An hour later Vanderlyn had escaped from Pargeter, and was standing
alone in Madame de Léra's drawing-room.
He was scarcely conscious of how many hours he had spent during the last
terrible three days, with the middle-aged Frenchwoman who had been so
true and sure a friend of Margaret Pargeter. In Madame de Léra's
presence alone was he able, to a certain extent, to drop the mask which
he was compelled to wear in the presence of all others, and especially
in that of the man who, as time went on, seemed more and more to lean on
him and find comfort in his companionship.
Vanderlyn had walked the considerable distance from the Avenue du Bois
to the quiet street near the Luxembourg where Adèle de Léra lived, and
all the way he had felt as if pursued by a mocking demon.
How much longer, so he asked himself, was his awful ordeal to endure?
The moments spent by him and Pargeter in Peggy's room had racked heart
and memory. He now fled to Madame de Léra as to a refuge from himself.
And yet? Yet he never looked round her pretty sitting-room, with its
faded, rather austere furnishings, without being vividly reminded of the
woman he had loved and whom he had now lost, for it was there that Peggy
had spent the most peaceful hours of her life since Pargeter had first
decided that henceforth they should live in Paris.
* * * * *
At last Madame de Léra came into the room; she gave her visitor a quick
questioning look. "Have you nothing new to tell?" she asked.
And, after a moment of scarcely perceptible hesitation, Vanderlyn
answered, "I have nothing new to tell," but as they both sat down, as he
saw how sad and worn the kind face had become in the last three days,
there came over him a strong wish to confide in her--to tell her the
whole truth. He longed, with morbid longing, to share his knowledge.
She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his
tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to
tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the
uselessness, of their present search.
Since last night the secret no longer seemed to be his alone.
But Vanderlyn resisted the temptation. He had no right to cast even half
his burden on another. Any moment the odious experience which had, it
seemed, already befallen Madame de Léra might be repeated. She might
again be cross-questioned by the police. In that event it was essential
that she should be still able truthfully to declare that she knew
nothing.
"I have just come from Tom Pargeter," he observed quietly. "I can't help
being sorry for him. The police have been worrying him, and--and at
their suggestion we have been seeking among her things--among her
correspondence--for some clue. But of course we found nothing. Pargeter
is longing to go away--to England. How I wish he would go,--God! how I
wish he would go! After all, as he says himself, he can do no good by
staying here. He would receive any news within an hour."
Madame de Léra leant forward. "Ah! but if Mr. Pargeter leaves Paris
before--before something is discovered, his conduct would be regarded as
very cruel--very heartless."
"Did you know," said Vanderlyn, in a low voice, "that Peggy once before
disappeared for three days? Pargeter keeps harking back to that. He
thinks that she found out something which made her leave him again."
"Yes," said Madame de Léra, "I knew of that episode in their early
married life--but on that occasion, Mr. Vanderlyn, our poor friend
cannot be said to have disappeared--she only returned to her own
family."
"Why, having once escaped, did she ever go back to him?" asked
Vanderlyn, sombrely.
"You forget," said Madame de Léra, gently, "that even then there was her
son."
Her son? Nay, Vanderlyn at no moment ever forgot Peggy's child. To
himself, he seemed to be the only human being who ever thought of the
poor little boy lying ill in far-away England.
"Well, you need not be afraid," he said quickly, "that Pargeter will go
away to-day. He intends to stay in Paris at least till to-morrow night,
for he is convinced, it seems, that the fortune-teller, Madame
d'Elphis,--the woman who by some incredible stroke of luck stumbled on
the right name of that horse of his which won the Oaks,--will be able to
tell him what has happened to--to Margaret Pargeter."
And, meeting Madame de Léra's troubled gaze, he added in a low bitter
tone, "How entirely that gives one the measure of the man,--the absurd
notion, I mean, that a fortune-teller can solve the mystery! Fortunately
or unfortunately, this Madame d'Elphis has been away for two or three
days, but she will be back, it seems, in time to give Pargeter, who is a
favoured client, an appointment to-morrow morning."
Adèle de Léra suddenly rose from her chair; with a nervous movement she
clasped her hands together.
"Ah, but that must not happen!" she exclaimed. "We must think of a way
by which we can prevent an interview between Mr. Pargeter and La
d'Elphis! Unless," she concluded slowly, "there is no serious reason why
he should not know the truth--now?"
Vanderlyn also got up. A look of profound astonishment came over his
face.
"The truth?" he repeated. "But surely, Madame de Léra, it is impossible
that this woman whom Pargeter is going to consult to-morrow morning can
have any clue to the truth! Surely you do not seriously believe----" he
did not conclude his sentence. That this broad-minded and religious
Frenchwoman could possibly cherish any belief in the type of charlatan
to which the American diplomatist supposed the famous Paris
fortune-teller to belong was incredible to him.
"I beg of you most earnestly," she repeated, in a deeply troubled voice,
"to prevent any meeting between Mr. Pargeter and Madame d'Elphis!
Believe me, I do not speak without reason; I know more of this
soothsayer and her mysterious powers than you can possibly know----"
"Do you mean me to understand that you yourself would ever consult such
an oracle?" Vanderlyn could not keep a certain contemptuous incredulity
out of his voice.
"No, indeed! But then I, unlike you, believe this woman's traffic to be
of the devil. Listen, Mr. Vanderlyn, and I will tell you of a case in
which La d'Elphis was closely concerned--a case of which I have absolute
knowledge."
Madame de Léra went back to her chair; she sank into it, and, with
Vanderlyn standing before her, she told him the story.
"If you cast back your mind to the time when you were first in Paris,
you will probably recall my husband's niece, a beautiful girl named
Jeanne de Léra?" Vanderlyn bent his head without speaking; nay more, a
look of pain came over his tired face, and sunken eyes, for, strangely
enough, there was a certain sinister parallel between the fate which had
befallen the charming girl whose image was thus suddenly brought up
before him, and that of the beloved woman who seemed to be now even more
present to his emotional memory than she had been in life.
"As you know, for it was no secret, Jeanne had what English and American
people call 'flirted' with Henri Delavigne, and he had sworn that he
would kill himself on her wedding-day. Well, the poor foolish girl took
this threat very seriously; it shadowed her happy betrothal, and on the
very day before her marriage was to take place, she persuaded her
married sister to go with her to a fortune-teller. It was not her own
future, which stretched cloudless and radiant before her, that tempted
Jeanne to peer into these mysteries; she only wished to be reassured as
to Delavigne and his absurd threat----"