The Wiles of the Wicked

Chapter Twelve

“It is his!”

The figure before me was that of a woman, calm, sweet-faced, her countenance rendered piquant by its expression of surprise.

It was none other than Mabel Anson.

Dressed in a tight-fitting tailor-made gown of some dark cloth, and a neat toque, she looked dignified and altogether charming. The slight severity of attire became her well, for it showed her marvellous figure to perfection, while the dash of red in her hat gave the necessary touch of colour to complete a tasteful effect. Her countenance was concealed by the thinnest of gauze veils, and as she held forth her well-gloved hand with an expression of pleasure at the unexpected meeting, her bangles jingled musically.

“This is indeed a most pleasant surprise, Miss Anson,” I said, when I recovered speech, for so sudden had been our encounter that in the moment of my astonishment my tongue refused to utter a sound.

“And to me also,” she laughed.

“I’ve been wondering and wondering when we should meet again,” I blurted forth. “I’m so very glad to see you.”

For the first few moments after she had allowed her tiny hand to rest for an instant in mine we exchanged conventionalities, and then suddenly, noting a roll of music in her hand, I asked —

“Are you going home?”

“Yes, across the Park,” she laughed. “Mother forbids it, but I much prefer the Park to those stuffy omnibuses.”

“And you’ve been to your music, I suppose?” I inquired.

“Yes. I’ve not been well for the past few days, and have missed several lessons. Now, like a good pupil, I’m endeavouring to make them up, you know.” And she laughed merrily.

“How many times a week do you go to the Academy?” I asked, surprised that she should have gone there that day, after what the hall-porter had told me.

“Twice, as a general rule,” she remarked; “but just now I’m rather irregular.”

“And so you prefer to cross the Park rather than ride by omnibus?”

“Certainly. Mother doesn’t approve of girls riding on the tops of ’buses, and says it’s fast. Therefore I’d much rather walk, for at this hour half London seems to be going from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith. I go right across, past the Serpentine, through Kensington Gardens to the Broad Walk, and out by the small gate next the Palace Hotel,” she added, with a sweep of her gloved hand.

Her eyes were lovely. As she stood there in the fading sunlight she seemed the fairest vision I had ever seen. I stood spell-bound by her marvellous beauty.

“And may I not act as your escort on your walk to-day?” I asked.

“Certainly. I have no objection,” she answered with graceful dignity, therefore I turned and walked beside her, carrying her music.

We took the road, which leads straight away to the Magazine, and crosses the Serpentine beyond. There in the yellow glow of the October sunset I lounged at her side and drank my fill of her loveliness. Surely, I thought, there could be no more beautiful woman in all the world. The Colonel’s strange warning recurred to me, but I laughed it to scorn.

As we passed beneath the rustling trees the sun’s last rays lit up her beautiful face with a light that seemed ethereal and tipped her hair until there seemed a golden halo about her. I was no lovesick youth, be it remembered, but a man who had had a bitter experience of the world and its suffering. Yet at that hour I was fascinated by the grace of her superb carriage, the suppleness of her figure, the charm of her sweet smile, and the soft music of her voice as she chatted to me.

She told me of her love for music; and from the character of the pieces which formed her studies I knew that she must be a musician of a no mean order. The operatic melody which she had sung at the Colonel’s was, she declared, a mere trifle. We discussed the works of Rossini and Massent, of Wagner and Mendelssohn, and of Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Perosi, and such latter-day composers. I had always prided myself that I knew something of music, but her knowledge was far deeper than mine.

And so we gossiped on, crossing the Park and entering Kensington Gardens – those beautiful pleasure grounds that always seem so neglected by the majority of Londoners – while the sun sank and disappeared in its blood-red afterglow. She spoke of her life abroad, declaring that she loved London and was always pleased to return to its wild, turbulent life. She had spent some time in Paris, in Vienna, in Berlin, but no one was half as interesting, she declared, as London.

“But you are not a Londoner, are you?” I asked.

“No, not exactly,” she responded, “although I’ve lived here such a long time that I’ve become almost a Cockney. Are you a Londoner?”

“No,” I answered; “I’m a countryman, born and bred.”

“I heard the Colonel remark that other night that you had been afflicted by blindness for some time. Is that so?”

I responded in the affirmative.

“Terrible!” she ejaculated, glancing at me with those wonderful dark eyes of hers that seemed to hold me in fascination and look me through and through. “We who possess our eyesight cannot imagine the great disadvantages under which the blind are placed. How fortunate that you are cured!”

“Yes,” I explained. “The cure is little short of a miracle. The three greatest oculists in London all agreed that I was incurable, yet there one day came to me a man who said he could give me back my sight. I allowed him to experiment, and he was successful. From the day that I could see plainly he, curiously enough, disappeared.”

“How strange! Did he never come and see you afterwards?”

“No. He took no reward, but simply discontinued his visits. I do not even know his real name.”

“How extraordinary!” she observed, greatly interested. “I really believe that there is often more romance and mystery in real life than in books. Such a circumstance appears absolutely bewildering.”

“If to you, Miss Anson, then how much more to me! I, who had relinquished all hope of again looking upon the world and enjoying life, now find myself actually in possession of my vision and able to mix with my fellow-men. Place yourself for a moment in my position, and try to imagine my constant thankfulness.”

“You must feel that a new life is opened to you – that you have begun a fresh existence,” she observed with a true touch of sympathy in her sweet voice. Then she added, as if by afterthought. “How many of us would be glad to commence life afresh!”

The tone in which she uttered that sentence seemed incongruous. A few moments before she had been all brightness and gaiety, but in those words there vibrated a distinctly gloomy note.

“Surely you do not desire to commence your life again?” I said.

She sighed slightly.

“All of us have our burden of regrets,” she answered vaguely, raising her eyes for an instant to mine, and then lowering them.

We appeared in those moments to grow confidential. The crimson and orange was fast fading from the sky. It was growing dark beneath the shadow of the great elms, and already the line of street lamps out in Kensington Gore were twinkling through the foliage on our left. No one was in the vicinity, and we were walking very slowly, for, truth to tell, I desired to delay our parting until the very last moment. Of all the leafy spots in giant London, there is none so rural, so romantic, or so picturesque in summer as that portion of Kensington Gardens lying between Queen’s Gate and the Broad Walk. Save for the dull roar of distant traffic, one might easily fancy one’s self far in the country, a hundred miles from the sound of Bow Bells.

“But you are young, Miss Anson,” I observed philosophically, after a brief pause. “And if I may be permitted to say so, you have scarcely begun to live your life. Yet you actually wish to commence afresh!”

“Yes,” she responded briefly, “I do. Strange, is it not?”

“Is the past, then, so full of bitterness?” I asked, the Colonel’s strange warning recurring to me at the same moment.

“Its bitterness is combined with regrets,” she answered huskily, in a low voice.

“But you, young, bright, happy, and talented, who need not think of the trials of everyday life, should surely have no regrets so deep as to cause you this anxiety and despair,” I said, with a feeling of tenderness. “I am ten years older than you, therefore I may be permitted to speak like this, even though my words may sound presumptuous.”

“Continue,” she exclaimed. “I assure you that in my present position I appreciate any words of sympathy.”

“You have my deepest sympathy, Miss Anson; of that I assure you,” I declared, detecting in her words a desire to confide in me. “If at your age you already desire to recommence life, your past cannot have been a happy one.”

“It has been far from happy,” she answered in a strange, mechanical voice. “Sometimes I think that I am the unhappiest woman in all the world.”

“No, no,” I hastened to reassure her. “We all, when in trouble, imagine that our burden is greater than that of any of our fellows, and that while others escape, upon us alone fall the graver misfortunes.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But a pleasant face and an air of carelessness ofttimes conceal the most sorrowful heart. It is so in my case.”

“And your sorrow causes you regret, and makes you wish to end your present life and commence afresh,” I said gravely. “To myself, ignorant of the circuit stances, it would seem as though you repented of some act or other.”

“What do you mean?” she gasped quickly, looking at me with a strange expression in her dark eyes. “I do not repent – I repent nothing!”

I saw that I had made a grave mistake. In my fond and short-sighted enthusiasm I had allowed myself to speak a little too confidentially, whereupon her natural dignity had instantly rebelled. At once I apologised, and in an instant she became appeased.

“I regret extremely that you should have such a weight of anxiety upon your heart,” I said. “If I can do anything to assist you, rely upon me.”

“You are extremely kind,” she answered in a gloomy tone; “but there is nothing – absolutely nothing.”

“I really can’t understand the reason why, with every happiness around you, you should find yourself thus plunged in this despair,” I remarked, puzzled. “Your home life is, I presume, happy enough?”

“Perfectly. I am entirely my own mistress, save in those things which might break through the ordinary conventionalities of life. I must admit to you that I am rather unconventional sometimes.”

I had wondered whether, like so many other girls, she had some imaginary grievance in her home; but now, finding that this was not so, it naturally occurred to me that the cause of her strange desire to live her life over again arose through the action of some faithless lover. How many hundreds of girls with wealth and beauty, perfectly happy in all else, are daily wearing out their lives because of the fickleness of the men to whom they have foolishly given their hearts! The tightly-laced corsets of every eight girls in ten conceals a heart filled by the regrets of a love long past; the men smile airily through the wreaths of their tobacco-smoke, while the women, in those little fits of melancholy which they love to indulge in, sit and reflect in silence upon the might-have-beens. Is there, I wonder, a single one of us, man or woman, who does not remember our first love, the deep immensity of that pair of eyes; the kindly sympathy of that face, which in our immature years we thought our ideal, and thereupon bowed the knee in worship? If such there be, then they are mere unrefined boors without a spark of romance in their nature, or poetry within their soul. Indeed, the regrets arising from a long-forgotten love ofttimes mingle pleasure with sadness, and through one’s whole life form cherished memories of those flushed days of a buoyant youth. To how many of those who read these lines will be recalled vivid recollections of a summer idyll of long ago; a day when, with the dainty or manly object of their affections, they wandered beside the blue sea, or on the banks of the tranquil, willow-lined river, or perhaps hand-in-hand strolled beneath the great old forest trees, where the sunlight glinted and touched the gnarled trunks with grey and gold! To each will come back the sweet recollection of a sunset hour now long, long ago, when they pressed the lips of the one they loved, and thought the rough world as rosy as that summer afterglow. The regret of those days always remains – often only a pleasant memory, but, alas! sometimes a lamentation bordering upon despair, until the end of our days.

“And may I not know something, however little, of the cause of this oppression upon you?” I asked of her, after we had walked some distance in silence. “You tell me that you desire to wipe out the past and commence afresh. The reason of this interests me,” I added.

“I don’t know why you should interest yourself in me,” she murmured. “It is really unnecessary.”

“No, no,” I exclaimed hastily. “Although our acquaintance has been of but brief duration, I am bold enough to believe that you count me among your friends. Is it not so?”

“Certainly, or I would not have given you permission to walk with me here,” she answered with a sweetness which showed her unostentatious delicacy of character.

“Then, as your friend, I beg of you to repose whatever confidence in me you may think fit, and to be assured that I will never abuse it.”

“Confidences are unnecessary between us,” she responded. “I have to bear my grief alone.”

“Your words sound strange, coming from one whom I had thought so merry and light-hearted,” I said.

“Are you, then, ignorant of the faculty a woman has of concealing her sorrows behind an outward show of gaiety – that a woman always possesses two countenances, the face and the mask?”

“You are scarcely complimentary to your own sex,” I answered with a smile. “Yet that is surely no reason why you should be thus wretched and downhearted.” Her manner puzzled me, for since the commencement of our conversation she had grown strangely melancholy – entirely unlike her own bright self. I tried to obtain from her some clue to the cause of her sadness, but in vain. My short acquaintance with her did not warrant me pressing upon her a subject which was palpably distasteful; nevertheless, it seemed to me more than strange that she should thus acknowledge to me her sorrow at a moment when any other woman would have practised coquetry.

“I can only suffer in silence,” she responded when I asked her to tell me something of the cause of her unhappiness.

“Excuse my depression this evening. I know that to you I must seem a hypochondriac, but I will promise you to wear the mask – if ever we meet again.”

“Why do you speak so vaguely?” I inquired in quick apprehension. “I certainly hope that we shall meet again, many, many times. Your words would make it appear as though such meeting is improbable.”

“I think it is,” she answered simply. “You are very kind to have borne with me like this,” she added, her manner quickly changing; “and if we do meet, I’ll try not to have another fit of melancholy.”

“Yes, Miss Anson,” I said, halting in the path, “let us meet again. Remember that we have to-day commenced a friendship – a friendship which I trust will last always.”

But she slowly shook her head, as though the heavy sadness of her heart still possessed her.

“Friendship may exist between us, but frequent meetings are, I fear, impossible.”

“Why? You told me only a moment ago that you were your own mistress,” I observed.

“And so I am in most things,” she answered. “But as far as meeting you, we can only leave that to chance.”

“Why?”

“Please do not endeavour to force me to explanations,” she answered with firmness. “I merely tell you that frequent meetings with you are unlikely – that is all.”

We had walked on, and were nearing the gate leading out into the High Street, Kensington.

“In other words, then, you are not altogether pleased with my companionship?”

“No, really,” she laughed sweetly. “I didn’t say that. You have no reason to jump at such a conclusion. I thank you very much indeed for your words of sympathy.”

“And you have no desire to see me again?” I interrupted, in a tone of bitter disappointment.

“If such were the case, ours would be a very extraordinary friendship, wouldn’t it?” and she lifted her eyes to mine with a kindly look.

“Then I am to take it that my companionship on this walk has not been distasteful to you?” I asked anxiously.

She inclined her head with dignified air, saying. “Certainly. I feel that this evening I have at least found a friend – a pleasant thought when one is comparatively friendless.”

“And as your friend – your devoted friend – I ask to be permitted to see you sometimes,” I said earnestly, for, lingering at her side, I was very loth to part from her. “If I can ever be of any assistance, command me.”

“You are very kind,” she answered, with a slight tremor in her voice. “I shall remember your words always.” Then, putting forth her well-gloved hand, as we stood upon the kerb of the High Street, she added, “It is getting late. We’ve taken such a long time across the Park that I must drive home;” and she made a gesture to a passing hansom.

“Before we part,” I said, “I will give you a card, so that should you require any service of me you will know where to write;” and, as we stood beneath the street lamp, I drew out a card and, with a pencil I took from my vest-pocket, scribbled my address.

In silence she watched, but just as I had finished she suddenly gripped my hand, uttering a loud cry of amazement.

“What’s that you have there?” she demanded. “Let me see it!”

Next instant – before, indeed, I could be aware of her intention – she had snatched the pencil from my grasp, and was examining it closely beneath the gaslight.

“Ah!” she gasped, glaring at me in alarm. “It is – yes, it is his!”

The small gold pencil which I had inadvertently used was the one I had taken from the pocket of the dead unknown on that fateful August night.

Chapter Thirteen

The Enchantment of a Face

The face of Mabel Anson, my new-found friend and idyll, had in that instant changed. Her countenance was pale as death, while the hand holding the small pencil trembled.

“Whence did you obtain this?” she demanded in an awe-stricken tone, which showed plainly that she recognised it. She held her breath in expectancy.

What could I reply? To explain the truth was impossible, for I had pledged my honour to Edna to preserve the secret. Besides, I had no wish to horrify her by the strange story of my midnight adventure. Hence a lie arose involuntarily to my lips.

“I found it,” I stammered.

“Found it? Where?”

“I found it when groping about during the time I was blind, and I’ve carried it ever since, wondering whether one day I should discover its owner.”

“It is extraordinary?” she gasped – “most extraordinary.”

“You appear to recognise it,” I observed, much puzzled at her attitude. “If you can tell me to whom it belongs I will return it.”

She hesitated, and with a quick effort regained her self-control.

“I mean it possesses an extraordinary resemblance to one I have seen many times before – but I suppose there are lots of pencil-cases of the same shape,” she added with affected carelessness.

“But there is a curious, unintelligible cypher engraved upon it,” I said. “Did you notice it?”

“Yes. It is the engraving which makes me doubt that I know its owner. His initials were not those.”

“You speak in the past tense,” I observed. “Why!”

“Because – well, because we are no longer friends – if you desire to know the truth;” and she handed me back the object, which, with the dress-stud, formed the only clue I had to the identity of the unfortunate victim of the assassin.

There was something in her manner which was to me the reverse of convincing. I felt absolutely certain that this unimportant object had, in reality, been identified by her, and that with some hidden motive she was now intentionally misleading me.

“Then you do not believe that this really belonged to your friend?” I asked, holding it up to her gaze.

“No,” she answered quickly, averting her face as though the sight of it were obnoxious. “I feel certain that it did not. Its resemblance is striking – that’s all.”

“It would have been a remarkable coincidence if it really were the property of your friend,” I said.

“Very remarkable,” she admitted, still regarding me strangely. “Yet the trite saying that ‘The world is small’ is nevertheless very true. When I first saw it I felt certain it belonged to a gentleman I knew, but on closer examination I find it is older, more battered, and bears initials which have evidently been engraved several years.”

“Where did your friend lose his?” I inquired, reflecting upon the lameness of her story. The mere recognition of a lost pencil-case would never have affected her in the manner that sight of this one had if there were not some deeper meaning attached to it.

“I have no idea. Indeed, I am not at all sure that it is not still in his possession.”

“And how came you to be so well acquainted with its aspect?” I asked, in eagerness to ascertain the truth.

She hesitated for a few moments. “Because,” she faltered – “because it was a present from me.”

“To an admirer?”

She did not answer, but even in that dim lamplight I detected the tell-tale flush mounting to her cheeks.

Then, in order, apparently, to cover her confusion, she added —

“I must really go. I shall be late for dinner, and my mother hates to wait for me. Good-bye.”

Our hands clasped, our eyes met, and I saw in hers a look of deep mystery, as though she held me in suspicion. Her manner and her identification of that object extracted from the pocket of the dead man were very puzzling.

“Good-bye,” I said. “I hope soon to have the pleasure of meeting you again. I have enjoyed this walk of ours immensely.”

“When we meet – if ever we do,” she answered with a mischievous smile, “remember that I have promised to wear the mask. Good-bye.” And she twisted her skirts gracefully, entered the cab, and a moment later was driven off, leaving me alone on the kerb.

I hesitated whether to return home by ’bus or Underground Railway, but, deciding on the latter, continued along the High Street to the station, and journeyed to the Temple by that sulphurous region of dirt and darkness known as the “Inner Circle.”

The reader may readily imagine how filled with conflicting thoughts was my mind on that homeward journey. Although I adored Mabel Anson with a love beyond all bounds, and would on that evening have declared my passion for her had I dared, yet I could not disguise from myself that sight of the pencil-case I had taken from the dead unknown had wrought an instant and extraordinary change in her.

She had identified it. Of that fact there was no doubt. Her lame explanation that it bore a resemblance to the one she had given to her friend was too palpably an afterthought. I was vexed that she should have thus attempted a deception. It was certainly true that one gold pencil-case is very like another, and that a Birmingham maker may turn out a thousand of similar pattern, yet the intricate cypher engraved on the one in question was sufficient by which to identify it. It was these very initials which had caused her to deny that it was really the one she had purchased and presented; yet I felt convinced that what she had told me was untrue, and that those very initials had been placed upon it by her order.