 Chapter 14 OF ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE by Mary Elizabeth Braddon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 14. Daisy's Diary at Lamford Home is sweet even after Italy, even after the bright and busy streets of Paris with their flower shops and milleners and bonbons and prettinesses of all kinds and the bois and the carriages and the smart people and the music and the life and movement everywhere and above all the opera and the theatre. Paris was very nice. I had no idea I could enjoy any city so much after Venice. I thought that enchanting labyrinth of marble lying upon the breast of the waves would take the colour out of every other city in the world. But Paris was nice all the same and I was sorry to leave it. Home is sweet always. I have been reading my German Plato this morning under the willows that shade my father's grave in the old spot that has been my sanctuary ever since I began to read serious books and to try to understand the thoughts of great writers. Plato is so comforting after Schopenhauer and Hartman. Plato is full of hope. They are the preachers of despair. Mother seems happy to be at home again in the old rooms among the books and pictures and in the gardens she loves so dearly. She has imported a small fortune in the shapes of specimen conifers and azaleas and peonies and roses from a famous nursery near Paris and she is happily employed in superintending the planting of her treasures. It is rather late for planting. Our head gardener says in his broad scotch and he even went so far as to give us a saying quoted by the great Sir Walter himself. Plot a tree before candle mass and ye may command it to grow. Plot one after candle mass and ye may just and treat it to grow. But in spite of Sir Walter's proverb we must trust in provenance and in our good old MacPherson scale. Uncle Ambrose retains the cottage in which he has lived so long and in which Cyril's childhood was spent. There is no room in our house for his books which fill every available wall in the cottage so he keeps them on their old shelves and uses his old study when he is working on any subject which requires much reference to authorities. He is writing a new book I believe though he has not confessed as much to either mother or me. He is very reticent about his literary work and seemed surprised and almost scared by the success of his last book and by the tremendous amount of criticism and argumentation that was expended upon it. I could not live without literary work, he told me once, but I do not derive much pleasure from the publication of a book. Critics are an aggravating race. They see meanings that I never meant. They overlook the better part of my work. He is the most self-contained man this world ever saw I believe. He takes no delight in the things that please other people, but he is the best and kindest friend I have and he adores mother, so what can I want more in him to make up perfection? Cyril is his opposite in most things, all energy action, light-heartedness. I sometimes wish he were a little less light-hearted. One may weary of perpetual sunshine. If I am ever in a sad or meditative mood I have a feeling that, however kind Cyril is, he can't understand me. He seems miles and miles away from me, as far as from England to America. He has been away at Oxford since we came home visiting some of his college friends. Of course I miss him sadly, but there is a kind of relief in being alone after continual companionship. Had Cyril been here I should not have been able to spend a morning by my father's grave. He would have wanted me to go for a ride or a walk or to row down to Henley. I fall back into my old ways and my sad, quiet life naturally while he is away and if it were not that we write to each other every day I might almost forget that we are engaged. Uncle Ambrose is not fond of River Lawn. He does not say as much, but I know him too well not to find out his real feelings. Children have a way of watching faces and I used to watch his face years ago to see when he was pleased or displeased with me so that I came to know every line in his countenance and what every line means. No, he is not fond of River Lawn. All the things I love, the quaint old cottage rooms that father and mother found here before they were married, the low ceilings, the bow windows, the great oak beams and diamond panes and leaden lattices have no charm for Uncle Ambrose. Nor yet the handsome rooms father built so studiously arranged for mother's comfort, drawing room and dining room below, bedroom, dressing room and boudoir above. Nothing could be more picturesque than the old rooms or more comfortable and luxurious than the new and yet Uncle Ambrose does not like the house. I can see it in his face. He seems to bear a grudge towards the place father loved and cared about. Is it jealousy, I wonder? Surely a philosopher, a man who has studied the deeper meanings and mysteries of life present and future, has Socrates studied them? Surely such a man could not feel so petty and limited to feeling as jealousy? Jealousy of my dear dead father's love and forethought for my mother? A jealousy so trivial as to set him against the rooms and the furniture my father provided for his wife? No, I cannot believe him capable of such pettiness. He is a man of large mind and far-reaching thoughts and to be jealous about chairs and tables. Impossible. But the fact still remains, Uncle Ambrose does not like River Lawn. He is full of his plans for the house in Grovener Square. He has been to London with my mother twice already to hurry on the work. He wants to install us there at the beginning of June so that we may enjoy all the gaities of the season, the summer season when people almost live out of doors. Mother is to be presented on her marriage and I am to be presented by mother. She has already begun to talk of my court gown all white like a brides. The girl suggested that it would be an economy for us to marry while the gown is fresh, but I told him that the idea of matrimony in relation to him had not yet entered my head. It has entered other people's heads though my dear lady disdain, said he. I suppose you know that a certain suite of rooms in Grovener Square is being fitted with a view to our joint occupation. With a view means any time within the next ten years, I told him. Upon this he began to be disagreeably persistent and declared that nobody had ever contemplated a long engagement, which is utterly untrue since mother suggested that we should wait two years before we marry. We had plenty of money, he said, and what was there to prevent our being married before the summer was over. A great many things, said I, but first and chief among them the fact that we are both much too feather-headed to take such an awful step as matrimony. And then I reminded him how nice it is to be engaged, how much nicer for young people like us than to be married and tied to each other in a sort of domestic bondage. Marriage is a capital institution for middle-aged and elderly people, said I. The very best and brightest examples we have of married people are Bosses and Philemon and Darby and Joan. Now you would not expect me to feel like Bosses. Bosses was young once, said he. Yes, and then no doubt she was engaged to Philemon and he used to serenade her as you did me that night at Venice. Oh, it was lovely. You couldn't have serenaded your wife, you would have been indoors grumbling at her more likely. Daisy, you are talking nonsense, said he sternly, and no doubt he spoke the truth. Oh, I am only pleading for youth and liberty, for the morning hours of life, I explained. While you are my fiancée you can go where you like, do what you like, and there is no one to find fault with you. If I were your wife I might feel offended at your going up to London so often and coming home so late at night and being a member of so many clubs. If I were your wife I might grumble at your accepting that invitation to Oxford for next week. Tell me to withdraw my acceptance and it is done, he cried in his impulsive way. I give you all the authority of a wife in advance. Being your slave what can I do but wait? Don't quote that sonnet, I said. Everybody does. Quote something fresh. He did not notice this impertinence. He was spacing up and down the room in a state of excitement. Your mother did not think like you, Daisy, he said. She was only nineteen when she married. Ah, but then she adored my father, said I, without thinking what I was saying. He stopped his impetuous perambulations and walked over to me with a terrible countenance. He laid his hands upon my shoulders and looked me in the face. Margaret Hattrell, he said, do you mean what your words imply? Do I mean that my mother was desperately in love with my father? Of course I do. And that you are not in love with me? Not desperately in love? Miss Cyril, don't look at me like that. You have no right to look so angry. You have no right to look so shocked and distressed. Did I ever tell you that I adored you? Did I ever pretend to be desperately in love? Never, never, never. I am not romantic or poetical as my mother was at my age. I have been taught differently. Your father trained my mind and he did not make me romantic. It isn't in my nature to love anyone as mother loved father. At least, I think not. A strange bothering stopped me as I said this. A curious dim feeling that there were hidden possibilities in my heart. Dreams that I might have dreamt. Feelings that would have brought my mind nearer akin to my mother's mind, if fate had been different. The look of absolute distress in his face made me unhappy and I tried to make amends for my foolish and considerate speech. Why should you be shocked because I am not romantic? I asked. I don't think you are a very romantic person, either. We have known each other all our lives and we ought to be very happy together by and by. Is that not enough, Cyril? Not quite, he answered, graver than I had ever seen him until that moment. But I suppose it is all I shall get, so I must be satisfied. Yesterday afternoon I amused myself with an exploration. It was a lovely afternoon almost summer-like though we are still in the time of tulips and hyacinths, and the beaches have not yet unfolded their tender young leaves. Mother had gone to London with her husband to look at the drawing rooms which are receiving their finishing touches at the hands of the decorators, and I had all the day to myself. I spent the whole morning at my studies working upon a synopsis of Durye's history of the Greeks, which Uncle Ambrose advised me to write, firstly to impress historical facts upon my mind, secondly to cultivate style, and thirdly to acquire the power of arranging and condensing a subject with neatness and facility. It is rather dry work, but I like it and I adore the Greeks. I have been reading Eber's Egyptian story between wiles, and I think that has helped me to realize the atmosphere of that bygone age when Pisistratus was ruling at Athens, and Cresus was preaching platitudes upon his fallen fortunes at the court of Amassus. I finished my work before lunch, which is an absurd meal when mother is away, Amir scrambled with the dogs who come in to keep me company and clear my plate under my nose. Directly after lunch I took up my hat to go out, whereupon Sappho and Phaeon my darling Irish setters went mad and nearly knocked me down in their delighted anticipation of a ramble with me. We had explored every lane, copse, and common within four miles of River Lawn so I wanted, if I possibly could, to give the dogs a change, and I thought I would venture to peep in at Fountainhead where the shrubberies are full of primroses at this season. The Fountainhead gardener and our undergardener are great friends and I have often talked to him when he has been in our grounds. I know the old housekeeper, too, so I had no compunction in opening a little gate in the shrubbery which gives on to the narrow lane that divides our property from Mr. Floristans. There is a grand entrance on the Henley Road and high iron gates and a rustic lodge with a thatched roof and the dearest old chimney stack. The gardener's family live in this lodge, but the big gate is only opened when Mr. Floristans is at home and that is very seldom. He told me he meant to be often or at Fountainhead in future. He feels himself growing too old for a roving life. I suppose he must be at least nine and twenty, which is certainly old compared with Cyril and me. How nice it is to be young, to feel oneself quite young, and how sad it must be when weariness and age begin to creep over one. I am miserable sometimes when I think that mother will grow old before I do, that I shall see the shadows stealing over that dear and lovely face, the shadows that foretell the end. Oh, that is the bane of life. That is what makes life not worth living, the knowledge that death is waiting somewhere on that road we know not, the grey mysterious highway of the future, waiting for those we love. The old shrubberies looked lovely in the afternoon sun, such a wild wealth of rhododendron and arbitus and so many fine conifers have varied among the spreading branches, a tangle of loveliness, periwinkle, and St. John's warts straggling over every bit of unoccupied ground. Phaeon and Sappho rushed about like mad things, imagining all sorts of impossible vermin, and scratching and digging whenever they got out of reach of my whip. That dog-whip of mine looks formidable, but I'm afraid those two clever darlings know that I would not hurt them for worlds. I had my pocket Dante with me, meaning to try and fancy myself in the pine forest near Ravenna, where he used to meditate, but the book was so far true to its name that it never left my pocket. I seem to have so much to think about, and a spring afternoon with light cloudlets floating in a pale blue sky, and the perfume of violets in the air sets all one's most fanciful fancies roaming far and wide. I think my thoughts were light as this old town or vanity that afternoon, or they could never have strayed so far, and yet there was a touch of sadness in them, for I could not help thinking of Gilbert Florestan and his melancholy position, quite alone in the world, mother and father both lying still and dumb as my dear father lives in his grave under the willows, no sister or brother, no one to care for him or to lean upon him. No doubt he has cousins as I have. I have not quite made up my mind whether cousins are a necessary evil or a modified blessing. I'm afraid if I stood alone in the world as he does, Dora and Flora would not fill a large gap in my life. I rambled in the shrubberies and the dear old fashioned gardens till I was tired, and then I began to feel the keenest curiosity about the inside of the house. It is not a pretty house, but it is old and dignified. When one has come but lately from a city of palaces, one can hardly be altogether alive to the beauty of an old English mansion with moss-grown walls and deep-set windows and a general grayness and low tone of color which some people find dispiriting. Yet the house touched me by a kind of mournful beauty and a sense of quiet desolation, such as I felt only a few weeks ago when I looked at those old neglected mansions upon some of the smaller canals so gloomy in their grandeur as of the dead irrevocable past. I have felt sometimes as if I would give worlds to be able to buy one of those degraded, dilapidated old palaces and to clear away all its parasite growth of petty modern uses and to restore it to the splendor and the beauty of three hundred years ago. And yet I have shuddered at the thought of the phantoms that might come crowding round me in those great grand rooms of all the dead people who might awake at the sound of music and laughter in the home where they were once young and merry. I walked up and down the broad gravel terrace in front of Mr. Floristan's house. It stands only about thirty feet above the level of the riverbank and a wide lawn slopes gently from the house to the river. I could see the boats going by and hear the voices of the roars which were a relief after the uncanny feeling that had crept over me while I was in the great overgrown garden on the other side of the house. I believe the gardener must have given himself a holiday for not a human creature did I see in the grounds. There is a glass door opening on to the terrace with an old-fashioned hanging bell. I ventured to ring that antiquated bell trembling a little at the thought of ghosts and perhaps a little at the thought that the old housekeeper would wonder at my wanting to explore her domain. The fancy had never come into my foolish brain before today, but I suppose that was because I had seen so little of Mr. Floristan until we met in Paris and could not feel any particular interest in his house. Now that I know him the house seems like an old friend and I wonder that I can have looked so often at the old Indian red roof and the great grey stone chimney stacks without wanting to see what the inside is like. No one answered my summons though I heard the bell ringing with an awful distinctness. I rang again but still there was no answer though I waited long enough for the feeblest of old women to creep from the remotest corner of the rambling old house. I rang a third time and still there was no reply and the more I couldn't get in the more keenly curious I became. So at last knowing old Mrs. Murdo would never resent any liberty on the part of my mother's daughter, mother being a power at Lamford, I tried the door. It opened easily and I went in, taking care to shut the door after me so as to keep Fayon and Sappho outside. They were scampering about the shrubberies and I knew they would find their way home when they missed me. I went in, feeling very much as Fatima must have felt, or in other words just a little ashamed of my idle curiosity. The house is a dear old house, very shabby as to carpets and curtains, but with lovely old furniture of Sir Charles Grandesson's period and with old China in every corner, China which I feel assured must be worth a fortune. But I will never breathe a word about its value to Mr. Floristan, or he may pack it all off to Christie's. Men are such goss where Wedgwood teapots and Mooster Willow pattern are in question. Yes, it is a dear old house. It has an old, old perfume of rose-leaves and lavender which must have been hoarded ever so long before Mr. Floristan was born in all the old chrysanthemum bowls and hoathering jars which stand about everywhere on the tops of cabinets and in corner cupboards and in quaint little alcoves and recesses which one meets with unawares in the corridors and lobbies. Not all the wealth of the Indies could create such a house. It is the slow growth of time, like the golden-brown lichens and cool gray mosses on the garden walls. I roamed and roamed about the rooms on the ground floor, opening one into another, quaintly and convenient with queer little doors, half wainscot and half wallpaper. Rooms without the faintest pretension to splendor or dignity. Rooms that suggest the world as Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austin knew it. A world in which people dined at five o'clock and danced country dances and played on the spinot and painted on velvet and talked about the luncheon tray and the britska. I looked at all the ornaments on all the tables and chimney-pieces. The things our grandmothers loved. Cardboard handscreens with pencil landscapes, Kregmiller Castle, Guy's Cliff. Spillboxes. What are spills, by the way, and why such a passion for boxes to accommodate them? Old albums and scrapbooks, old work baskets lined with faded satin. Everything was arranged as neatly as it had been fifty years ago when Mr. Floristan's grandmother was mistress of the house and these were her things, most of them. His mother's room had a more modern look, yet even there the books, desks, and work boxes were old-fashioned. How quickly the fashion of this life passes away. At first I was too much interested and amused to feel the uncanny influences of those deserted rooms full of things that had belonged to people who were all dead, but presently that air of long ago, together with a death-like silence of the house, began to affect my spirits. A feeling of profound melancholy crept over me. I thought of my dear dead father and wondered, as I have so often wondered, where the dead are. How near us? How distant? I went back to the dining-room for a last look at the family portraits before leaving the desolate house. Mrs. Murdo had evidently gone out upon some errand and there was no use in waiting for her return. I looked with interest at the picture on the left of the sideboard and near the door leading into the hall. It was the portrait of Mr. Floristan's father, a full-length painting in a rough brown shooting suit, knickerbockers, and mighty hop-nailed boots. A picturesque brown hat, a gun, and a liver-colored pointer were the accessories of the boldly painted figure against a background of russet foliage. The picture which was by a master hand might have been called a study in brown. The likeness between father and son was remarkable. It might have been Gilbert Floristan's portrait that I was looking at. I studied the picture so long, fascinated by that wonderful slap-dash power, the kind of painting which Reskin describes as a rapid hand and a full brush, that the face seemed to grow into my mind and the figure almost took life and motion as I looked at it. My nerves were in a peculiar state after that hour of silence and thoughtfulness in the desolate house, or else I could hardly have been so foolish as I was two minutes afterwards when I turned to leave the dining room and shrieked with terror on seeing a figure on the threshold of the door in the shadow of the half-closed shutters. I was idiot enough to mistake the real for the unreal, the living son for the dead father. In that moment of terror I believe that the figure standing there looking at me with a quiet smile was the ghostly semblance of the man whose picture I had contemplated so long. Pray forgive me for startling you, said Mr. Floristan, offering me his hand in the easiest way and not allowing me to see that he thought me an idiot as he must have done. I ought to have given you some notice of my arrival. You were so absorbed in my father's picture that you did not hear his son's footsteps. I think it is the fault of that thick turkey carpet rather than of my abstraction, I told him, but I really was absorbed in the picture and envying the painter his power to get such a grand effect out of such simple elements. It is almost as fine as Gainsborough's Blue Boy. I had no idea you were coming to England so soon. I had no idea myself, but the distance from Paris to Lamford is such a bagatelle that I thought I might as well run across and have a look at the old home before all the tulips are withered. My mother used to be so fond of her tulips, though they were never a costly collection. A Dutch connoisseur would have laughed at our poor little show. Have you only just arrived? I asked, feeling that I was redder than the reddest of the tulips and wondering what he must think of my extraordinary intrusion. Within three minutes the fly is still at the door and my servant is bringing in my portmanteau. You must think it's so strange to find me here. I stammered, feeling even worse than Fatima, though there were no gory heads lying about to add to my embarrassment. I only think it delightful to be welcomed by the presence of a friend, he answered with his inexpressible kindness. There was something in his smile and in his tone of voice so full of protecting friendliness that I began to feel easier in my mind and was able to explain my appearance in his dining room on that particular afternoon, and then I told him that I must go and hunt for the dogs who might be doing all manner of mischief in his shrubbery. I had a secret conviction that the good creatures had gone peaceably home to the stables, but they afforded a decent excuse to get me out of the house. I feel sure they won't do the slightest harm, he said, but if you are uneasy on that score we'll go and look for them together, and then perhaps your mother will take pity upon a tired traveller and give me a cup of tea. I am so dreadfully sorry, I said. Mother is in London and won't be home much before eight. That's a sad disappointment. I had looked forward to seeing her this afternoon. We went out at the hall together and we explored the shrubberies and garden but saw no sign of the dogs. He went home with me and we found Savo and Fayon in their kennels, whether they had returned half an hour before. Then from the stable-yard we walked naturally to the garden where the basket-chairs and tables had been set out on the terrace in honour of the summery warmth of the afternoon. The footman came out with a tea-tree and arranged it while Mr. Floristan and I stood looking at the river. Servants are so officious. I had happened to say at luncheon that if the day continued fine I thought I would have tea in the garden, and here was the man setting out the cups and saucers under Mr. Floristan's nose. There was no help for it. I could not be so inhospitable as to send him away tea-less, with my pet brass kettle singing merrily over the spirit lamp and my favourite buns frizzling fresh from the oven. I made the best of my awkward position. Perhaps as Mother isn't here you'll allow me to give you a cup of tea, I said. He accepted eagerly. I almost hoped he'd take his tea standing and go away directly he had emptied the cup. But although he had been the soul of delicacy and consideration in his own house he seemed to think he might do as he liked in hours. He seated himself in one of the low basket-chairs and I felt that he meant to stay. I daresay he thought it the most natural thing in the world, but I could not help feeling the strangeness of it, though Cyril and I had tea on the terrace t-t-t-t many a time before we were engaged and Mr. Floristan is a good deal older than Cyril. So I tried not to look confused or silly as I poured out the tea. Please let me wait upon you," I said when I saw him struggling out of the chair, the seat of which is only about a foot from the ground. I know how tired you must be. Let me wait upon you just as if you were mother. The offer is too tempting. I owned a feeling tired. I left Paris at eight o'clock and that meant leaving my lodgings at seven. And the day was hot and dry and dusty. However this garden and the river make amends for all I have suffered and this toasted bun is better than the most famous of Bignon's sautées. Why do we waste our substance on Paris dinners when tea and cake on a sunlit terrace are so much more delicious? We cannot always have the terrace and the sunshine. Oh, but there is the winter fireside," said he. Everyone has a fireside. I am assured that Epicurean dining is a mistake. A man left to his own devices usually dines on a mutton chop. The taste of Alvinism is more swagger and rivalry. A Lord Alvinly for a wager invents a dish which shall be costlier than anybody else's dish. A fricassee composed of that particular morsel out of a fowl's back which Epicureans have christened the oyster. A hackatomb of chickens have to be sacrificed for a single fricassee. And Lord Alvinly goes down to posterity as the inventor of the costliest dish that was ever cooked since Vitelius and his nightingales' tongues. Well, most all our dining in Paris is upon the same principle. We vie with each other in wastefulness and restaurateurs grow rich. It was a pleasure to hear him mattle on as he took his tea, devouring buns and jam sandwiches and seeming really to enjoy the meal. I was very soon as much at home with him as if he had been Cyril. I told him about the house in Grovener Square and we had a long discussion upon coloring and high art and furniture. I find that he inclines to the Italian school and thinks that Orientalism is a mistake in London. Your Persian lattices and Moorish divans imply perpetual sunshine, a lazy life and a semi-tropical climate, he said. They are mere foolishness in such a country as England. Were I furnishing a house in town I would take a Florentine palace as my model. And so you are going to desert River Lawn in all its summer beauty for the starched stateliness of Grovener Square? I told him that the change was not my choice or my mother's, but that it was my stepfather who was shifting the scene of our lives. And then I was drawn on to tell him of my stepfather's dislike of the house which had been my father's home. I suppose it is a natural feeling on his part, I said. He loves my mother so intensely that he cannot bear to see her in the home which her first husband made for her. Yes, it may be that such a jealousy is natural to some temperaments. Your stepfather is a peculiar man, a man of deep feeling, I fancy. Yes, that is quite true. He was devoted to my mother for years, all the years of her widowhood, before he took courage to ask her to be his wife. He is the most unselfish of men. He hardly made any use of his fortune until his marriage, but since he has been mother's husband he has spent his money like a prince. And you are to be his son's wife, he said. That will strengthen the bond between your mother and him. His voice and manner changed curiously as he said this. No one could have been gayer than he was five minutes before when he was expatiating upon the merits of jam sandwiches. No one could be graver than he was now. I did not answer him. What could I say? My engagement is an accepted fact. We were both silent till I felt somebody would have to say something so I said rather stupidly, Cyril and I have known each other since we were children. We are almost like brother and sister. Almost, with the difference of a wedding ring, he answered and he rose to say goodbye. When he was gone I found he had stayed only twenty minutes and I had two hours to dispose of before eight o'clock. He came to see mother this afternoon and they walked together on the terrace in earnest conversation for more than an hour. Uncle Ambrose was over at the cottage buried among his books. I was in the drawing room and I couldn't help feeling a little curious about what mother and Mr. Floristan could find to talk about all that time. I tried to practice but found myself repeatedly running to the window to look at them. He took leave at last without coming into the house to see me which I thought was a little ungrateful on his part after my having given him tea yesterday afternoon. What secrets have you and your neighbor been talking, dearest? I asked when mother came slowly in at the drawing room window looking grave and thoughtful. Don't ask to know too much, my pet. We have been talking of a page in the book of the past. Nothing that touches my daisy. You have been talking of my father, I said. She did not deny it. I asked no more questions knowing how easily she is saddened by any thought of the past. Yet I could not help wondering and wondering and wondering all day long what connection there could be between Mr. Floristan and my father's fate. May 30. It is ever so long since I wrote the last line in my diary and we have migrated to Grobner Square. The house is lovely. Every detail that can minister to the comfort and convenience of its inhabitants has been studied and thought out. My rooms are delicious, coloring, form, everything in excellent taste, outlook, sunny, flowers in all the windows, brightness and prettiness everywhere. And yet I find myself regretting River Lawn every hour of my life and I have a shrewd suspicion that mother feels very much as I do. Already she has been talking about August when we shall go back to Lamford. The drawing room is for tomorrow and my court gown has come from Madame Martinez, a train of thick dull white silk which falls in massive statue-esque folds. A white satin petticoat covered with crystal beads, all one sparkle, dazzling, iridescent. The costume is a marvel of brilliant simplicity. Mother has given me the pearl necklace she wore at her presentation two and twenty years ago and Uncle Ambrose has given me a set of diamond stars which are to fasten the ostrich plumes in my hair on my shoulders. Cyril brought his offering this morning, a sapphire half-hoop ring, the second he has given me. The first was given me in Venice where he bought it at one of the jewelers in the dear Little Merceria, a double half-hoop of diamonds and rubies. So now I have the three colors, red, white and blue on my engaged finger. Their rings are lovely, but almost too heavy a load for my poor finger to carry. June 1. The awful ceremony is over without any hitch and I hope without any gaucherie upon my part. I have seen the face of her majesty, for mother and I were early at the palace and the queen had not retired when our turn came. My gown has been admired and is laid by in lavender and I am now formally introduced to society and have all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of a young person who is out. Cyril is not to be allowed the splendors and luxuries of Grosvenor Square until after our marriage. His father thinks that as a bachelor he is better off in the Albany where he has a delightful set of rooms and where he may keep dogs, entertain his Oxford friends and smoke as much as he likes. If I were a young man with such advantages I should never want to marry. My cousins have expressed themselves very decidedly about my future life in Grosvenor Square. They cannot believe it possible that any young couple could be happy under the same roof as their father and mother. I should prefer the shabbiest little flat in the edge where road, nominally Hyde Park to your splendid apartments, said Dora. The plan may answer very well in France. There is a kind of childishness about the French which makes them look up to their parents in a positively ridiculous way. But it will never do in an English household. Mark my words Daisy, it will never do. I told her that almost the chief consideration in my engagement to Cyril was the idea that I should not be parted from my mother when I became his wife. If that consideration influences you my dear, depend upon it you don't care too straws for the man, she answered in her horrid way. I see a good deal of my cousins now I am living in town. They find Grosvenor Square nearer the park than Harley Street and often drop into luncheon after their morning walk. They walk in the row in the morning and ride before dinner daily as if it were a part of their religion. And yet my aunt says I have not had one eligible offer for either of them. I think there is something really pathetic in that yet. What is Robert Hattrell to me? Gilbert Florestan was among the idlers who sauntered in the mall to watch youth and beauty go by on that particular afternoon when Margaret Hattrell made her curtsy to the Queen. He, who was not usually a lounger in fashionable places, wasted a considerable time in waiting for Mrs. Arden's carriage. Although the ladies were early the gentlemen's impatience made him earlier and he had been standing about nearly an hour when the new neatly appointed Lando came in view and he wasted another half-hour in lightening along with a slowly crawling line of garages and stopping to talk to Mrs. Arden and her daughter whenever there was an opportunity. I wanted to see you both in your court plumes, he said smiling at the two fair faces, framed in snowy feathers and flashing gems. I could not conceive the notion of Miss Hattrell in a court train. You should have come to Grovener Square for an early luncheon and then you might have seen the train," answered Clara. Oh, I can see it now, only it is transformed into a billowy background for the young ladies' throat and shoulders like the wind-blown drapery of a water-nymph riding on a nautilus shell as painters love to paint it. I assure you, Miss Hattrell, it is infinitely becoming. You have caught the tone of St. James' spark in the days of Steele and Addison," said Mrs. Hattrell. It is the influence of the genius Loki. I feel as if I were one of the characters in Love in a Wood. Ah, those gallant, tender, light-hearted days are gone, Mrs. Hattrell, the days when love and gallantry ruled the world, when battles were won and lost for a petticoat and when mankind lived and died for love. We are much wiser nowadays and ever so much more prosaic. I am going back to my den in the Champs-Élysées tomorrow. Is there anything in this world I can do for you in Paris? Only to follow up the inquiry you began so successfully," Clara answered gravely. Be sure I will do my uttermost, but I fear the road has ended in a decided no thoroughfare. And for you, Miss Hattrell, will you not entrust me with some little commission which shall be to me as a lady's glove in a knight's helmet? Have you no refractory shoemaker or dilatory-glover on the other side of the channel whom I may harry for you? No, Mr. Florestan, mother and I are British enough to find all we want in London. Another instance of the degeneracy of the times. In Lady Mary Montague's day a man who went to Paris carried a string of delicate commissions from his fair young friends. The parcel posed as demolished that particular branch of gallantry. I shall send you a box of chocolate caramels as a reward for good behavior if you get yourself out of the royal presence without tripping over your train. Goodbye. He stood with his hat lifted as the carriage moved slowly on. They were close to the palace gates by this time. Why is he going back to Paris so soon, I wonder, speculated Daisy with a piteous little look which startled her mother by the suggestion of a danger that had never occurred to her before. My dear Daisy, he lives in Paris. What more natural than that he should go back. Why should he prefer Paris to Fountainhead? It seems unreasonable. He will settle at Fountainhead by and by, no doubt, when he marries. Is he engaged to be married, do you think, mother? I have no idea, but I think if he were engaged he would have talked about his fiancé. I don't know. Some men are so secret and reserved. Uncle Ambrose, for instance. See how he went on adoring you in secret for years. Mr. Floristan may have some attachment, but if he were engaged I think he would have spoken about his sweetheart. What does it matter, dearest? He is nothing to us except a friendly neighbor. No, only a friendly neighbor, but one wants to know all about him. Gilbert Floristan went back to the bachelor lodgings in the bachelor life. He had stayed nearly three weeks at Fountainhead and he had seen a good deal of Daisy and her mother both before and after their migration. Grovner Square is within a little more than an hour's journey from Lamford for him who will take an express train and a fast handsome, and Mr. Floristan had dined once and taken afternoon tea three times in the new house and had happened to meet the two ladies at three different picture galleries on three different mornings. He had studied Daisy's character and disposition as if she had been one of Shakespeare's heroines and he found her perfected as the Mona in her meek purity, spontaneous as Juliet in her girlish transparency of mind and soul. She was all this, but she was the plighted wife of another man whom she no doubt adored. It was not because she was somewhat cold and careless in her treatment of her lover that she loved him the less, Mr. Floristan told himself. They had been companions from childhood and love had become a matter of course. He went back to Paris where the season was still at its height, although the wordlings were beginning to talk of their favourite maladies and to discuss Auvergne and the Pyrenees, ex and the Austrian Tyrol. Floristan and his present humour cared very little about fashionable society. He had his friends and companions in the world of literature and art and in this particular world he tried to discover the character and antecedence of Diverdi, the man he had met in Madame Quixada's salon. He also made certain inquiries about Madame Quixada herself. The ultimate result of a good deal of trouble was as follows. Monsieur Diverdi was not known to literature or art. The painters and literary men had never heard of him, but he was known as an obitue of the boulevard theatres and of some of the fastest and most furious of the restaurants. He was said to be a Spaniard and to have only appeared in Paris within the last two years and yet this description of him seemed strangely at variance with his modes of speech which were essentially Argotic and Parisian, albeit that his accent was not Parisian. He was described as an idle visionary with pretensions to be a man of science and an inventor although he had never been known to take out a patent for so much as a new kind of corkscrew. He had been known also to dabble in mining speculations and had more than once been obliged to swim for his life in troubled waters. Of Madame Quixada nothing was known except that she had a beautiful daughter whom she kept as close as a nun. It was supposed that there must be someone in the background, someone who kept dark and who was the source of that magnificence in jewels and that luxury in hot-house flowers which contrasted so curiously with the lady's unpretending manner of life. There was something in this little household of the Rue Saint Guillaume which interested Florestan although he had not the slightest disposition to fall in love with the beautiful Dolores. He was interested in her only as a study in human nature, a leaf in the great book of humanity. For personal feeling he was more moved by the grey-haired middle-aged cousin than by Madame Quixada's daughter. He might have been still more interested in Louise Marseille could he have been present at an interview between her and Leon Duverdier which took place on the morning of his return to Paris. It was nearly a month since Duverdier's urgent application for a loan and since his threat of suicide, a threat which he had no doubt forgotten five minutes after it was made. He walked into Madame Quixada's salon unannounced as usual and found Louise alone busy in the arrangement of the flowers a duty which was always entrusted to her and in which she exhibited an artistic taste. A heavy Maréchal Niel Rose dropped from her hands at the side of Duverdier and she moved towards the door without a word an expression of intense subversion upon her pale rigid face. Stop! He cried in a brutal tone. You are the person I want to talk to this morning. I saw my aunt and Dolores get out of a fly and go into a milliner's in the rue de la peine. I came here on purpose to see you. I won't stand being avoided as if I were a pestilence. She stopped near the door looking at him fixedly but without uttering a word. What dumb devil has got into you? I have nothing to say to you. She answered sternly. I will have no dealings with you, will hold no intercourse with you. If you were dying of fever I would not give you a drink of water. You are a nice young woman to live in a Christian land and yet I suppose you call yourself a good Catholic. Now listen to me. You are a Virago and you are a Monomaniac but you have more heart common sense than your cousin or her mother and you know that I am not a man to be trifled with. I must have twenty thousand francs before next Saturday. It is absurd for my aunt to make any difficulty about it. Old Perez is a goldmine and she has only to put in her hand and take out as much gold as she wants. And you are despicable enough to trade upon your cousin's dishonor. There is no dishonor in the question. I consider my cousin's position as the adored, adopted daughter, let us say, of an old millionaire, aminantly respectable. There are duchesses in Paris who are not half so virtuous and if she is ashamed of her position it only remains for her to regularize it. The old fool would marry her tomorrow if she were not too stupid and too listless to bring him to the point. She hates that old man too intensely to tie herself to him for life. She is weary of her existence as his slave. Is she? Let her help me to make a fortune then and she shall be my queen. I only want a little capital to carry on experiments which must result in a mine of wealth. Yes, as big as a goldmine as Old Perez has made for himself on the bus and a more glorious fortune, for it will bring fame with it, fame of the inventor. Tell her that I must have the money to ease or something desperate will come of her refusal to help me. I have tied it over a month since I asked her for a loan but I cannot go on much longer. I am deeply in debt and all the most precious things in my laboratory will be seized by my creditors and that will mean utter ruin. Tell her she must help me. Tell her when you are alone with her. Leave that old harpy my aunt out of the discussion. I know Dolores will find me the money if she is left to her own inclination. I will not be your intermediary. I will have nothing to do with you and I only hope that Dolores will be wise enough to refuse you any further help. She must know that you have lied to her about your schemes and experiments, your speculations and wild dreams of wealth not once but many times. She must know that you have been leading an idle, profligate life in the very worst company in Paris while you were pretending to be a genius and an inventor and to live only for science. She does not know as much about you as I do but she must know that you are false to the core. She must know that you have traded upon her love for you and will go on trading upon it to the end that there is no baseness, no depth of shame to which you will not stoop to further your own basins. She does not know what I know that you are as cruel as you are mean and false. The livid pallor of her hollow cheeks was intensified by the hectic spot which burnt upon the cheekbone and gave an added luster to eyes that had grown too large for the haggard face. Que diable, cried Duverdi, you are usually possessed by a dumb devil but when you do talk by heaven it is a torrent. No matter, I'm not generally in need of an intermediary with a pretty woman and I have no doubt I shall be able to come to an understanding with Dolores before long. This conversation took place in the morning. Gilbert Florestan called in the Roussaint Guillaume on the following evening. He found Duverdi established in a faute beside the sofa on which Dolores was sitting, looking very lovely in a flowing teagun of paleless salmon silk which set off at once the grace of her supple figure and a pendant and bracelet of magnificent sapphires. Florestan had never seen her wear these gems until tonight and he guessed that they were a recent gift from her mysterious protector. He pitted her all the more when he saw these new tokens of her slavery, for the wearer's eyes had a look of profound sadness while the mother's cruel face was radiant with recent triumph. Louise Mercier was not in the salon. Duverdi was the only visitor when Florestan arrived and he had a perfect consciousness that he was not wanted by anyone except Madame Quirada who received him with marked empracement and begged him to stop till eleven o'clock. I fear my salon is the dullest in all Paris, she said, but you must remember that we are exiles and have lived in the strictest retirement ever since we left Madrid. Florestan protested that there was nothing he preferred to a small circle, society in which conversation really meant the interchange of thoughts. He talked of Madrid, a city in which he had spent three years of his diplomatic career and although Madame Quirada evaded his questions with supreme ability, it was obvious to him that her knowledge of the Spanish capital was the knowledge of an outsider and that she could never have occupied a good social position in that city. If she ever lived in Madrid, she lived there as she lives in Paris, as an adventurer and an outcast outside the pail, he told himself. Her refinement, he believed, to be the thinnest veneer laid on in later womanhood. Her education was of the smallest, yet she contrived to discuss every subject that was mooted, political, social or literary, with Anna Plain, which carried her further than the widest knowledge will carry a diffident conversationalist. Du Verdi openly sneered at some of her observations and provoked more than one vindictive glance from those southern eyes. Dalada is talked very little and for the most part in confidential tones only meant to reach her cousins here. Du Verdi talked like a man who had seen the world of men and knew the world of books. All his ideas and theories belong to the most advanced school. He looked forward to a millennium of science, a millennium of socialism, when the forces of nature should be the willing slaves of men and hard work, the sweat of the laborer's brow should be ancient history, an age when the governing powers of the world should be reduced to the lowest point when armies and navies should have become a tradition of the Dark Ages, and the poverty and starvation of the vanished centuries should seem as mythical as the rape or the birth of manurva. He spoke with the suppressed boastfulness of a certain invention of his own which was fast approaching perfection and which would revolutionize the coal mines of France and ultimately of the world, an application of electricity to the working of the mine and the carriage of the coal which would minimize labor and achieve in less than a month the results which now require a year. Dalada is listened with admiring looks and fullest faith in the speaker. Dalada looked at the disbelief and aversion which he may have feared to express in words. Florestan felt that the atmosphere was charged with electricity and that the storm might burst at any moment, yet he prolonged his visit till a few minutes after eleven at which hour de Valje made no signs of departure. He determined to follow up his inquiries about this mysterious family until he should come at a clearer understanding of their position and history. The first point he had to discover was the identity of the unseen admirer who supplied the mother and daughter with their evidently ample means. He had considerable difficulty in sifting the various accounts that were offered of the secluded beauty. She had been seen in public just often enough to excite curiosity in that section of society which claims to be familiar with all the ramifications of the demi-monde and she had acquired a kind of distinction by her retired life. After hearing three or four different people mentioned as the hidden creases were paid for Dolores Quixote as jewels and other caprices, he was finally informed upon reliable authority that her protector was a certain Pedro Perez, a Spanish Jew and the largest dealer in Spanish-American securities upon the Paris bus. He was old and eccentric of nervous temperament and strange solitary habits. He was said to be lavish in his generosity to Dolores and her mother but was also said to be tyrannical in his exactions insisting that the girl he admired should live like a cloistered nun and promising to reward her by a large bequest even if he did not make her his wife. Florestan's informant whose knowledge was derived from the Spaniard's confidential clerk added that if Dolores had cared to exercise her influence over the old man she might have easily brought him to the matrimonial point but she hated Perez and was madly in love with escaped-grace cousin with a great deal of money since without ostensible resources he had been able to meet his engagements on the bus after more than one unlucky venture. Of Diverdier Florestan could learn nothing further. He lived on a fourth floor in a street near the Pantheon and he dabbled in experiments in chemistry and electricity but in spite of these scientific tastes he was said to be a shallow pretender who had never brought the smallest scheme to a successful result. A man of schemes and dreams Florestan's informant an idle vagabond who is content to live upon women an idle vagabond who is content to live upon women musing over these words as he walked under the trees in the Champs-Élysées on his way homeward after a night at a Bohemian club in the Boulevard Michel Florestan was suddenly reminded of the story of Antoinette Morel and her brother and a hundred-pound note Claude Morel, a chemist assistant alone in Paris with an only sister was almost broken by the loss of her English lover. Louise Mercier, a woman who in every look and accent bore the tokens of a great sorrow might, allowing for the effect of grief and illness, be the age of Antoinette Morel who would now be about forty. What if he had stumbled accidentally upon the very couple of whom he was inquest? What if Léon du Verdi and Louise Mercier were Claude Morel and his sister Antoinette hiding under changed names? The very fact of the altered names would be significant of evil and would give rise to the darkest suspicions. Claude Morel, a proscribed communist, was known to have escaped arrest and to have fled to London with his sister after the last days of the commune and it was within a year and a half after the close of the commune that Robert Hatrell was murdered by an unknown foreigner in a London lodging-house. There was that in the countenance and manner of Louise Mercier which told of a more harrowing grief than an ordinary love affair she had the aspect of one over whose youth there had passed some great horror a grief too terrible to be outlived or forgotten. Those premature grey hairs, the deep lines upon the pallid forehead, the sunken cheeks and haggard eyes were the lasting witness of an undying agony and her horror of du Verdi had been expressed in an unmistakable manner on the night when Floristan saw her start up and leave the room at his entrance. He remembered her extraordinary emotion upon hearing Miss Hatrell's name at the opera the keen interest with which she had looked at mother and daughter. He had forgotten the incident until this moment and grossed in far different thoughts but it came back to him vividly tonight and for the moment it seemed to him conclusive evidence of some past link between Louise Mercier and the name of Hatrell. Yet he reflected presently the association might be of another nature than that which he imagined. The fact that du Verdi was an adventurer and a student of chemistry might have no bearing upon the existence of Claude Morel, the chemist's assistant of twenty years before. The idea that Louise Mercier and Leon du Verdi were brother and sister might be utterly without foundation. At any rate I will try to put my suspicions to the test, he said to himself. If Louise Mercier is the emotional woman I take her to be, it will be easy to shake her firmness and to see behind the veil. He determined to make an early opportunity of being alone with this strange pale woman whose untold sorrow had touched him from their first meeting. He was haunted all through a wakeful night with shapes of horror, the phantasm picture of the murder in the shabby Bloomsbury lodging, the face of Leon du Verdi, cruel and callous in the very act of murder, the face of Robert Hatrell which he remembered in his boyhood, frank, open, attractive. It was a mere chimera doubtless this wild fancy about Leon du Verdi, a nightmare dream engendered out of the small social mystery a very common story after all, common as dirt, a wicked mother, a beautiful girl sold like a slave in an eastern market, wealth, luxury, infamy, ennui and vexation jumbled together in two shameful lives that did well to hide their dishonor from the world's kin. He had brooded too long over this commonplace domestic drama and now he must needs try to establish a link between these three women and the murder in Denmark Street. Foolish as the fancy might be, he meant to test it to the uttermost and for this purpose went to the chief office of the criminal police of Paris early next morning and contrived to get admitted to one of the heads of the department. To this gentleman he recalled the circumstances of Robert Hatrell's murder. The murderer was supposed to be a Swiss, he said, but that was a purely speculative idea founded upon his statement that he was a journeyman watchmaker. One part at least of that statement, was the impression that he was employed by a well-known firm in Cornhill was proved to be false. The name of Antoinette, which was used as a decoy to lure him to his death, is the name of a girl he knew in Paris. The girl's brother was known to be vindictively disposed towards him, although her relations with Hatrell were perfectly innocent and he acted as a man of honour throughout. The mention of the girl's name is to my mind a conclusive proof that Claude Morel was concerned I wonder that the attention of the French police was not called to this case and that no effort was made to find the murderer upon this side of the channel seeing the large reward that was offered by Mr. Hatrell's widow. It was too soon after the commune. We had our hands over full at that time. The police of this city have only one fault, monsieur. And that is... There are not half enough of them. The French police are the most trained body in Europe, yet crime stocks rampant in the capital from midnight till morning, the wolves so much outnumber the sheep-dogs. I own that it was an oversight on our part not to hunt down Claude Morel. His name was in the black book of the commune for more than one petty villainy, but he slipped through our fingers, escaped the guns at Sattery and the exportations from Haver. Had he paid the legal penalty for his offences his secret would have been safe in our hands. I suppose you know that it is our rule never to divulge the antecedents of a força who has served his time. That seems rather hard upon the non-criminal classes who may ally themselves with an ex-felon for want of a knowledge of the past which would serve as a warning. I will not dispute that point, but it is a part of our code of honour. A criminal who is trying to recover his place in society has nothing to fear from us so long as he leads an honest life. Claude Morel, however, belongs to another category. For the undetected felon we have no mercy. Will you do what you can to ascertain if he has been in Paris since 72? asked Florestan. Yes, I will institute an inquiry, but a fox of that breed is good at winding and doubling and not easy to hunt down. I do not think he would set his foot in Paris after being concerned in more than one row that involved Rappen and Bloodshed especially if he was afterwards traded in a murder in London. He would be more likely to try the New World, America or Australia. He might keep away for a few years and then venture back emboldened by the passage of time. There is a man whose character and surroundings are an enigma to me and whom I am most anxious to understand more clearly. I will pay the expenses of any investigation you may take into the existence of this person. Who is he? He calls himself Leion du Verdier but I have a shrewd suspicion that he is no other than Claude Morel. I wonder whether there is anyone in your force who remembers Morel and who could identify him after a lapse of years. There are plenty of men who were engaged in hunting down the Communist but Morel was never a man of mark. I doubt if his personal appearance would be remembered by any of our men. You had better leave the matter in my hands for a few days and I will see what can be done. You can get me the details of the London murder and a report of the inquest, I suppose. Yes, I have the newspapers with their report of the inquest and the inquiry before the magistrate. I will get all the particulars copied and send you the copy. The Parisian police ought not to lose the chance of such a bonus as a thousand pounds. On the following morning Gilbert Floristan was early on foot sauntering in the neighbourhood of the flower market near the Boulevard Saint Michel. He had heard Madame Quihada say that her niece went every morning to the flower market to make her own selections for the daily supply and he relied upon meeting her there. He was not disappointed. She made her appearance between eight and nine o'clock very plainly dressed in a black Merino gown and a black straw bonnet and carrying a light basket on her arm. He waited about while she made her purchases and when she had filled her basket and was walking along the key in a homeward direction he followed her and addressed her. Good morning, mademoiselle Marseille. I hope you are not in a hurry this morning," he said, walking by her side. She looked round at him with an apprehensive air and quickened her pace. I have always a great deal to do of a morning," she answered quickly. Yes, I am rather in a hurry. Not so much as to deny me ten minutes' private conversation, I hope," he said. There is something about which I want to talk to you most particularly, something which dates from the evening of the opera when you saw Robert Hatrell's widow in the stalls. Her pale face flushed for a moment or so and then grew paler than before. He had no doubt of the emotion caused by the mere sound of the murdered man's name. His intention had been to ask her to walk as far as the Luxembourg gardens with him so that he might have leisure and quiet for serious conversation but he saw such avoidance and apprehension in her manner that he deemed it wiser to come to the point once. There were not many people upon the quay at this hour and he came to a standstill near a display of shabby second-hand literature and stood there quietly expectant while Louise Merced dropped her basket of flowers and leaned against the stone parapet, pallid and trembling almost as if she were on the point of fainting. His name moves you now as it moved you then," he said earnestly, laying his hand upon her arm as it hung by her side while she leaned on her arm. I am assured that you could throw a new light upon his cruel death, that it is in your power to bring about the discovery of his murderer. I don't know what you are talking about," she said. Who is Robert Hattrell? And what is Robert Hattrell to me? She pronounced the name with difficulty but she pronounced it more correctly than a French woman would have pronounced an English name on her to be for. Robert Hattrell as a man who was lured to his death by a woman's name and that name was yours, said Florestan with conviction, holding her arm in his strong grasp looking straight into her eyes which tried in vain to evade the direct gaze. But for his regard for you his fidelity to a tender memory he would never have been tempted into the house where he was slaughtered. That house was a guettapon and you were the assassin's lure and if that assassin was your brother it is not the less your duty to denounce him. So cold-blooded a murderer deserves no mercy even from his nearest of kin. I don't know what you are talking about," she repeated doggedly with trembling lips. Oh, but you do, you do. Every line in your face acknowledges what your lips deny. You think it is a sister's duty to shield a brother, to be dumb or to lie in his defense even when that brother is little better than a beast of prey. You shrink from him with undisguised loathing. You will not stay in the same room with him yet you allow your cousin to waste her love upon him and you do not warn her that the man with whom she associates in confiding affection has the heart of a tiger and would stop at no crime that would serve his own interest. You know what he is and you know by the light of the past what may be expected of him in the future. Do you think that the Denmark street murderer is a man to stop at his first crime or at his second? Given such a nature as that and the occasion will give birth to the crime. You talk in riddles, in riddles," she said helplessly, looking from side to side like a wild animal at bay. You refuse to trust me. You deny that your real name is Antoinette Morel and that you are the sister of Claude Morel, the communist. My name is Louise Mercé. Very well. Remember I have warned you. In Claude Morel's first crime you were only the decoy. Who knows? In his second you may be the victim. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 and 17 of One Life, One Love by Mary Elizabeth Braddon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 16. French Leave Gilbert Floristan who had not been remarkably energetic in the pursuit of any ambition or fancy of his own could but wonder at the intensity which moved his thoughts and his actions in the pursuit of that investigation which Mrs. Arden had confided to him. He could think of nothing else undertake no other occupation and when his thoughts were not fixed upon Leon du Verdi and his supposed sister they were on the other side of the channel haunting River Lawn or a certain house in Grosvenor Square and following one particular girlish figure with an alarming persistence. He wanted to do the thing which Mrs. Arden had given him to do. He wanted to prove how difficult a task he could accomplish in order to lessen the sorrow of her life but even if he should succeed in bringing Robert Hattrell's murderer to his doom and enlightening the anguish of the wife who lamented his dark fate all the more acutely because it was unavenged would this great service done for Robert Hattrell's widow bring him any nearer to Robert Hattrell's daughter? Alas! No, he told himself that young heart was given to another that young life was pledged nothing he could do would bring him any nearer to Daisy he could never be more to her than he had been that sunny afternoon on the terrace by the river when the uneasy look in the lovely hazel eyes had told him that she wished him away she had always been kind and courteous to him but he was a nullity to Cyril Arden's future wife it may be that her woman's wit had guessed his secret and that she was nervous and uneasy at any chance he had assuredly perceived something in her manner which a very vain man might have interpreted as the indication of a hidden preference a growing regard against which she struggled in duty bound to another why are mothers in such a hurry to give away their daughter's future lives? he asked himself not knowing that Daisy had accepted her old playfellow of her own free will pledging herself almost unawares with that girlish lightness which disposes her life in a breath for good or for evil he felt that his case was hopeless and yet it was something to him to be able to devote himself to Mrs. Arden's service to feel that there were confidence and friendship between him and Daisy's mother friendship which would at least give him an excuse for seeing Daisy now and then and making himself a little more unhappy hopeless lovers cultivate the weed unhappiness as if it were a flower Floristan had no more doubt Madame Quixote's niece was Antoinette Morel than he had of his own identity her denial was in its mode and manner quite as good as a confession he read the report of the inquest for a third time and subsequent paragraphs describing the cashing of the back notes at Cannes and at Monte Carlo and he was strongly inclined to believe that the elderly and aristocratic French woman who changed the notes was no other than Madame Quixote true that the elderly lady's white hair was appointed the description while the Spanish lady's hair was still black but it would be only natural that a woman interested with such a critical mission would do her utmost to hide her identity true also that the elderly lady was described as having a mole over the left eyebrow while Madame Quixote showed no such mark but it was by no means unlikely that the mole was an artificial disfigurement devised to divert suspicion from the lady hereafter was it the same woman who stopped Robert Hatrell in Canbourne Street and killed him on behalf of the dying Antoinette yes, Claristan thought the same although the woman in Cranbourne Street was described by Colonel McDonald as middle-aged and if this were so Madame Quixote had been her nephew's aider and a better in a diabolical murder would Antoinette otherwise Louise warn her aunt of his suspicions he determined to appear in the lady's salon on her next evening in order to discover if it were possible what the confidences had passed between the aunt and niece his own idea of the situation was that the younger woman existed in her aunt's house only on sufferance and that there was suspicion on the one side and loathing on the other he spent only half an hour in the Roussé Guillaume Louise was absent from the salon suffering from a neurologic headache her aunt told him Dolores looked pale and preoccupied there was no change in her mother's manner and Claristan concluded that Louise had told her nothing there was no other visitor and the dullness of the salon was oppressive before he left he contrived in the most casual way to ask an important question he commented in a sympathizing tone upon when was Elmer says delicate appearance and weak health and then he asked abruptly how long is it since she had that serious illness of which you told me a good many years I really don't remember how many replied Madame Quixote carelessly oh mother you can't forget the year cried Dolores who had been yawning behind her fan it was in 72 the year we went to Madrid the year of Robert Hattwell's murder this answer settled two points Antoinette's illness and the establishment of Madame Quixote Madrid had been events of the same year the horror of Claude Maudelle's crime had been the cause of his sister's brain fever the leads of the crime had enabled Claude Maudelle's accomplice to establish herself in the Spanish capital doubtless it was to Spain that the murderer had betaken himself thinking it a safer refuge than the new world his southern birth had made it easy for him to pass as a Spaniard Florestan felt that he was getting the threads of the tangled skein into his hands he called on the following day at the headquarters of the Palis de Surte and was again admitted to the important confided his suspicions of Diverdier I have read the story of Mr. Hattwell's murder said this functionary after receiving him with grave politeness and I agree with you that the name of Antoinette employed as a lure goes very near to fix the murder or at any rate complicity with the murder upon Antoinette's brother yet you must bear in mind that there are always remote possibilities in every case and the obvious solution of a mystery is not always the right solution it is possible that Mr. Hattwell may have talked of this youthful love affair and that the name of his sweetheart may have been known to others besides her brother no other man would have had the same malignant feeling to prompt the crime suggested Florestan the crime which was to realize a gain of nearly 4,000 pounds would need no prompting from sentiment or revenge how can you account for Morrell's precise knowledge of Mr. Hattwell's movements was he infrequent communication with Mr. Hattwell at this time I should say decidedly not but I have no absolute knowledge upon this point then in all probability he was in communication with his sister's former lover it would be only natural for a man of that kind to try and trade upon his knowledge of the past I have to remind you that Mr. Hattwell's relations with the French girl were perfectly innocent the official who had grown grey in the experience of the worst society shrugged his shoulders and expressed all the doubt which an elderly and astute visage can express will you vouch for that fact he asked yes I have it upon the evidence of the girl's own letters and from the lips of a worthy old lady in whom she confided granted then that the intrigue was an innocent entanglement mild as rose water Mr. Hattwell may yet have desired to keep the story from his wife and may have allowed Claude Morrell to hang upon him and may thus have given him the opportunity to find out all about the intended visit to the bank and the sum to be handed over in the lawyer's office it must have been so the movements of the murderer were too precise to have been guesswork or the result of accident the murderer must have had detailed information as to Mr. Hattwell's intended movements on that fatal day that is the most mysterious point in the story not very mysterious if Claude Morrell were in frequent communication with Mr. Hattwell would Hattwell confide in a man who was sponging upon him a man he must have despised perhaps not but Mr. Hattwell's servants might furnish the information servants would hardly have known the precise facts my dear sir servants know everything you English have a pernicious habit of discussing your most private affairs at the dinner table the people who wait upon you here and remember however this is beating about the bush I have something to tell you as the result of the inquiry that has been made since you were last in this room you have discovered the identity of Morrell and Duvalier exclaimed Florestan eagerly not conclusively but we have discovered that Duvalier is a man of the worst possible reputation to have escaped deportation to New Caledonia we have discovered that on the strength of good looks and consummate audacity he has managed to live for the last seven years in Madrid and Paris of course what we know of him in Spain is at present only at second hand there has been no time for any direct inquiries in Madrid we cannot hear anything about him except that he was known to the Spanish police as an adventurer and under suspicion of having been concerned in a great jewel robbery at Madrid six years ago I have dispatched my agent to that city and he may be able to get more details on the spot in the meantime there is one fact called strongly against Monsieur Léon Duvalier and that is he has made off he has sent a danger I believe and has disappeared from Paris before he could be asked any inconvenient questions is that really so yes after I had read the account of the Denmark Street murder I had a desire to look at this Duvalier whom you take for Morrell I was told that he occupied an apartment in the Rue Soufflot so I put on one of my numerous disguises in which I pay visits of this kind and in the character of a septogenarian savant I salid forth to call upon the experimentalist and inventor I know enough of chemistry to sustain a conversation with as shallow a scientist as I take Duvalier to be however my capacity in this line was not put to the test the concierge informed me that Monsieur Duvalier had left for Brussels upon the previous evening and that he had no idea when he would return he had left the key of his apartment with the concierge and at my request the man went upstairs with me and allowed me to investigate the deserted rooms did you make any discoveries nothing of an incriminating nature two of the rooms are furnished with a showy vulgarity which bespeaks the tiger, velvet and gilding photographs of actresses and demi-mondaine a great display of pipes, foils and boxing gloves a third and larger room is fitted roughly as a laboratory and bears indications of recent experiments I asked the concierge if Monsieur Duvalier's departure had been long in contemplation and he told me that the first he had heard of the intended journey was the order for a cab to take Duvalier and his portmanteau to the station he gave no date for his return but said that he should not be long absent and begged the man to look after his rooms while he was away the concierge doubted if any of the furniture had been paid for and anticipated a dissent of the sheriff during the tenant's absence did you hear anything of Duvalier's habits? nothing to distinguish him from the common run of profligates and spurious savants late hours and important creditors occasional visits from mysterious women who came closely veiled and shunned observation rare intervals of seclusion and work in the laboratory I could see that he was not a favorite with the concierge and that if there had been anything damaging to tell about him the man would have told it he has been warned by his sister said Florestan after a thoughtful silence I showed my cards too soon he told Mr. Gelluc of his interview with Louise Mercier yes, that was a mistake although the interview may have gone far to confirm your suspicion no doubt she told her brother that you were on the scent and Morel, alias Duvalier has disappeared for an indefinite period he would have no hesitation in leaving a city where he was deeply dipped in which he might not be allowed to leave if he lingered much longer there was no more to be said whatever ideas Mr. Gelluc had as to the possibility of any satisfactory solution of the mystery of Robert Hatrell's murder he did not impart them to Florestan but simply took that gentleman's check for the expenses incurred in the inquiries and investigations that had been made at his request and said that for the rest time would show if this Duvalier is as black a villain as you believe him to be or in other words if he is the Denmark street murderer he will be sure to put his neck under the knife no such man stops at a single crime he is a man to be watched then said Florestan yes, he is a man to be watched and I believe he will prove a man worth watching 17 Daisy's Diary in London it was an old fancy and one which had haunted me from the first night I slept in Grovener Square as I laid myself down to rest in the pretty little bed with its embroidered Japanese coverlet and cloud of creamy lace all devised by mother so dainty and gracious and as I heard the noise of the carriage wheels like the great horse roar of the sea I said to myself this is London the city in which my father was lured to his death the city in which a good man may be murdered and brought daylight on a summer afternoon in the midst of his fellow men I could not sleep that first night for thinking of my dear dead father I could not stop myself from picturing the awful scene over and over again the ghastly change in the dear face the horrid wound the pitiless murderer whose face I could not picture to myself then and again and again I tried to shape that unknown face I thought of all the villainous countenances I had seen in picture galleries of this or that Judas this or that murderer the malignant face with dull red hair the swarthy face with close cut black hair the rugged features and beatling brow the low scarcely human forehead under ragged dangled locks all of the villainous and inhuman that painters have ever conceived yet I could never picture to myself the form and face of the man who killed my father night after night I have lain awake thinking of him my father has been much more often in my thoughts since we came to London than he was while we were at Peaceful River Lawn where I used to lie awake to hear the nightingales in the warm June nights and where the sound of the river always soothed me like a lullaby here all the gait he and splendor the operas and plays the music and dancing and talk and laughter are not enough to make me forget that in this city my father was murdered if there were no such wilderness as London he might be living and among us today he might be ours for many a year to come I think of Professor Palmer in the desert lured to his fate by murderous Arabs was the desert worse than London I think of all who have ever been treacherously slain in wild and lonely places but I can think of no place worse than London I want to see the house in which my father died I want to see the room in which he was found lying stabbed to death this is the fancy that has tormented me ever since we took up our boat in London ever since the roll of the wheels and the tramp tramp tramp of horses feet have been in my ears I feel as if I should think less of him and be less haunted by the dreadful vision of that room if I could see it in all its sordid reality if I could know exactly what it is like I have told Cyril my feelings on this point but he refuses to take me to the house or even the street in which my father died he cannot understand me he cannot understand that this dreadful sensation of being haunted nightly by the vision of the deed and the room might be lessened by familiarity with the actual scene however painful the sight of that horrible place might be I have entreated him to take me there but he steadfastly refuses so I have made up my mind to go there without him mother and her husband are going to a grand dinner this evening to meet royalties Cyril has gone to Oxford to dine with the Bullendon club I shall have the evening all to myself and I shall go to Denmark street alone I suppose it is rather an awful thing for a girl of my age to go out after eight o'clock and I have never been in the streets of London by myself at any hour so I don't care to take even my good broom field where she would most likely make as many objections as Cyril and I might fail in getting inside the house I want to see I would rather depend entirely upon my own cleverness I know the number of the street I know the position of the room I know that it is a street of lodging houses so I can very easily make believe to be in search of lodgings I shall wait till the carriage has driven off with mother and uncle Lambrose and then I shall send down word to the butler that I have a headache and won't dine I shall tell broom field that I'm going to lie down for an hour or two upon which I know the dear soul after having fast about me with odour cologne and salvo latili and arranged my pillows and reading lamp will go down to the servants hall at the very bottom of the house and will be absorbed and gossiped till my bell rings I know where uncle Lambrose leaves the latch key which he always uses when he comes in from a walk so I can let myself in quietly as I let myself out our hall and staircase when the heads of the family are out might for silence and solitude as well be in the supple ker of one of the pharaohs I shall put on my very plainest cloth gown and a shabby little garden hat so as to look like a work girl or anything common or insignificant I have seen that dreadful room a commonplace ill furnished room in a shabby lodging house and the sight of it will haunt me to my dying day Cyril was right and I was wrong it was a senseless thing to do and I ought to have left it undone everything happened as I hoped the pretended headache did me good service I was mistress of my time and actions before nine o'clock I slipped off my tea gown and dressed myself for the character of a young woman in search of a respectable lodging at seven shillings a week I suppose that is about the price work girls may the evening was gray and dull not dark but thick and heavy with an oppressive feeling in the atmosphere of a stored up heat and dust such a different atmosphere from the cool dewy air in the garden at Lamford on a Midsummer night I had studied the map of London and had carefully made out my way to Denmark Street but seeing a benevolent looking old cab man with a red nose creeping along close to the curb in Grovener Street I hailed him and told him to drive me to St. Giles Church so I will my dear and I wish I was going to drive you there to be spliced he said which shows how thoroughly common I must have looked in my garden hat or it might be that the old man had been drinking for he rattled the cab over the stones and zigzagged across the road in a really dreadful manner if I had not been full of other thoughts I believe I should have feared for my life especially when he took me round corners he drew up in front of the church in a shabby looking street where there were shops still open though it was after nine o'clock I gave him half a crown which he did not seem to think enough do you want me to wait for you miss he asked you won't get another cab in this neighborhood I said no for I was shaken dreadfully by that one ride and I felt it would be tempting providence to let the red nose cab man drive me again my heart was beating so violently that I hardly knew what I was doing but I began telling myself to be calm and collected and to remember that I was there in opposition to Searle's advice and that I must prove worthy of my own self-confidence I am not a fainting young person indeed I never fainted in my life but last night I was afraid that I was going to faint and I had to struggle against the swimming in my head and a painful sense of alightness which made me taught her a little as I turned into Denmark street I was very quiet there the street had a sober old-fashioned air which would have given me confidence if I had really been a hard-working young woman in search of a lodging some of the houses looked the picture of neatness others were shabby and squalid against every door I observed a row of brass bells which showed that there were several tenants in each house I saw the number I was in search of from the opposite side of the way there was the Taylor's workshop that I was talking about in the newspaper the windows were wide open and half a dozen men were at work in a glare of gas I could not help thinking they looked like lost souls in pandemonium the bare, dusty room the glare and heat on this summer night when the stars were shining on all the flowery creeks and willowy islands near Lamford when life and the world were so lovely for some people yes, that was the Taylor's workshop and it might have been one of those men who heard my father's murderer go singing down the stairs fresh from his deed of blood I think the idea of that and the horror of it braced my nerves for I felt less like fainting as I crossed the road and knocked at the door of the fatal house I waited for some minutes before anyone came to the door though I knocked a second time then a woman appeared an elderly woman who looked at me curiously I told her I wanted a lodging a respectable room at seven shillings a week but she answered rather sharply that she only let lodgings to men why prefer men I wonder and she was going to shut the door in my face when I grew desperate and stopped her by laying my hand upon her arm there was a murder eight years ago in this house I said let me see the room where it was done and I'll give you seven shillings I would have soon have offered her a sovereign but I had got the sum of seven shillings in my mind in connection with the rent of a lodging and I offered her that amount unthinkingly it was enough however for she snapped at my offer come in she said looking at me very hard and very suspiciously all the time that's a curious fancy of yours you haven't anything to do with the murderer I hope no no no I cried I'm glad of that said she ah he was a devil that man a smooth-faced smooth-tongued devil the sight of him and the sound of his voice makes me sick and faint whenever I call him to mind he put a blight upon me and on my house I've never been the same woman since I asked her what the man was like finding that she was willing to talk and she described his appearance in a great many words but her words did not conjure up any distinct image he was good-looking and he was young she did not take him for much over thirty he was dark with fine black eyes and he wore a mustache but no beard he talked English but he spoke like a foreigner this was all I could gather from her she went slowly up the stairs before me with a paraffin lamp in her hand and she flung open the door of the back room on the second floor and told me to go in holding up the lamp on a level with her head so that I might see the room I've kept it just as it was that day she said I've never had a good let-in all the eight years not a permanency there's a blight upon the room but people come and look at it as it might be you and give me a trifle oh how horrid of people I said forgetting myself how can they be so morbid not more so than you miss it's human nature she answered I looked at the room a square common-looking room with very shabby furniture with a window looking out upon roofs and chimney stacks all looked dark and dreary the light of the flaring lamp only made the squalid furniture seem more squalid oh what a scene to meet those dying eyes what horror in that one agonizing moment to feel himself caught like a snared bird trapped in such a hole as this how did he look where did you find him lying I asked and then she described that ghastly sight showing me the spot where our dear one lay gloating over every detail I could have shrieked with agony as I listened to her she had put down her lamp on the table and she clawed my wrist with her skinny fingers as she pointed with the other hand to the floor and she acted over all the scene as it might be here as it might be there and she dwelt upon the look of the dead face when they lifted him from the floor and laid him on that wretched bed until my heart seemed to turn to stone I could not speak I just let her go on I had so wanted to know all all that the commonest lips could tell all from any source however cruel I let her talk on to her heart's content like a ghoul as she was and then I went with her downstairs somehow quite numbed and cold as if I had been in a nightmare dream and I went out into the dark street I made up my mind to walk home I felt the air and exercise would give me my only chance of getting calm after the agony of that quarter of an hour I walked on blindly for some distance first in one street and then in another going out of my way I believe yet vaguely making for the west I had lost all sense of time and when I heard a church-clock strike and counted the strokes I was surprised to find that it was only ten it was almost immediately after this that I came into a long, shabby-looking street which looked so empty and desolate that I felt as much alone in it as if I had been walking in one of our Berkshire lanes there was only one lighted spot in the street and that looked like a hotel or a restaurant it was a restaurant and as I got near on the opposite side of the street I saw the name, restaurant du pavillon I was walking slowly meaning to ask the first policeman I met to put me in the right way to Grosvenor Square and not caring ever if I went out of my way for the cool air and the movement were helping me to recover my calmness when three men came pouring out of a lighted doorway talking and laughing in a boisterous kind of way that made me think they were tipsy one of them saw me and called out something to his friends in French to which the others replied in the same language but I could not understand a word they said I hurried my steps and tried to get out of their reach but the man who had spoken first came across the road and began to talk to me in English this time asking me where I was going and whether I would go to a music hall with him and his friends I cannot record the horrid tone and manner of the man I hate to remember his vulgar insolence I hate to think that there are such men in the world and that poor, hard-working girls such as I was supposed to be are exposed to the insolence of such creatures and have such hateful words forced upon their ears as they go quietly home from their work their wretch caught hold of my arm and urged me to go with him to some place he called the Oxford while his friends who spoke only in French laughed boisterously and talked of my affected prudery I was furious I shook myself free from the wretched touch and I looked up and down the street in despair for someone who would help me How dare you speak to me or touch me, you odious creature I cried and then he took off his hat in mocking acknowledgment of an imaginary compliment I saw in the light of the lamp close above us he had an olive complexion like an Italian's and black eyes and I remembered with a shutter the woman's description half an hour before there must be thousands of such men among the exiles who come to London for refuge yet I shall never see such a face without recalling the unknown image of my father's murderer he pretended to think that my anger was only assumed and went on with his hateful compliments and offers of supper and champagne at the Oxford and I saw in my despair that there was not a mortal insight to whom I could appeal for protection the door of the restaurant stood open and I could see lights and servants moving about inside I had half a mind to rush across the street and go in at the open door where no doubt someone would have taken my part against these horrid men but my courage failed me in the next instant it would have been such a wild thing to do and how could I have faced half a dozen astonished waiters in the glare of that gaslit vestibule I looked down the street again and this time there was a promise of rescue in the shape of a handsome cab coming along rapidly with two great flaming lamps like a dragon with fiery eyes the good dragon that comes to rescue forlorn damsels, not to eat them I ran into the road and hailed the driver without stopping to see if the cab were empty while I waved my hand in frantic appeal how ashamed of myself I feel today when I have to write about it in this cold blooded journal somebody inside the cab dashed his stick up through the little trap door in the roof just as frantically the driver pulled up sharp and a big middle aged man got out of the cab and came to me how thankful I was that he was so big and so middle aged I felt the utmost confidence in him almost as if he had been my uncle is there anything the matter he asked looking at my persecutors yes I answered one of these men has been horribly rude to me they have all been rude but that one I pointed to my worst tormentor has been the most offensive he will not be offensive anymore unless he wants to be thoroughly well kicked said my friend and he looked as if he would like to do it please don't take any trouble about him I said he is tipsy I believe and he is really not worth kicking he wouldn't know anything about it afterwards so it would be wasted trouble if you would oblige me so far as to give me your cab you would be able to get another one very soon I suppose I should be deeply grateful I had seen that he was not an evening dress or I should have hardly ventured to make such a selfish request my cab is quite at your service where shall I tell the man to drive you to grovener square my name is Hattrell miss Hattrell I repeated the name very distinctly to my unknown friend to understand that I was not ashamed of myself although he found me in such a disagreeable position two of my assailants that sneaked off already with a laugh and an air of being quite at their ease but my chief tormentor stood as if he were glued to the pavement staring at me in a dull and stupid way while I got into the cab and shook hands gratefully with my nameless friend he had been noisy enough a few minutes before when he was doubtless in the loquacious stage of intoxication but now he seemed to have fasted into a silent and stony stage which was like absolute stoop of action one of his friends turned to look after him when they had gone some little way ahead oh la du verdi veux-tu te plâter la toute la nuit he called out so my tormentor's name is du verdi I stopped the cab man at the corner of the square paid him to his perfect satisfaction for I just emptied the silver in my port-monnaie into his hand and walked quietly to our own door where I let myself in like a thief in the night End of chapter 16 and 17