Part 17 (2/2)
”It's an awful business,” he continued. ”I don't see how I'm ever going to find her. I hoped she might stroll down to the Spa in the evening, and I've been hanging about the gates ever since six. I hadn't the threepence to go in.”
”But have you no notion of the sort of street or the kind of house it was?” I enquired.
”Not a ghost,” he replied. ”I left it all to Maud, and didn't trouble.”
”Have you tried any of the lodging-houses?” I asked.
”Tried!” he exclaimed bitterly. ”I've been knocking at doors, and asking if Mrs. McQuae lives there steadily all the afternoon, and they slam the door in my face, mostly without answering. I told a policeman--I thought perhaps he might suggest something--but the idiot only burst out laughing, and that made me so mad that I gave him a black eye, and had to cut. I expect they're on the lookout for me now.”
”I went into a restaurant,” he continued gloomily, ”and tried to get them to trust me for a steak. But the proprietress said she'd heard that tale before, and ordered me out before all the other customers. I think I'd have drowned myself if you hadn't turned up.”
After a change of clothes and some supper, he discussed the case more calmly, but it was really a serious affair. They had shut up their flat, and his wife's relatives were travelling abroad. There was no one to whom he could send a letter to be forwarded; there was no one with whom she would be likely to communicate. Their chance of meeting again in this world appeared remote.
Nor did it seem to me--fond as he was of his wife, and anxious as he undoubtedly was to recover her--that he looked forward to the actual meeting, should it ever arrive, with any too pleasurable antic.i.p.ation.
”She will think it strange,” he murmured reflectively, sitting on the edge of the bed, and thoughtfully pulling off his socks. ”She is sure to think it strange.”
The following day, which was Wednesday, we went to a solicitor, and laid the case before him, and he inst.i.tuted inquiries among all the lodging- house keepers in Scarborough, with the result that on Thursday afternoon McQuae was restored (after the manner of an Adelphi hero in the last act) to his home and wife.
I asked him next time I met him what she had said.
”Oh, much what I expected,” he replied.
But he never told me what he had expected.
A CHARMING WOMAN
”Not _the Mr. ---_, _really_?”
In her deep brown eyes there lurked pleased surprise, struggling with wonder. She looked from myself to the friend who introduced us with a bewitching smile of incredulity, tempered by hope.
He a.s.sured her, adding laughingly, ”The only genuine and original,” and left us.
”I've always thought of you as a staid, middle-aged man,” she said, with a delicious little laugh, then added in low soft tones, ”I'm so very pleased to meet you, really.”
The words were conventional, but her voice crept round one like a warm caress.
”Come and talk to me,” she said, seating herself upon a small settee, and making room for me.
I sat down awkwardly beside her, my head buzzing just a little, as with one gla.s.s too many of champagne. I was in my literary childhood. One small book and a few essays and criticisms, scattered through various obscure periodicals had been as yet my only contributions to current literature. The sudden discovery that I was the Mr. Anybody, and that charming women thought of me, and were delighted to meet me, was a brain- disturbing thought.
”And it was really you who wrote that clever book?” she continued, ”and all those brilliant things, in the magazines and journals. Oh, it must be delightful to be clever.”
She gave breath to a little sigh of vain regret that went to my heart. To console her I commenced a laboured compliment, but she stopped me with her fan. On after reflection I was glad she had--it would have been one of those things better expressed otherwise.
”I know what you are going to say,” she laughed, ”but don't. Besides, from you I should not know quite how to take it. You can be so satirical.”
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