MRS. SMITH-LESSING
Ray and I left the building together. As we turned into Pall Mall he
glanced at his watch.
"You have missed the six o'clock train," he remarked. "I suppose you
know that there is nothing now till the nine-twenty. Will you come to
the club with me, and have some dinner?"
It was less an invitation than a command. I felt a momentary impulse of
rebellion, but the innate masterfulness of the man triumphed easily. I
found myself walking, a little against my will, down Pall Mall by his
side. A man of some note, he was saluted every minute by passers-by,
whom, however, he seemed seldom to notice. In his town clothes, his
great height, his bronzed face, and black beard made him a sufficiently
striking personality. I myself, though I was little short of six feet,
seemed almost insignificant by his side. Until we reached the club he
maintained an unbroken silence. He even ignored some passing comment of
mine; but when once inside the building he seemed to remember that he
was my host, and his manner became one of stiff kindness. He ordered an
excellent dinner and chose the wine with care. Then he leaned a little
forward across the table, and electrified me by his first remark.
"Ducaine," he said, "what relatives have you with whom you are in any
sort of communication?"
"None at all!" I answered.
"Sir Michael Trogoldy was your mother's brother," he remarked. "He is
still alive."
"I believe so," I admitted. "I have never approached him, nor has he
ever taken any notice of me."
"You did not write to him, for instance, when Heathcote absconded, and
you had to leave college?"
"Certainly not," I answered. "I did not choose to turn beggar."
"How much," he asked, "do you know of your family history?"
"I know," I told him, "that my father was cashiered from the army for
misconduct, and committed suicide. I know, too, that my mother's people
treated her shamefully, and that she died alone in Paris and almost in
poverty. It was scarcely likely, therefore, that I was going to apply
to them for help." Ray nodded.
"I thought so," he remarked grimly. "I shall have to talk to you for a
few minutes about your father."
I said nothing. My surprise, indeed, had bereft me of words. He sipped
his wine slowly, and continued.
"Fate has dealt a little hardly with you," he said. "I am almost a
stranger to you, and there are even reasons why you and I could never be
friends. Yet it apparently falls to my lot to supplement the little you
know of a very unpleasant portion of your family history. That rascal
of a lawyer who absconded with your money should have told you on your
twenty-first birthday."
"A pleasant heritage!" I remarked bitterly; "yet I always wanted to know
the whole truth."
"Here goes, then," he said, filling my glass with wine. "Your father
was second in command at Gibraltar. He sold a plan of the gallery forts
to the French Government, and was dismissed from the army."
I started as though I had been stung. Ray continued, his stern
matter-of-fact tone unshaken.
"He did not commit suicide as you were told. He lived, in Paris, a life
of continual and painful degeneration. Your mother died of a broken
heart. There was another woman, of course, whose influence over your
father was unbounded, and at whose instigation he committed this
disgraceful act. This woman is now at Braster."
My brain was in a whirl. I was quite incapable of speech.
"Her real name," he continued coolly, "God only knows. For the moment
she calls herself Mrs. Smith-Lessing. She is a Franco-American, a
political adventuress of the worst type, living by her wits. She is
ugly enough to be Satan's mistress, and she's forty-five if she's a day,
yet she has but to hold up her finger, and men tumble the gifts of their
life into her lap, gold and honour, conscience and duty. At present I
think it highly probable that you are her next selected victim."
For several minutes Ray proceeded with his dinner. I did my best to
follow his example, but my appetite was gone. I could scarcely persuade
myself that the whole affair was not a dream--that the men who sat all
round us in little groups, the dark liveried servants passing noiselessly
backwards and forwards, were not figures in some shadowy nightmare, and
that I should not wake in a moment to find myself curled up in a railway
carriage on my way home. But there was no mistaking the visible
presence of Colonel Mostyn Ray. Strong, stalwart, he sat within a few
feet of me, calmly eating his dinner as though my agony were a thing of
little account. He, at least, was real.
"This woman," he continued, presently, "either is, or would like to be,
mixed up with the treachery that is somewhere close upon us. Sooner or
later she will approach you. You are warned."
"Yes," I repeated vaguely, "I am warned."
"I have finished," Colonel Ray remarked. "Go on with your dinner and
think. I will answer any question presently."
There were only two I put to him, and that was when my hansom had been
called and I was on the point of leaving.
"Is he--my father--alive now?" I asked.
"I have reason to believe," Ray answered, "that he may be dead."
"How is it," I asked, "that you are so well acquainted with these
things? Were you at any time my father's friend?"
"I was acquainted with him," Ray answered. "We were at one time in the
same regiment. My friendship was--with your mother."
The answer was illuming, but he never winced.
"Indirectly," I said, "I seem to have a good deal to thank you for. Why
do you say that you can never be my friend?"
"You are your father's son," he answered curtly.
"I am also my mother's son," I objected.
"For which reason," he said, "I have done what I could to give you a
start in life."
And with these words he dismissed me.
* * * * *
I received Ray's warning concerning Mrs. Smith-Lessing, the new tenant
of Braster Grange, somewhere between seven and eight o'clock, and barely
an hour later I found myself alone in a first-class carriage with her,
and a four hours' journey before us. She had arrived at King's Cross
apparently only a few minutes before the departure of the train, for the
platform was almost deserted when I took my seat. Just as I had changed
my hat for a cap, however, wrapped my rug around my knees, and settled
down for the journey, the door of my carriage was thrown open, and I saw
two women looking in, one of whom I recognized at once. Mrs.
Smith-Lessing, although the night was warm, was wearing a heavy and
magnificent fur coat, and the guard of the train himself was attending
her. Behind stood a plainly dressed woman, evidently her maid, carrying
a flat dressing-case. There was a brief colloquy between the three. It
ended in dressing-case, a pile of books, a reading lamp, and a
formidable array of hat-boxes, and milliner's parcels being placed upon
the rack and vacant seats in my compartment, and immediately afterwards
Mrs. Smith-Lessing herself entered. I heard her tell her maid to enter
the carriage behind. The door was closed and the guard touched off his
hat. A minute later and we were off.
I was alone with the adventuress. I had no doubt but that she had
chosen my carriage with intent. I placed my dispatch-box on the rack
above my head, and opened out a newspaper, which I had no intention of
reading. She, for her part, arranged her travelling light and took out
a novel. She did not apparently even glance in my direction, and seemed
to become immersed at once in her reading. So we travelled for half an
hour or so.
At the end of that time I was suddenly conscious that she had laid down
her book, and was regarding me through partially-closed eyes. I too
laid down my paper. Our eyes met, and she smiled.
"Forgive me," she said, "but did I not see you one day last week upon
the sands at Braster with Lady Angela Harberly?"
"I believe so," I answered. "You were riding, I think, with her
brother."
"How fortunate that I should find myself travelling with a neighbour!"
she murmured. "I rather dreaded this night journey. I just missed the
six o'clock, and I have been at the station ever since."
I understood at once one of the charms of this woman. Her voice was
deliciously soft and musical. The words seemed to leave her lips
slowly, almost lingeringly, and she spoke with the precision and slight
accent of a well-educated foreigner. Her eyes seemed to be wandering
all over me and my possessions, yet her interest, if it amounted to
that, never even suggested curiosity or inquisitiveness.
"It is scarcely a pleasant journey at this time of night," I remarked.
"Indeed, no," she assented. "I wonder if you know my name? I am Mrs.
Smith-Lessing, of Braster Grange. And you?"
"My name is Guy Ducaine," I told her. "I live at a small cottage called
the 'Brand.'"
"That charming little place you can just see from the sands?" she
exclaimed. "I thought the Duke's head-keeper lived there."
"It was a keeper's lodge before the Duke was kind enough to let it to
me," I told her.
She nodded.
"It is a very delightful abode," she murmured.
She picked up her book, and after turning over the pages aimlessly for a
few minutes, she recommenced to read. I followed her example; but when
a little later on I glanced across in her direction, I found that her
eyes were fixed upon me, and that her novel lay in her lap.
"My book is so stupid," she said apologetically. "I find, Mr.
Ducaine," she added with sudden earnestness, "the elements of a much
stranger story closer at hand."
"That," I remarked, laying down my own book, and looking steadily across
at her, "sounds enigmatic."
"I think," she said, "that I am very foolish to talk to you at all about
it. If you know who I am, you are probably armed against me at all
points. You will weigh and measure my words, you will say to yourself,
'Lies, lies, lies!' You will not believe in me or anything I say. And,
again, if you do not know, the story is too painful a one for me to
tell."
"Then let us both avoid it," I said, reaching again for my paper. "We
shall stop at Ipswich in an hour. I will change carriages there."
She turned round in her seat towards the window, as though to hide her
face. My own attempt at reading was a farce. I watched her over the
top of my paper. She was looking out into the darkness, and she seemed
to me to be crying. Every now and then her shoulders heaved
convulsively. Suddenly she faced me once more. There were traces of
tears on her face; a small lace handkerchief was knotted up in her
nervous fingers.
"Oh, I cannot," she exclaimed plaintively. "I cannot sit here alone
with you and say nothing. I know that I am judged already. It does not
matter. I am your father's wife, Guy. You owe me at least some
recognition of that fact."
"I never knew my father," I said, "except as the cause of my own
miserable upbringing and friendless life."
"You never knew him," she answered, "and therefore you believe the
worst. He was weak, perhaps, and, exposed to a terrible temptation, he
fell! But he was not a bad man. He was never that."
"Do you think, Mrs. Smith-Lessing," I said, struggling to keep my voice
firm, though I felt myself trembling, "that this is a profitable
discussion for either of us?"
"Why not?" she exclaimed almost fiercely. "You have heard his story
from enemies. You have judged him from the report of those who were
never his friends. He sinned and he repented. Better and worse men
than he have done that. If he were wholly bad, do you believe that
after all these years I should care for him still?"
I held my peace. The woman was leaning over towards me now. She seemed
to have lost the desire to attract. Her voice had grown sharper and
less pleasant, her carefully arranged hair was in some disorder, and the
telltale blue veins by her temples and the crow's feet under her eyes
were plainly visible. Her face seemed suddenly to have become pinched
and wan, the flaming light in her strangely coloured eyes was a
convincing assertion of her earnestness. She was not acting now, though
what lay behind the storm I could not tell.
"You seem afraid to talk to me," she exclaimed. "Why? I have done you
no harm!"
"Perhaps not," I answered, "yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up
this miserable history. It is both painful and profitless."
"I will say no more," she declared, with a sudden note of dignity in her
tone. "I can see that I am judged already in your mind. After all, it
does not really matter. No one likes to be thought worse of than they
deserve, and women are all--a little foolish. But at least you must
answer me one question. I have the right to ask it. You must tell me
where he is."
"Where who is?" I asked.
Again her eyes flamed upon inc. Her lips parted a little, and I could
see the white glimmer of her teeth.
"Oh, you shall not fence with me like a baby!" she exclaimed. "Tell me,
or lie to me, or refuse to tell me! Which is it?"
"Upon my honour," I said, looking at her curiously, "I have no idea whom
you mean!"
She looked at inc steadily for several moments, her lips parted, her
breath seeming to come sharply between her teeth.
"I mean your father," she said. "Whom else should I mean?"