The Vanity Box/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
Terry Ricardo was curiously anxious about Sir Ian.
Her anxiety amounted to a presentiment of evil; but what kind of evil she could not define.
The morning after her arrival with Nora Verney at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, he bade her good-bye, saying that he must return immediately to England. And she did not remind him that he had said, because of Major Smedley, he would remain at St. Pierre for a day or two longer.
Of course, everything was different now, on account of Ian Barr. Sir Ian did not say that Barr's fate had anything to do with his change of plan, but Terry was sure it had, just as much as it had to do with hers.
The annoyance that they had both suffered from Major Smedley's arrival appeared as nothing now, looked back upon after the sensational incident of the evening. It did not seem to matter much, somehow, Terry thought, what Major Smedley thought or did; so it could hardly be fear of trouble from that quarter which had altered Sir Ian's looks for the worse since the night before.
He had been haggard then, but he was more haggard now, and it was far truer of him to-day than it had been when the thought first came into her mind, that he had the air of a man haunted.
In saying farewell, his eyes lingered with a kind of anguished longing on Terry's face—the face that he had once pronounced "fascinating rather than beautiful"; the face whose resemblance he had been wont to seek in the old portrait at Riding Wood House.
"Why, you look at me as if we were never going to meet again!" she exclaimed, on a frightened impulse, as he wrung her hand.
"Perhaps we never shall," he answered. "One can't be sure, can one?"
"But I have promised Nora to go back to England at once," said Terry. "Fate is against my staying more than twenty-four hours at dear St. Pierre de Chartreuse, it seems. But never mind! I have seen the sweet little place again—and talked to you here. I shall have another good memory. And we shall meet in England soon. You know, Ian, I want to be your friend."
"I could never be your friend, Terry," he protested.
"Nonsense! You said 'nonsense' to me once. I say it to you now. Please tell me where you will be in England. Not at"
"Friars' Moat? Oh, no! I can't bear the thought of the place. I don't know where I shall go."
"Oh, how dreary not to know! You have many friends, who must have asked you to their houses because they wanted you to be with them, and let them comfort you."
"No one can comfort me."
"Not yet. But by and by it will be different. Won't you stay with some friends—near Riding St. Mary?"
"I couldn't do that. I think I shall go straight to a London hotel."
"Which one? I want to know," Terry persisted, "because I might wish to write to you."
His face brightened faintly. "Would you write to me?" he asked. "I—should like to have a letter from you."
"What about?" Terry inquired, smiling.
"Anything! Just to hear from you. To have a letter."
"You shall have one," she assured him. "As good a letter as I know how to write. The letter of a friend to a friend."
"Will you write it on the boat, or in the train between Dover and London, and post it when you get to town?" Sir Ian pleaded anxiously.
"Why on the boat or in the train?"
"Because I should like to have the thoughts almost warm from your hand, when they reach me."
"I could write it after arriving in London, if you want them so very fresh."
"No," said Sir Ian. "Please post the letter immediately on your arrival. I might be gone from the address I shall give you, if you didn't do that."
"Very well," Terry consented, "I will post it immediately, or send it by messenger."
Thank you with all my heart for the promise. Address me at Harland's Hotel, Charles Street, Pall Mall."
"I never heard of it," said Terry. "Is it a new hotel, since my day?"
"No, it's very old, I believe. But it's small and insignificant. Comparatively few people know of its existence. It's not a very bright or gay place; but for that reason it will suit me the better now. And you? Shall you go to Mrs. Ricardo?"
"I am not sure," Terry replied. "I haven't talked it over with Nora yet; but as I've taken charge of her for the present, I must arrange for her welfare. I expected to have stopped over here longer, and there seemed plenty of time to settle about the future. Now there's none. I think of wiring Maud to ask if she will invite Nora to White Fields. I'm almost sure that if I do, she will. Meanwhile, though, I may put up at an hotel in town for a night or two."
"Don't," Sir Ian said quickly. "I hope you won't do that."
She looked surprised. "Why? Are you so old-fashioned that you dislike the thought of women being in a hotel alone?"
"No—yes," he answered disjointedly. "Couldn't you promise not to stop in town, but to go at once to the country?"
Bewildered, Terry replied that, to please him, she would do as he suggested, if she possibly could, though she was unable to imagine what his reason could be.
"You'll hear later," he began, then changed his sentence. "I will give you my reason later," he amended. "I know I've no right to dictate, or even to ask a favour but if you would do me this last one"
"This last one?" she echoed.
"I mean," and he smiled faintly, "that I'll try not to ask others."
Terry lightly responded that she liked her friends to ask favours of her, and took it as a compliment. But when Sir Ian had gone, and she tried to analyze the anxious feeling she had, these words of his, and other somewhat strange expressions he had used in their conversation, came back to her.
She and Nora Verney did not leave St. Pierre de Chartreuse till that night, twelve hours after Sir Ian Hereward. They shared a compartment in a wagon lit, but neither slept. The mind of each was tenanted, almost to the exclusion of other thoughts, by the image of a man; and the two men were of the same blood and the same name.
"Why doesn't he want me to stop for even one night in London, where he will be?" Terry asked herself. She wondered if it could possibly be on account of Major Smedley, who chose to take his departure from St. Pierre de Chartreuse at the hour when Sir Ian went; but she could scarcely believe it was because of the old mischief-maker. London was a large place. Even Major Smedley could not find fault with them for being in London at the same time; and in any case he could say no worse things than he was prepared to say now.
At Paris Nora was so ill with a terrible nervous headache that Terry feared congestion of the brain for the girl. It was not possible to go on; so, thinking of Sir Ian and the letter he would be expecting, she telegraphed him that she was unavoidably delayed. "Will wire again after seeing doctor, when we shall be able to start," she added.
Next day Nora was better, and, though very weak, insisted that she was able to travel, grew feverish at the suggestion of being detained longer, and at last forced the French doctor, called in by Miss Ricardo, to consent to her wish with a shrug of the shoulders. "She may grow worse if we compel her to wait. She is a true woman," he said to Terry, with the smile of a much-enduring, much-experienced medical man.
Accordingly, the girl had her way, and they left Paris on the eleven o'clock train. Terry was by this time almost as anxious to get on as Nora herself, though she had tried conscientiously to resign herself to the necessity of stopping. She wired again to Sir Ian, and thought of him continually, with the same heavy presentiment of—she knew not what. Again and again she accused herself of foolish superstition, but she could not put away the feeling that he was calling to her. It was as if she could hear his voice crying out of a great darkness, "Terry! Terry! Good-bye!"
Any observant person, a student of life and human character, would have noticed the two travellers with a particular interest, sharpened to curiosity. An unobservant person would merely have seen a young woman and a girl journeying together; the woman gracious and distinguished in appearance, with supreme charm of individuality; the girl brilliantly beautiful, with cheeks like roses and blue eyes like stars. He would have seen that they were well but simply dressed, that they did not trouble to talk to each other much, though they seemed on friendly terms, and that both were rather tired of travelling, or impatient to reach England. The observant person, however, would have seen far more. He would have seen that the woman's pallor and the girl's roses were caused by the same almost unbearable anxiety; that their quiet manner was retained only by desperate efforts at self-control. He would have guessed that each wished to hide her excitement from the other, and that they talked little because there was a tabooed subject, to which each one gave her whole thought. He would have guessed at a moving romance or tragedy which shaped the lives of both, and drew them toward a common goal.
By this time Ian Barr was in England, and Nora's great desire was to find out what had happened to him there. Her own conduct was to be determined by Sir Ian Hereward's. Her Ian would be silent to the end, whatever it might be, she was only too sure. But if Sir Ian Hereward kept silence, she would not. She would speak, even though the breaking of her promise meant the end of Ian's love.
"They shan't kill him—they shan't kill him!" the panting of the engine said for her, in train and boat.
She could hardly wait to get to Dover, because there they would see the evening papers. There might be news of some sort, good or bad, in them. She felt there would be news. Big black headlines danced before her eyes: "Sir Ian Hereward Confesses to the Murder of his Wife." And, as a hideous alternative: "Evidence Piles Up Against Ian Barr. Damaging Statements by Sir Ian Hereward."
What if, with the best will in the world to break her promise, to tell all the truth as she had told it to Sir Ian, his word should be believed against hers, with Ian Barr silent, refusing to corroborate her, refusing to defend himself at Sir Ian's expense.
The girl shivered as if with ague, when this thought crawled into her mind, cold and sly as an adder. It might be so! It might be so! She would want to kill Sir Ian. But that would not save her lover. Perhaps nothing could save him, after all.