Part 3. The Tomb - Chapter 24. The Lodging-House

________________________________________________
_ PART III. THE TOMB
CHAPTER XXIV. THE LODGING-HOUSE

The thought of soon seeing her intoxicated him. His head swam, his heart leapt, his limbs did what they liked, being forgotten. And then, as he sobered himself, he tried seriously to find an answer to this question: Why had she returned, as it were surreptitiously, to the very building from which her funeral was supposed to have taken place? Could she imagine that oblivion had covered her adventure, and that the three thousand five hundred would ignore the fact that she was understood to be dead? He found no answer--at least, no satisfactory answer--except that women are women, and therefore incalculable.

'Go and see if she is there,' he said to Simon at five minutes to nine.

'She is there,' said Simon at five minutes past nine; 'in one of the work-rooms alone.'

Then Hugo put a heavy curb on his instincts, and came to a sudden resolve.

'Tell the new drapery manager,' he instructed Simon, 'to give instructions to Mrs. Tudor, or Miss Payne, whichever she calls herself, that she is to meet him in my central office at six o'clock this evening. He, however, is not to be there. She is to wait in the room alone, if I have not arrived. Inform no one that I have returned from Paris. I am now going out for the day.'

'Yes, sir.'

Hugo thereupon took train to Ealing. He walked circuitously through the middle of the day from Ealing to Harrow, alone with his thoughts in the frosty landscape. From Harrow he travelled by express to Euston, reaching town at five-thirty. Somehow or other the day had passed. He got to Sloane Street at six, and ascended direct to his central office.

Had his orders been executed? Would she be waiting? As he hesitated outside the door he was conscious that his whole frame shook. He entered silently.

Yes, she was there. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire, staring at the fire. She was dressed in the customary black. Ah! it was the very face he had seen in the coffin, the same marvellous and incomparable features; not even sadder, not aged by a day; the same!

She turned at the sound of the closing of the door, and, upon seeing him, started slightly. Then she rose, and delicately blushed.

'Good-evening, Mr. Hugo,' she said, in a low, calm voice. 'I did not expect to see you.'

Great poetical phrases should have rushed to his lips--phrases meet for a tremendous occasion. But they did not. He sighed. 'I can only say what comes into my head,' he thought ruefully. And he said:

'Did I startle you?'

'Not much,' she replied. 'I knew I must meet you one day or another soon. And it is better at once.'

'Just so,' he said. 'It _is_ better at once. Sit down, please. I've been walking all day, and I can scarcely stand.' And he dropped into a chair. 'Do you know, dear lady,' he proceeded, 'that Doctor Darcy and I have been hunting for you all over Paris?'

He managed to get a little jocularity into his tone, and this achievement eased his attitude.

'No,' she said, 'I didn't know. I'm very sorry.'

'But why didn't you let Darcy know that you were coming to London?'

'Mr. Hugo,' she answered, with a charming gesture, 'I will tell you.' And she got up from her chair and came to another one nearer his own. This delicious action filled him with profound bliss. 'When I read in the paper that Mr. Ravengar had committed suicide, I had just enough money in my pocket to pay my expenses to London, and to keep me a few days here. And I did so want to come! I did so want to come! I came by the morning train. It was an inspiration. I waited for nothing. I meant to write to Mr. Darcy that same night, but that same night I caught sight of him here in Sloane Street, so I knew it was no use writing just then. And I didn't care for him to see me. I thought I would give him time to return. As a matter of fact, I wrote yesterday evening. He would get the letter to-night. I hope my disappearance didn't cause you any anxiety?'

'Anxiety!' He repeated the word. 'You don't know what I've been through. I feared that Ravengar, before killing himself, had arranged to--to--I don't know what I feared. Horrible, unmentionable things! You can't guess what I've been through.'

'I, too, have suffered since we met last,' said Camilla softly.

'Don't talk of it--don't talk of it!' he entreated her. 'I know all. I saw your image in a coffin. I have heard your late husband's statement. And Darcy has told me much. Let us forget all that, and let us forget it for evermore. But you have to remember, nevertheless, that in London you have the reputation of being dead.'

'I have not forgotten,' she said, with a beautiful inflection and a bending of the head, 'that I promised to thank you the next time we met for what you did for me. Let me thank you now. Tell me how I can thank you!'

He wanted to cry out that she was divine, and that she must do exactly what she liked with him. And then he wanted to take her and clasp her till she begged for her breath. And he was tempted to inform her that though she loved Darcy as man was never loved before, still she should marry him, Hugo, or Darcy should die.

'Sit down,' he said in a quiet, familiar voice. 'Don't bother about thanking me. Just tell me all about the history of your relations with Ravengar.' And to himself he said: 'She shall talk to me, and I will listen, and we shall begin to be intimate. This is the greatest happiness I can have. Hang the future! I will give way to my mood. Darcy said she didn't want to leave Paris, but she has left it. That's something.'

'I will do anything you want,' she answered almost gaily; and she sat down again.

'I doubt it,' he smiled. 'However--'

The sense of intimacy, of nearness, gave him acute pleasure, as at their first interview months ago.

'I would _like_ to tell you,' she began; 'and there is no harm now. Where shall I start? Well'--she became suddenly grave--'Mr. Ravengar used to pass my father's shop in the Edgware Road. He came in to buy things. It was a milliner's shop, and so he could buy nothing but bonnets and hats. He bought bonnets and hats. I often served him. He gave my father some very good hints about shares, but my father never took them. When my parents both died, Mr. Ravengar was extremely sympathetic, and offered me a situation in his office. I took it. I became his secretary. He was always very polite and considerate to me, except sometimes when he got angry with everybody, including me. He couldn't help being rude then. He had an old clerk named Powitt, who sat in the outer office, and seemed to do nothing. Powitt had just brains enough to gamble, and he gambled in the shares of Mr. Ravengar's companies. I know he lost money, because he used to confide in me and grumble at Mr. Ravengar for not giving him proper tips. Mr. Ravengar simply sneered at him--he was very hard. Powitt had a younger brother, who was engaged in another City office, and this younger brother also gambled in Ravengar shares, and also lost. The two brothers gambled more and more, and old Powitt once told me that Mr. Ravengar misled them sometimes from sheer--what shall I call it?'

'Devilry,' Hugo suggested. 'I can believe it. That would be his idea of a good joke.'

'By-and-by I learnt that they were in serious difficulties. Young Powitt was married, but his wife left him--I believe he had taken to drink. There was a glass partition between my room and Mr. Ravengar's--ground glass at the bottom, clear glass at the top. One night, after hours, I went back to the office for an umbrella which I had forgotten, and I found young Powitt trying to open the petty-cash-box in my room. He had not succeeded, and I just told him to go, and that I should forget I had seen him there. He kissed my hand. And just then the outer door of the office opened, and someone entered. I turned off the light in my room. Young Powitt crouched down. It was Mr. Ravengar. He went to his own room. I jumped on a chair, and looked through the glass screen. Old Powitt was hanging by the neck from the brass curtain-rod in Mr. Ravengar's room. While young Powitt was trying to get out of their difficulties by thieving, old Powitt had taken a shorter way. Mr. Ravengar looked at the body swinging there, and I heard him say, "Ah!" Like that!'

'Great heaven!' cried Hugo, 'you've been through sufficient in your time!'

'Yes.' Camilla paused. 'Mr. Ravengar cut down the body, searched the pockets, took out a paper, read it, and put it in his own pocket. Then the old man's lips twitched. He was not quite dead, after all. Mr. Ravengar stared at the face; and then, by means of putting a chair on a table and lifting Powitt on to the chair, he tied up the cord which he had cut, and left the poor old man to swing again. It was an--an interrupted suicide.'

She stopped once more, and Hugo fervently wished he had never asked her to begin. He gazed at her set face with a fascinated glance.

'All this time,' she resumed, 'young Powitt had been crouching on the floor, and had seen nothing.'

'And what did you do?'

'I fainted, and fell off my chair. The noise startled Mr. Ravengar, and he came round into my room. Young Powitt met him at the door, and, to explain his presence there, he said that he had come to see his brother. Mr. Ravengar said: "Your brother is in the next room." But instead of going into the next room, young Powitt ran off. Then Mr. Ravengar perceived me on the floor. My first words to him when I recovered consciousness were: "Why did you hang him up again, Mr. Ravengar?" He was staggered. He actually tried to justify himself, and said it was best for the old man--the old man had wanted to die, and so on. Mr. Ravengar certainly thought that young Powitt had seen what I had seen. That very night young Powitt was arrested for another theft, from his own employers, and it was not till after his arrest that he learnt that his brother had committed suicide. He got four years. When he received sentence, he swore that he would kill Mr. Ravengar immediately he came out of prison. I heard his threat. I knew him, and I knew that he meant it. He argued that Mr. Ravengar's financial operations had ruined thousands of people, including his brother and himself.

'But the inquest on old Powitt--I seem to remember about it. Why didn't you give evidence?'

'Because I was ill with brain-fever. When I recovered, all was finished. What was I to do? I warned Mr. Ravengar that young Powitt meant to kill him. He laughed. Of course, I left him. It is my belief that Mr. Ravengar was always a little mad. If he was not so before, this affair had strained his intelligence too much.'

'You did a very wrong thing,' said Hugo, 'in keeping silence.'

'Put yourself in my place,' Camilla answered. 'Think of all the facts. It was all so queer, And--and--Mr. Ravengar had found me in the room with young Powitt. Suppose he had--'

'Say no more,' Hugo besought her. 'How long is this ago?'

'Three years last June. In six months young Powitt's sentence will be up.'

Hugo nearly leapt from his chair.

'Is it possible, Mrs. Tudor,' he asked her eagerly, 'that you are not aware that in actual practice a reasonably well-behaved prisoner never serves the full period of his sentence? Marks for good conduct are allowed, and each mark means so many days deducted from the term.'

'I didn't know,' said Camilla simply. 'How should I know a thing like that?'

'I have no doubt that young Powitt is already free. And if he is--'

'You think that Mr. Ravengar's suicide may not have been a suicide?'

Hugo hesitated.

'Yes,' he said, and lapsed into reflection.

* * * * *

'I shall see you home,' he said.

'I am going to walk,' she replied. 'And I have to get my things from the cloak-room.'

'I will walk with you,' he said.

'What style the woman has!' he thought, enraptured.

They proceeded southwards in silence. Then suddenly she asked how he had left Mr. Darcy, and they began to talk about Darcy and Paris. Hugo encouraged her. He wished to know the worst.

'Except my father,' she said, 'I have never met anyone with more sense than Mr. Darcy, or anyone more kind. I might have been dead now if it hadn't been for Mr. Darcy.'

'Mr. Darcy is a very decent fellow,' Hugo remarked experimentally.

She turned and gave him a look. No, it was not a look; it was the merest fraction of a look, but it withered him up.

'She loves him!' he thought. 'And what's more, if she hadn't made up her mind to marry him, she wouldn't be so precious easy and facile and friendly with me. I might have guessed that.'

They passed Victoria Station, and came into Horseferry Road. She had informed him that she had taken a furnished room in Horseferry Road. The high and sinister houses appeared unspeakably and disgracefully mean to him in the wintry gloom of the gaslights. She halted before a tenement that seemed even more odious than its neighbours. Was it possible that she should exist in such a quarter? The idea sickened him.

'Which floor?' he questioned.

'Oh,' she laughed, 'the top, the fifth. Good-night, Mr. Hugo.'

He pictured the mean and frowsy room, and shuddered. Yet what could he do? What right had he to interfere, to criticise, to ameliorate?

'Good-night,' she repeated, and in a moment she had opened the door with a latchkey and disappeared. He stood staring at the door. He had by no means finished saying all that he meant to say to her. He must talk to her further. He must show her that he could not be dismissed in that summary fashion. He mounted the two dirty steps, and rang the bell in a determined manner. He heard it tinkle distantly.

She was divine, adorable, marvellous, and far beyond the deserts of any man; but she had not shaken hands with him, and she had treated him as she might have treated one of the shopwalkers. Moreover, the question of to-morrow had to be decided.

There was no answer to the bell, and he rang again, with an increase of energy.

Then he perceived through the fanlight an illumination in the hall. The door opened cautiously, as such doors always do open, and a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown stood before him. In the background he descried a small table with a candle on it, and the foul, polished walls of the narrow lobby--a representative London lodging-house.

'I want to see Mrs. Tudor,' said Hugo.

'Well, she ain't in at the moment,' replied the man.

'Excuse me,' Hugo corrected him, 'I saw her enter a minute ago with her latchkey.'

'No, you didn't,' the man persisted. 'I'm the landlord of this house, and I've been in my room at the back, and nobody's come in this last half-hour, for I can see the 'all and the stairs as I sits in my chair.'

'Wait a moment,' said Hugo; and he retreated to the kerb, in the expectation of being able to descry Camilla's light in the fifth story.

'Oh, you can look,' the landlord observed loftily, divining his intention; 'I warrant there's no light there.'

And there was not.

'Perhaps you'll call again,' said the landlord suavely.

'I suppose you haven't got a room to let?' Hugo demanded, fumbling about in his brain for a plan to meet this swift crisis.

'I can't tell you till my wife comes home.'

'And when will that be?'

'That'll be to-morrow.'

The door was banged to. Hugo rang again, wrathfully, but the door remained obstinate. _

Read next: Part 3. The Tomb: Chapter 25. Chloroform

Read previous: Part 3. The Tomb: Chapter 23. First Triumph Of Simon

Table of content of Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book