The Mischief-Maker Part 4

"I think you're wise to go away for a time, Julien," he decided. "Look here, it's six o'clock now. I have a taxicab waiting downstairs. Come round to my rotten little restaurant in Soho and dine with me. Your fellow can meet us at Charing-Cross with your things. You won't see a soul you know where I'm going to take you."

Julien turned slowly away from the window. He was looking for the last time from those rooms at the London which he had loved. The setting sun had caught the dome of St. Paul's, was flashing from the dark, placid water of the Thames. The roar of the great city was pa.s.sing from eastwards to westwards.

"You're a good chap, Kendricks," he declared. "I'll come along, with pleasure. I shall have enough solitude later on. But listen, before we go--listen, David, to a speech after your own heart."

Julien stood quite still for a moment. His pale face seemed suddenly whiter, his eyes were full of fire.

"David," he said, "if ever the time comes in the future when I find that a woman is beginning to claim a minute of my thoughts, a single one of my emotions, to govern the slightest throb of my pulses, I'll take her by the throat and I'll throw her out of what's left of my life as I would a rat that had crept into my room. I've done with them.

Curse all women!"

There was a silence. Kendricks leaned over to the fireplace and knocked his pipe against the hearth. Then he suddenly paused.

"What's that?" he asked abruptly.

There was a soft knocking at the outside door.

CHAPTER IV

A BUNCH OF VIOLETS

Kendricks rose slowly to his feet. Julien was looking toward the door with a frown upon his face. While they stood there the knocking was repeated, still soft but a little more insistent. Julien hesitated no longer.

"I think," Kendricks said dryly, "that you had better see who is there."

The door was already opened. Julien seemed suddenly transformed into a graven image. He said nothing, merely gazing at the woman who walked calmly past him into the room. Kendricks, who also recognized her, withdrew his pipe from his mouth. This was a situation indeed! The woman, with her hands inside her m.u.f.f, looked from one to the other of the two men.

"Am I interrupting a very important interview?" she asked calmly. "If not, perhaps you could spare me five minutes of your time, Sir Julien?"

Kendricks recovered himself at once.

"I'll wait for you downstairs, Julien," he declared.

He caught up his hat and departed, closing the door after him. Julien was still motionless.

"Well?" she began.

He drew a little breath. He was beginning to regain his self-possession.

"My dear Mrs. Carraby," he said, "with your wonderful knowledge of the world and its ways, will you permit me to point out that your presence here is a little embarra.s.sing to me and might, under certain circ.u.mstances, be a good deal more embarra.s.sing to you?"

Mrs. Carraby smiled. She stood where the sunlight touched her brown hair and her quiet, pale face. She was one of those women who are never afraid of the light. Her face was of that strange, self-contained nature, colorless, apparently, yet capable of strange and rapid changes. Just now the last glow of sunlight seemed to have found a skein of gold in her hair, a queer gleam of light in her eyes. She stood there looking at the man whom she had come to visit.

"Julien," she said, "I wanted a few words with you."

It was impossible for him to remain altogether unmoved. Whatever else might be the truth, she had risked most of the things that were dear to her in life by this visit.

"Mrs. Carraby," he declared, "I am entirely at your service. If you think that any useful purpose can be served by words between you and me, I would only point out, for your own sake, that your visit is, to say the least of it, unwise. These are bachelor chambers."

"You know very well," she replied calmly, "that it was my only chance of speaking with you. If I had sent for you, you would not have come.

If I had spoken to you in the street, you would have pa.s.sed me by--quite rightly. This was my only chance. That is why I have come to you."

"If you think it worth the risk," he remarked gravely, "pray continue."

She shrugged her shoulders very slightly.

"Who can tell what is worth the risk?"

"You have at least excited my curiosity," he admitted, leaning a little towards her. "I cannot conceive what it is that you want to say to me."

She lifted her eyes to his, and though there was nothing unusual about them--there were few people, indeed, who could tell you what color they were--men seldom forgot it when Mrs. Carraby looked at them steadily.

"I do not know, myself," she said. "I do not know why I have come."

Julien laughed unnaturally.

"Pray be seated," he begged. "Would you like to examine my curios or my photographs? I must apologize for the condition of my room. You see, you happen to be the first woman who has ever crossed its threshold."

"That," she remarked, "rather interests me. Still, it is only what I should have expected. No, I do not think that I will sit down. I am trying to ask myself exactly why I have come."

"If you can answer that question," Julien said grimly, "you will appease a very natural curiosity on my part. It is not like you."

"Quite true," she a.s.sented. "It is not like me. I have run a great risk in coming here and it is not my metier to run risks. And now that I am here I do not know why I have come. This has been an impulse and this is an hour outside my life. I am trying to understand it. Come here, Julien." He came unwillingly to her side. She held out her hand, but he shook his head.

"Mabel," he said, "you and I do not need to mince words. To-night I am celebrating the ruin of my career. I am leaving England within a few hours. I have you to thank for what has happened. Yet you come to me, you hold out your hand. You must forgive me--I am afraid I am dull."

"No," she replied, "you are not dull. Your feelings towards me are obvious and very natural. Mine towards you I am not so sure of. It is not because I did not understand you that I came here to-night. It is because I did not understand myself. May I go on?"

"Why not?" he answered. "I am at your service."

"From the days of my boarding-school," she continued, "I have known only one Mabel. In her girlhood she had all that she could get out of life and turned everything she could to her own ends. A marriage was arranged for her--you see, I was half a Jewess and my husband was half a Jew, and things are done like that with us. The marriage opened the door to a fresh set of ambitions. For the last few years I have trodden a well-worn path. It was I who advised my husband to refuse a baronetcy. It was I who won his first election. I see that my photographs are in all the ill.u.s.trated papers, that his speeches are properly recorded, that my visiting list moves within the correct limits. These things have spelt life. To the fulfillment of my husband's ambitions there was one obstacle. That obstacle was you. In life one schemes. It was my husband's wish that I should make myself agreeable to you, even to the extent of a flirtation."

She raised her eyes.

"Your obedience to your husband is most touching," he said.

"It is true, I suppose," she went on, "that we have flirted. I looked upon it as the means to an end. The end came. I played my cards quite ruthlessly, I gathered in the reward. I got your letter, I handed it to my husband. Your career was finished, my husband's begun."

"This is most interesting," Julien muttered.

"Is it?" she answered. "I suppose it should have been an hour of triumph with me. It simply isn't. I have come to a place in my life which I don't understand. When I told myself that it was over, that I had flirted with you, that I had won your friendship and your confidence, betrayed you, ruined you for a peerage and that my husband should take office, I should surely have been satisfied! It was for that I had worked. I gave my husband the letter and I watched him walk off in triumph. Since then I have not been myself. I have come to you, Julien, to ask if there is no other end possible to this?"

Once more she raised her eyes. Julien came a step nearer to her. They were standing now face to face.