Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable to me.
Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very home of
idle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle.
I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I realised that
my fellow-guests were the most reserved and self-centred of all possible
people.
One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a colonel in
the Indian army, was understood to be a student of Biblical prophecy,
having collected some thousands of texts which established the identity
of the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel.
Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken orders
without securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of the
world and (after forty years of continuous labour) to have reached the
century before Christ.
An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actress
who was studying in secret for a season at the National Theatre.
Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since been told
that every great city has many such groups of people, the great
prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors whom
the world does not know--the odds and ends of humanity, thrown aside by
the rushing river of life into the gulley-ways that line its banks, the
odd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whom
there is no place in the family, in society, or in the business of the
world.
It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have been
safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London into
which chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one unfortunate
happening.
That was the arrival of the daily newspaper.
There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the morning
and was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by an unwritten
law of the house) it was the duty as well as the honour of the person
who had first finished breakfast to take it up and read the most
startling part of the news to the rest of the company.
Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I was
startled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to the
fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:
"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress."
"Read it," said the old clergyman.
The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand, and
when I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what was
coming, and it came.
The old colonel read:
_"A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious disappearance of
the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late on
Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning.
"It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little more
than a year ago, and her disappearance is the more unaccountable from
the fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied in
preparing for a fête in honour of her return home after a long and happy
honeymoon.
"The pavilion in which the fête was to have been held had been erected
on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea,
and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out
on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in
the darkness and fell over the cliffs.
"The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Ellan
until the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Friday
evening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion.
"Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken husband."_
* * * * *
After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost irresistible
impulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my house-mates looked
into my face they must see that I was the person indicated.
They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Most
mysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her fête
too!") they began to discuss disappearances in general, each
illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study.
"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays," said one.
"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his spectacles,
"why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear when
whole nations--the ten tribes for example. . . ."
"But that's a different thing altogether," said the old clergyman. "Now
if you had quoted Biblical examples--Elisha or perhaps Jonah. . . ."
After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rose
from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room.
It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed--how
newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire into
the circumstances of my disappearance; how the theory of accident gave
place to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the theory
of flight; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried my
trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was a
maid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown (his proper
fee being threepence); how two female passengers had declared that a
person answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool;
how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how,
finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my
disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped from
mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea.
But then came another development.
My father, who was reported to have received the news of my departure in
a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses (raging and
storming at my husband like a man demented), having come to the
conclusion that I, being in a physical condition peculiar to women, had
received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered five
hundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery,
which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-broken
family but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and
inheritance.
With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal
appearance.
_"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair;
lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression;
unusually sunny smile."_
It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard
these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even
the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knife
and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth,
which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes.
They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But all
the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in
Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great
agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry.
"Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"
That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legal
powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terror
that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a
public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the
legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that
would bring not only upon me but upon Martin.