The Heart of a Woman

"No. He and Philip have joined some new club in Shaftesbury Avenue – The Veterans' I think it is called."

"Some low, mixed-up kind of place! Old Radclyffe must be out of his senses!"

"He likes it, so he tells me, because people don't come and bother him there."

"I should think not indeed. I wouldn't set foot in such a place."

"He goes there most evenings, and so does Philip – and it's so bad for Uncle Rad to be out late these foggy nights."

"You ought to make an effort and stop it, Luke."

"I have made many efforts, sir. But, as a matter of fact, I had made up my mind to make a final one to-night. Uncle Rad ought to go abroad, and I thought I would try to impress this on Philip. He can't be a bad man."

"Oh! can't he?" was Colonel Harris's muttered comment.

"At any rate, if I have no influence, he has, and he must exert it and get Uncle Rad down to Algeciras or anywhere he likes so long as it is well south."

Luke paused awhile, his face flushed with this expression of determination which must have caused his pride many a bitter pang. Then he resumed more quietly:

"It's rather humiliating, isn't it, to go to that man as a suppliant?"

"Don't go as a suppliant, my boy. You must insist on your uncle being properly looked after."

Colonel Harris thought all that sort of thing so easy. One always does before one has had a genuine tussle with the unpleasant realities of life; to the good country squire with an assured position, an assured income, assured influence, it seemed very easy indeed to insist. He himself never had to insist; things occurred round him and at his word, as it were, of themselves.

But Louisa, knowing how matters stood, made no suggestion. She knew that Luke would do his best, but that that best was of little avail now; as Philip de Mountford arranged so it would all come about.

Friends and well-wishers could but pray that the intruder was not a bad man, and that he had his uncle's health at heart.

She gave the signal to go, saying simply,

"We mustn't be late for dinner, father, must we?"

And she rose to go, held back by the hand, by Luke's fervent insistence.

He could not accustom himself to part from her, as he often had to do. It seemed absurd, but undeniable. He was supremely happy in her company, and snatched as much of it as ever he could; but the wrench was always awful and Louisa – subtly comprehensive – was conscious of the terrible pain which she gave him at every parting. She felt the repercussion of it in all her nerves, although her sound common-sense condemned the sensation as unreal.

To-night the feeling was even stronger than it had ever been before. At her first suggestion that it was time to go, an elusive current passed from him to her. He had been holding her hand, and his had been cool and only slightly on the quiver from time to time when her own fingers pressed more markedly against his. But now, all at once it seemed as if a sudden current of lava had penetrated his veins; his hand almost scorched her own, and though visibly it did not move, yet she felt the pulses throbbing and trembling beneath the flesh. The look of misery in his face made her own heart ache though she tried to smile with easy gaiety.

"To-morrow we go to the Temple Show together; don't forget, Luke."

Her words seemed to recall him from another world, and he quickly enough pulled himself together and helped her on with her cloak. Colonel Harris with the gentle tactfulness peculiar to kind hearts had loudly announced that he would be waiting in the hall.

"Anything the matter, Luke?" she asked as soon as her father had gone from the room.

He contrived to smile and to look unconcerned.

"Not particularly," he replied.

"You seem different to-night, somehow."

"How different?"

"I can't explain. But you are not yourself."

"Myself more than ever. My adoration for you is more uncontrolled – that is all."

She wrapped herself up in her furs, for it was silence that gave the best response. And then he said quite calmly:

"Will you go first. I'll switch off the light."

"Father will be waiting down stairs," she rejoined.

Then she went past him and out through the door, and he had to go back to the mantel-piece where one of the electric light switches was. He turned off the light; the room remained in darkness save where the dying embers of the fire threw a red glow on the sofa where she had sat with him, and the footstool on which her evening shoe had rested.

And the conventional man of the world, schooled from childhood onward to discipline and self-control, fell on both knees against that mute footstool, and leaning forward he pressed his burning lips against the silk cushions of the sofa, which still bore the impress and the fragrance of her exquisite shoulders.

Then he, too, went out of the room.

CHAPTER XII

SHALL A MAN ESCAPE HIS FATE?

On the way to the Danish Legation, Colonel Harris asked Luke what his plans were for the evening.

"I shall," replied Luke, "call at Grosvenor Square. I may find Uncle Rad, or Philip, or both at home. I mean to have a good tussle about this wintering abroad. It's really most important."

"I call it criminal," retorted Colonel Harris, "keeping a man in London who has been used to go south in the winter for the past twenty years at least."

"Uncle Rad is still fairly well now, though I do think he looks more feeble than usual. He ought to go at once."

"But," suggested Louisa, "he oughtn't to go alone."

"No. He certainly ought not."

"Would Mr. de Mountford go with him?"

"I don't think so."

"This new man of his, then?"

"That," said Luke hotly, "would be madness. The man is really a drunkard."

"But somebody ought to go."

"Edie would be only too willing – if she is allowed."

"Edie?" exclaimed Louisa.

And she added with a smile:

"What will Reggie Duggan have to say to that?"

"Nothing," he replied quietly. "Reggie Duggan has cried off."

"You don't mean that."

"He has given up Edie who has little or nothing a year, and become engaged to Marian Montagu who has eight thousand pounds a year of her own."

"Poor Edie!" murmured Louisa, whilst Colonel Harris's exclamation was equally to the point and far more forcible, and more particularly concerned the Honourable Reginald Duggan.

"Yes," rejoined Luke, "it has hit her hard, coming on the top of other things. There's no gainsaying the fact, is there, Colonel Harris, that we four brothers and sister owe something to Uncle Arthur's son?"

"The handle of a riding whip," came from out the depths of Colonel Harris's fur coat. "Stupid way parsons have of saying that to wish a man dead is tantamount to murder. I am committing murder now for a matter of that, for I wish that blackguard were buried in one of his native earthquakes."

"Would to God," added Luke, "that wishing alone would do it."

There was so much wrath, such hatred and contempt in those words that Louisa instinctively whispered:

"Hush, Luke! don't talk like that."

And Colonel Harris somewhat ostentatiously cleared his throat and said:

"Don't let us think of that confounded Philip."

Luke took leave of Colonel Harris and of Louisa at the door of the Danish Legation. He waited on the carpeted curb beneath the awning until he saw her white evening cloak disappear in the door-way.

The fog had become very dense. Just here where a number of carriage lamps threw light around, one could distinguish faces and forms immediately close to one, but as Luke turned away from the brilliant lights, he realized how thick was the pall which enveloped London to-night. He looked at his watch; it was close upon eight. The next few minutes brought him to the door of Lord Radclyffe's house.

He rang but obtained no answer. He rang again and again and finally came to the conclusion that his uncle and cousin were as usual dining out and that the elderly couple who did perfunctory service in the house were either asleep or out of ear-shot or had taken the opportunity of seeking amusement in a neighbouring public house.

But Luke was worried about Lord Radclyffe; moreover he had made up his mind that he would speak to him and to Philip to-night, with regard to the imperative wintering abroad for the old man.

The Veterans' Club was unknown to Luke, but Shaftesbury Avenue was not. He turned into Oxford Street and as taxicabs were now a forbidden luxury he hailed a passing omnibus and jumped into it, and thus was rapidly conveyed into the very heart of the fog which had found its haven around Piccadilly Circus.

CHAPTER XIII

THEY HAVE NO HEART

As to what occurred in the heart of the fog on that night in November four years ago, most of you no doubt will remember. Those who do not I must refer to the morning papers of the following day.

A perfect harvest for journalists. Gossip and detail sufficient to fill column upon column of newspaper: gossip that grew as the hours sped on, and the second day of fog pursued its monotonous course.

A man had been found murdered in a taxicab, his throat stabbed through from ear to ear, the jugular pierced, life absolutely extinct; the murderer vanished.

Drama in the midst of reality.

Such things are, you know. No amount of so-called realistic literature, no amount of sneers at what is dubbed melodrama, will prevent this fact occurring – and occurring very frequently in the streets of a mighty city.

Just a man murdered and the murderer disappeared. A very real thing that, and London has had to face such facts often enough, more often than has an audience at Drury Lane or the Adelphi. The superior-minded critic who spells British Drama with a capital B and D, and pronounces it Pritish Trama sat in the stalls of a London theatre on this very same foggy evening in November, four years ago. The play was one that did not appeal to the superior-minded critic: it was just a simple tale of jealousy which led to the breaking of that great commandment: "Thou shalt do no murder!"

And the superior-minded critic yawned behind a well gloved hand and dubbed the play melodramatic, unreal, and stagey, quite foreign to the life of to-day. But just at that hour – between nine and ten o'clock – a man was murdered in a taxicab, and his murderer vanished in the fog.

London doesn't dub such events melodrama; she does not sneer at them or call them unreal. She knows that they are real: there is nothing stagey or artificial about them: they have even become commonplace.

They occur so often! And most often whilst society dines or dances and the elect applaud with languid grace the newest play by Mr. Bernard Shaw.

Only in this case, the event gained additional interest. The murdered man was a personality. Some one whom everybody that was anybody had talked about, gossiped, and discussed for the past six months. Some one whom few had seen but many had heard about – Philip de Mountford – the son of the late Arthur de Mountford – Radclyffe's newly found heir, you know.

The news spread as only such news can spread, and when Society poured out from theatres, from houses in Grosvenor Square, or from the dining-room of the Carlton, every one had heard the news.

It was as if the sprite of gossip had been busy whispering in over-willing ears.

"Philip de Mountford has been murdered."

"He was found in a taxicab; his throat was cut from ear to ear."

"No! no! not cut, I understand. Pierced through with a sharp instrument – a stiletto, I presume."

"How horrible!"

"Poor Lord Radclyffe – such a tragedy – "

"He'll never live through it."

"He has looked very feeble lately."

"The scandal round the late Arthur's name broke him up, I think."

"It seems Arthur de Mountford had married a negress."

"No! no! Philip did not look like a half-caste. I saw him once or twice. He was dark but nice looking."

"Still, there was some scandal about the marriage!"

"Nothing to what this scandal will be!"

"What scandal?"

"Seek whom the crime benefits, you know."

"Then you think? – You really think Luke de Mountford did it?"

"I thought so the moment I heard the story."

"I've always thought that Luke de Mountford a queer sort of fellow."

"And he took his cousin's advent very badly."

"Well one can't wonder at that exactly – to lose a future peerage all of a sudden – and he has no private fortune either – "

"Poor beggar."

"I heard there were awful rows between the cousins until Lord Radclyffe himself turned Luke and the others out of the house."

"And now Philip de Mountford has been murdered."

"And the police will seek him whom the crime benefits."

"It certainly looks very suspicious."

"A real cause célèbre! Won't it be exciting."

"Something to read about in one's morning papers."

"I shall try and get reserved seats for the trial. I hate a crush, don't you?"

"Will they hang him, do you think?"

"If he is found guilty – English justice is no respecter of persons."

"How awful."

And tittle-tattle, senseless talk, inane remarks, were wafted on the grimy wings of the fog. They penetrated everywhere, in the lobbies of the theatres, the boudoir of madame and the smoking room of my lord. They penetrated to the magnificent reception rooms of the Danish Legation, and Louisa heard the remarks even before she knew the full details of the story. Louisa had a well-trained contralto voice, and had been asked to sing, in the course of the evening. Just as she stood in an outer room selecting her music, she heard a group of idlers – men and women – talking over the mysterious murder in the taxicab.

They had at first been unconscious of her presence. She had her back toward them, turning over the leaves of of her song. Suddenly there was a hush in the conversation; one of the chatterboxes must have pointed her out to the others.

Whereupon Louisa, serene and smiling, a roll of music in her hand, joined the merry group.

"Please," she said, "don't stop. I have heard nothing yet. And of course I want to know."

One of the men laughed inanely and the ladies murmured silly nothings.

"Oh!" said some one, "it mayn't be true. Such lots of wild rumours get about."

"What," asked Louisa placidly, "mayn't be true? Some one said just now that Philip de Mountford has been murdered."

"Well," murmured one of the ladies, "they say it was Mr. de Mountford; but they can't be sure, can they?"

The group was dissolving: almost, it seemed, as if it had vanished into thin air. When Louisa first heard them talking there were about a dozen men and women, a brilliant throng of gaily plumaged birds; now the ladies remembered that they wanted to hear the latest infant prodigy who had been engaged to entertain the guests at the post-dinner reception to-night, and the men too, feeling uncomfortable and awkward, made good their escape.

People – the pleasure-loving people of to-day – have no use for latent tragedy. Excitement, yes! and drama; but only from the secure distance of a private seat at an Old Bailey trial. The murder of Philip de Mountford could be discussed with quite an amount of enjoyment between a dinner party and a ball supper, but not in Louisa Harris's presence! By Gad! too much of a good thing you know!

Within a very few minutes Louisa found herself almost alone, just the one or two near her to whom she had directly spoken and – fortunately – Colonel Harris in the door-way, come to look for his daughter.

"The infant with the violin," he said as soon as he caught sight of Louisa, "is just finishing his piece, poor little rat! You promised you would sing next, Lou. What songs have you got?"

"I was just making a selection when you came, father. What would you like me to sing?"

With an unexpressed sigh of relief the last two of the original group of gossips dwindled away into the reception room beyond, congratulating themselves on having successfully engineered their exit.

"Dooced awkward, don't you know, Miss Harris asking questions."

"I suppose she doesn't realize – "

"She will soon enough – "

"She ought to have broken off her engagement long ago."

"Isn't it awful? – Poor thing."

Louisa, left alone with her father, could allow her nerves to ease their fearful tension. She had no need to hide from him the painful quiver of her lips, or the anxious frown across her brow.

"Do you know," she asked, "anything about this awful business, father?"

"There's a lot of gossip," he replied: his voice was not only gruff but hoarse, which showed that he was strangely moved.

"But," she insisted, "some truth in the gossip?"

"They say Philip de Mountford has been murdered."

"Who says so?"

"Some people have come on from the theatres, and men from the clubs. The streets are full of it – and evening papers have brought out midnight editions which are selling like hot cakes."

"And do they say that Luke has killed Philip de Mountford?"

"No" – with some hesitation – "they don't say that."

"But they hint at it."

"Newspaper tittle-tattle."

"How much is actual fact?"

"I understand," he explained, "that at nine o'clock or thereabouts two men in evening dress hailed a passing taxicab just outside the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and told the chauffeur to drive to Hyde Park corner, just by the railings of the Green Park. The driver drew up there and one of the two men got out. As he reclosed the door of the cab he leaned toward the interior and said cheerfully, "S'long old man. See you to-morrow." Then he told the chauffeur to drive on to 1 Cromwell Road opposite the museum, and turning on his heel disappeared in the fog. When the chauffeur drew up for the second time no one alighted from the cab. So he got down from his box and opened the door."

"The other man," murmured Louisa vaguely, "was in the cab – dead!"

"That's about it."

"With his throat pierced from ear to ear by a sharp instrument which might have been a skewer."

"You have heard it all then?"

"No, no!" she said hurriedly.

The room was swaying round her: the furniture started hopping and dancing. Louisa, who had never fainted in her life, felt as if the floor was giving way under her feet. Memory was unloading one of her storehouses, looking over the contents of a hidden cell, wherein she had put away a strange winter scene in Brussels, a taxicab, the ill-lighted boulevard, the chauffeur getting down from his box and finding a man crouched in the farther corner of the cab – dead – with his throat pierced from ear to ear by an instrument which might have been a skewer. And memory was raking out that cell, clearing it in every corner, trying to find the recollection of a certain morning in Battersea Park a year ago, when Louisa recounted her impressions of that weird scene and told the tale of this crime which she had almost witnessed. Memory found a distinct impression that she had told the tale at full length and with all the details which she knew. She remembered talking it all over, and, that when she did so, the ground in Battersea Park was crisp with the frost under her feet, and an inquisitive robin perched himself on the railings and then flew away accompanying her and another all the way along as far as the gates.

Two pictures, vivid and distinct: that evening in Brussels, and the morning in Battersea Park, her first meeting with Luke after his letter to her – the letter which had come to her in the Palace Hotel and which had made her the happiest woman in all the world. Memory – satisfied – had at last emptied the storehouse of that one cell and left Louisa Harris standing here, staring at her father, her ears buzzing with the idle and irresponsible chatter of society jackdaws, her mind seeing all that had happened outside 1 Cromwell Road: the cab stopping, the chauffeur terrified, the crowd collecting, the police taking notes. Her mind saw it as if her bodily eyes had been there, and all that her father told her seemed but the recapitulation of what she knew already.

"Where," she said after awhile, "is the dead man now?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I should imagine they would keep the body at the police station until the morning. I don't suppose they'd be such mugs as to disturb Lord Radclyffe at this time of night; the shock might kill the old man."

"I suppose they are quite sure that it is Philip de Mountford who was killed?"

"Why, yes; he had his pocket-book, his cards, his letters on him, and money too – robbery was not the object of the crime."

"It was Philip de Mountford then?"

"Good God, yes! Of whom were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of Luke," she replied simply.

The old man said nothing more. Had he spoken at all then it would have been to tell her that he, too, was thinking of Luke and that there was perhaps not a single person in the magnificent house at that moment who was not – in some way or another – thinking of Luke.

The hostess came in, elegant and worldly, with banal words to request the pleasure of hearing Miss Harris sing.

"It is so kind of you," she said, "to offer. I have never heard you, you know, and people say you have such a splendid voice. But perhaps you would rather not sing to-night?"

She spoke English perfectly, but with a slight Scandinavian intonation, which seemed to soften the banality of her words. Being foreign, she thought less of concealing her sympathy, and was much less fearful of venturing on delicate ground.

She held out a small, exquisitely gloved hand and laid it almost affectionately on the younger woman's arm.

"I am sure you would rather not sing to-night," she said kindly.

"Indeed, Countess, why should you think that?" retorted Louisa lightly. "I shall be delighted to sing. I wonder which of these new songs you would like best. There is an exquisite one by Guy d'Hardelot. Shall I sing that?"

And Her Excellency, who so charmingly represented Denmark in English society, followed her guest into the reception room: she admired the elegant carriage of the English girl, the slender figure, the soft abundant hair.

And Her Excellency sighed and murmured to herself:

"They are stiff, these English! and oh! they have no feeling, no sentiment!"

And a few moments later when Louisa Harris's really fine voice, firm and clear, echoed in the wide reception room, Her Excellency reiterated her impressions:

"These English have no heart! She sings and her lover is suspected of murder! Bah! they have no heart!"

CHAPTER XIV

THE TALE HAD TO BE TOLD

And whilst the morning papers were unfolded by millions of English men and women, and the details of the mysterious crime discussed over eggs and bacon and buttered toast, Philip de Mountford, the newly found heir presumptive to the Earldom of Radclyffe, was lying in the gloomy mortuary chamber of a London police court, whither he had been conveyed in the same cab whose four narrow walls jealously guarded the secret of the tragedy which had been enacted within their precincts.

Lord Radclyffe had been aroused at ten o'clock the previous night by representatives of the police, who came to break the news to him. It was not late, and the old man was not yet in bed. He had opened the front door of his house himself, his servants – he explained curtly – were spending their evening more agreeably elsewhere.

The house – even to the police officers – appeared lonely and gloomy in the extreme, and the figure of the old man, who should have been surrounded by every luxury that rank and wealth can give, looked singularly pathetic as he stood in his own door-way, evidently unprotected and uncared for, and suspiciously demanding what his late visitors' business might be.

Very reluctantly on hearing the latter's status he consented to admit them. He did not at first appear to suspect that anything wrong might have happened, or that anything untoward could occasion this nocturnal visit: in fact, he seemed unconscious of the lateness of the hour.

He walked straight into the library, where he had obviously been sitting, for an arm-chair was drawn to the fire, a reading lamp was lighted on the table, and papers and magazines lay scattered about.

The police officer in plain clothes, who stood with his subordinate, somewhat undecided, hardly knew how to begin. It was a hard task to break such awful news to this lonely old man.