THE TENDER MERCIES OF TWO LADIES
By way of a commencement, Miss Broad was conscious of two things--that
Miss Bewicke was looking her best; that she herself was looking her
worst; at least, she was nearly certain she was looking her worst, she
felt so hideous.
Miss Bewicke had a knack of walking--it came by nature, though there
were those who called it a trick--which gave her a curious, and,
indeed, humorous, air of importance altogether beyond anything her
stature seemed to warrant. This enabled her to overwhelm men, and even
women who were much taller than herself, with a grace which was
positively charming. She moved across that spacious hall, looking
straight at Miss Broad, as if there was nothing there; and was walking
past with an apparent unconsciousness of there being anyone within a
mile, though she brushed against the other's skirts as she passed,
which was a little more than Miss Broad could endure. She was not
going all the way to Brighton to be treated by that woman as if she
were a nonentity.
'Miss Bewicke!'
The lady, who had passed, turned.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Can I speak to you?'
'Speak to me?' She regarded the other with a smile which, if pretty,
was impertinent. 'I'm afraid I haven't the pleasure.'
'I am Miss Broad.'
'Broad?--Broad? I don't seem to remember.'
'Perhaps you remember Mr Holland.'
'Mr Holland?--Guy Holland? Oh, yes, I have good cause for remembering
him.'
'Mr Holland has spoken of me to you?'
'Oh! You are that Miss Broad! I have pleasure in wishing you good
morning.'
Miss Bewicke walked off as if, so far as she was concerned, the matter
was at an end; but so abrupt a termination to the interview the other
would not permit.
'I am sorry to detain you, Miss Bewicke, but, as I have said, I wish
to speak to you.'
'Yes. What do you wish to say?'
'Can I not speak to you in private?'
'By all means.' Miss Bewicke led the way into a sitting-room. As soon
as they were in, and the door closed, before the other had a chance to
open her lips, she herself began the ball. 'Miss Broad, before you
speak, there is something which I wish to say to you. You incited Mr
Guy Holland to commit, last night, a burglary upon my premises.'
If she expected the other to show signs of confusion, or to attempt
denial, she was mistaken. Miss Broad did not flinch.
'I did.'
'You admit it?'
'I do.'
'Are you aware that in so doing you were guilty of a criminal action?'
'As to that I know nothing, and care less.'
'I have only to send for a policeman to have you sentenced to a term
of imprisonment.'
'I understand how it is you have been so successful on the stage. You
really are an excellent actress. You bear yourself as if you were the
injured party, while all the time you know very well that it was
precisely because you had robbed him that I advised him to despoil you
of your booty.'
'You are perfectly aware that that is false.'
'On the contrary, I am perfectly aware that it is true. Where is Mr
Holland? Is he here with you?'
'Miss Broad!'
'Or did you dare to make his doing, what you know he was perfectly
justified in doing, an affair of the police?'
'I came upon Guy Holland, at dead of night, engaged in robbing me, and
I sent him from me with my blessing.'
'Then where is he?'
'I know no more than this chair.'
'Miss Bewicke, I called at your rooms this morning. I saw his
walking-stick upon your table. When I asked how it came there, the
woman who had opened the door said, in effect, that he had left it
behind in his hurry to go away with you.'
'The woman! What woman?'
'She said she was your companion.'
'Casata? Louise Casata never said anything so monstrous.'
'Not in so many words; but that was what she intended me to
understand.'
'You believed it? What a high opinion you appear to have of us! Guy
must be worse even than I imagined, or you, his promised wife, would
not judge him with such hard judgment.'
'I did not believe it; but I did believe that you called in the police
last night.'
'I didn't; I called in no one. I simply told him to go, and he went.'
'You are laughing. You know where he is. I can see it in your face.'
'Then you are indeed a seer.'
'This morning, when he did not come, as he promised he would, and
always has done, someone gave me this. What am I to think?'
Miss Broad handed Miss Bewicke the two typewritten lines, which that
lady carefully regarded.
'Someone? Who was someone?'
'A little boy. I thought it was a message from Guy. By the time I
found it wasn't, he was gone. I don't know who he was, nor from whom
he came, if it wasn't from you.'
It certainly did not come from me. Miss Broad, I begin to find you
amusing. I also begin to understand what it is Guy Holland perceives
in you to like. You are more of a woman than I am; that is, there is
in you more of the natural savage, which, to a man of his temperament,
goes to make a woman.'
'I want none of your praises.'
'I'm not going to give you any, or compliments either. I doubt if
you're in a frame of mind to properly appreciate any sort of
sleight-of-hand. Let me finish. I had an engagement for luncheon; as
you have made me late for it, perhaps you will do me the honour of
lunching with me here.'
'No, thank you.'
'Pardon me, you will.'
'Excuse me, I won't.'
'We shall see.'
Miss Bewicke touched the bell button. Miss Broad eyed her with flaming
cheeks.
'It's no use your ordering anything to eat for me, because I sha'n't
touch it. You treat me as if I were a child. I'm not a child.'
'My dear Miss Broad, we are both of us women--both of us; and there
are senses in which women and children are synonyms. Mr Holland was
once in love with me--he was, I assure you. He is now in love with
you, which fact creates between us a bond of sympathy.'
'I don't see it.'
'No? I do. You will. He appears to have got himself into, we will put
it, a rather equivocal position. It is our bounden duty, as joint
sympathisers, to get him out of it. We will discuss our bounden duty;
but I never can discuss anything when I'm starving, which I am.'
To the waiter who appeared Miss Bewicke gave orders for an immediate
lunch for two. Miss Broad kept silence. The truth was, she was not
finding Miss Bewicke altogether the sort of person she expected. That
little lady went on,--
'I'm free to confess, my dear Miss Broad; by the way, may I call you
Letty?'
'No; you may not.'
'Thank you; you are so sweet. As I was about to remark, my
dear--Letty'--the other winced, but was still--'I'm free to confess
that I think it not improbable that something has happened to Mr
Holland.'
'You know that something has happened?'
'I don't know--I surmise. I put two and two together, thus:--To begin
with, I don't think that you were the only person who egged him on to
felony.'
Miss Broad again was speechless. She remembered Mr Holland's tale of
his encounter with Miss Casata.
'There was a preciseness about his proceedings which set me thinking
at the time, and has kept me thinking ever since. I'm pretty shrewd,
you know. Now, I happen to be aware that a certain person of my
acquaintance has been on too good terms with Mr Horace Burton. You
have heard of Mr Horace Burton? I thought so. Such a nice young man!
Now, however, this certain person is on the worst terms with Mr Horace
Burton. For sufficient reasons, I assure you. She has been evolving
fantastic schemes of vengeance on the deceitful wretch; she's just a
little cracked, you know. To ruin Mr Horace Burton by assisting Guy
Holland to deprive him of his fortune would be just the kind of notion
which would commend itself to her. I fancy that that's exactly what
she did do. Didn't she, my dear?'
Miss Broad was breathing a little hard. The other's keen intuition
startled her.
'It was I who told him to take what was his own.'
'Yes, I know; but the first suggestion did not come from you. However,
so long as we understand each other, that's the point. To proceed--Mr
Horace Burton would be cautious that this certain person's sweetness
had turned to gall, and also that she was wishful to pay him out in
his own coin. He might even have a notion of the form that payment was
to take, having learned it from the certain person's own lips. If so,
you may be quite sure that he or his friends saw Guy Holland enter my
premises, if nobody else did. They saw him come out. They were to the
full as anxious to obtain possession of that ruby as ever he could be.
So they took it from him.'
'Took it from him--with violence?'
'Do you think they could take it from him without violence--that he
would hand it over practically upon request? That's not like Guy; not
the Guy I knew. He'd fight for it tooth and nail himself against a
regiment.'
'Do you think then they hurt him?'
'It looks as if they did something to him. He never went home. There
must have been some reason why he didn't. There is at least a
possibility that it was because he couldn't.'
'Do you think they--killed him?'
'Ah, now you ask too much. I should say certainly not. It would be
unintentionally if they did. That would be too big a price even for Mr
Horace Burton to pay. If they attacked him in fair fight, I should say
that he killed someone before they did him; and that when they did it
was because they had to. But the possibility is that they never let
him have a chance; that they stole on him unawares, and had him at
their mercy before he knew that danger threatened.'
'Miss Bewicke, you are so clever--so much cleverer than I--'
'My dear!'
'Come up to town with me and help me look for him, and go with me to
the police, and--'
'Set all London by the ears? I know. We'll do it; but here comes
lunch. You sit down to lunch with me, and we'll talk things over while
we lunch. You see how far talking things over has already brought us;
and after lunch we'll go to town, as you suggest, and find out what's
happened to Guy Holland, and where he is, or we'll know the reason
why. But if you won't lunch with me, then nothing remains but to wish
you good day, and, so far as I'm concerned, there'll be an end of the
matter. I'll have nothing to do with a person who won't eat my bread
and salt.'
So the ladies lunched together. Although Miss Broad declared that she
could not swallow a morsel, Miss Bewicke induced her to dispose of
several. Indeed, she handled her with so much skill that by the time
the meal was through--it was not a long one--one would have thought
that they really were on decent terms with one another, though Miss
Broad was still a trifle scratchy. But then her nerves were out of
order, and when a lady's nerves are out of order, she is apt,
occasionally, to stray from those well-defined paths which etiquette
and good breeding require her to tread; in short, she does not know
what she is doing, or what anybody else is doing either, which Miss
Bewicke quite understood, so that her guest's eccentricities,
apparently, simply amused her.
And the two young ladies went up together in the same compartment to
London to look for Mr Holland, and to call down, if necessary,
vengeance on his enemies and those who had despitefully used him.