Part 18 (1/2)
In her chat with me she had no design formed or conclusion previously drawn, but her intuitive quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, caused her to half-confide in me her deep sorrow. Her compa.s.sionate disposition, her exceeding gentleness, which gave the prevailing tone to her character, her modesty, her tenderness, her grace, her almost ethereal refinement and delicacy, all showed a true poetic nature within, while her dark, fathomless eyes betrayed that energy of pa.s.sion which gave her character its concentrated power.
Was it any wonder, even though she might have been betrayed into a momentary tergiversation, that I bowed down and wors.h.i.+pped her? She was my ideal; her personal beauty and the tender sweetness of her character were alike perfect. Therefore my love for her was a pa.s.sion--that headlong vehemence, that fluttering and hope, fear and transport, that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of true love which we feel once, and but once, in our lives.
Yet I was held perplexed and powerless by her unexpected and unacknowledged identification of that clue to the unknown dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
A REVELATION.
Although many days pa.s.sed, no word of apology came from my mysterious correspondent for not having kept the appointment. I watched every post for nearly a fortnight, and as I received no explanation, my suspicion regarding Mabel's connexion with the strange affair became, of course, strengthened.
With heart-sinking I had taken leave of her on the kerb in Kensington High Street on that well-remembered evening, feeling that the likelihood of our frequent meeting was very remote, especially now that she apparently held me in suspicion. In this case, however, I was mistaken, for within a week we met again quite accidentally in Bond Street, and, finding her disposed to accept my companions.h.i.+p, I accompanied her shopping, and spent an extremely pleasant afternoon. Her mother was rather unwell, she explained, and that accounted for her being alone.
She was dressed entirely in black, but with a quiet elegance that was surprising. I had never known before that day how smart and _chic_ a woman could appear in a gown of almost funereal aspect. Her manner towards me retained nothing of its previous suspicion; she was bright and merry, without that cloud of unhappiness that had so strangely overshadowed her on the last occasion we had been together. She possessed a clever wit, and gossiped and joked amusingly as we went from shop to shop, ordering fruit for dessert, and flowers for table-decoration. That her mother was wealthy appeared certain from the extravagant prices which she gave for fruits out of season and choice hothouse flowers. She bought the best she could procure, and seemed utterly regardless of expense.
I remarked how dear were some grapes which she had ordered, but she only smiled and gave her shoulders a little shrug.
This recklessness was not done to impress me, for I was quick to detect that the shopkeepers knew her as a good customer, and brought forward their most expensive wares as a matter of course.
Although at first she declined my invitation, as though she considered it a breach of the _convenances_, I at length persuaded her to take some tea with me at Blanchard's, and we continued our gossip as we sat together at one of the little tables surrounded by other ladies out shopping with their male enc.u.mbrances.
I had, rather unwisely, perhaps, pa.s.sed a critical remark regarding a lady who had entered in an unusually striking toilette, in which she looked very hot and extremely uncomfortable, and laughing at what I had said, she replied--
”You are certainly right. We women always overweigh ourselves in our garments, to say nothing of other and more fatiguing things. Half of life's little worries accrue from our clothes. From tight collar to tight shoe, and not forgetting a needlessly befeathered hat, we take unto ourselves burdens that we should be much happier without.”
”I agree entirely,” I said, smiling at her philosophy. ”Some blatant crank bent on self-advertis.e.m.e.nt might do worse than found an Anti-ornamental Dress League. Just think how much of life's trials would at once slip off a man if he wore neither collar nor tie-- especially the dress-tie!”
”And off a woman, if she wore neither belt, gloves, nor neck arrangement!”
”Exactly. It would be actually making us a present for life of nearly an hour a day. That would be seven hours a week, or nearly a fortnight a year,” I said. ”It's worth consideration.”
”Do you remember the derision heaped upon that time-saving arrangement of our ancestors, the elastic-side boot?” she observed, with a merry smile. ”But just fancy the trouble they must have saved in lacing and b.u.t.toning! Sewing on shoe-b.u.t.tons ought always to be done by criminals condemned to hard labour. b.u.t.ton-sewing tries the conscientiousness and thoroughness of the work more than anything else, and I'm certain oak.u.m-picking can't be worse. It also tries the quality of the thread more than anything else; and as to cottons, well, it treats them as Samson did the withs.”
The carriage met her outside the Stores in the Haymarket at five o'clock, and before she took leave of me she mischievously asked--
”Well, and how do you find me when I wear my mask?”
”Charming,” I responded with enthusiasm. ”Mask or no mask, you are always the same to me, the most charming friend I have ever had.”
”No, no,” she laughed. ”It isn't good form to flatter. Good-bye.”
And she stretched forth her small hand, which I pressed warmly, with deep regret at parting. A moment later the footman in his brown livery a.s.sisted her into the carriage. Then she smiled merrily, and bowed as I raised my hat, and she was borne away westward in the stream of fine equipages, hers the smartest of them all.
A week later, having seen nothing further of her, I wrote and received a prompt response. Then in the happy autumn days that followed we contrived to meet often, and on each occasion I grew deeper and deeper in love with her. Since that evening when we had stood together beneath the street lamp in Kensington, she had made no mention of the pencil-case or of its owner. Indeed, it seemed that her sudden identification of it had betrayed her into acknowledging that its owner had been her lover, and that now she was trying to do all she could to remove any suspicion from my mind.
Nevertheless, the remembrance of that crime and of all the events of that midnight adventure was ever within my mind, and I had long ago determined to make its elucidation the chief object of my life. I had placed myself beneath the thrall of some person unknown, and meant to extricate myself and become again a free agent at all costs.
On several occasions I had seen the cabman West on the rank at Hyde Park Corner, but although he had constantly kept his eyes open in search of Edna, his efforts had all been in vain. I had seen also the old cab-driver who bore the nickname ”Doughy,” but it turned out that it had not been his cab which my mysterious protectress had taken after parting from me. One point, however, I settled satisfactorily. On one of our walks together I contrived that, the man West should see Mabel, but he afterwards declared that the woman of whom he was in search did not in the least resemble her. Therefore, it was certain that Mabel and Edna were not, as I had once vaguely suspected, one and the same person.
Sometimes I would meet my idol after her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and accompany her across the park; at others we would stroll together in the unfrequented part of Kensington Gardens, or I would walk with her shopping and carry her parcels, all our meetings being, of course, clandestine ones.