“A friend of Laurence. Don't be frightened!”
There was such silence that he could hear a clock ticking, and the sound
of his own hand passing over the surface of the wall, trying to find the
switch. He found it, and in the light which leaped up he saw, stiffened
against a dark curtain evidently screening off a bedroom, a girl
standing, holding a long black coat together at her throat, so that
her face with its pale brown hair, short and square-cut and curling up
underneath, had an uncanny look of being detached from any body. Her
face was so alabaster pale that the staring, startled eyes, dark blue or
brown, and the faint rose of the parted lips, were like colour stainings
on a white mask; and it had a strange delicacy, truth, and pathos, such
as only suffering brings. Though not susceptible to aesthetic emotion,
Keith was curiously affected. He said gently:
“You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--quite the
contrary. May I sit down and talk?” And, holding up the keys, he added:
“Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted
me?”
Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at
a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh. Nor at the moment did it
seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought.
He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt
mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa. Twenty years
and more since he had been in such a place. And he said:
“Won't you sit down? I'm sorry to have startled you.”
But still she did not move, whispering:
“Who are you, please?”
And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that
whisper, he answered:
“Larry's brother.”
She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and,
still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat
down on the sofa. He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were
bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked
like a tall child. He drew up a chair and said:
“You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see.” He
expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together
on her knees, and said:
“Yes?”
Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.
“An awful business!”
Her whisper echoed him:
“Yes, oh! yes! Awful--it is awful!”
And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where he
was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.
“Yes,” she whispered; “Just there. I see him now always falling!”
How she said that! With what a strange gentle despair! In this girl of
evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved
him to a sort of unwilling compassion?
“You look very young,” he said.
“I am twenty.”
“And you are fond of--my brother?”
“I would die for him.”
Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes,
true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first.
It was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet,
or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks;
or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea,
sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the
world, professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said,
stammering a little:
“I--I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer
the questions I put to you.”
She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:
“Oh! I will answer anything.”
“This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?”
“A dreadful man.”
“Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?”
“Eighteen months.”
“Where did you live when you saw him last?”
“In Pimlico.”
“Does anybody about here know you as Mrs. Walenn?”
“No. When I came here, after my little girl died, I came to live a bad
life. Nobody knows me at all. I am quite alone.”
“If they discover who he was, they will look for his wife?”
“I do not know. He did not let people think I was married to him. I was
very young; he treated many, I think, like me.”
“Do you think he was known to the police?”
She shook her head. “He was very clever.”
“What is your name now?”
“Wanda Livinska.”
“Were you known by that name before you were married?”
“Wanda is my Christian name. Livinska--I just call myself.”
“I see; since you came here.”
“Yes.”
“Did my brother ever see this man before last night?”
“Never.”
“You had told him about his treatment of you?”
“Yes. And that man first went for him.”
“I saw the mark. Do you think anyone saw my brother come to you?”
“I do not know. He says not.”
“Can you tell if anyone saw him carrying the--the thing away?”
“No one in this street--I was looking.”
“Nor coming back?”
“No one.”
“Nor going out in the morning?”
“I do not think it.”
“Have you a servant?”
“Only a woman who comes at nine in the morning for an hour.”
“Does she know Larry?”
“No.”
“Friends, acquaintances?”
“No; I am very quiet. And since I knew your brother, I see no one.
Nobody comes here but him for a long time now.”
“How long?”
“Five months.”
“Have you been out to-day?”
“No.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Crying.”
It was said with a certain dreadful simplicity, and pressing her hands
together, she went on:
“He is in danger, because of me. I am so afraid for him.” Holding up his
hand to check that emotion, he said:
“Look at me!”
She fixed those dark eyes on him, and in her bare throat, from which the
coat had fallen back, he could see her resolutely swallowing down her
agitation.
“If the worst comes to the worst, and this man is traced to you, can you
trust yourself not to give my brother away?”
Her eyes shone. She got up and went to the fireplace:
“Look! I have burned all the things he has given me--even his picture.
Now I have nothing from him.”
Keith, too, got up.
“Good! One more question: Do the police know you, because--because of
your life?”
She shook her head, looking at him intently, with those mournfully true
eyes. And he felt a sort of shame.
“I was obliged to ask. Do you know where he lives?”
“Yes.”
“You must not go there. And he must not come to you, here.”
Her lips quivered; but she bowed her head. Suddenly he found her quite
close to him, speaking almost in a whisper:
“Please do not take him from me altogether. I will be so careful. I will
not do anything to hurt him; but if I cannot see him sometimes, I shall
die. Please do not take him from me.” And catching his hand between her
own, she pressed it desperately. It was several seconds before Keith
said:
“Leave that to me. I will see him. I shall arrange. You must leave that
to me.”
“But you will be kind?”
He felt her lips kissing his hand. And the soft moist touch sent a queer
feeling through him, protective, yet just a little brutal, having in it
a shiver of sensuality. He withdrew his hand. And as if warned that she
had been too pressing, she recoiled humbly. But suddenly she turned,
and stood absolutely rigid; then almost inaudibly whispered: “Listen!
Someone out--out there!” And darting past him she turned out the light.
Almost at once came a knock on the door. He could feel--actually feel
the terror of this girl beside him in the dark. And he, too, felt
terror. Who could it be? No one came but Larry, she had said. Who else
then could it be? Again came the knock, louder! He felt the breath of
her whisper on his cheek: “If it is Larry! I must open.” He shrank back
against the wall; heard her open the door and say faintly: “Yes. Please!
Who?”
Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice which
Keith recognised answered:
“All right, miss. Your outer door's open here. You ought to keep it shut
after dark.”
God! That policeman! And it had been his own doing, not shutting the
outer door behind him when he came in. He heard her say timidly in her
foreign voice: “Thank you, sir!” the policeman's retreating steps, the
outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something
in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him
gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he
could not see her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak
the truth! And he said brusquely:
“You told me they didn't know you!”
Her voice answered like a sigh:
“I did not think they did, sir. It is so long I was not out in the town,
not since I had Larry.”
The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at
those words. His brother--son of his mother, a gentleman--the property
of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event!
But she had turned up the light. Had she some intuition that darkness
was against her? Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless
save for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly,
so unaccountably good, and like a child's.
“I am going now,” he said. “Remember! He mustn't come here; you mustn't
go to him. I shall see him to-morrow. If you are as fond of him as you
say--take care, take care!”
She sighed out, “Yes! oh, yes!” and Keith went to the door. She was
standing with her back to the wall, and to follow him she only moved her
head--that dove-like face with all its life in eyes which seemed saying:
'.ook into us; nothing we hide; all--all is there!'
And he went out.
In the passage he paused before opening the outer door. He did not want
to meet that policeman again; the fellow's round should have taken him
well out of the street by now, and turning the handle cautiously, he
looked out. No one in sight. He stood a moment, wondering if he should
turn to right or left, then briskly crossed the street. A voice to his
right hand said:
“Good-night, sir.”
There in the shadow of a doorway the policeman was standing. The fellow
must have seen him coming out! Utterly unable to restrain a start, and
muttering “Goodnight!” Keith walked on rapidly:
He went full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and uneasy
feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had been taken
for a frequenter of a lady of the town. The whole thing--the whole
thing!--a vile and disgusting business! His very mind felt dirty and
breathless; his spirit, drawn out of sheath, had slowly to slide
back before he could at all focus and readjust his reasoning faculty.
Certainly, he had got the knowledge he wanted. There was less danger
than he thought. That girl's eyes! No mistaking her devotion. She would
not give Larry away. Yes! Larry must clear out--South America--the
East--it did not matter. But he felt no relief. The cheap, tawdry room
had wrapped itself round his fancy with its atmosphere of murky love,
with the feeling it inspired, of emotion caged within those yellowish
walls and the red stuff of its furniture. That girl's face! Devotion;
truth, too, and beauty, rare and moving, in its setting of darkness and
horror, in that nest of vice and of disorder!... The dark archway; the
street arab, with his gleeful: “They 'ain't got 'im yet!”; the feel of
those bare arms round his neck; that whisper of horror in the darkness;
above all, again, her child face looking into his, so truthful! And
suddenly he stood quite still in the street. What in God's name was he
about? What grotesque juggling amongst shadows, what strange and ghastly
eccentricity was all this? The forces of order and routine, all the
actualities of his daily life, marched on him at that moment, and swept
everything before them. It was a dream, a nightmare not real! It was
ridiculous! That he--he should thus be bound up with things so black and
bizarre!
He had come by now to the Strand, that street down which every day he
moved to the Law Courts, to his daily work; his work so dignified and
regular, so irreproachable, and solid. No! The thing was all a monstrous
nightmare! It would go, if he fixed his mind on the familiar objects
around, read the names on the shops, looked at the faces passing. Far
down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of the old church, and
beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves. The bell of a fire-engine
sounded, and the horses came galloping by, with the shining metal,
rattle of hoofs and hoarse shouting. Here was a sensation, real and
harmless, dignified and customary! A woman flaunting round the corner
looked up at him, and leered out: “Good-night!” Even that was customary,
tolerable. Two policemen passed, supporting between them a man the worse
for liquor, full of fight and expletives; the sight was soothing, an
ordinary thing which brought passing annoyance, interest, disgust.
It had begun to rain; he felt it on his face with pleasure--an actual
thing, not eccentric, a thing which happened every day!
He began to cross the street. Cabs were going at furious speed now
that the last omnibus had ceased to run; it distracted him to take this
actual, ordinary risk run so often every day. During that crossing of
the Strand, with the rain in his face and the cabs shooting past, he
regained for the first time his assurance, shook off this unreal sense
of being in the grip of something, and walked resolutely to the corner
of his home turning. But passing into that darker stretch, he again
stood still. A policeman had also turned into that street on the other
side. Not--surely not! Absurd! They were all alike to look at--those
fellows! Absurd! He walked on sharply, and let himself into his house.
But on his way upstairs he could not for the life of him help raising a
corner of a curtain and looking from the staircase window. The policeman
was marching solemnly, about twenty-five yards away, paying apparently
no attention to anything whatever.