Audrey was scarcely more than half conscious when she found herself
out in the open air, such air as was to be had on a hot, dusty day at
the end of May, with a blazing sun pouring down into the busy streets
near the Old Bailey, and a keen east wind waiting round the corner,
blowing clouds of paper, straw and dust into the faces of the
passers-by.
The blinding glare of the sun revived her, however, and made her
blink. Looking round, she found herself supported by the arm of a man,
listening to a voice she half remembered, and surrounded by a too
attentive and too curious, but decidedly sympathetic, crowd.
“Poor thing!” “She’s his wife!” “Didn’t you see him look at her?”
“P’raps he didn’t do it, after all!” “Poor thing!”
These and similar comments reached Audrey’s ears before they carried
any sense to them. But remembrance, full, horrible, came back
suddenly, and she drew herself up and struggled to regain her
self-command.
“Mr. Candover!”
“Yes, yes. You’re all right. I’ve got my car here; only get through
this abominable crowd, and you will be all right.”
But Audrey had recovered her wits, and a sudden fierce resentment
awoke in her.
This was Gerard’s most intimate friend, and he had known all about
their distress, yet they had seen nothing of him all through that
dreadful time. She tried to draw away the hand which he held fast
within his own arm.
“You might have come to us before!” she said, with bitter reproach.
“You knew the trouble we were in, and you professed to be so anxious
to help us. Yet never once in all that dreadful time have we seen
you!”
“I--I told my secretary to do what he could. He did get bail for your
husband!” faltered Mr. Candover in a tone of some contrition but still
more reproach.
“Because I insisted. I followed him about till he did,” retorted
Audrey sharply.
“As for myself, I was in Paris. I had to go. I told you so.”
“Paris is not at the other end of the world. And you didn’t even write
to him!”
“Mrs. Angmering, you overwhelm me! Allow me to do the best I can to
make amends for what indeed was not my fault. Let me do what poor
Angmering would like best, and take care of his wife.”
“Thank you. Your kindness comes too late. I can take care of myself.”
And Audrey, now that they had come in sight of the smart motor-car
which never failed to attract the attention of a crowd when it
stopped, refused her companion’s entreaties that she would get into
it, and dashed across the street to an omnibus.
Mr. Candover was disappointed, but he took his disappointment with
philosophy. His good intentions might be resented now, but they would
be better appreciated some day.
So he waited nearly a week, and then he called at the flat at West
Kensington, and was told that Mrs. Angmering was not at home.
He felt sure that she was, so he lay in wait for her. And when Audrey,
very pale, very quiet, wearing a thick veil, came quickly out and down
the stairs and out into the street, she was met by her husband’s
friend, who, raising his hat with a courteous and diffident manner,
asked humbly:--
“Won’t you speak to me, Mrs. Angmering? Surely, because you’re unhappy
yourself, you shouldn’t make your old friends unhappy!”
Audrey stopped, but she did not hold out her hand. In truth she was at
war with all the world. With the judge who had sentenced Gerard, the
jury who had tried him, the counsel who had led the case against him,
the counsel who had failed to defend him successfully; more than all
with the relations who had written her letters full of horror at her
husband’s supposed misdeeds, accompanied by subdued reminders that,
when she left the calm of a Lancashire town for the riot and
wickedness of a London life with a London husband, she had only done
what she might have expected to lead to misery.
“I don’t want to make anybody unhappy,” said she in a low voice. “But
it’s true, Mr. Candover, that just now I don’t feel inclined to hold
any intercourse with anybody. I want a little--a little time to--to
get over it!”
“Indeed, I can quite understand that. But for Gerard’s sake you must
take care of yourself, you know. You mustn’t fret, for one thing. You
mustn’t let him see, when you meet him again, that you’ve allowed
fretting to mar your beauty.”
She frowned impatiently. What did she care for her looks now Gerard
could not see her? She felt that, at that moment, she would have liked
to pull out her eyelashes and cut off her hair, and efface the charms
which she valued for his sake only.
“I’m not going to waste time in fretting. It’s of no use,” said she.
“Excuse my asking--what are you going to do?”
She hesitated.
“I--I don’t quite know--yet.”
He looked at his watch.
“Look here. I may take the privilege of an old fogey and an old
friend, mayn’t I? Let me take you to one of the restaurants--one of
the quiet ones,” he went on hastily, as she drew herself up, “where we
can talk over the situation, and I may be able to help you to decide
upon something.”
“Thank you very much, but----”
“Come, come, you’ve dined with me often enough before.”
“With Gerard, yes. But not without him.”
“Well, do you mean to give up your friends altogether? To live the
life of a nun?”
Audrey had recovered her full faculties, and she answered him promptly
and steadily:--
“No. I don’t mean to lead the life of a nun, but the life of a widow,”
she said. “While Gerard is in prison I’m going to remain in mourning
for him, and when he comes back to me I’m going to--to be alive once
more.”
“But in the meantime,” urged Mr. Candover gently, “even though you
don’t feel that life is worth living, you must live, you know. And the
best way to please Gerard is to keep in good health and in good
spirits. I don’t mean uproariously high spirits, but the natural ones
of youth and beauty. May I ask where you’re going now?”
She hesitated.
“I’m going to try to sublet the flat,” she answered unwillingly at
last.
For she still felt aggrieved at his defection, as she considered it,
at the fact that, when a powerful friend like himself might have done
much to support Gerard and to create a favourable impression by
standing up for him boldly, Mr. Candover, who had professed so much
affection for them both, should have remained silent and aloof.
“Won’t you let me do the business for you? A man is less likely to be
taken advantage of than a woman, you know.”
“Thank you, I would rather arrange it all myself. It gives me
something to do.”
“May I come round to-morrow and bring you some books?”
“Thank you, I have no time for reading now.”
“If I were to come, then, should I be told you were out, as I was told
just now?” persisted he.
“I--I think so. I leave the same message for all my friends. If they
were to persist in seeing me, I should have to go away. Really I
should have thought you might understand, Mr. Candover, how very, very
retired a life I must live now.”
It was very neatly worded, but Mr. Candover understood. Audrey had to
be discreet; she was a good and true woman, and the enjoyments which
she had loved, the gaieties in which she had taken a foremost and
brilliant part with her young husband by her side to share them, were
now to be put away, forgotten, to give place to the austerity of the
widowhood she professed to have entered.
The man of the world was nonplussed. Give up the chase he would not;
but before this inflexible determination he was powerless. At last a
bright thought struck him:--
“If I were to bring my two girls up, now, would you see them? They are
hardly more than children, and are still at school. But I should like
you to know them. And I should like them to know _you_, to have before
them the example of a noble woman and a devoted wife.”
Audrey was conquered. She could hardly refuse such a request as this.
“I should be very happy to see them,” she said gently. “But wait, oh,
do please wait a little. To see two happy girls now--would--would----”
The tears were so near that she had to collect herself--“would be more
than I could bear,” she ended in a whisper.
A week later, therefore, Mr. Candover called at the flat one
afternoon, bringing with him two shy schoolgirls, still in the awkward
stage between childhood and womanhood, though the elder was a tall,
well-developed girl whose hair had just been “put up” to celebrate her
eighteenth birthday.
She was a bright-faced girl, this Pamela, with irregular features,
little twinkling, merry dark eyes, and manners half-shy,
half-hoydenish, but rather sweet.
Babs, the younger girl, was rather silent, rather slow. But the pretty
features and fair hair promised to develop into great beauty
by-and-by.
Both girls had evidently been told enough to interest them in their
beautiful hostess, as poor Audrey felt with a pang. And their shy
looks and gently subdued voices cut her to the quick, making her feel
indeed that she was lonely with a deeper loneliness than that of a
widow, for was not Gerard going through worse than death?
Audrey hoped to dispose of her task as hostess within an hour, but as
they all stayed on she presently felt compelled to ask them to stay
and dine with her, an invitation which was accepted with so much
readiness that she perceived at once that this was the end Mr.
Candover had had in view.
She felt rather ashamed of her vague mistrust of this amiable and kind
friend when, the girls being engaged at the piano in a “brilliant”
duet which afforded a perfect cover for conversation, he said to her
in a low voice full of feeling:--
“And now, my dear Mrs. Angmering, let me know something of your plans.
Both the girls and I hope that you won’t give us up altogether,
however quiet you mean to be.”
Reticence would be out of place, she felt, now that Mr. Candover had
so tactfully shown himself in the character of an old friend and a
father, instead of the one in which she knew him best, the
complimentary, half lover-like man of pleasure and man about town.
“I want,” she said, “to do something for myself, to earn money, I
mean. I want to have something to show Gerard when I see him again.”
Mr. Candover raised his eyebrows.
“Well said, like a brave lady. And what do you propose to do? Perhaps
I could help you.”
“Well,” said Audrey, “I have a taste, perhaps even a talent, for
millinery; I have still a little capital; and I thought I might
perhaps start a business as lots of women do now. Too many, perhaps,”
she added thoughtfully.
“Too many do it the wrong way. You must do it the right way,” said Mr.
Candover with animation. “Now this is a thing I know I can help you
in, and you ought to do well. But remember, there must be no
half-measures. Don’t be modest. That is the golden rule for every sort
of business, from that of the company promoter to that of the keeper
of a whelk-stall. Blow the trumpet, beat the drum, tell them yours is
the greatest show on earth--and they’ll believe you.”
Audrey laughed nervously.
“Oh, I haven’t either impudence or money enough to make a great noise
about it,” said she.
“Never mind. I’ll do that for you. I know of the very woman who would
do the hard part of the work; what you have to do is the showy part.
You must wear handsome dresses, advertise your own bonnets, and
swagger about in a victoria to show them all off.”
“Oh, no, no, I’d no idea of doing anything of that sort,” said Audrey
breathlessly.
“I know you had not. Nevertheless, that’s how the thing has to be
done. You must take a first floor in the neighbourhood of Bond Street,
and you must call yourself by a foreign name, a title for choice.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t like to do that!”
“You have no choice. Either you must leave the thing undone, or do it
well. My dear Mrs. Angmering, I advise you in Gerard’s interest as
well as your own. Wouldn’t you like to be able to meet him, in not so
very long a time, with a house of your own, and a turn-out such as you
both have admired in the park a hundred times? Of course you would.
And the way to get all those nice things, and to hold up your head in
the world besides, is to cut a dash with whatever capital you’ve got,
and to begin with a flourish. I’ll get you a good little circle of
smart clients to make a start with, and if you’ll be guided by me, you
will make your fortune.”
Breathlessly, with many a timid fear, yet with a vague consciousness
that there was sound sense in his advice from a worldly point of view,
Audrey listened, objected, was talked down and finally conquered.
Within a month, taking step by step, not without caution, but
acknowledging the great help of Mr. Candover’s judgment, Audrey found
herself the responsible tenant of handsomely furnished first-floor
showrooms in a good street in the West End, with a staff of
assistants, and over them the “valuable woman” of whom Mr. Candover
had spoken.
This woman was a sallow, elderly Frenchwoman, who professed to speak
no English. She was thin, gaunt, plain of feature, simple of dress.
She had keen, hard eyes and a curious look in her face which reminded
Audrey of some one she had seen somewhere, but in an elusive way, so
that she was unable to fix the resemblance upon any definite person.
This woman’s name was Marie Laure, and she had the eye of a lynx and
the step of a cat. Audrey was sure that Mademoiselle Laure disliked
her, but could not say how she knew it. In the meantime the
Frenchwoman was clever, business-like and an excellent manager, so
that indeed, as Mr. Candover had said, it was only the showy part of
the work that was left to the young nominal head of the business.
Little by little Audrey had discovered that she was sliding into
complete confidence in Mr. Candover’s advice, so that he was consulted
by her in everything, and always with good results.
He fulfilled his promise to bring her customers, and although some of
these were not of the type she would have chosen, he laughed at her
scarcely expressed scruples, and told her that she did not want to
cater for Sunday schools. Then he got her an order for the dresses for
a new piece at a theatre, and telling her that she must now advertise
herself by the title he had found for her, sent announcements
broadcast to the papers that the dresses for the new piece at the
Piccadilly Theatre were by that “artistic creator of exquisite motives
in millinery and dreams in dresses,” the Countess Rocada.
Audrey had already demurred to the assumption of this high-sounding
title, but she had given way, feeling herself to be in safe hands with
regard to worldly knowledge on such matters, and being moreover glad
to hide herself from public curiosity by dropping her own too
well-known name.
So she was known to her employees only as Madame Rocada.
And on the very day when this announcement went forth in the press,
Audrey found herself overwhelmed by a surprising flow of evidently
wealthy customers, both men and women, all well dressed, all curious,
all with money to spend, who crowded her rooms from before
luncheon-time to within an hour of dinner.
There was a look about these curious customers, an obvious and haughty
inquisitiveness about the women, an elaborate courtesy on the part of
the men, which Audrey did not like. And she told herself that they had
probably found out who she was, and that they had come to stare at her
and to gossip about her and “the way she took it”.
When they were all gone, the lights turned down, when the assistants
had filed out, and the costly dresses and plumed hats had been
shrouded in wraps and put away, Audrey, worn out, wounded and
miserable, flung herself face downwards on one of the luxurious
couches which had been crowded that day with idle visitors, and burst
into bitter tears.
A rapid step in the next room, which was another showroom, divided
from this only by a handsome portière, the sound of a sharply drawn
breath, and then a peal of wild, hysterical laughter, startled her and
made her spring to her feet.