Part 94 (1/2)

”You are not, of course, aware of it, but I happen to be an old schoolfellow of your wife's.” Her pretty, inquisitive eyes went back to the writing-table, where stood a photograph of Lynette, recently taken--an exquisite, delicate, pearly-toned portrait in a heavy silver-gilt frame.

”We used to be great friends. Du Taine was my maiden name. Surely Mrs.

Saxham has spoken to you of Greta Du Taine? I left Gueldersdorp at the beginning of the siege. Later, we went to Cape Town. I met my husband there. He is Sir Philip Atherleigh, Baronet.” She italicised the word. ”He was with his regiment, going to the Front. We were married almost directly. It was a case of love at first sight. Now we are staying at our town house in Werkeley Square. Mrs. Saxham must visit us--my husband is dying to know her.”

”I regret that the desire cannot be gratified, madam.” The angry blood darkened his face. His tone, even more plainly than his words, told her that the boasted friends.h.i.+p was at an end.

Greta reddened too, and her turquoise-hued eyes dealt him a glance of bitter hatred.

”I did not stay long at the Convent at Gueldersdorp. Nuns are good, simple creatures, and easily imposed upon. And--mother did not wish me to be educated with strays and foundlings--dressed up like young ladies--actually allowed to mingle upon equal terms with them----”

It was Cornelius Agrippa, I think, who once materialised the Devil as an empty purse. The necromancer should have evoked the Spirit of Evil in the shape of a spiteful woman. Greta went on:

”--Such Society as there was, I should say. You were at Gueldersdorp throughout the siege, and for some time before it, I think, Dr. Saxham?”

Two pairs of blue eyes met, the man's hard as s.h.i.+ning stones, the woman's dancing with malicious intention. Saxham stiffly bent his head. But her fear of him had evaporated in her triumph. Those inquisitive, turquoise eyes had an excellent memory behind them. Something in the shape of the square black head and hulking shoulders quickened it now.

”It's odd----” Her smile was a grin that showed sharp little white teeth ready to bite, and her speech was pointed with venomed meaning. ”I used to go out a great deal in such Society as the place possessed. Yet I do not remember ever having met you!”

Saxham's cold eyes clashed with the malicious turquoises.

”I did not mingle in Society at Gueldersdorp.”

He signed to the waiting manservant to open the hall-door. She drew her snowy ermines about her and rustled over the threshold. But in the hall she turned and dealt her thrust.

”No? You were too busy attending cases. Police-Court Cases ...”

Her light laugh fluttered mockingly about his ears.

”I remember the funny headings of some of the newspaper reports....

'Another Rampant Drunk! The Town Painted Red Again by the Dop Doctor!'”

”Door!” said Saxham, shaping the word with stiff grey lips. His face was the face of Death, who had come close up and touched him. Her little ladys.h.i.+p went out to her waiting auto-brougham, and her light, malignant laugh fluttered back as the servant shut the hall-door.

Saxham went back into the consulting-room. The Spring suns.h.i.+ne poured in through the tall muslin-screened window. There was a cheerful play of light and colour in the place. But to the man who sat there it was full of shadows, dark and gloomy, threatening and grim. And not the least formidable among them was the shadow of the Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp, looming portentously over that fair face within the silver-gilt frame upon the writing-table, stretching out long octopus-arms to drag down shame upon it, and heap ashes of humiliation undeserved upon the lovely head, and mock her with the solemn altar-vows that bound her to the drunkard.

LXI

The Great Victorian Age was laid to rest.

The great pageant of mortality had wound along the officially-appointed route, under the cold grey sky, an apparently endless, slowly-marching column of Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry of the Line, progressing pace by pace between the immovable barriers of great-coated soldiers, and the surging, restless sea of black-clad men and women pent up on either hand behind them. The long rolling of m.u.f.fled drums, and the dull boom of cannon; the baring of men's heads; the wail of the Funeral March, the flash of suddenly whitened faces turned one way to greet Her as She pa.s.sed, borne to Her rest upon a gun-carriage, as fitting an aged warrior Queen; drawn to her wedded couch within the tomb by the willing, faithful hands of her sons of the twin Services, who shall forget, that heard and witnessed?

Who shall forget?

The Royal Standard draped across the satin-white, gold-fringed pall, where on rich crimson cus.h.i.+ons rested the Three Emblems of Sovereignty. The dignified, kingly figure of a man, no longer young, bowed with sorrow under the Imperial heritage, preceding the splendid sombre company of crowned heads; the blaze of uniforms and orders, the clank of sword and bridle, the potent ring of steel on steel, the sumptuously-trapped, s.h.i.+ning horses pacing slowly, drawing the mourning-carriages of State, their closed windows, frosted with chilly fog, yielding scant glimpses of well-known faces. One most beloved, most lovely, and no less so in sorrow than in joy. ”_Did you see her?_” the women asked of one another, as the pageant pa.s.sed and vanished, and one good soul, all breathless from the crush, gasped as she straightened her battered bonnet and twitched her trodden skirt: ”There never was a better than the blessed soul that's gone, but there couldn't be a sweeter nor a beautifuller Queen than the one she leaves behind her!”

The last wail of the Funeral March having died away into silence, the last cannon-shot gone booming out, down came the foggy dusk on bereaved London.