Part 5 (1/2)
”What is it, Anneli?”
”The lady--the lady who came with the flowers--she is behind us. Yes; I am sure.”
The girl's mistress glanced quickly round. Some distance behind them there was certainly a lady dressed altogether in black, who, the moment she perceived that these two were regarding her, turned aside, and pretended to pick up something from the gra.s.s.
”Fraulein, Fraulein,” said Anneli, eagerly; ”let us sit down on this seat. Do not look at her. She will pa.s.s.”
The sudden presence of this stranger, about whom she had been thinking so much, had somewhat unnerved her; she obeyed this suggestion almost mechanically; and waited with her heart throbbing. For an instant or two it seemed as if that dark figure along by the trees were inclined to turn and leave; but presently Natalie Lind knew rather than saw that this slender and graceful woman with the black dress and the deep veil was approaching her. She came nearer; for a second she came closer; some little white thing was dropped into the girl's lap, and the stranger pa.s.sed quickly on.
”Anneli, Anneli,” the young mistress said, ”the lady has dropped her locket! Run with it--quick!”
”No, Fraulein,” said the other, quite as breathlessly, ”she meant it for you. Oh, look, Fraulein!--look at the poor lady--she is crying.”
The sharp eyes of the younger girl were right. Surely that slender figure was being shaken with sobs as it hurried away and was lost among the groups coming through the Marble Arch! Natalie Lind sat there as one stupefied--breathless, silent, trembling. She had not looked at the locket at all.
”Anneli,” she said, in a low voice, ”was that the same lady? Are you sure?”
”Certain, Fraulein,” said her companion, eagerly.
”She must be very unhappy,” said the girl. ”I think, too, she was crying.”
Then she looked at the trinket that the stranger had dropped into her lap. It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned silver locket formed in the shape of a heart, and ornamented with the most delicate filagree work; in the centre of it was the letter N in old German text. When Natalie Lind opened it, she found inside only a small piece of paper, on which was written, in foreign-looking characters, ”_From Natalie to Natalushka_.”
”Anneli, she knows my name!” the girl exclaimed.
”Would you not like to speak to the poor lady, Fraulein?” said the little German maid, who was very much excited, too. ”And do you not think she is sure to come this way again--to morrow, next day, some other day? Perhaps she is ill or suffering, or she may have lost some one whom you resemble--how can one tell?”
CHAPTER V.
PIONEERS.
Before sitting down to breakfast, on this dim and dreary morning in February, George Brand went to one of the windows of his sitting-room and looked abroad on the busy world without. Busy indeed it seemed to be--the steamers hurrying up and down the river, hansoms whirling along the Embankment, heavily laden omnibuses chasing each other across Waterloo Bridge, the underground railway from time to time rumbling beneath those wintry-looking gardens, and always and everywhere the ceaseless murmur of a great city. In the midst of all this eager activity, he was only a spectator. Busy enough the world around him seemed to be; he alone was idle.
Well, what had he to look forward to on this dull day, when once he had finished his breakfast and his newspapers? It had already begun to drizzle; there was to be no saunter up to the park. He would stroll along to his club, and say ”Good morning” to one or two acquaintances.
Perhaps he would glance at some more newspapers. Perhaps, tired of reading news that did not interest, and forming opinions never to be translated into action, he would take refuge in the library. Somehow, anyhow, he would desperately tide over the morning till lunch-time.
Luncheon would be a break; but after--? He had not been long enough in England to become familiar with the whist-set; similarly, he had been too long abroad to be proficient in English billiards, even if he had been willing to make either whist or pool the pursuit of his life. As for afternoon calls and tea-drinking, that may be an interesting occupation for young gentlemen in search of a wife, but it is too ghastly a business for one who has no such views. What then? More newspapers? More tedious lounging in the hushed library? Or how were the ”impracticable hours” to be disposed of before came night and sleep?
George Brand did not stay to consider that, when a man in the prime of health and vigor, possessed of an ample fortune, unfettered by anybody's will but his own, and burdened by neither remorse nor regret, nevertheless begins to find life a thing too tedious to be borne, there must be a cause for it. On the contrary, instead of asking himself any questions, he set about getting through the daily programme with an Englishman's determination to be prepared for the worst. He walked up to his club, the Waldegrave, in Pall Mall. In the morning-room there were only two or three old gentlemen, seated in easy-chairs near the fire, and grumbling in a loud voice--for apparently one or two were rather deaf--about the weather. Brand glanced at a few more newspapers. Then a happy idea occurred to him; he would go up to the smoking-room and smoke a cigarette.
In this vast hall of a place there were only two persons--one standing with his back to the fire, the other lying back in an easy-chair. The one was a florid, elderly gentleman, who was first cousin to a junior Lord of the Treasury, and therefore claimed to be a profound authority on politics, home and foreign. He was a harmless poor devil enough, from whom a merciful Providence had concealed the fact that his brain-power was of the smallest. His companion, reclining in the easy-chair, was a youthful Fine Art Professor; a gelatinous creature, a bundle of languid affectations, with the added and fluttering self-consciousness of a school-miss. He was absently a.s.senting to the propositions of the florid gentleman; but it is probable that his soul was elsewhere.
These propositions were to the effect that leading articles in a newspaper were a mere impertinence; that he himself never read such things; that the business of a newspaper was to supply news; and that an intelligent Englishman was better capable of forming a judgment on public affairs than the hacks of a newspaper-office. The intelligent Englishman then proceeded to deliver his own judgment on the question of the day, which turned out to be--to Mr. Brand's great surprise--nothing more nor less than a blundering and inaccurate _resume_ of the opinions expressed in a leading article in that morning's _Times_. At length this one-sided conversation between a jackanapes and a jacka.s.s became too intolerable for Brand, who threw away his cigarette, and descended once more into the hall.
”A gentleman wishes to see you, sir,” said a boy; and at the same moment he caught sight of Lord Evelyn.
”Thank G.o.d!” he exclaimed, hurrying forward to shake his friend by the hand. ”Come, Evelyn, what are you up to? I can't stand England any longer; will you take a run with me?--Algiers, Egypt, anywhere you like.
Let us drop down to Dover in the afternoon, and settle it there. Or what do you say to the Riviera? we should be sure to run against some people at one or other of the towns. Upon my life, if you had not turned up, I think I should have cut my throat before lunch-time.”