lives
are to be changed. Oh, _you_ must be sorry?"
"I tell you, meeting you and winning you in this way is worth the best
ten years of my life. But you haven't answered my question."
"I'll answer it now!" cried the girl. "Meeting you is worth _all_ the
years of my life! I'm not much of a princess, but you _are_ St. George."
"St. George!" he echoed, a ring of bitterness under his laugh. "That's
the first time I've been called a saint, and I'm afraid it will be the
last. I can't live up to that, but--if I can give you a happy life, and
a few of the beautiful things you deserve, why, it's _something_!
Besides, I'm going to worship my princess. I'd give anything to show you
how I--but no. I was good before, when I was tempted to kiss you. You're
at my mercy now, in a way, all the more because I'm taking you from your
old existence to one you don't know.
"I sha'n't ask to kiss you--except maybe your little hand if you don't
mind--until the moment you're my wife. Meantime, I'll try to grow a bit
more like what your lover ought to be; and later I shall kiss you enough
to make up for lost time."
If, five hours ago, any one had told Annesley Grayle that she would wish
to have a strange man take her in his arms and kiss her she would have
felt insulted. Yet so it was. She was sorry that he was so scrupulous.
She longed to have him hold her against his heart.
The thought thrilled her like an electric shock a thousand times more
powerful than the tingling which had flashed up her arm at the first
touch of his hand, though even that had seemed terrifying then. But she
sat still in her corner of the taxi, and gave him no answer, lest she
should betray herself.
Her silence, after the warmth of his words, seemed cold. Perhaps he felt
it so, for he went on after an instant's pause, as if he had waited for
something in vain, and his tone was changed. Annesley thought it, by
contrast, almost businesslike.
"You mustn't be afraid," he said, "that I mean to stay at the Savoy
myself. Even if I'd been stopping there, I should move if I were going to
put you in the hotel. But I have my own lair in London. I've been over
here a number of times. Indeed, I'm partly English, born in Canada,
though I've spent most of my life in the United States. Nobody at the
Savoy but the Countess de Santiago knows who I am, and she'll understand
that it may be convenient for me to change my name. Nelson Smith is a
respectable one, and she'll respect it!
"Now, my plan is to ask for her (she'll be in by this time), have a few
words of explanation on the quiet, not to embarrass you; and the Countess
will do the rest. She'll engage a room for you next to her own suite, or
as near as possible; then you'll be provided with a chaperon."
"I'm not anxious about myself, but about you," Annesley said. "You
haven't told me yet what happened after you went upstairs at Mrs.
Ellsworth's, and how you knew those men were gone. I suppose you did
know? Or--did you chance it?"
"I was as sure as I needed to be," Nelson Smith answered. "A moment after
I switched on the electricity in the room up there I heard a taxi drive
away. I turned off the light so I could look out. By flattening my nose
against the glass I could see that the place where those chaps had waited
was empty; but in case the taxi was only turning, and meant to pass the
house again, I lit the room once more, for realism.
"That's what kept me rather long--that, and waiting for the dragon to go.
Otherwise I should have been down before Ruthven Smith trapped me.
"For a second it looked as if the game of life was up. And then I found
out how much you meant to me. It was _you_ I thought of. It seemed
beastly hard luck to leave you fast in that old woman's clutches!"
Annesley put out her hand with a warm impulse. He took it, raising it to
his lips, and both were startled when the taxi stopped. They had arrived
at the Savoy: and though Annesley seemed to have lived through a lifetime
of emotion, just one hour and thirty minutes had passed since she and her
companion drove away from these bright revolving doors.
The foyer was as brilliant and crowded as when they left at half-past
ten. People were parting after supper; or they were lingering in the
restaurant beyond. Nobody paid the slightest attention to the newcomers,
and Annesley settled down unobtrusively in a corner, while her companion
went to scribble a line to the Countess de Santiago.
When he had finished, and sent up the letter, he did not return, and
again the girl had a few moments of suspense, thinking of the danger
which might not, after all, be over. Just as she had begun to be anxious,
however, she saw him coming with a wonderful woman.
Annesley could have laughed, remembering how he had said the Countess
would "mother" her. Any one less motherly than this Juno-like beauty in
flame-coloured chiffon over gold tissue it would be hard to imagine.
The Spanish South American Countess was of a camelia paleness, and had
almond-shaped dark eyes with brooding lashes under slender brows that
met. In contrast, her hair was of a flame colour vivid as her draperies,
and her lips were red.
At first glance Annesley thought that the dazzling creature could not be
more than thirty; but when the vision had come near enough to offer her
hand, without waiting for an introduction, a hardness about the handsome
face, a few lines about the eyes and mouth, and a fullness of the chin
showed that she was older--forty, perhaps.
Still, Annesley hoped that her lover had not asked the lady to "mother"
his fiancée. She had not the air of one who would be complimented by such
a request.
As Annesley put her hand into that of the Countess, she noticed that this
hand was as wonderful as the rest of the woman's personality. It was very
long, very narrow, with curiously supple-looking fingers exquisitely
manicured and wearing many rings. Even the thumb was abnormally long,
which fact prevented the hand from being as beautiful as it was, somehow,
unforgettable.
"This is a pleasure and a surprise," began the Countess, smiling, her
eyes appearing to take in the full-length portrait of Annesley Grayle
with their wide, unmoving gaze. When she smiled she was still extremely
handsome, but not so perfect as with lips closed, for her white teeth
were too short, somewhat irregular, and set too wide apart. She spoke
English perfectly, with a slight foreign accent and a roll of the letter
"r."
"My friend--Nelson Smith" (she turned, laughing, to him), "has told me
ex-_citing_ news. We have known each other a long time. I think this is
the best thing that can happen. And you will be a lucky girl. He, too,
will be lucky. I see that!" with another smile.
Annesley was disappointed because the beautiful woman's voice was not
sweet.
"Now you must engage her room," Nelson Smith said, abruptly. "It's late.
You can make friends afterward."
"Very well," the Countess agreed. "And you--will you come to the desk?
Yet, no--it is better not. Miss Grayle and I will go together--two women
alone and independent. Lucky it's not the season, or we might find
nothing free at short notice. But Don--I mean Nelson--always did have
luck. I hope he always will!"
She flashed him a meaning look, though what the meaning was Annesley
could not guess. She knew only that she did not like the Countess as she
had wished to like her lover's friend. There was something secret in the
dark eyes, something repellent about the long, slender thumb with its
glittering nail.