THE COMING OF A STRANGER
ENID was standing on the steps of the hotel when the men arrived.
For a second Walter glanced into her splendid eyes, and then bowed over
her hand in his foreign way, a murmured expression of pleasure escaping
his lips.
About twenty-two, tall and slim, she presented a complete and typical
picture of the outdoor girl, dressed as she was in a grey jumper trimmed
with purple, a short golfing skirt, her tweed hat to match trimmed with
the feathers of a cock pheasant.
Essentially a sportswoman, she could handle gun or rod, ride to hounds,
or drive a motor-car with equal skill, and as stepdaughter of Sir Hugh
she had had experience on the Indian frontier and in Egypt.
Her father had been British Minister at the Hague, and afterwards at
Stockholm, but after his death her mother had married Sir Hugh, and had
become Lady Elcombe. Nowadays, however, the latter was somewhat of an
invalid, and seldom left their London house in Hill Street. Therefore,
Enid was usually chaperoned by Mrs. Caldwell, wife of the well-known
K.C., and with her she generally spent her winters on the Continent.
Blanche, Sir Hugh's daughter by his first wife, had married Paul Le
Pontois, who had been a captain in the 114th Regiment of Artillery of the
French Army during the war, and lived with her husband in France. She
seldom came to England, though at frequent intervals her father went over
to visit her.
When Walter Fetherston took his seat beside Enid Orlebar at the luncheon
table a flood of strange recollections crowded upon his mind--those walks
along the Miramar, that excursion to Pampeluna, and those curious facts
which she had unwittingly revealed to him in the course of their
confidential chats. He remembered their leave-taking, and how, as he had
sat in the _rapide_ for Paris, he had made a solemn vow never again to
set eyes upon her.
There was a reason why he should not--a strong but mysterious reason.
Yet he had come there of his own will to meet her again--drawn there
irresistibly by some unseen influence which she possessed.
Was it her beauty that had attracted him? Yes--he was compelled to admit
that it was. As a rule he avoided the society of women. To his intimates
he had laid down the maxim: "Don't marry; keep a dog if you want a
faithful companion." And yet he was once again at the side of this
fair-faced woman.
None around the table were aware of their previous meeting, and all were
too busy chattering to notice the covert glances which he shot at her. He
was noting her great beauty, sitting there entranced by it--he, the man
of double personality, who, under an assumed name, lived that gay life of
the Continent, known in society in twenty different cities, and yet in
England practically unknown in his real self.
Yes, Enid Orlebar was beautiful. Surely there could be few fairer women
than she in this our land of fair women!
Turning upon him, she smiled gaily as she asked whether he had been
interested in seeing a mountain battery at work.
Her fresh face, betraying, as it did, her love of a free, open-air life,
was one of those strangely mysterious countenances met only once in a
lifetime. It seemed to be the quintessence of pain and passion, conflict
and agony, desire and despair. She was not one of those befrilled,
fashion-plate dolls that one meets at the after-war crushes and dances,
but was austerely simple in dress, with a face which betrayed a spiritual
nobility, the very incarnation of modern womanhood, alive with modern
self-knowledge, modern weariness and modern sadness.
Her beautiful hair, worn plain and smooth, was black as night--wonderful
hair. But still more wonderful were those great, dark, velvety eyes, deep
and unfathomable. In them the tragedy of life was tumultuously visible,
yet they were serene, self-possessed, even steady in their quiet
simplicity. To describe her features is not an easy task. They were
clear-cut, with a purity of the lines of the nose and brow seldom seen in
a woman's face, dark, well-arched eyebrows, a pretty mouth which had just
escaped extreme sensuousness. Cheeks soft and delicately moulded, a chin
pointed, a skin remarkable for its fineness and its clear pallor, the
whole aspect of her face being that of sweetness combined with nobility
and majesty. In it there was no dominant expression, for it seemed to be
a mask waiting to be stirred into life.
Fetherston had known Sir Hugh slightly for several years, but as Enid had
been so much abroad with Mrs. Caldwell, he had never met her until that
accidental encounter in Biarritz.
"We've been up here six weeks," she was telling Fetherston. "Father
always gets a lot of golf up here, you know, and I'm rather fond of it."
"I fear I'm too much of a foreigner nowadays to appreciate the game,"
Walter laughed. "Last season some Italians in Rome formed a club--the
usual set of ultra-smart young counts and marquises--but when they found
that it entailed the indignity of walking several miles they declared it
to be a game only fit for the populace, and at once disbanded the
association."
The men were discussing the work of the battery, for four of the officers
had been invited, and the point raised was the range of mountain guns.
Walter Fetherston glanced at the general through his pince-nez with a
curious expression, but he did not join in the conversation.
Enid's eyes met his, and the pair exchanged curiously significant
glances.
He bent to pick up his serviette, and in doing so he whispered to her: "I
must see you outside for a moment before I go. Go out, and I'll join
you."
Therefore, when the meal had concluded, the girl went forth into the
secluded garden at the rear of the hotel, where in a few moments the man
joined her at a spot where they could not be overlooked.
She turned towards him, separate, remote, incongruous, her dark eyes
showing an angry flash in them.
"Why have you come here?" she demanded with indignation. The whole aspect
of her face was tragic.
"To see you again," was his brief reply. "Before we parted at Biarritz
you lied to me," he added in a hard tone.
She held her breath, staring straight into his eyes.
"I--I don't understand you!" she stammered. "You are here to torment--to
persecute me!"
"I asked you a question, Enid, but in response you told me a deliberate
lie. Think--recall that circumstance, and tell me the truth," he said
very quietly.
She was silent for a moment. Then, with her mouth drawn to hardness, she
replied: "Yes, it is true--I lied to you, just as you have lied to me.
Remember what you told me that moonlit night when we walked by the sea
towards the Grotto of Love. I was a fool to have believed in you--to have
trusted you as I did! You left me, and, though I wrote time after time
to your club, you refused to send me a single line."
"Because--because, Enid, I dared not," replied her companion.
"Why not?" she demanded quickly. "You told me that you loved me, yet--yet
your own actions have shown that you lied to me!"
"No," he protested in a low, earnest, hoarse voice; "I told you the
truth, Enid, but----"
"But what?" she interrupted in quickly earnestness.
"Well," he replied after a brief pause, "the fact is that I am compelled
to wear a mask, even to you, the woman I love. I cannot tell you the
truth--I cannot, dearest, for your own sake."
"And you expect me to believe this lame story--eh?" she laughed. She was
pale and fragile, yet she seemed to expand and to dilate with force and
energy.
"Enid," he answered in a low voice, with honesty in his eyes, "I would
rather sacrifice my great love for you than betray the trust I hold most
sacred. So great is my love for you, rather would I never look upon your
dear face again than reveal to you the tragic truth and bring upon you
unhappiness and despair."
"Walter," she replied in a trembling voice, looking straight into his
countenance with those wonderful dark eyes wherein her soul brimmed over
with weary emotion and fatigued passion, "I repeat all that I told you on
that calm night beside the sea. I love you; I think of you day by day,
hour by hour. But you have lied to me, and therefore I hate myself for
having so foolishly placed my trust in you."
He had resolved to preserve his great secret--a secret that none should
know.
"Very well," he sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "These recriminations
are really all useless. Ah, if you only knew the truth, Enid! If I only
dared to reveal to you the hideous facts. But I refuse--they are too
tragic, too terrible. Better that we should part now, and that you should
remain in ignorance--better by far, for you. You believe that I am
deceiving you. Well, I'm frank and admit that I am; but it is with a
distinct purpose--for your own sake."
He held forth his hand, and slowly she took it. In silence he bowed over
it, his lips compressed; then, turning upon his heel, he went down the
gravelled walk back to the hotel, which, some ten minutes later, he left
with Fred Tredennick, catching the train back to Dundee and on to Perth.
He was in no way a man to wear his heart upon his sleeve, therefore he
chatted gaily with his friend and listened to Fred's extravagant
admiration of Enid's beauty. He congratulated himself that his old friend
was in ignorance of the truth.
A curious incident occurred at the hotel that same evening, however,
which, had Walter been aware of it, would probably have caused him
considerable uneasiness and alarm. Just before seven o'clock a tall,
rather thin, middle-aged, narrow-eyed man, dressed in dark grey tweeds,
entered the hall of the hotel and inquired for Henry, the head waiter. He
was well dressed and bore an almost professional air.
The white-headed old man quickly appeared, when the stranger, whose
moustache was carefully trimmed and who wore a ruby ring upon his white
hand, made an anxious inquiry whether Fetherston, whom he minutely
described, had been there that day. At first the head waiter hesitated
and was uncommunicative, but, the stranger having uttered a few low
words, Henry's manner instantly changed. He started, looked in wonder
into the stranger's face, and, taking him into the smoking-room--at that
moment unoccupied--he allowed himself to be closely questioned regarding
the general and his stepdaughter, as well as the man who had that day
been their guest. The stranger was a man of quick actions, and his
inquiries were sharp and to the point.
"You say that Mr. Fetherston met the young lady outside after luncheon,
and they had an argument in secret, eh?" asked the stranger.
Henry replied in the affirmative, declaring that he unfortunately could
not overhear the subject under discussion. But he believed the pair had
quarrelled.
"And where has Mr. Fetherston gone?" asked his keen-eyed questioner.
"He is, I believe, the guest of Major Tredennick, who lives on the other
side of Perthshire at Invermay on Loch Earn."
"And the young lady goes back to Hill Street with her stepfather, eh?"
"On Wednesday."
"Good!" was the stranger's reply. Then, thanking the head waiter for the
information in a sharp, businesslike voice, and handing him five
shillings, he took train back from Monifieth to Dundee, and went direct
to the chief post-office.
From there he dispatched a carefully constructed cipher telegram to an
address in the Boulevard Anspach, in Brussels, afterwards lighting an
excellent cigar and strolling along the busy street with an air of
supreme self-satisfaction.
"If this man, Fetherston, has discovered the truth, as I fear he has
done," the hard-faced man muttered to himself, "then by his action to-day
he has sealed his own doom!--and Enid Orlebar herself will silence him!"