"Forbidden!" I cried, taking her proffered hand and keeping possession
of it. "Why is our friendship forbidden? I thought you had accepted my
friendship! I do not know the truth about yourself--nor do I wish to
know. I only know that I desire to serve you in every way a man is
capable. I only ask you to allow me to love you, to let me think of you
as my own."
"Ah, no!" she said, withdrawing her hand. "It is not just that I should
allow you to thus go headlong into ruin. My duty is to warn you of the
dire consequences of this reckless devotion to myself," she added with
that sweet touch of her woman's nature that had all along held me
charmed. "Hear me, Mr Kennedy, I beseech of you. Pause and reflect
upon the consequences. You say you are my friend. That may be so, but
when I tell you in reply that no friendship is permissible between us,
will it not be best if we part at once--
[About five lines missing here.]
of my return to London--not by mere chance surely, but because I am
destined to serve you."
A man's arguments in such circumstances are never very logical. What
other words I uttered I do not recollect. I only know that her
determination to tell me nothing about herself rendered her the more
attractive.
But to all my persuasions, my pleadings, and my utterances she was still
the same woman of honour, fearful lest I should come to harm through
association with her, fearful lest the unknown fate she dreaded should
fall upon us both at the hour of our supreme happiness.
At one moment I felt that I was acting foolishly in thus trying to
persuade her into accepting me as her friend, and at others the fact
that in social standing I was far beneath her, the daughter of a noble
house and well known in London, impressed itself upon me.
For half an hour we walked onward, heedless of where our footsteps led
us. She told me of her recent travels in the East with her father, of
their delightful time in the cold weather in India, and afterwards in
Sydney and Melbourne.
"My father has been a wanderer ever since my poor mother's death," she
exclaimed, with a touch of sadness. "He will never remain in England
long, because life here always brings back recollections of her. They
were a very devoted pair," she added.
"And so you have accompanied him?"
"Yes, ever since I left the convent school in France. My journeys
already have included two trips round the world and a yachting voyage to
Spitzbergen."
"Well," I laughed, "I thought I had some claim to be a traveller; but
you entirely eclipse me."
"Ah, but I am tired of it--terribly tired, I can assure you."
I told her how I, too, had suffered from that nostalgia that comes
sooner or later to most persons who live abroad, that curious indefinite
malady of the heart which causes one to long for home and friends, and
to waste in the flesh if the desire is ungratified. You who have lived
abroad have experienced it.
I told her how I had lived for years beside that brilliant tideless sea
until I had become sun-sick and tired of blue skies, whereupon she
sighed and said:
"Italy!--ah, yes! I know Italy. I have, alas! cause to remember my
visit there."
"Is the recollection of it so bitter?" I inquired, quickly on the
alert.
"Yes," she answered in a hard voice. "It is years ago now; but I
recollect every one of those incidents as vividly as though they only
happened yesterday. Milan, Florence, Perugia, Rome--all cities whose
very names are now hateful to me. Yet I suppose the past should be of
the past." And she sighed again, her eyes fixed upon the pavement.
What could I say? What question could I put to her?
Could it be that her journey to Italy had had any connection with the
strange conspiracy that seemed to be in progress, or was it possible
that her travels in the South had been fraught with some youthful love
episode of a tragic nature?
Her character, sweet and modest, was yet so utterly complex that I could
not understand it. I was, therefore, uncertain of the security of my
own position, and thus feared to explain to her that The Closed Book
stolen from Harpur Street was in my hands, lest it might be against the
interests of the investigations I had undertaken.
She made no mention of the old hunchback from Leghorn, who had no doubt
visited at Harpur Street, perhaps even made the house his headquarters.
Yet I felt sure that she was acquainted with Graniani just as she knew
Selby.
Again and again I reverted to my affection for her, begging and
imploring her to view my suit with favour, or if not, at least to allow
me to stand her friend. But she was obdurate, although my words caused
her much genuine emotion.
I saw that, although driven to desperation by reason of some unspeakable
secret, she was nevertheless a woman of honour. If I sought to assist
her, I should place myself in deadly peril of my life, she declared.
This she would not allow me to do. Why? Was it because at heart she
was really my friend?
I wonder if there are others who have experienced a similar feeling--a
desire to commence life afresh, guided by a good woman? If they have,
they will know the feelings which were mine. I was no mawkish youth,
callow in his first affection, and carrying his heart upon his sleeve.
On the contrary, I had known love, I had enjoyed my allotted share of
it, and just as prosperity had come to me the great sorrow of my life
had come also to me, and I had gone abroad to bury myself in an Italian
village.
Dusk darkened into night, and the street lamps commenced to glimmer as
we strolled on and on westward, through that maze of highly respectable
streets and squares which constitute Bayswater, until we suddenly found
ourselves in the boarding-house region of Powis Square. Then, at her
suggestion, we turned and retraced our steps to the Edgware Road,
proceeding towards the Park. The cloud that had earlier fallen upon her
seemed now removed, and she grew brighter.
Her father, she told me, had returned to London, and was at home; but
she expected they would both leave again tomorrow for the North.
"To Scotland?" I suggested with some anxiety.
"Oh, I really don't know," was her reply. "My father is most erratic in
his movements. I only know that he goes to the North, and that I go
with him."
"But tell me," I asked very earnestly, "has your father ever mentioned
his intention of going to Galloway?"
She looked up at me in some surprise.
"Yes, he did so the other day, while we were at Saxlingham," she
responded. "But why do you wish to know?"
"Because I have a reason--a very strong one," I answered. "He goes with
friends, doesn't he?"
"With me--I know of no one else who is going. We may be going to
Castle-Douglas; but of course I am quite in the dark. Very often I have
set out from Charing Cross with him and have not known our destination
until we have been in Paris or Brussels. Again, we have, on several
occasions, been living quietly at home in Grosvenor Street when all our
friends have believed us to be on the other side of the equator. It is
quite exciting, I assure you, to live in secret at home, see nobody, and
only go out at night, and then always in fear of being recognised," she
added.
"But why does your father do these things; he surely has some motive?"
I recollected that the town of Castle-Douglas was near the castle of
Threave.
She gave her well-formed shoulders a shrug, and her countenance was
overspread by a blank look of ignorance which I was compelled to admit
was feigned.
Mystery crowded on mystery. I could make nothing out of it all. Put
yourself for a moment in my place, and ask yourself whether you could
solve the extraordinary problem surrounding this popular peer and his
daughter who, while appearing frequently at the most exclusive functions
in London, were sometimes living in absolute secrecy in their own house,
or wandering over the face of the world without apparent motive, yet
evidently with some fixed but secret object.
The more I reflected, the more utterly mystified I became.
"It is impossible--quite impossible?" she said when, at the Park Lane
corner of Grosvenor Street I halted to take leave of her. "We must not
meet again. I hope, Mr Kennedy, you will think no more of me," she
added; "because it pains me quite as much as it does you. As I have
already told you, I would explain the truth if I were allowed--but I
cannot."
I saw that her eyelids trembled slightly, and I, folding her hand in
farewell, pressed it with a deep meaning which she understood, and to
which she responded.
"But we are friends, Lady Judith; we are friends, are we not?"
In response she drew a long sigh, and shook her head, saying, "Mr
Kennedy, I know you are my friend, and one day, perhaps, I shall require
to put your friendship to the test. Until then, let us remain apart,
because it will be best so. You know the fears I have--the fear that
evil may befall you."
"I am ready to serve you at any moment," I answered.
She withdrew her hand, sighing again, and, filled with emotion by my
final declaration, hurried away through the hot, oppressive night.
For a moment, full of vague regret, I watched her departure, then turned
on my heel and strolled down Park Lane into Piccadilly on my return to
Dover Street, my mind full of that sweet-faced woman.
Those strange words of hers rang in my ears. At what did she hint?
Tragedy, deep and mysterious, was underlying it all, I was confident,
yet as a man of action I felt impelled towards that other spot mentioned
in The Closed Book--the grim castle of Threave, that scene of foul
deeds, that through the Middle Ages was the home of the Black Douglas.
That her father intended to go there was evident, and it therefore
behooved us to lose no time in going North and making preliminary
investigations.
The advisability of going North without delay filled my mind until I had
become oblivious to all about me, and indeed I was walking quite
unconscious of the hurrying traffic in Piccadilly until I felt a slight
touch on the arm and heard a woman's low voice exclaim in Italian,
"Pardon, Signor Kennedy, but I believe we have met before?"
I started and turned quickly aside to recognise in the speaker the very
last person whom I expected to meet in that busy London thoroughfare--
the dark-eyed, well-dressed woman whom I had encountered in the prior's
study at Florence, the woman in black who had made confession to Father
Bernardo.