But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate
unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had
taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case
would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D----
must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no
longer.
No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her
save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers
till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."
But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
what few women in the world would have had the courage to do--shown
her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would be an
embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out that
morning that it was too early yet to call.
To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
_perdu_ and in wait for me.
"A letter, Mr. Munro, from D---- & Co.," said the brisk young
clerk. They had treated me with great respect of late, for, indeed,
our claim was steadily growing in weight, and was sure to come right
before long. I opened and read:
"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic--what you
have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger
sails at once, and will report himself to you."
"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's
young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.
And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the
steps in Clarges street.
"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of
Parliament, who opened the door--"Miss Meyrick, I mean."
"Yes, sir--in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a
flourish.
Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for
on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.
Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.
"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard
and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then--did you?--that I
cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched me
as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you,
sir--none at all. Can you?"
Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,
and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.
I had dreaded the _rôle_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and, I
own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played
out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a
late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all my
little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,
etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.
For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,
in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I
should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and in
which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and
calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being
beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.
But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe
I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.
But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact
which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in the world--the
_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a
difficult bar.
It _was_ delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father,
and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.
I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.
But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as I
had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs. D----,
with a large traveling party. They came straight to London, and
summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.
I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom I
had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers
who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.
"Mr. D---- charged me, Mr. Munro," she began after our first
ceremonious greeting, "to give this into no hands but yours. I have
kept it securely with my diamonds, and those I always carry about me."
From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the paper
I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was strongly
perfumed with violet powder.
"You see, I was coming over," she proceeded to explain, "in any event,
and when Mr. D---- talked of sending Bunker--I think it was
Bunker--with us, I persuaded him to let me be messenger instead. It
wasn't worth while, you know, to have any more people leave the
office, you being away, and--Oh, Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!"
As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the _surprised_ look in her
eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to me, I
thought that the reason for young Bunker's omission from the party was
possibly before me.
Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices! Her
maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor young
clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For at
this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
it on the morrow for home.
"Bessie is in Lenox, I think," Fanny Meyrick had said to me as I bade
her good-bye.
"What! You have heard from her?"
"No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends this
morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church steps."
I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.
"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it
was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"
"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.