Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy she was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the hotel. With each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to do, loomed blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the door of the lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside.
There was time still to change her mind. She had only to turn now … jump into an omnibus … jump out again at the familiar corner, and everything would be as it had been. Life for the next five, ten, maybe twenty years, would be what the last five had been.
At the thought of the Savoy and the adventure waiting there, the girl's skin had tingled and grown hot, as if a wind laden with grains of heated sand had blown over her. But at the thought of turning back, of going "home"—oh, misused word!—a leaden coldness shut her spirit into a tomb.
She had walked fast, after descending at Bedford Street from a fierce motor-bus with a party of comfortable people, bound for the Adelphi Theatre. Never before had she been in a motor-omnibus, and she was not sure whether the great hurtling thing would deign to stop, except at trysting-places of its own; so it had seemed wise to bundle out rather than risk a snub from the conductor, who looked like pictures of the Duke of Wellington.
But in the lighted Strand she had been stared at as well as jostled: a girl alone at eight o'clock on a winter evening, bare-headed, conspicuously tall if conspicuous in no other way; dressed for dinner or the theatre in a pale gray, sequined gown under a mauve chiffon cloak meant for warm nights of summer.
Of course, as Mrs. Ellsworth (giver of dress and wrap) often pointed out, "beggars mustn't be choosers"; and Annesley Grayle was worse off than a beggar, because beggars needn't keep up appearances. She should have thanked Heaven for good clothes, and so she did in chastened moods; but it was a costume to make a girl hurry through the Strand, and just for an instant she had been glad to turn from the white glare into comparative dimness.
That was because offensive eyes had made her forget the almost immediate future in the quite immediate present. But the hotel, with light-hearted taxis tearing up to it, brought remembrance with a shock. She envied everyone else who was bound for the Savoy, even old women, and fat gentlemen with large noses. They were going there because they wanted to go, for their pleasure. Nobody in the world could be in such an appalling situation as she was.
It was then that Annesley's feet began to drag, and she slowed her steps to gain more time to think. Could she—could she do the thing?
For days her soul had been rushing toward this moment with thousand-horsepower speed, like a lonely comet tearing through space. But then it had been distant, the terrible goal. She had not had to gasp among her heart-throbs: "Now! It is now!"
Creep as she might, three minutes' brought her from the turning out of the Strand close to the welcoming entrance where revolving doors of glass received radiant visions dazzling as moonlight on snow.
"No, I can't!" the girl told herself, desperately. She wheeled more quickly than the whirling door, hoping that no one would think her mad. "All the same, I was mad," she admitted, "to fancy I could do it. I ought to have known I couldn't, when the time came. I'm the last person to—well, I'm sane again now, anyway!"
A few long steps carried the girl in the sparkling dress and transparent cloak into the Strand again. But something queer was happening there. People were shouting and running. A man with a raucous, alcoholic voice, yelled words Annesley could not catch. A woman gave a squeaking scream that sounded both ridiculous and dreadful. Breaking glass crashed. A growl of human anger mingled with the roar of motor-omnibuses, and Miss Grayle fell back from it as from a slammed door in a high wall.
As she stood hesitating what to do and wondering if there were a fire or a murder, two women, laughing hysterically, rushed past into the hotel court.
"Hurry up," panted one of them. "They'll think we belong to the gang. Let's go into the hotel and stay until it's over."
"Oh, what is it?" Annesley entreated, running after the couple.
"Burglars at a jeweller's window close by—there are women—they're being arrested," one of the pair flung over her shoulder, as both hurried on.
"'Women … being arrested … '" That meant that if she plunged into the fray she might be mistaken for a woman burglar, and arrested with the guilty. Even if she lurked where she was, a prowling policeman might suppose she sought concealment, and bag her as a militant.
Imagine what Mrs. Ellsworth would say—and do—if she were taken off to jail!
Annesley's heart seemed to drop out of its place, to go "crossways," as her old Irish nurse used to say a million years ago.
Without stopping to think again, or even to breathe, she flew back to the hotel entrance, as a migrating bird follows its leader, and slipped through the revolving door behind the fugitives.
"It's fate," she thought. "This must be a sign coming just when I'd made up my mind."
Suddenly she was no longer afraid, though her heart was pounding under the thin cloak. Fragrance of hot-house flowers and expensive perfume from women's dresses intoxicated the girl as a glass of champagne forced upon one who has never tasted wine flies to the head. She felt herself on the tide of adventure, moving because she must; the soul which would have fled, to return to Mrs. Ellsworth, was a coward not worthy to live in her body.
She had room in her crowded mind to think how queer it was—and how queer it would seem all the rest of her life in looking back—that she should have the course of her existence changed because burglars had broken some panes of glass in the Strand.
"Just because of them—creatures I'll never meet—I'm going to see this through to the end," she said, flinging up her chin and looking entirely unlike the Annesley Grayle Mrs. Ellsworth knew. "To the end!"
She thrilled at the word, which had as much of the unknown in it as though it were the world's end she referred to, and she were jumping off.
"Will you please tell me where to leave my wrap?" she heard herself inquiring of a footman as magnificent as, and far better dressed than, the Apollo Belvedere. Her voice sounded natural. She was glad. This added to her courage. It was wonderful to feel brave. Life was so deadly, worse—so stuffy—at Mrs. Ellsworth's, that if she had ever been normally brave like other girls, she had had the young splendour of her courage crushed out.
The statue in gray plush and dark blue cloth came to life, and showed her the cloak-room.
Other women were there, taking last, affectionate peeps at themselves in the long mirrors. Annesley took a last peep at herself also, not an affectionate but an anxious one. Compared with these visions, was she (in Mrs. Ellsworth's cast-off clothes, made over in odd moments by the wearer) so dowdy and second-hand that—that—a stranger would be ashamed to——?
The question feared to finish itself.
"I do look like a lady, anyhow," the girl thought with defiance. "That's what he—that seems to be the test."
Now she was in a hurry to get the ordeal over. Instead of hanging back she walked briskly out of the cloak-room before those who had entered ahead of her finished patting their hair or putting powder on their noses.
It was worse in the large vestibule, where men sat or stood, waiting for their feminine belongings; and she was the only woman alone. But her boat was launched on the wild sea. There was no returning.
The rendezvous arranged was in what he had called in his letter "the foyer."
Annesley went slowly down the steps, trying not to look aimless. She decided to steer for one of the high-back brocaded chairs which had little satellite tables. Better settle on one in the middle of the hall.
This would give him a chance to see and recognize her from the description she had written of the dress she would wear (she had not mentioned that she'd be spared all trouble in choosing, as it was her only real evening frock), and to notice that she wore, according to arrangement, a white rose tucked into the neck of her bodice.
She felt conscious of her hands, and especially of her feet and ankles, for she had not been able to make Mrs. Ellsworth's dress quite long enough. Luckily it was the fashion of the moment to wear the skirt short, and she had painted her old white suede slippers silver.
She believed that she had pretty feet. But oh! what if the darn running up the heel of the pearl-gray silk stocking should show, or have burst again into a hole as she jumped out of the omnibus? She could have laughed hysterically, as the escaping women had laughed, when she realized that the fear of such a catastrophe was overcoming graver horrors.
Perhaps it was well to have a counter-irritant.
Though Annesley Grayle was the only manless woman in the foyer, the people who sat there—with one exception—did not stare. Though she had five feet eight inches of height, and was graceful despite self-consciousness, her appearance was distinguished rather than striking. Yes, "distinguished" was the word for it, decided the one exception who gazed with particular interest at that tall, slight figure in gray-sequined chiffon too old-looking for the young face.
He was sitting in a corner against the wall, and had in his hands a copy of the Sphere, which was so large when held high and wide open that the reader could hide behind it. He had been in his corner for fifteen or twenty minutes when Annesley Grayle arrived, glancing over the top of his paper with a sort of jaunty carelessness every few minutes at the crowd moving toward the restaurant, picking out some individual, then dropping his eyes to the Sphere.
For the girl in gray he had a long, appraising look, studying her every point; but he did the thing so well that, even had she turned her head his way, she need not have been embarrassed. All she would have seen was a man's forehead and a rim of smooth black hair showing over the top of an illustrated paper.
What he saw was a clear profile with a delicate nose slightly tilting upward in a proud rather than impertinent way; an arch of eyebrow daintily sketched; a large eye which might be gray or violet; a drooping mouth with a short upper lip; a really charming chin, and a long white throat; skin softly pale, like white velvet; thick, ash-blond hair parted in the middle and worn Madonna fashion—there seemed to be a lot of it in the coil at the nape of her neck.
The creature looked too simple, too—not dowdy, but too unsophisticated, to have anything false about her. Figure too thin, hardly to be called a "figure" at all, but agreeably girlish; and its owner might be anywhere from twenty to five or six years older. Not beautiful: just an average, lady-like English girl—or perhaps more of Irish type; but certainly with possibilities. If she were a princess or a millionairess, she might be glorified by newspapers as a beauty.
Annesley forced her nervous limbs to slow movement, because she hoped, or dreaded—anyhow, expected—that one of the dozen or so unattached men would spring up and say, constrainedly, "Miss Grayle, I believe?—er—how do you do?" If only he might not be fat or very bald-headed!
He had not described himself at all. Everything was to depend on her gray dress and the white rose. That seemed, now one came face to face with the fear, rather ominous.
But no one sprang up. No one wanted to know if she were Miss Grayle; and this, although she was ten minutes late.
Her instructions as to what to do at the Savoy were clear. If she were not met in the foyer, she was to go into the restaurant and ask for a table reserved for Mr. N. Smith. There she was to sit and wait to be joined by him. She had never contemplated having to carry out the latter clause, however; and when she had loitered for a few seconds, the thought rushed over her that here was a loop-hole through which to slip, if she wanted a loop-hole.
One side of her did want it: the side she knew best and longest as herself, Annesley Grayle, a timid girl brought up conventionally, and taught that to rely on others older and wiser than she was the right way for a well-born, sheltered woman to go through life. The other side, the new, desperate side that Mrs. Ellsworth's "stuffiness" had developed, was not looking for any means of escape; and this side had seized the upper hand since the alarm of the burglars in the Strand.
Annesley marched into the restaurant with the air of a soldier facing his first battle, and asked a waiter where was Mr. Smith's table.
The youth dashed off and produced a duke-like personage, his chief. A list was consulted with care; and Annesley was respectfully informed that no table had been engaged by a Mr. N. Smith for dinner that evening.
"Are you sure?" persisted Annesley, bewildered and disappointed.
"Yes, miss—madame, I am sure we have not the name on our list," said the head-waiter.
The blankness of the girl's disappointment looked out appealingly from wistful, wide-apart eyes. The man was sorry.
"There may be some misunderstanding," he consoled her. "Perhaps Mr. Smith has telephoned, and we have not received the message. I hope it is not the fault of the hotel. We do not often make mistakes; yet it is possible. We have had a few early dinners before the theatre and there is one small table disengaged. Would madame care to take it—it is here, close to the door—and watch for the gentleman when he comes?"
"When he comes!" The head-waiter comfortably took it for granted that Mr. Smith had been delayed, that he would come, and that it would be a pity to miss him. The polite person might be right, though with a sinking heart Annesley began to suspect herself played with, abandoned, as she deserved, for her dreadful boldness.
Perhaps Mr. Smith had been in communication with someone else more suitable than she, and had thrown over the appointment without troubling to let her know. Or perhaps he had been waiting in the foyer, had inspected her as she passed, and hadn't liked her looks.
This latter supposition seemed probable; but the head-waiter was so confident of what she ought to do that the girl could think of no excuse. After all, it would do little harm to wait and "see what happened." As Mr. Smith was apparently not living at the Savoy (he had merely asked her to meet him there), he might have had an accident in train or taxi. Annesley had made her plans to be away from home for two hours, so she could give him the benefit of the doubt.
A moment of hesitation, and she was seating herself in a chair offered by the head-waiter. It was one of a couple drawn up at a small table for two. Sitting thus, Annesley could see everybody who came in, and—what was more important—could be seen. By what struck her as an odd coincidence, the table was decorated with a vase of white roses whose hearts blushed faintly in the light of a pink-shaded electric lamp.
A quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, dragged along, and no Mr. Smith. Annesley could follow the passing moments on her wrist-watch in its silver bracelet, the only present Mrs. Ellsworth had ever given her, with the exception of cast-off clothes, and a pocket handkerchief each Christmas.
Every nerve in the girl's body seemed to prickle with embarrassment. She played with a dinner roll, changed the places of the flowers and the lamp, trying to appear at ease, and not daring to look up lest she should meet eyes curious or pitying.
"What if they make me pay for dinner after I've kept the table so long?" she thought in her ignorance of hotel customs. "And I've got only a shilling!"
Half an hour now, all but two minutes! There was nothing more to hope or fear. But there was the ordeal of getting away.
"I'll sit out the two minutes," she told herself. "Then I'll go. Ought I to tip the waiter?" Horrible doubt! And she must have been dreaming to touch that roll! Better sneak away while the waiter was busy at a distance.
Frightened, miserable, she was counting her chances when a man, whose coming into the room her dilemma had caused her to miss, marched unhesitatingly to her table.
Annesley glanced up, her face aflame, like a fanned coal. The man was tall, dark, lean, square-jawed, handsome in just that thrilling way which magazine illustrators and women love; the ideal story-hero to look at, even to the clothes which any female serial writer would certainly have described as "immaculate evening dress."
It was too good—oh, far too wonderfully good!—to be true that this man should be Mr. Smith. Yet if he were not Mr. Smith why should he——Annesley got no farther in the thought, though it flashed through her mind quick as light. Before she had time to seek an answer for her question the man—who was young, or youngish, not more than thirty-three or four—had bent over her as if greeting a friend, and had begun to speak in a low voice blurred by haste or some excitement.
"You will do me an immense service," he said, "if you'll pretend to know me and let me sit down here. You sha'n't regret it, and it may save my life."
"Sit down," answered something in Annesley that was newly awake. She found her hand being warmly shaken. Then the man took the chair reserved for Mr. Smith, just as she realized fully that he wasn't Mr. Smith. Her heart was beating fast, her eyes—fixed on the man's face, waiting for some explanation—were dilated.
"Thank you," he said, leaning toward her, in his hand a menu which the waiter had placed before the girl while she was still alone. She noticed that the hand was brown and nervous-looking, the hand of a man who might be a musician or an artist. He was pretending to read the menu, and to consult her about it. "You're a true woman, the right sort—brave. I swear I'm not here for any impertinence. Now, will you go on helping me? Can you keep your wits and not give me away, whatever happens?"
"I think so," answered the new Annesley. "What do you want me to do?" She took the pitch of her tone from his, speaking quietly, and wondering if she would not wake up in her ugly brown bedroom at Mrs. Ellsworth's, as she had done a dozen times when dreaming in advance of her rendezvous at the Savoy.
"It will be a shock when I tell you," he answered. "But for Heaven's sake, don't misunderstand. I shouldn't ask this if it weren't absolutely necessary. In case a man comes to this table and questions you, you must let him suppose that you are my wife."
"Oh!" gasped Annesley. Her eyes met the eyes that seemed to have been waiting for her look, and they answered with an appeal which she could not refuse.
She did not stop to think that if the dark eyes had not been so handsome they might have been easier to resist. She—the suppressed and timid girl, never allowed to make up her mind—let herself go with the wave of strong emotion carrying her along, and reached a resolve.
"It means trusting you a great deal," she answered. "But you say you're in danger, so I'll do what you ask. I think you can't be wicked enough to pay me back by trying to hurt me."
"You think right," the man said, and it struck her that his accent was not quite English. She wondered if he were Canadian or American. Not that she knew much about either. "A woman like you would think right!" he went on. "Only one woman out of ten thousand would have the nerve and presence of mind and the humanity to do what you're doing. When I came into this room and saw your face I counted on you."
Annesley blushed again in a rush of happiness. She had always longed to do something which would really matter to another soul. She had even prayed for it. Now the moment seemed to have come. God would not let her be the victim of an ignoble trick!
"I'm glad," she said, her face lit by a light from within. And at that moment, bending toward each other, they were a beautiful couple. A seeker of romance would have taken them for lovers.
"Tell me what you want me to do," Annesley said once more.
"The worst of it is, I can't tell you exactly. Two men may come into this restaurant looking for me. One or both will speak to me. They'll call me a certain name, and I shall say they've made a mistake. You must say so, too. You must tell them I'm your husband, and stick to that no matter what the man, or men, may tell you about me. The principal thing now is to choose a name. But—by Jove—I forgot it in my hurry! Are you expecting any one to join you? If you are, it's awkward."
"I was expecting someone, but I've given him up."
"Was this table taken in his name or yours? Or, perhaps—but no, I'm sure you're not!"
"Sure I'm not what?"
"Married. You're a girl. Your eyes haven't got any experience of life in them."
Annesley looked down; and when she looked down her face was very sweet. She had long, curved brown lashes a shade or two darker than her hair.
"I'm not married," she said, rather stiffly. "I thought a table had been engaged in the name of Mr. Smith, but there was a misunderstanding. The head waiter put me at this table in case Mr. Smith should come. I've given him up now, and was going away when——"
"When you took pity on a nameless man. But it seems indicated that he should be Mr. Smith, unless you have any objection!"
"No, I have none. You'd better take the name, as I mentioned it to the waiter."
"And the first name?"
"I don't know. The initial I gave was N."
"Very well, I choose Nelson. Where do we live?"
Annesley stared, frightened.
"Forgive me," the man said. "I ought to have explained what I meant before asking you that, or put the question another way. Will you go on as you've begun, and trust me farther, by letting me drive with you to your home, if necessary, in case of being followed? At worst, I'll need to beg no more than to stand inside your front door for a few minutes if we're watched, and—but I see that this time I have passed the limit. I'm expecting too much! How do you know but I may be a thief or a murderer?"
"I hadn't thought of such a thing," Annesley stammered. "I was only thinking—it isn't my house. It doesn't even belong to my people. I live with an old lady, Mrs. Ellsworth. I hope she'll be in bed when I get back, and the servants, too. I have a key because—because I told a fib about the place where I was going, and consequently Mrs. Ellsworth approved. If she hadn't approved, I shouldn't have been allowed out. I could let you stand inside the door. But if any one followed us to the house, and saw the number, he could look in the directory, and find out that it belonged to Mrs. Ellsworth, not Mr. Smith."
"He couldn't have a directory in his pocket! By the time he got hold of one and could make any use of his knowledge, I'd be far away."
"Yes, I suppose you would," Annesley thought aloud, and a little voice seemed to add sharply in her ear: "Far away out of my life."
This brought to her memory what she had in her excitement forgotten: the adventure she had come out to meet had faded into thin air! The unexpected one which had so startlingly taken its place would end to-night, and she would be left to the dreary existence from which she had tried to break free.
She was like a pebble that had succeeded in riding out to sea on a wave, only to be washed back into its old place on the shore. The thought that, after all, she had no change to look forward to, gave the girl a passionate desire to make the most of this one living hour among many that were born dead.
"Mrs. Ellsworth's house," she said, "is 22-A, Torrington Square."
"Thank you." Only these two words he spoke, but the eager dark eyes seemed to add praise and blessings for her confidence.
"My name is Annesley Grayle," she volunteered, as if to prove to the man and to herself how far she trusted him; also perhaps as a bid for his name in payment of that trust. So at least he must have understood, for he said: "If I don't tell you mine, it's for your own protection. I'm not ashamed of it; but it's better that you shouldn't know—that if you heard it suddenly, it should be strange to you, just like any other name. Don't you see I'm right?"
"I dare say you are."
"Then we'll leave it at that. But we can't go on pretending to study this menu for ever! You came to dine with Mr. Smith. You'll dine with his understudy instead. You'll let me order dinner? It's part of the programme."
"Very well," Annesley agreed.
The man nodded to the head-waiter, who had been interested in the little drama indirectly stage-managed by him. Instead of sending a subordinate, he came himself to take the order. With wonderful promptness, considering that Mr. Smith's thoughts had not been near the menu under his eyes, several dishes were chosen and a wine selected.
"Madame is glad now that I persuaded her not to go?" the waiter could not resist, and Annesley replied that she was glad. As the man turned away, "Mr. Smith" raised his eyebrows with rather a wistful smile.
"I'm afraid you're sorry, really," he said. "If I'd come a minute later than I did, you'd have been safe and happy at home by this time."
"Not happy," amended the girl. "Because it isn't home. If it were, I shouldn't have told fibs to Mrs. Ellsworth to-night."
"That sounds interesting," remarked her companion.
"It's not interesting!" she assured him. "Nothing in my life is. I don't want to bore you by talking about my affairs, but if you think we may be—interrupted, perhaps, I'd better explain one or two things while there's time. I wanted to come here this evening to keep an engagement I'd made, but it's difficult for me to get out alone. Mrs. Ellsworth doesn't like to be left, and she never lets me go anywhere without her except to the house of some friends of mine, the only real friends I have. It's odd, but their name is Smith, and that saved my telling a direct lie. Not that a half-lie isn't worse, it's so cowardly!
"Mrs. Ellsworth likes me to go to Archdeacon and Mrs. Smith's because—I'm afraid because she thinks they're 'swells.' Mrs. Smith has a duke for an uncle! Mrs. Ellsworth said 'yes' at once, when I asked, and gave me her key and permission to stop out till half-past ten, though everyone in the house is supposed to be in bed by ten. She's almost sure to be in bed herself, but if she gets interested in one of the books I brought from the library to-day, it's possible she may be sitting up to read, and to ask about my evening.
"Our bedrooms are on the ground floor at the back of an addition to the house. What if she should hear the latchkey (it's old fashioned and hard to work), and what if she should come to the swing door at the end of the corridor where she'd see you with me? What would you say or do?"
"H'm! It would be awkward. But—isn't there a young Smith in your Archdeacon's family?"
"There is one, but I haven't seen him since I was a little girl. He's a sailor. He's away now on an Arctic expedition."
"Then it wasn't that Mr. Smith you came to meet at the Savoy?"
"No. They're not related." As Annesley returned in thought to the Mr. Smith who had thrown her over, she took from her bodice the white rose which was to have identified her for him, and found it a place in the vase with the other white roses. She had a special reason for doing this. The real Mr. Smith, if by any chance he appeared now, would be a complication. Without the rose he could not claim her acquaintance.
"Why do you do that?" her companion broke the thread of his questioning to ask.
The girl was tempted to tell some easy fib that the rose was faded, or too fragrant; but somehow she could not. They both seemed so close to the deep-down things of life at this moment that to speak the truth was the one possible thing.
"I arranged to wear a white rose for Mr. Smith to recognize me. We—have never seen each other," she confessed.
"Yet you say there's nothing interesting in your life!"
"It's true! This thing was—was dreadful. It could happen only to a girl whose life was not interesting."
"Now I understand why you put away the rose—for my sake, in case Mr. Smith should turn up, after all. Will you give it to me? I won't flaunt it in my buttonhole. I'll hide it sacredly, in memory of this evening—and of you. Not that I shall need to be reminded of anything which concerns this night—you especially, and your generosity, your courage. But it may be that the men I spoke of won't find me here. If they don't, the worst of your ordeal is over. It will only be to finish dinner, and let me put you into a taxi. To-morrow you can think that you dreamed the wretch who appealed to you, and be glad that you will never see him again."
Annesley selected her white rose from its fellows, dried its stem daintily with her napkin, and gave the flower to "Mr. Smith." Already it looked refreshed, as she herself felt refreshed, after five years of "stuffiness," by these few throbbing moments.
Their hands touched, and through Annesley's darted a little tingle of electricity that flashed up her arm to her heart, where it caught like a hooked wire. She was surprised, almost frightened by the sensation, and ashamed because she didn't find it disagreeable.
"It must be that people who're really alive, as he is, give out magnetism," she thought. And the thrill lingered as the man thanked her with eyes and voice.
When he had looked at the rose curiously, as if expecting to learn from it the secret of its wearer, he put the flower away in a letter-case in an inner breast pocket of his coat.
For once Annesley was face to face with romance, and even though she would presently go back to the old round (since the adventure she came out to meet had failed), she was stirred to a wild gladness in this other adventure. The hors d'oeuvres appeared; then soup, and wine, which Mr. Smith begged her to taste.
"Drink luck for me," he insisted. "You and you alone can bring it."
Annesley drank. And the champagne filliped colour to her cheeks.
"Now we'll go on and think out the problem of what may happen at your door—if Fate takes me there," the man said. "Your old friend's sailor son is no use to me. He can't be whisked back from the North Pole to London for my benefit. Perhaps I may be an acquaintance of Archdeacon Smith's, mayn't I, if worst comes to worst? I've been dining there, and brought you back in a taxi. Will that do? If there are fibs to tell, I'll tell them myself and spare you if possible."
"After all I've told to-night, one or two more can't matter," said Annesley. "They won't hurt Mrs. Ellsworth. It's the other danger that's more worrying—the danger from those men. I've thought of something that may help if they follow us to Torrington Square. They may ask a policeman whose house we've gone into, and find out it's Mrs. Ellsworth's, before you can get away. So it will be better not to tell them it's yours. You can be visiting. There is a Mr. Smith who comes sometimes from America, where he lives, though he's not American. Even the policemen who have that beat may have heard of him from Mrs. Ellsworth's servants. There's a room kept always ready for him, and called 'Mr. Smith's room.'"
"That does help," said the man. "It's clever and kind of you to rack your brains for me. A Mr. Smith from America! It's easy for me to play that part, I'm from America. Perhaps you've guessed that?"
"But you're very different from Mrs. Ellsworth's Mr. Smith," Annesley warned him, hastily. "He's middle-aged, eccentric, and not good-looking. He comes to England for his 'nerves' when he has worked too hard and tired himself out. I think he's rich; and once he was robbed in some big hotel, so he likes to stay at a plain sort of house where there's no danger. He has a horror of burglars, and won't even stop at the Archdeacon's since they had a burglary a few years ago. He pays Mrs. Ellsworth for his room, I believe. A funny arrangement!—it came about through me. But that's not of importance to you."
"It may be. We can't tell. Better let me know as much as possible about these Smiths. There's Mrs. Ellsworth's Smith, and the Smith you came to meet——"
"We needn't talk of him, anyway!"
There was a hint of anger in the girl's protest; but her resentment was for the man who had humiliated her by breaking his appointment—such an appointment!
She hurried on, trying to hide all signs of agitation. "You see, Mrs. Ellsworth once hoped to have Archdeacon Smith and his wife for friends. They didn't care for her, but they loved my father—oh, long ago in the country, where we lived. When he died and I hadn't any money or training for work, they were nice to Mrs. Ellsworth for my sake—or, rather, for my father's sake—and persuaded her to take me as her companion. She was glad to do it to please them; but soon she realized that they didn't mean to reward her by being intimate.
"Poor woman, I was almost sorry for her disappointment! You see, she's a snob at heart, and though 'Smith' sounds a common name, both the Archdeacon and his wife have titled relations. So have I—and that was another reason for taking me. She adores a title. Doesn't that sound pitiful? But she has few interests and no real friends, so she's never given up hope of 'collecting' the Smiths.
"That's why she lets me visit them. And when I happened to mention, for something to say, that the Archdeacon had an eccentric cousin in America who was afraid of hotels and even of visiting at their house because of a fad about burglars, she offered to give him the better of her two spare rooms whenever he came to England. I never thought he'd accept, but he did, only he would insist on paying.
"That's the story, if you can call it a story, for Mr. Ruthven Smith isn't a bit exciting nor interesting. When he appears—generally quite suddenly—he finds his room ready. He has his breakfast sent up, and lunches out at his club or somewhere. He mostly dines out, too, but he has a standing invitation to dine with Mrs. Ellsworth, and we always have good dinners when he is staying, to be ready in case of the worst."
The man smiled, rather a charming smile, Annesley could not help noticing.
"In case of the worst!" he repeated. "He must be deadly if his society bores you more than that of an old lady on whom, I suppose, you dance attendance morning, noon, and night. Now, my situation is so—er—peculiar that I ought to be thankful to exchange identities with any man. But I wouldn't with Mr. Ruthven Smith for all his money and jewels."
Annesley opened her eyes. "Did I say anything about jewels?" she asked.
"No, you didn't," the man assured her, "except in mentioning the name of Ruthven Smith. Anybody who has lived in America as long as I have, associates jewels with the name of Ruthven Smith. His 'Ruthven' lifts him far above the ruck of a mere Smith—like myself, for instance"; and he smiled again.
Annesley began curiously to feel as if she knew him well. This made her more anxious to give him help—for it would not be helping a stranger: it would be helping a friend.
"I've heard, of course, that he's something—I'm not sure what—in a firm of jewellers," she said. "But I'd no idea of his being so important."
"He's third partner with Van Vreck & Co.," her companion explained. "I've heard he joined at first because of his great knowledge of jewels and because he's been able to revive the lost art of making certain transparent enamels. The Van Vrecks sent for him from England years ago. He buys jewels for the firm now, I believe. No doubt that's why he's in such a funk about burglars."
"Fancy your knowing more about Mr. Smith than I know! Perhaps more than Mrs. Ellsworth knows!" exclaimed Annesley, forgetting the strain of expectation—the dread that a pair of mysterious, nightmare men might break up the dreamlike dinner-party for two.
"I don't know more about him than half America and Europe knows," laughed the man. "It's lucky I do know something, though, as I may have to be mistaken for Ruthven Smith, and add an 'N' to his initials. I suppose he's not in England now by any chance?"
"No. It must be six or seven months since he was here last," said Annesley. "I don't think Mrs. Ellsworth has heard from him. She hardly ever does until a day or two before he's due to arrive; neither do his cousins."
"A peculiar fellow, it would seem," remarked her companion. And then, out of a plunge into thought, "You say you've never seen the Mr. Smith you came to meet at the Savoy? How can you be sure it isn't old 'R. S.' as they call him at Van Vreck's, wanting to play you a trick—give you a surprise?"
Annesley shook her head. "If you knew Mr. Ruthven Smith, you'd know that would be impossible. Why, I don't believe he remembers when I'm out of sight that I exist."
"Still more peculiar! Miss Grayle, I haven't any right to ask you questions. But I shouldn't be a man if I weren't forgetting my own affairs—in—in curiosity, if you want to call it that (I don't!), about yours. No! I won't let it pass for ordinary curiosity. Can't you understand you're doing for me more than any woman ever has done, or any man would do? That does make a bond between us. You can't deny it. Tell me about this Mr. Smith whom you don't know and never saw, yet came to the Savoy Hotel to meet."
Surprised by the abruptness of his question, Annesley's eyes dropped from the eyes of her host, which tried to hold them. She felt that she ought to be angry with him for taking advantage of her generosity—for it amounted to that! Yet anger would not come, only shame and the desire to hide a thing which would change his gratitude to contempt.
"Don't let's waste time talking about me," she said. "We haven't arranged——"
"We've arranged everything as well as we can. For the rest, I must trust to luck—and you. Do tell me why you came here, why you thought you came here, I mean; for I'm convinced you were sent for my sake by any higher powers there may be. I felt that, the minute I saw you. I feel it ten times more strongly now. I know that whatever your reason was, it's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I am ashamed," Annesley was led on to confess. "You'd despise me if I told you, for you can't realize what my life's been for five years. And that's my one excuse."
"Only a fool would want a woman like you to excuse herself for anything. I swear I wouldn't despise you. I couldn't. If you should tell me—knowing you as little, or as well, as I do, that you'd been plotting a murder, I'd be certain you were justified, and my first thought would be to save you, as you're saving me now."
Annesley felt again the man's intense magnetism. Suddenly she wanted to tell him everything. It would be a relief. She would watch his face and see how it changed. It would be like having the verdict of the world on what she had done—or meant to do.
"I saw an advertisement in the Morning Post," she said with a kind of breathless violence, "from a man who—who wanted to meet a girl with—a 'view to marriage.'"
The words brought a blush so painful that the mounting blood forced tears to her eyes. But she looked her vis-à-vis unwaveringly in the face.
That did not change at all, unless the interest in his eyes grew warmer. The sympathy she saw there gave Annesley a new and passionate desire to defend herself. If he had shown disgust, she would not have cared to try, she thought.
"I told you it was horrid, and not interesting or romantic," she dashed on. "But I was desperate. Mrs. Ellsworth is awful! I don't suppose you ever met such a woman. She's not cruel about starving my body. It's only my soul she starves. What business have I with a soul, except in church, where it's proper to think about such things? But she nags—nags! She makes my hair feel as if it were turning gray at the roots, and my face drying up—like an apple.
"I wasn't nineteen when I came to her. I'm twenty-three now, and I feel old—desiccated, thanks to those piling-up hundreds of days with her. They've killed my spirit. I used to be different. I can feel it. I can see it in the mirror. It isn't only the passing days, but having nothing better to look forward to. I'm too cowardly—or too religious or something, to kill myself, even if I knew how to, decently. But the deadliness of it all, the airlessness of her house and her heart!
"A man couldn't imagine it. She's made me forget not only my own youth, but that there's youth in the world. Why, at first I was so wild I should have loved to say dreadful things, or strike her. But now I haven't the spirit left to feel like that. My blood's turning white. The other day when I was reading aloud to Mrs. Ellsworth (I read a lot: the stupidest parts of the papers and the silliest books, that turn my brain to fluff) I caught sight of an advertisement in the Personal Column.
"I stopped just in time and didn't read it out. Only a glimpse I had, for I was in the midst of something else when my eyes wandered. But when Mrs. Ellsworth was taking her nap after luncheon I got the Post again and read the advertisement through carefully. The reason I was interested was because even the glance I took showed that the girl who was 'wanted' seemed in some ways rather like me. The advertisement said she must be from twenty-one to twenty-six; needn't be a beauty, but of pleasant appearance; money no object; the essentials were that she must have a fair education and be of good birth and manners, so as to command a certain position in society.
"I believe those were the very words. And it didn't seem too conceited to think that I answered the description. I'm not bad-looking, and my mother's father was an earl—an Irish one. I couldn't get the advertisement out of my head. It fascinated me."
"No wonder!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. He had been listening intently, and though she had paused, panting a little, more than once, he had not broken in with a word.
"Do you honestly think it no wonder?" Annesley flashed at him.
"It was like a prisoner seeing a key sticking in a door that has always been locked," he said.
"How strange you should think of that!" she cried. "It was the thought which came into my mind, and seemed to excuse me if anything could." Annesley felt grateful to the man. She was sure she could never have explained herself in this way or pleaded her own cause with the real Mr. Smith. A man cold-blooded enough to advertise for a wife "well-born and able to command a certain position in society" would have frozen her into an ice-block of reserve.
She might possibly have accepted his "proposition" (one couldn't speak of it in the ordinary way as a "proposal"), provided that, on seeing her, he had judged her suitable for the place; but she could never have talked her heart out to him as she was led on to do by this other man, equally a stranger, yet sympathetic because of his own trouble and the mystery which made of him a figure of romance.
"It isn't strange I should think of the prison door and the key," her companion said. "That was the situation. 'N. Smith' was rather clever in his way. There must be many girls of good family and good looks who are in prison, pining to escape. He must have had a lot of answers, that fellow; but none of the girls could have come within a mile of you. I'm selfish! I bless my lucky stars he didn't turn up here."
"I dare say it's the best thing that could happen," Annesley agreed with a sigh. "Probably he's horrible. But there was one thing: I thought, though he must be a snob and vulgar, advertising as he did for a wife of good birth, that very thing looked as if he were no worse than a snob. Not a villain, I mean. Otherwise, I shouldn't have dared answer. But I did answer the same day, while I had the courage. I posted a letter with some of Mrs. Ellsworth's, which she sent me out to drop into the box. His address was 'N. S., the Morning Post'; and I told him to send a reply, if he wrote, to the stationery shop and library where Mrs. Ellsworth makes me go every day to change her books."
"And the answer? What was it like? What impression did it give you?" questioned the man who sat in Mr. Smith's place.
"Oh, it was written in a good hand. But it was a stiff, commonplace sort of letter, except that it asked me to wear a white rose. White roses happen to be the ones I like best."
"So do I," said Mr. Smith. "Did he tell you to come to a table here and wait for him?"
"Not exactly. He was to meet me in the foyer. But if he did not, I was to understand he'd been delayed; and in that case I must come to the restaurant and inquire for a table engaged by Mr. N. Smith. Lots of times I decided not to do anything. But you see I came, and this is my reward."
"A poor one," her companion finished.
"I don't mean that! I mean he hasn't come at all. Maybe he never meant to. Maybe he got some letter he liked better than mine, and arranged to meet the girl somewhere else. A man of that sort wouldn't write to tell the straight truth in time, and save the unwanted one from humiliation."
"Are you very sorry he didn't?"
"No," Annesley said, frankly. "I'm not sorry. It's good to be able to help someone. I'm glad I came."
"So am I," Mr. Smith answered with a sudden change in his voice from calm to excitement. "And now the moment isn't far off, I think, for the help to be given. The men I spoke of are here. They're in the restaurant. You can't see them without turning your head, which would not be wise. They're speaking to a waiter. They haven't seen me yet, but they're sure to look soon. They're pointing to a table near us. It's free. The waiter's leading them to it. In an instant you'll have a better view of them than I shall. Now … but don't look up yet."
From under her lashes Annesley saw—in the way women do see without seeming to use their eyes—two men conducted to a table directly in front of her. As she sat on her host's right, at the end of the table, not opposite to him, this gave her the advantage—or disadvantage—of facing the newcomers fully, while Mr. Smith, who had faced them as they entered, would have his profile turned toward their table.
The pair seated themselves in the same way that Annesley and her companion were placed, one at the right hand of the other. This caused the first man to face the girl fully and gave her the second in profile. One table only intervened between Mr. Smith's and that selected by the late arrivals, and the latter had hardly sat down when the party of four at the intermediate table rose to go.