A LAPSE OF MEMORY
Deane sat at his desk, immersed once more in the affairs of his great
business. His cheeks were bronzed with the sun and heather-scented wind.
His eyes were clear and bright. All traces of the unsettlement of those
few nervous weeks seemed to have passed away. One thing only
occasionally disturbed him--the non-appearance of Winifred Rowan. Since
those few seconds of tremulous excitement when they had stood face to
face in the darkened room of the hotel, he had neither seen nor heard
from her. He could understand her having left the hotel hurriedly. He
could have understood her keeping away for a day or two. But a whole
month had passed, and she had taken no steps whatever to communicate
with him. He had left exact instructions as to what was to be done
should she come to the office while he was in Scotland. He had had the
whole of his private letters forwarded, lest by chance a word from her
should fail to reach him. There was something a little ominous in this
absolute silence, something which troubled him occasionally, which set
him thinking, wondering, whether under that still, quiet demeanor there
might be qualities of which he had taken no account,--whether indeed
she, too, were not a schemer who meant to make the most of this
opportunity which chance had thrown in her way.
A clerk entered and stood at his side. "A young lady is here to see you,
sir," he announced,--"Miss Rowan."
"Miss Rowan," Deane repeated mechanically.
"Yes, sir!" the clerk answered. "We have instructions outside to let you
know if she called at any time."
Deane leaned back in his chair. With a few quick words he dismissed his
secretary from the immediate business in hand. "You may show Miss Rowan
in," he said.
A moment or two later she entered. Deane watched her with a new
curiosity as he rose to his feet. She was as quietly dressed as usual,
as pale, and her eyes, except for one upward glance, seemed always to be
seeking the carpet. There was something curiously negative about her
appearance,--something, it seemed to him, almost wilfully so. The rich
brown hair, which had flashed almost to golden in the morning sunlight
at Rakney, was drawn up and concealed, as though the owner's sole object
was that it might escape attention. Her clothes were not unbecoming, but
they were the quietest of their sort. Her eyes, which should have been
beautiful, were so perpetually veiled and hidden that their quality was
lost. Both physically and in her reticent speech she appealed to him
more than ever that morning as a woman whose desire seemed to be to
creep through life unnoticed.
"At last!" he remarked, holding out his hand pleasantly. "I have been
expecting to see you for some time, Miss Rowan."
"You have been expecting to see me?" she repeated, raising her eyes to
his. "How strange!"
"Why strange?" he answered, glancing around the room, and lowering his
voice a little. "Don't you remember at our last meeting you promised to
bring my tea a few hours later? Since then, I have not even seen you,
nor have you sent me a line."
She raised her eyes again and looked at him. They were very beautiful
eyes, but he did not understand the somewhat blank expression which
shone out of them. "I do not understand you," she said quietly.
Deane would have been irritated, but something in her manner struck him
as so strange that his feeling turned to one of bewilderment. "Come," he
said, "you are not going to suggest that I have been dreaming, or that
you have had one of these fashionable lapses of memory? You remember
meeting me in that room in the Universal Hotel?"
Without change of countenance or expression she answered, "I have never
been in the Universal Hotel in my life!"
Deane looked at her, his lips a little parted, and as he looked his
feeling of bewilderment grew. "My dear young lady," he protested, "do
you mean to tell me--"
"You have been mistaking me for someone else, I think," she said calmly.
"There are so many people about who are like me. We will not talk of
this just now, if you do not mind. I have come to you from my brother."
"Well?" said Deane.
"My brother is free," she went on. "He was released at nine o'clock this
morning. The doctor at the prison signed a certificate that he has only
a month or so to live. He is free on the understanding that he goes away
to some quiet place. He came to me an hour ago. It is at his wish that I
am here."
"Go on," Deane rapped out.
"He wishes to see you," she said. "That is all. He does not think that
there is any risk about it, under the circumstances. We are staying for
the night at the Grand Hotel. To-morrow we shall go down to Devonshire
or Cornwall. He will be glad if you will come and see him as soon as
possible."
"I will come," Deane said, "but first, Miss Rowan, I must have an
understanding with you."
"An understanding with me?" she repeated slowly.
"Naturally," he answered. "I want to know, first of all, whether you are
my friend or my enemy,--whether, in short, you mean to play the
blackmailer, or whether you mean to return to me that document which you
abstracted from amongst Sinclair's effects."
She drew a little sigh. "I am quite sure now, Mr. Deane," she said,
"that you are mistaking me for someone else. I do not know what you are
talking about."
Deane was silent for several moments. He was feeling nervous and
disturbed. There was something uncanny about this quiet, persistent
denial,--the still face, the steadfast, beautiful eyes, which seemed yet
like unlit fires devoid of sympathy or apprehension.
"I scarcely know," Deane said, "how we are to continue this discussion.
For some reason or other, you are sitting there within a few feet of me
and denying something which we both know to be the truth. You have a
motive, I suppose, but whatever that motive may be, you cannot imperil
it by speaking openly here. We are absolutely alone. There is not a soul
within hearing. You and I both know, Miss Rowan, that you hold that
paper to obtain which your brother risked his life and met with such
misfortune. It would be his wish, I know, that you should give it to me.
The terms I offered him for its recovery were surely liberal. If you
think otherwise, tell me your price. We are alone. You are not giving
yourself away. Tell me your price!"
"I have no price, Mr. Deane," she said, "because I have no paper. I am
not a thief, nor have I stolen anything from anybody. All that you say
is strange to me. My brother is waiting, and he is very ill. Will you
come with me now, or will you follow as soon as you can?"
Deane leaned back in his chair and laughed. It was not altogether a
natural laugh, but it was the only relief he could find from his
overwrought feelings. "What sort of a game you and I are going to play,
Miss Rowan, I cannot imagine," he said. "I have made the first and the
obvious move, and you have declared your opening. We must let it go at
that, I suppose. When you are disposed to talk common sense, I and my
cheque-book will be glad to listen to you. In the meantime, let me beg
of you one thing, and that is, keep that paper in some safe place!"
She rose to her feet with a little sigh. "You are mistaking me for
someone else, Mr. Deane," she said.
He crossed the room and fetched his hat and gloves from a cupboard. He
glanced into a looking-glass for a moment to straighten his tie, and met
the girl's eyes fixed upon him. He stood quite still, watching. She was
looking at him, at his back, as he stood there. There was expression in
her face at last, an expression which puzzled him, which he failed
altogether to understand. He stood quite still, with his fingers still
upon the sailor knot of his tie. As though she realized the
possibilities of the mirror, she suddenly turned around. When he came
towards her, the mask, if it was a mask, was there once more.
"If you will come with me," said he, "I should be glad to go and see
your brother."
They passed through the offices side by side. Many curious eyes followed
them. Deane paused at one or two of the desks to leave a few parting
instructions. Then he handed the girl into the electric brougham which
was waiting at the door.
"The Grand Hotel," he told the man.
He got in and seated himself by her side. "Miss Rowan," he said, "you
are beginning to interest me exceedingly."
"I am sure that you cannot be in earnest," she answered, without turning
her head. "I am a most uninteresting person, living a most uninteresting
life."
"I think you said that you were a typist," he remarked.
"I am," she answered. "I am employed by Messrs. Rubicon & Moore in St.
Mary's Passage. I have been there for three years."
"With occasional holidays," he remarked, with a smile.
She shook her head. "The only holiday I have taken," she answered, "was
when I came to see you."
He deliberately leaned forward to look into her face. The memory of that
moment when he had held her in his arms, the breaking of the storm, the
thrill, the wonderful, unanalyzed excitement which seemed to play about
them like the lightning which was soon to flash across the sea and land,
came back to him. He looked deliberately into her face,--still as the
grave,--at the large eyes, which were listlessly fixed upon the
streaming people.
"You are the most amazing person!" he said softly. "Perhaps, as you were
never at the Hotel Universal, you were never in Rakney? Perhaps it was
not you who came to me with the storm, who tapped at my window, who
stood there like the daughter of the storm itself, who--"
"It was I who came to Rakney," she said. "You know that very well, Mr.
Deane. Neither have I forgotten it. But I think that you should not
remind me just now of that."
Of course she was right, but Deane felt a little unhinged. Her
invulnerability was maddening. "Perhaps not," he answered. "Perhaps I
have no right to remind you of that night, of the time when you crept in
from the storm, crept into my arms."
She turned her head slightly away, as though interested in the passing
throng. No flush of color tinged her cheeks. Her straight, firm lips
never trembled. He tried to take her hand,--small it was, and encased in
old, neatly-mended gloves. She drew it quietly but firmly away. She
remained silent.
"Perhaps I have no right," he continued, "to remind you of these things,
but neither have you the right to deny our later meeting. You are
playing some sort of a game with me," he continued, a little roughly,
"and your methods, whatever they may be, include a lie. Therefore, I
myself take license."
"If you have quite finished, Mr. Deane," she said, "I should be glad. My
visit to you, and all the circumstances connected with it, is one of the
things which I wish to forget."
"To relegate to the same place in your memory," he remarked, "as your
brief essay in the role of a chambermaid."
She leaned out of the window. "Here we are," she remarked. "I am anxious
about my brother. Please hurry."