Carpentaria slipped back into the car with a shiver, as it occurred to him that Ilam, had he so chosen, might have pushed him into three hundred and forty perpendicular feet of space. But Ilam had not moved.
“I’ve had enough,” said Carpentaria. “We’ll descend. Ring the bell.”
“No,” said Ilam. “I want to——”
“We’ll descend,” Carpentaria insisted.
“It’s about Juliette,” pleaded Ilam.
“We’ll descend,” said Carpentaria a third time. “Ring the bell.”
He sat down, took his revolver from his pocket, and put it ostentatiously on his knees.
Ilam sighed, and pushed the white disc that communicated with the engine-house, and a few moments later a vibration went through the wheel, and it resumed its revolution. The car came down on the side nearest the river, and its occupants had a superb view of the final items of the display of fireworks. Among them were two portraits, in living flame, of the twin gods of the City of Pleasure, and under each headpiece was the name of its subject: “Ilam,” “Carpentaria.” The cheers of the immense multitude greeted their ears. Then there was another sound, but it came from above instead of from below. Ilam shrank as if afraid.
“You needn’t be frightened,” said Carpentaria. “It isn’t the trumpet of the Day of Judgment, it’s only the beginning of a thunderstorm. It’s just come in nice time to soak everybody through on their way home.”
Rain spattered viciously on the windows.
When they reached the ground a strange sight met their eyes—the sight of seas and oceans of black, shining umbrellas, surging in waves from all directions towards the Central Way and the exits from the City, and as the umbrellas reached the covered footpaths of the Central Way they collapsed and showed human beings. And then, at all the exits from the City, all these umbrellas—and it was estimated that there were over a quarter of a million of them—sprang again into life, and hid their owners. The tempest was already at its height.
“Come with me,” said Carpentaria, as Ilam sought to leave him, when they quitted the Amusements Park.
“No,” said Ilam flatly.
They stood side by side in the open, heedless of the rain, while shelter in the shape of the sidewalks of the Central Way was within a few yards of them.
The searchlight from the balloon still swept about the grounds, but the fireworks were finished.
“You shall come with me and see a ghost,” insisted Carpentaria angrily and obstinately, “or I will make such a scandal in this place as will go far to ruin it. Let me tell you that I know a great deal more than you think. I am in a position, for example, to ask you, Ilam, whether you spend your nights in bed or wandering about the grounds carrying mysterious burdens.”
A group of visitors hurried past them.
“What do you mean?” muttered Ilam. “I—you must be going off your head.”
“Doubtless I’m a madman, eh? Well, come along with the madman.”
Ilam sighed. They passed into the Central Way, and had to fight for progress against the multitudes that crowded the footpaths. No one recognized them.
“I wish we could understand each other,” said Ilam.
“We shall, rest assured of that,” returned Carpentaria. “In quite a few minutes we shall understand each other, or I am mistaken, and it may be you that will have to leave this City—and with considerably less than fifty thousand a year, my friend.” He pictured the moment when he should confront Ilam with the man whose corpse Ilam had buried. Vistas opened out before him. He saw the tables completely turned; he saw himself sole master of the City, and the wielder of such power over Ilam as would enforce obedience to his wishes. Then there would be no more insulting requests to abandon his music, no more ridiculous suggestions, and no fear of foolishness on the part of Juliette. It astonished him that he had not realized before the enormous latent power which his knowledge of Saturday night gave him over Ilam.
“You will come with me to my house,” he said.
“Who is there?” asked Ilam wearily.
“Dr. Rivers—and the ghost.”
“What is all this nonsense about a ghost?”
“You shall see him first, and then, when you have seen him—before he has seen you—you shall tell me whether or not you would like to have a chat with him. It is a ghost warranted to talk.”
Ilam said nothing. He was naturally at a complete loss.
They entered the bungalow by means of Carpentaria’s latchkey, and they mounted to the first-floor, and they went into the study. The door of the bedroom was shut. Carpentaria led Ilam out on to the balcony of the study window, from which it was not difficult, even for Ilam, to climb into the balcony of the bedroom.
“Now, you shall look into my bedroom,” said Carpentaria.
And he himself looked first. It may be said that he was astounded.
The room was lighted. There were no signs of Mr. Jetsam, but two chairs had been overturned, and young Rivers lay prone on the floor, his eyes shut, and some blood flowing from a wound in his forehead.
Carpentaria sprang into the room, and, strange to say, Ilam followed him. The fact was that Ilam did really for the moment believe Carpentaria to be mad, and the bedroom to be the scene of some maniacal crime. .
Just then Rivers came to his senses.
“That you, Mr. Carpentaria?” he murmured, rubbing his eyes.
“Yes. What’s happened? Where’s Jetsam, as he calls himself? You’re not seriously hurt, are you?”
At the name of Jetsam, Ilam caught his breath and took hold of a bedpost.
“Jetsam?” he repeated.
“You evidently recognize the name of my ghost,” said Carpentaria, “though he isn’t here.”
“He bashed me on the head with a chair,” said the doctor, sitting up and putting a handkerchief to his head, “and I suppose I must have—— It can’t be more than a minute or two since——”
“But what was he doing? Where’s he gone?” inquired Carpentaria impatiently.
“He recovered consciousness quite quickly,” answered Rivers, “and I gave him something to drink; then he asked me about Mrs. Ilam, and I told him she lived with Mr. Ilam here, and he grew very excited, and said he must go to her at once. I said he couldn’t; I said you wouldn’t allow that, and he pretended to agree; but it was only a pretence. He began to talk about other things, and then, all of a sudden, he sprang at me, and that’s as much as I remember.”
Without a word Carpentaria ran out downstairs and into the avenue. The door of Ilam’s house stood wide open. He entered. In the hall he perceived that the door of the drawing-room was also wide open, and he entered the drawing-room..There was no light in the room save that of a match, and the match was held by Mr. Jetsam. Mr. Jetsam stood staring at Mrs. Ilam, and Mrs. Ilam sat motionless in her chair, apparently trying to articulate and not succeeding. An appalling fear shone in her eyes. No sound could be heard except the rattling of the rain on the French window.
Mr. Jetsam turned, and in the same second he dropped the match. The room was in darkness. Then followed a crash of glass and splintering of wood, and then a heavy fall in the apartment itself. With some trouble, Carpentaria found the electric switch and turned on the light. Mrs. Ilam’s lips were still trembling in a vain effort to speak. Her son lay stretched and whimpering at her feet. Mr. Jetsam had vanished. The window was in ruins.
Dr. Rivers appeared. He had bandaged his forehead.
“She is paralysed!” said the doctor, when he had examined Mrs. Ilam. “She will never again have the use of her limbs or her organs of speech. She will be able to see and to hear, that’s all.”
It is a singular fact that the secondary stage of the drama which I am relating was tremendously, vitally, influenced by the marriage of Mr. Luke Shooter, junior partner in Shooter’s, a firm of wholesale ribbon merchants in Cannon Street. Luke Shooter did not know it. Luke Shooter had nothing whatever to do with the drama; it is very, probable that he never even heard of it, except such trifling fragments as got into the newspapers. Nevertheless, by the mere fact of marrying, Luke Shooter unconsciously changed the course of events in the City of Pleasure. For he was a man of broad views, and he liked people to think well of him, and so it occurred that, at his suggestion, the multitudinous staff of Shooter’s was given a complete holiday on the day of his marriage, and that day happened to be Tuesday, May 4.
So much for Mr. Luke Shooter.
Many of the employés spent the latter half of the day in the City of Pleasure, which was now the rage, the craze, and the vogue of London, and among these were the twin sisters, Pauline and Rosie Dartmouth. Pauline and Rosie were typists in the house of Shooters. Their age was twenty-six. They were tall, and rather slim; only Rosie, the younger, was not quite so slim as Pauline. Pauline was dark; Rosie was inclined to fairness. In the partnership between them Pauline supplied the common sense, while Rosie supplied the gaiety; each supplied a considerable amount of beauty and charm, and a sum of thirty-five shillings a week. It is obvious that on a total income of three pounds ten a week, or a hundred and eighty-two pounds a year, two girls living together in a small flat, with sense and gaiety and full opportunity for acquiring ribbons at wholesale prices, may have a very good time and cut quite a pretty figure in the world. And this Pauline and Rosie certainly did manage to do.
They were orphans, and had been for a very long time.
They came to the City by the Tube from their flat in Shepherd’s Bush, and Pauline put a florin down for the two of them at the northern entrance gates, just as though they had been ordinary visitors; as, in fact, at that moment they were. A few persons noticed them, but quite casually, and only because they were dressed—and well dressed—almost exactly alike. There are so many beautiful young women in London that Londoners seldom turn their heads to look at one. It is left to Frenchmen to rave about the blond charm of the Anglo-Saxon “mees.” What exuberant adjectives the Frenchman would find to express his delight if he penetrated further north, into Staffordshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, where ugly faces and bad complexions are practically unknown, it is impossible to guess.
The City of Pleasure met with the entire approval of Pauline and Rosie. As soon as they found themselves in the Central Way they began to get enthusiastic. The sun was shining, the flags were flying, the cable-cars were gliding, and thousands and thousands of visitors made gay the City. They had never before seen anything like the Central Way, with its colonnades, and its shops, and its coloured throngs, and its soaring, gleaming, white architecture.
“It’s just as good as being abroad, isn’t it?” said Rosie.
“Better,” said Pauline.
But then they had never been beyond Boulogne.
They stopped at shop windows, as much to regard jewellery and knick-knacks, as to observe whether their frocks and chiffons and hats were in that immaculate order which a sunny day and the presence of one’s fellow-creatures demand. It may be mentioned here that their dresses were of dark blue, with blue belts, bunchy knots of white muslin at the throat, white gloves, brown glacé kid boots, and large blue-and-black picture hats. It was plain, but it was perfect, and they knew it was perfect. The consciousness of perfection enabled them to sustain the judicial gaze of other women, and the passing glance of innumerable young men, with a supercilious stare. In truth they were secretly wild with the joy of life, and the attractiveness of the City, and the sensations of their holiday, but they did not show it. Oh, no! They did not show it. They were prim to the most advanced degree, as became them.
“I should just love to go on one of those dear little cable-cars!” exclaimed Rosie.
“Well, let’s,” Pauline agreed.
“Aren’t they delicious?” said Rosie.
And only in the girlish hop, skip, and jump, which landed them gracefully on a car, was there a hint of the pent-up vivacity which surged in their veins—a hint that vanished as rapidly as it had showed itself. As Rosie smoothed out her skirt, and as Pauline opened the purse in her gloved hand to give two pence to the conductor, they had the utter demureness of duchesses.
The car was open to the sky, with crosswise seats, and, as it sailed rapidly down the Central Way, constantly passing other cars coming in the opposite direction, and passing fountains and flower-beds and elephants and camels, and all the strange world of the City, the pleasure became rather too keen for Rosie’s mercurial heart. She took Pauline’s hand and pressed it, sitting a little bit closer to her.
“Suppose we meet him?” she whispered.
“What? In this crowd? Never! Besides, he isn’t likely to be outside,” said Pauline.
She was only a few minutes older than Rosie, but she could not have played the elder sister more completely had she been ten years older.
“We might meet her, anyway!” murmured Rosie.
“Nonsense, Rosie. You don’t imagine she’ll be here, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosie, lifting her chin. “But suppose we do meet him, or either of them.”
“Well, then,” said Pauline wisely, “we meet them, that’s all.”
“Shall you speak to them?” Rosie asked; “I shan’t.”
“We’ll think about that when we see them,” said Pauline.
“Oh!” cried Rosie.
This exclamation had nothing to do with the foregoing chatter. It merely expressed some part of Rosie’s joy when the car came to the magnificent circular place half-way down the Central Way, with the façade of the Exposition Palace on the right, the stately entrance to the Oriental Gardens on the left, and the superb vista of the thoroughfare before and behind.
“Oh!” cried Rosie again, for quite a different reason.
Already she had forgotten the architectural and other beauties of this scene, and was eagerly directing Pauline’s attention to a tall man with vivid hair and an individual style, who had just crossed the rails in front of the car and was proceeding towards the Oriental Gardens.
“There!” said Rosie, pointing frantically, yet primly. “Don’t you see him?”
“Who? That man with the red hair?”
“Yes; it’s Carpentaria, isn’t it?”
“So it is, I do declare!” agreed Pauline, frankly as interested as her sister.
It was.
“Oh!” breathed Rosie regretfully, as the car swept them further from the figure of the popular hero. “Doesn’t he look lovely? He’s just like his portraits, only nicer, isn’t he?”
“I—I couldn’t see him very well,” said the discreet Pauline.
“Yes, you could,” Rosie corrected her sharply. “You know you adore him. But you’re always so mum.”
Pauline smiled placidly.
“I do wish we could meet him—be introduced to him I mean!” said Rosie.
“My dear child,” Pauline reprimanded. “Don’t be silly. He’s frightfully rich.”
“I know!” said Rosie sadly. “But he isn’t married. I think his hair’s beautiful.”
In common with very many English and other girls, Rosie and Pauline were capable of displaying brazenly, for a man they had scarcely seen, an affection the tenth part of which certain males with whom they were intimately acquainted would have been delighted to receive. Their virgin hearts had never been touched, not even by the Apollos of the house of Shooter; they prided themselves on their unapproachableness; yet they could rave about Carpentaria, and openly profess that they were his slaves. In Carpentaria’s presence they would doubtless have behaved, even if they did not feel, differently.
The car whirled them to the other end of the City, and they began systematically to do everything and to see everything that could be done and seen, from the captive balloon (not that they did that—they were content to see it) to the Soudanese native village, from the circus to the exhibition relating to Woman, from the cricket field to the Freak Show, and from the Art Galleries to the ladies’ afternoon-tea café. They were in the ladies’ afternoon-tea café and paying for two pots of tea, seven cakes, and an extra cream, just as the clock struck five. It then occurred to them that a concert of military music began at precisely five o’clock in the Oriental Gardens, and they decided to go and listen to it, even though, sad to say, Carpentaria never conducted in person till the evening.
They crossed the Central Way, and were strolling along the avenue to the Gardens, when Pauline stopped.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed.
“What is it?”
Coming down the steps of Ilam’s bungalow was the great Ilam himself, and it was to Ilam she pointed.
“What shall we do?” whispered Rosie. “He’s lots older, isn’t he?... And you said we shouldn’t meet him!”
They walked on, irresolute and blushing, and just as they arrived opposite Ilam’s gate, with their eyes gazing studiously straight in front of them, Ilam called out:
“Hi, there! Young ladies!”
Now, the avenue was generously sprinkled with people, but Pauline and Rosie happened to be the only young ladies within hail, and to have ignored such a loud and unmistakable appeal as Ilam’s would have drawn down upon them more public attention than they desired. They therefore stopped, still blushing, but delightfully blushing, and smiling with that innate kindliness of heart which distinguished both of them. Rosie spoke first. She was a woman, and had positively stated that under the circumstances she should not speak. Hence, naturally, she spoke first.
“Good afternoon, cousin,” said she.
In her manner of pronouncing that word “cousin,” a non-committal manner, a more-than-meets-the-eye manner, a defensive manner—in a word, a family manner—she indicated a whole family history. When relatives who are distant in more senses than one meet after a considerable period, that particular manner is invariably employed by the one who speaks first.
The history of the Dartmouths and the Ilams was quite simple—indeed, so usual as to be hardly worthy of record. Mrs. Dartmouth, mother of the twins, had been an Ilam. She was the orphan child of Josephus’ dead uncle, and therefore niece of Josephus’ father. And before her marriage she was understood to have “expectations” from that mighty and opulent soda-water manufacturer. However, heedless of these expectations, she went and married beneath her—to wit, a solicitor’s clerk. The niece of a rich soda-water manufacturer has no business to marry a solicitor’s clerk. The result was a complete estrangement. Mrs. Dartmouth gave all the Ilams to understand that she and her husband had no need of anyone’s money—that, in fact, they scorned the Ilam millions. Mrs. Dartmouth met Josephus at his father’s funeral. Ten years later Pauline and Rosie met Josephus at Mrs. Dartmouth’s funeral. They shook hands formally, and made it clear to Josephus that they would stoop to accept no gift from him, who had scorned their mother, even should he offer it.
That was seven years ago, and Pauline and Rosie were now absolutely alone in the world, and, moreover, age had taught them tolerance, and their curiosity had been extremely excited by the news of their cousin’s partnership with the world-renowned Carpentaria, and the subsequent birth of the City of Pleasure. So that, in spite of anything they might have previously said to each other, they were rather pleased to meet their solemn cousin, who, after all, was a millionaire, and who really seemed less aloof and stiff than he appeared at funerals.
“So you were going to cut me?” said Ilam, trying to smile.
“No, cousin,” said Pauline. “How are you? You don’t look very well.”
They shook hands over the gate.
“I’m not,” said Ilam.
“And Mrs. Ilam. She keeps pretty well, I hope,” put in Rosie decorously.
“That’s just it. She doesn’t. She’s—— Won’t you come in?”
And he opened the gate.
“Do you live here?” cried Rosie. “Fancy living in the middle of this place! How jolly! And what a jolly house! Oh! what a delicious notion—living in the show!”
And they disappeared into the bungalow.
The historic family coolness looked as if it was going to warm itself into a sort of pleasant acquaintanceship.
Yes, Ilam was saying when they came downstairs, “she has been like that since last night, and the doctors—I have had two—assure me that at her age no recovery is possible. She can take liquid food, and she can move her eyes slightly—you noticed how her eyes turn?—but otherwise she is incapable of movement, and, of course, she can’t articulate.”
He had taken his young relatives upstairs to see his mother, and the picture of her, lying almost in the attitude of a corpse on the bed, with a uniformed nurse sitting motionless beside her, had made a deep impression on Pauline and Rosie. In fact, the whole house saddened them. It was spacious and luxurious, but it was far from reaching that standard of splendour which one might reasonably expect from the Ilam wealth. Ilam did not look like a wealthy man. He did not talk like a wealthy man, and both girls began to perceive, dimly, that wealth is useless to those who have not sufficient imagination to employ it. Certainly the City of Pleasure was an expression of the Ilam riches, but they knew, as all the world knew, that the imagination which had brought into being the City of Pleasure was Carpentaria’s. Hence, they felt sorry for Josephus Ilam, partly because of the calamity to his mother, and partly because of his forlorn and anxious air; they thought he wanted looking after, and that this heavy pompous man was greatly to be pitied, despite his opulence.
“You haven’t told us how it happened, what caused it?” said Pauline sympathetically.
“Oh!” said Ilam, “as to that, who can tell? Probably some fright, some shock. But we can’t say. She was alone when it happened. And as she can’t speak—can’t write—can’t—— Well, you see how it is.”
“We are sorry for you,” murmured Rosie.
“And here I am, alone as it were,” Ilam continued. “What am I to do? What can a man do by himself? I’ve got a nurse. I can get fifty nurses, if necessary. And there are the servants. But what are nurses and servants? You understand my position, don’t you?”
“Yes, quite,” said Pauline.
They were partaking of a second tea in the Ilam drawing-room. The appetite of Rosie for cakes seemed unimpaired, though she did her best to hide it, and to pretend that she was only eating cakes out of politeness.
Ilam swallowed his tea in great gulps.
“I’m utterly unnerved,” he said.
“You must be,” said Rosie kindly.
“There’s a vast amount of superintendence to do in the City, as you may guess. But what am I fit for, with my poor old mother lying up there? You can’t fancy what she was to me. I depended on her for everything—everything.”
And then tears showed themselves in the little eyes of Josephus Ilam. The appearance of those tears in the eyes of a great strong man made Rosie feel very uncomfortable, so much so, that she was obliged to look out of the window.
“I wish we could help you,” said Pauline, after a pause.
“We’d do anything we could,” said Rosie.
Ilam glanced up.
“You can do everything,” he said. “I hesitated to ask you, but since you’ve mentioned it yourselves... and I’ll make it worth your while. Rely on that.”
“But what?” demanded Pauline, startled, while Rosie put down a fresh piece of cake which she had just taken.
“Come and live here,” said Ilam bluntly.
“Both of us?”
“Both of you.”
“We couldn’t do that, really,” said Pauline.
“No, of course not. But wouldn’t it be lovely?” added Rosie.
“Why couldn’t you?” asked Ilam. “You are your own mistresses, aren’t you? What is there to prevent you?”
“Well, you see,” said Pauline judicially, “we have our living to get, and then there’s our flat, and——”
“I don’t know how much you earn,” Ilam cried. “But I’ll cheerfully undertake to give you treble, whatever it is.”
“That would be five hundred and forty-six pounds a year, then,” said Rosie, who was specially good at arithmetic.
“Let us say six hundred,” Ilam amended the figure with a tremendously casual air.
The girls felt that, after all, perhaps he resembled a millionaire more than they had at first thought.
“Come, now,” Ilam urged. “Say yes. It’s an idea that came to me all of a sudden, while I was talking to you. But it’s an idea that gets better and better the more I think about it.”
“But we couldn’t give up our situations,” objected Pauline.
“Why not?” Ilam asked.
“I don’t know,” Pauline stammered. “It seems so queer. It’s so sudden. What would our duties be here?”
“Your duties would be to act as mistresses of this house, and to look after my poor mother. Of course, there’d be a nurse as well. I don’t know how many servants there are—five or six.”
“And we should have to manage everything?” said Pauline.
“Everything domestic. Come, you agree?”
“But suppose,” interpolated Rosie—“suppose we—you—we didn’t suit you?”
What she meant was “Suppose you didn’t suit us?”
“Come a month on trial,” said Ilam. “At the end of that time, if you want to leave, I’ll guarantee you a situation quite as good as you’re leaving. I can’t say fairer than that, can I?”
There was a pause; the twins looked at each other.
“Just think how I’m fixed!” pleaded Ilam.
“What do you say, Rosie?” Pauline asked primly of her sister.
“Well,” answered Rosie, “as cousin is in such a dilemma, and poor Mrs. Ilam so—so ill, perhaps——”
“Good!” exclaimed Ilam; “you agree. Good! I’m very much obliged to you. You’re two really nice girls, and I can assure you you’ll have a free hand here.”
“You decide for us,” said Pauline, smiling and reddening under Ilam’s appreciation.
“We’ll begin at once, eh?” said Ilam. “Tonight.”
“Oh, that’s quite out of the question,” objected Rosie. “We shall be obliged to give a month’s notice at Shooter’s.”
“Nonsense!” said Ilam. “I’ll send ‘em a cheque for a month’s salary instead; then they can’t grumble.”
“But to-morrow? How will they manage without us?” persisted Rosie.
Ilam laughed—and it was not often that Ilam laughed. Either the humour of the thing must have appealed to him very strongly, or it was a symptom that his spirits had mightily improved.
“They’ll manage without you,” he said.
“It’s true they can get substitutes from the Typewriting Exchange,” said Pauline.
Thus, it was arranged that Pauline and Rosie should take one of the City automobiles to their flat, and return with trunks and boxes during the evening. Before leaving the bungalow Pauline wrote to Shooter’s informing them of the blow that had fallen on Shooter’s, and Ilam filled in a cheque, and Rosie put it in the envelope and fastened the envelope. The automobile, ordered by telephone, came round to the door.
“You’ll introduce us to Mr. Carpentaria, won’t you?” said Rosie smilingly, as she was getting into the carriage.
Ilam frowned, and then cleared his face.
“Do you want to know him?” he asked.
“Why, of course!”
“Very well, I suppose you must,” Ilam agreed.
“Well, isn’t this the greatest fun?” Rosie whispered to Pauline when they drove off. “We can go where we like in the City. We can save at least five hundred a year, and perhaps we shall be his heiresses.”
“Hush!” Pauline admonished her.
And three hours later those two extremely practical twins were thoroughly installed in the Ilam bungalow. They had the air of having lived there all their lives as they chatted with Ilam in the drawing-room. Ilam himself was decidedly looking a little better.
“I have been talking to nurse,” said Pauline importantly, “and I shall sleep on the couch in Mrs. Ham’s room to-night. Nurse needs rest. She says there is nothing to do, but some one should be there.”
“I don’t want you to begin by tiring yourselves,” said Ilam, “but, of course——”
They heard a violent ring at the front-door, and presently a servant entered. Ilam started.
“Mr. Carpentaria,” said the servant.
Ilam turned pale.
“Show him in,” said Rosie calmly to the servant.
“Yes, Miss Rose,” said the servant, who, in common with the other servants, had already been clearly informed of the names, position, and authority of the new-comers.
“You are to introduce him to us, you know,” Rosie murmured sweetly to Ilam, “and I suppose we shall have to play hostesses now.”
Carpentaria came in, evidently hot from his concert.
“I say, Ilam——” he began.
Then he perceived the twins, and Ilam clumsily performed the introductions. The girls were enchanted with his uniform and with him. He said little, and he was pale, but then he was so distinguished; all his movements were distinguished and magnificent.
“We saw you this afternoon,” Rosie ventured timidly.
“And I didn’t see you! The loss was mine,” he returned, gazing at Pauline.
Ilam had sunk back heavily into a chair. Carpentaria caught sight of his face, and an awkward silence followed.
“I came on a matter of business,” Carpentaria said to Ilam, “but I won’t trouble you now, it will do to-morrow. Good-night.”
“We shall hope to see more of you,” said Rosie when Carpentaria had demonstrated that he really meant to go.
“Yes indeed,” said Pauline very quietly, and the visitor bowed.
And then Carpentaria, that glorious vision, had vanished.
“Cousin’s nerves are simply all to pieces,” commented Rosie, as the girls were going upstairs; “even a casual visitor upsets him. Did you notice his face as soon as the bell rang?”
Pauline had put the book down on the bed, and was bending over the fire pulling the coals together with the poker. She performed this homely, natural, everyday action more to reassure herself, to convince herself that she was in an everyday world, than because the fire needed attention. For the strange mystery of the speechless creature on the bed, helpless as though bound with chains and gagged by the devices of tortures, had seized and terrified her. She held the poker in the air and listened. Not a sound save the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece! From all the sleeping house, not a sound. She might have been alone with the living corpse in the house, and yet she knew that Rosie, and Josephus Ilam, and the nurse, and the halfdozen servants, were in various rooms of it, perhaps sleeping, perhaps trying to sleep.
There was a sudden sharp noise behind her, near the bed.
She started violently and glanced round in fear. It was merely the book—the harmless and amusing “The Lady or the Tiger?”—which had slipped from the bed to the floor. Yet how could it have slipped? Had the paralytic, who was incapable of the slightest movement, after all twitched a limb and so shaken the book off the bed? Absurd. She had merely placed the book too close to the edge of the bed; that was all. Nothing more natural, nothing more probable. Her nervous fright was grotesque.
She rose, picked up the book, and looked again at her charge. The burning, blazing eyes were still dropping tears, and the tears ran in a deep furrow down either cheek. Softly Pauline wiped them away, her own eyes moist. The tragedy of the life’s end of this old, old woman, whom every one had regarded as fierce and formidable, rendered helpless in a moment by no one knew what horrible visitation, chilled her heart’s core.
“What can she want? What is troubling her?” thought Pauline frenziedly.
And then she imagined that perhaps she had mistaken all the symptoms of those eyes, and that Mrs. Ilam had wished her to continue to read. She resumed the book, and read very slowly in a fairly loud voice. And instantly the eyes began to blink irregularly—fast, then slow—and the eyeballs themselves moved slightly from side to side. Obviously the patient was not content.
Pauline put down the book again in despair.
The eyeballs still moved slightly to and fro.
“She wants something in the room. What can it be?”’ said Pauline to herself. “It may be she is thirsty.”
She went to the night-table and poured a few drops of water into the invalid’s cup, and brought it near Mrs. Ilam’s lips. But the eyes seemed to close as if in refusal, and the face, which could only wear one expression—that of grief—to deepen its inexpressible melancholy.
And then an idea occurred to Pauline, and shone on her brow like a light.
“Listen,” she said kindly to the aged woman. “I will ask you some questions. The answers will be only yes or no. If you mean ‘no’ try to keep your eyelids still, but if you mean ‘yes’ blink them! as much as you can. Do you understand?”
The eyelids blinked; and then they continued their terrible entranced stare at a spot on the ceiling exactly above their owner’s head.
“Good,” said Pauline. “Are you in pain?”
No movement of the eyelids.
“Are you thirsty?”
A slight flickering, which the patient clearly endeavoured to suppress.
“You want something?”
The eyes blinked.
“Is it some person?”
The eyelids were steady.
“Something in this room?”
A violent blinking.
“Is it in a drawer?”
The eyelids were steady.
“Then I can see it as I stand here?”
The eyes blinked again. Pauline set the cup down on the night-table, and gazed round the room. She went to the mantelpiece, and gave a list of the things on it: candlestick, clock, matches, vases, keys, medicine-bottle, a piece of crochet work, a long knitting-needle, a picture post-card. There was no response from the invalid.
“How foolish I am!” murmured Pauline. “She cannot possibly want any of these things.” Then she saw a few old letters half-hidden behind the clock. “Is it there?” she asked, holding the letters near to Mrs. Ilam.
But there was still no response. She put back the letters and went to the ottoman, on which was a large family Bible. But it was not the Bible that Mrs. Ilam wanted, nor a spectacle case that lay on the Bible. Then Pauline catalogued one by one the contents of the dressing-table, and then the contents of the washstand, still with no result. At last, she came to a chest of drawers, covered with a piece of white crewelwork, and bearing some wax flowers, two small vases, a black lacquered box, sundry folded linen, several books, and a few faded photographs. She described the photographs and the linen and the books, as these seemed to be the most likely objects, and then she came to the lacquered box. And suddenly, the eyes began to blink furiously.
“You want this box?”
The eyes continued to blink.
She brought it to the bed: It was about eight inches square and three inches in depth, and beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl in a design to resemble a bunch of roses—just such a little cabinet as our grandmothers valued, such as was scorned as being Early Victorian during the aesthetic movement of the eighties and nineties, but such as we ourselves are beginning to recognize as beautiful. It had prominent brass hinges, and a keyhole, and it was locked.
“Do you want me to open it? It’s locked.”
The eyes were moderately still.
“Then you wish it put somewhere else?”
They blinked.
“In a drawer?”
No response.
“On the dressing-table?”
No response.
“Near you?”
The eyes blinked,
“On the bed?”
No response.
“Under the bed?”
No response.
Pauline was at a loss.
“Under your pillow?” she hazarded at length.
The eyelids moved up and down, if not with joy, at any rate with satisfaction.
And very carefully Pauline raised the pillow, and
Mrs. Ilam’s head, and slipped the box underneath both the pillow and the bolster.
“There; is that right?”
The tragic eyes blinked, and a slight sigh emanated weakly from between those thin pale lips. But, slight as it was, it seemed to have come from the innermost depths of the stricken woman’s being. It might have been a sigh to indicate that her last wish was realized.
“I shall lie down now,” said Pauline, and turning out all the electric lights except the tiny table lamp on the table, she stretched herself on the couch which stood at the foot of the great bed, and she drew a rug over her and shut her eyes and told herself that she must sleep. But she could not sleep. Her brain was as busy as the inside of a clock and electric lights seemed to be burning and fizzing in it, extinguishing themselves and relighting themselves. What strange house had she and Rosie wandered into? What was the hidden secret of this paralysis, and of Josephus Ilam’s worn and worried mien, and of the sudden arrival and equally sudden departure of Carpentaria? And, above all, what was the meaning of the old woman’s desire for the box. What was in the box?
Do not imagine that Pauline regretted having come. She did not. Except under the passing influences of night and of the presence of illness, she was not a bit superstitious; nor was Rosie. They were not afraid of mysteries. They were intensely practical young women, incapable of being frightened or repulsed by what they did not understand. And that Pauline was a girl entirely without the timidity of the doe, she abundantly proved in the next few minutes. As she lay on the couch she could see, without moving her head, the French window. She fancied that the heavy crimson curtain was somewhat pulled aside in one place, at a height of about four feet from the ground, and she fancied that she could see the end of a finger on the end of the curtain. “No,” she said to herself, “this is ridiculous. There cannot possibly be a finger there. I must not be silly,” and she resolutely shut her eyes. The next time she opened them, the fire had blazed up a little and, more than ever, the something on the edge of the curtain resembled a finger.
Her little heart beating, but courageously, she noiselessly rose up from the couch and approached the window.
It was the end of a finger on the edge of the curtain—a finger with a rounded and very white finger-nail I Moreover, the curtain trembled slightly, as it would do if held by some one who was endeavouring not to move. Pauline remembered that the French window behind the curtain had purposely been left slightly open, and that it gave on to a balcony, as most of the windows of the bungalow did.
She advanced resolutely, and drew aside the curtain.