A VISITOR FROM SCOTLAND YARD
The carriage pulled up before one of the handsomest houses in London.
Douglas, brought back suddenly to the present, realised that this
wonderful afternoon was at an end. The stopping of the carriage seemed
to him, in a sense, symbolical. The interlude was over. He must go
back to his brooding land of negatives.
"It has been very kind of you to come and see me, and to take me out,"
he said.
She interrupted the words of farewell which were upon his lips.
"Our little jaunt is not over yet," she remarked, smiling. "We are
going to have dinner together--you and I alone, and afterwards I will
show you that even a town house can sometimes boast of a pleasant
garden. You needn't look at your clothes. We shall be alone, and you
will be very welcome as you are."
They passed in together, and Douglas was inclined to wonder more than
ever whether this were not a dream, only that his imagination could
never have revealed anything like this to him. Outside the
hall-porter's office was a great silver bowl sprinkled all over with the
afternoon's cards and notes. A footman with powdered hair admitted
them, another moved respectfully before them, and threw open the door of
the room to which Emily de Reuss led him. He had only a mixed
impression of pale and beautiful statuary, drooping flowers with strange
perfumes, and the distant rippling of water; then he found himself in a
tiny octagonal chamber draped in yellow and white--a woman's den, cosy,
dainty, cool. She made him sit in an easy-chair, which seemed to sink
below him almost to the ground, and moved herself to a little
writing-table.
"There is just one message I must send" she said, "to a stupid house
where I am half expected to dine. It will not take me half a minute."
He sat still, listening mechanically to the sound of her pen scratching
across the paper. A tiny dachshund jumped into his lap, and with a
little snort of content curled itself up to sleep. He let his hand
wander over its sleek satin coat--the touch of anything living seemed to
inspire him with a more complete confidence as to the permanent and
material nature of his surroundings. Meanwhile, Emily de Reuss wrote
her excuses to a Duchess--a dinner-party of three weeks'
standing--knowing all the while that she was guilty of an unpardonable
social offence. She sealed her letter and touched a bell by her side.
Then she came over to him.
"Now I am free" she announced, "for a whole evening. How delightful!
What shall we do? I am ordering dinner at eight. Would you like to
look at my books, or play billiards, or sit here and talk? The garden I
am going to leave till afterwards. I want you to see it at its best."
"I should like to see your books," he replied.
She rose and moved towards the door.
"I am not certain," she said, "whether you will care for my library.
You will think it perhaps too modern. But there will be books there
that you will like, I am sure of that."
Douglas had never seen or dreamed of anything like it. The room was
ecclesiastical in shape and architecture, fluted pillars supported an
oak-beamed ceiling, and at its upper end was a small organ. But it was
its colour scheme which was so wonderful. The great cases which came
out in wings into the room were white. Everything was white--the rugs,
the raised frescoes on the walls, the chairs and hangings.
She watched his face, and assuming an apologetic attitude, said, "it is
unusual--and untraditional, I know, but I wanted something different,
and mine is essentially a modern library. In this country there is so
much to depress one, and one's surroundings, after all, count for much.
That is my poetry recess. You seem to have found your way there by
instinct."
"I think it is charming," he remarked. "Only at first it takes your
breath away. But what beautiful editions."
He hesitated, with his hand upon a volume. She laughed at him and took
it down herself. Perhaps she knew that her arm was shapely. At least
she let it remain for a moment stretched out as though to reach the next
volume.
"I always buy _editions de luxe_ when they are to be had," she said. "A
beautiful book deserves a beautiful binding and paper. I believe in the
whole effect. It is not fair to Ruskin to read him in paper covers, and
fancy Le Gallienne in an eighteenpenny series."
"You have Pater!" he exclaimed; "and isn't that a volume of De
Maupassant's?"
His fingers shook with eagerness. She put a tiny volume into his hands.
He shook back the hair from his head and forgot that he had ever been
ill, that he had ever suffered, that he had ever despaired. For the
love of books was in his blood, and his tongue was loosened. For the
first time in his life he knew the full delight of a sympathetic
listener. They entered upon a new relationship in those few minutes.
The summons for dinner found them still there. Douglas, with a faint
flush in his cheeks and brilliant eyes; she, too, imbued with a little
of his literary excitement. She handed him over to a manservant, who
offered him dress clothes, and waited upon him with the calm, dexterous
skill of a well-trained valet. He laughed softly to himself as he
passed down the broad stairs. Surely he had wandered through dreamland
into some corner of the Arabian Nights?--else he had passed from one
extreme of life to the other with a strange, almost magical, celerity.
Dinner surprised him by being so pleasantly homely. A single trim
maidservant waited upon them, a man at the sideboard opened the wine,
carved, and vanished early in the repast. Over a great bowl of
clustering roses he could see her within a few feet of him, plainly
dressed in black lace with a band of velvet around her white neck, her
eyes resting often upon him full of gentle sympathy. They talked of the
books they had been looking at, a conversation all the while without
background or foreground. Only once she lifted her glass, which had
just been filled, and looked across to him.
"To the city--beautiful," she said softly. "May the day soon come when
you shall write of it--and forget!"
He drank the toast fervently. But of the future then he found it hard
to think. The transition to this from his days of misery had been too
sudden. As yet his sense of proportion had not had time to adjust
itself. Behind him were nameless horrors--that he had a future at all
was a fact which he had only recognised during the last few hours.
Afterwards they sat in low chairs on a terrace with coffee on a small
round table between them, a fountain playing beneath, beyond, the trees
of the park, the countless lights of the streets, and the gleaming fires
of innumerable hansoms. It was the London of broad streets, opulent,
dignified, afire for pleasure. Women were whirled by, bright-eyed,
bejewelled, softly clad in white feathers and opera cloaks; men hatless,
immaculate as regards shirt-fronts and ties, well-groomed, the best of
their race. Wonderful sight for Douglas, fresh from the farmhouse
amongst the hills, the Scotch college, the poverty-stricken seminary.
Back went his thoughts to that dreary past, and though the night was hot
he shivered. She looked at him curiously.
"You are cold?"
He shook his head.
"I was thinking," he answered.
She laid her fingers upon his arm, a touch so thrilling and yet so
delicate.
"Don't you know," she said, "that of all philosophies the essence is to
command one's thoughts, to brush away the immaterial, the unworthy, the
unhappy. Try and think that life starts with you from to-day. You are
one of those few, those very few people, Douglas Jesson, who have before
them a future. Try and keep yourself master of it."
A servant stepped out on to the balcony and stood respectfully before
them. She looked up frowning.
"What is it, Mason?" she asked. "I told you that I was not seeing any
one at all to-night."
"The person, madame," he answered, "is from Scotland Yard, and he says
that his business is most important. He has called twice before. He
begged me to give you his card, and to say that he will wait until you
can find it convenient to spare him a few minutes." She looked at the
card--
"Mr. Richard Grey,
from Scotland Yard."
Then she rose regretfully.
"What the man can possibly want with me," she said, "Heaven only knows.
You will smoke a cigarette, my friend, till I return. I shall not be
long."
He stood up to let her pass, untroubled--not sorry for a moment's
solitude. It was not until she had gone that a thought flashed into his
mind, which stopped his heart from beating and brought a deadly
faintness upon him.