The Man Who Lost Himself Part 25

He did not know where the South Kensington Hotel might be, but a taxi solved that question and shortly before ten o'clock he reached his destination.

Yes, Lady Rochester had arrived last night and was staying in the hotel, and whilst the girl in the manager's office was sending up his name and asking for an interview Jones took his seat in the lounge.

A long time--nearly ten minutes--elapsed, and then a boy brought him her answer in the form of a letter.

He opened it.

"Never again. This is good-bye."

"T."

That was the answer.

He sat with the sheet of paper in his hand, contemplating the shape and make of an armchair of wicker-work opposite him.

What was he to do?

He had received just the answer he might have expected, neither more nor less. It was impossible for him to force an interview with her. He had overthrown Voles, climbed over Mulhausen, but the flight of stairs dividing him now from the private suite of the Countess of Rochester was an obstacle not to be overcome by courage or direct methods, and he knew of no indirect method.

He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hotel and took his way back to Carlton House Terrace.

If she would not see him she could not refuse to read a letter. He would write to her and explain all. He would write in detail giving the whole business, circ.u.mstance by circ.u.mstance. It would take him a long while; he guessed that, and ordinary note-paper would not do. He had seen a stack of ma.n.u.script paper, however, in one of the drawers of the bureau, and having shut the door and lit a cigarette he took some of the sheets of long foolscap, ruled thirty four lines to the page, and sat down to the business. This is what he said:

"Lady Rochester,

"I want you to read what follows carefully and not to form any opinion on the matter till all the details are before you. This doc.u.ment is not a letter in the strict sense of the term, it's more in the nature of an invoice of the cargo of stupidity and bad luck, which I, the writer, Victor Jones of Philadelphia, have been freighted with by an all-wise Providence for its own incomprehensible ends."

Providence held him up for a moment. Was Providence neuter or masculine?--he risked it and left it neuter and continued.

When the servant announced luncheon he had covered twenty sheets of paper and had only arrived at the American bar of the Savoy.

He went to luncheon, swallowed a whiting and half a cutlet, and returned.

He sat down, read what he had written, and tore it across.

That would never do. It was like the vast prelude to a begging letter.

She would never read it through.

He started again, beginning this time in the American bar of the Savoy, writing very carefully. He had reached, by tea-time, the reading of Rochester's death in the paper.

Well satisfied with his progress he took afternoon tea, and then sat down comfortably to read what he had written.

He was aghast with the result. The things that had happened to him were believable because they had happened to him, but in cold writing they had an air of falsity. She would never believe this yarn. He tore the sheets across. Then he burned all he had written in the grate, took his seat in the armchair and began to think of the devil.

Surely there was something diabolical in the whole of this business and the manner in which everything and every circ.u.mstance headed him off from escape. After dinner he was sitting down to attempt a literary forlorn hope, when a sharp voice in the hall made him pause.

The door opened, and Venetia Birdbrook entered. She wore a new hat that seemed bigger than the one he had last beheld and her manner was wild.

She shut the door, walked to the table, placed her parasol on it and began peeling off a glove.

"She's gone," said Venetia.

Jones had risen to his feet.

"Who's gone?"

"Teresa--gone with Maniloff."

He sat down. Then she blazed out.

"Are you going to do nothing--are you going to sit there and let us all be disgraced? She's gone--she's going--to Paris. It was through her maid I learned it; she's gone from the hotel by this--gone with Maniloff--are you deaf or simply stupid? You _must_ follow her."

He rose.

"Follow her now, follow her and get her back, there is just a chance.

They are going to the Bristol. The maid told everything--I will go with you. There is a train at nine o'clock from Victoria, you have only just time to catch it."

"I have no money," said Jones, feeling in his pockets distractedly, "only about four pounds."

"I have," replied she, "and our car is at the door--are you afraid, or is it that you don't mind?"

"Come on," said Jones.

He rushed into the hall, seized a hat and overcoat, and next minute was buried in a stuffy limousine with Venetia's sharp elbow poking him in the side.

He was furious.

There are people who seem born for the express purpose of setting other people by the ears. Venetia was one of them. Despite Voles, Mulhausen, debts and want of balance one might hazard the opinion that it was Venetia who had driven the unfortunate Rochester to his mad act.

The prospect of a journey to Paris with this woman in pursuit of another man's wife was bad enough, but it was not this prospect that made Jones furious, though a.s.sisting. No doubt, it was Venetia herself.

She raised the devil in him, and on the journey to the station, though she said not a word, she managed to raise his exasperation with the world, herself, himself and his vile position to the limit just below the last.--The last was to come.

At the station they walked through the crowd to the booking-office where Venetia bought the tickets. Reminiscences of being taken on journeys as a small boy by his mother flitted across the mind of Jones and did not improve his temper.

He looked at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes of the starting time and he was in the act of evading a barrow of luggage when Venetia arrived with the tickets.

It had come into the mind of Jones that not only was he travelling to Paris with the Hon. Venetia Birdbrook, in pursuit of the wife of another man, but that they were travelling without luggage. If, in Philadelphia, he had dreamt of himself in such a position he would have been disturbed as to the state of his health and the condition of his liver, yet now, in reality, the thing did not seem preposterous, he was concerned as to the fact about the want of luggage.

"Look here," said he, "what are we to do--I haven't even a night-suit of pyjamas. I haven't even a toothbrush. No hotel will take us in."

"We don't want an hotel," said Venetia, "we'll come back straight if we can save Teresa. If not, if she insists in pursuing her mad course, you had better not come back at all. Come on and let us take our places in the train."

They moved away and she continued.

"For if she does you will never be able to hold up your head again, everyone knows how you have behaved to her."

"Oh, stop it," said he irritably. "I have enough to think about."

"You ought to."