The Master Mummer Part 40

We drove through the cold grey twilight to the Rue de St. Antoine, where Feurgeres' apartments were. To my surprise servants were at hand expecting us, and I was shown at once into a suite of rooms, in one of which was a great marble bath all ready for use. Some coffee and a change of clothes were brought me. All my wants seemed to have been antic.i.p.ated and provided for. I had always imagined Feurgeres to be a man of very simple and homely tastes, but there were no traces of it in his home. He showed me some of the rooms while we waited for breakfast, rooms handsomely furnished and decorated, full of art treasures and curios of many sorts collected from many countries.

But, in a sense, it was like a dead house. One felt that it might be a dwelling of ghosts. There were nowhere any signs of the rooms being used, the habitable air was absent. Everything was in perfect order.

There was no dust, none of the chilliness of disuse. Yet one seemed to feel everywhere the sadness of places which exist only for their history. One door only remained closed, and that Feurgeres unlocked with a little key which hung from his chain. But he did not invite me to enter.

"You will excuse me for a few moments," he said. "My housekeeper will show you into the breakfast-room. Please do not wait for me."

An old lady, very primly dressed in black, and wearing a curious cap with long white strings, bustled me away. As Feurgeres opened the door of the room, in front of which we had been standing, the air seemed instantly sweet with the perfume of flowers. The old lady sighed as she poured me out some coffee. I am ashamed to say that I felt, and doubtless I looked, curious.

"Would it not be as well for me to wait for Monsieur Feurgeres?" I asked. "He will not be very long, I suppose?"

The old lady shook her head sadly.

"Ah! but one cannot say!" she answered. "Monsieur had better begin his breakfast."

"Your master has perhaps someone waiting to see him?" I remarked.

Madame Tobain--she told me her name--shook her head once more. She spoke softly, almost as though she were speaking of something sacred.

"Monsieur did not know, perhaps--it was the chamber of Madame. Always Monsieur spends several hours a day there when he is in Paris, and always after he has performed at the theatre he returns immediately to sit there. No one else is allowed to enter; only I, when Monsieur is away, am permitted once a day to fill it with fresh flowers--flowers always the most expensive and rare. Ah, such devotion, and for the dead, too! One finds it seldom, indeed! It is the great artists only who can feel like that!"

She wiped her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n, dropped me a curtsey, and withdrew. Feurgeres came in presently, and I avoided looking at him for the first few minutes. To tell the truth, there was a lump in my own throat. When he spoke, however, his tone was as usual.

"I shall ask you," he said, "to stay indoors, but to be prepared to start away at a moment's notice. I am going to make a few enquiries myself."

His voice drew my eyes to his face, and I was astonished at his appearance. The skin seemed tightly drawn about his cheeks, and he was very white. As though in contradiction to his ill-looks, however, his eyes were unusually brilliant and clear, and his manner almost buoyant.

"Forgive me, Monsieur Feurgeres," I said, "but it seems to me that you had better rest for a while. You have been travelling longer than I have, and you are tired."

He smiled at me almost gaily.

"On the contrary," he declared, "I never felt more vigorous. I----"

He stopped short, and walked the length of the room. When he returned he was very grave, but the smile was still upon his lips. He laid his hand almost affectionately upon my shoulder.

"My dear friend," he said softly, "I think that you are the only one to whom I have felt it possible to speak of the things which lie so near my heart. For I think that you, too, are one of those who know, and who must know, what it is to suffer. We who carry the iron in our hearts, you know, are sometimes drawn together. The things which we may hide from the world we cannot hide from one another. Only for you there is hope, for me there has been the wonderful past. People have pitied me often, my friend, for what they have called my lonely life. They little know! I am not a sentimentalist. I speak of real things. Isobel, my wife, died to the world and was buried. To me she lives always. Just now--I have been with her. She sat in her old chair, and her eyes smiled again their marvellous welcome to me. Only--and this is why I speak to you of these things--there was a difference."

He was silent for a few minutes. When he continued, his voice was a little softer but no less firm.

"Dear friend," he said, "I will be honest. When Isobel was taken from me I had days and hours of hideous agony. But it was the craving for her body only, the touch of her lips, the caress of her hands, the sound of her voice. Her spirit has been with me always. At first, perhaps, her coming was faint and indefinable, but with every day I realized her more fully. I called her, and she sat in her box and watched me play, and kissed her roses to me. I close the door upon the world and call her back to her room, call her into my arms, whisper the old words, call her those names which she loves best--and she is there, and all my burden of sorrow falls away. My friend, a great love can do this! A great, pure love can mock even at the grave."

I clasped his hand in mine.

"I think," I said, "that I will never pity you again. You have triumphed even over Fate--even over those terrible, relentless laws which sometimes make a ghastly nightmare of life even to the happiest of us.

You have turned sorrow into joy. It is a great deed. You have made my own suffering seem almost a vulgar thing."

"Ah, no!" he said, "for you, too, there is hope. You, too, know that we need never be the idle, resistless slaves of Fate--like those others.

Will and faith and purity can kindle a magic flame to lighten the darkness of the greatest sorrow. I speak to you of these things--now--because I think that the end is near."

He suddenly sank into a chair. I looked at him in alarm, but his face was radiant. There was no sign of any illness there.

"You are young, Arnold Greatson," he said. "They tell me that you will be famous. Yet you are not one of those to turn your face to the wall because the greatest gift of life is withheld from you. That is why I have lifted the curtain of my own days. I know you, and I know that you will triumph. It is a world of compensations after all for those who have the wit to understand."

I think that he had more to say to me, but we were interrupted. There was a knock at the door, and the man entered whom I had seen talking with Feurgeres upon the platform of the railway station. Feurgeres rose at once, calm and prepared. They talked for a while so rapidly that I could not follow them. Then he turned to me.

"They are preparing for a move," he announced. "They are going south as though for Ma.r.s.eilles and Illghera, but they insist upon a special train. They have declined a saloon attached to the train de luxe, and Monsieur Estere here has doubts as to their real destination. Wait here until I return. Be prepared for a journey."

They left me alone. I lit a cigarette and settled down to read. In less than half an hour, however, I was disturbed. There was a knock at the door, and Madame Tobain entered.

"There is a lady here, sir, who desires to see Monsieur!" she announced.

A fair, slight woman in a long travelling cloak brushed past her. She raised her veil, and I started at once to my feet. It was Lady Delahaye.

CHAPTER IV

It did not need a word from Lady Delahaye to acquaint me fully with what had happened. Indeed, my only wonder had been that this knowledge had not come to her before. She greeted me with a smile, but her face was full of purpose.

"Where is he?" she asked simply.

"Not here," I answered.

She seated herself, and began to unpin the travelling veil from her hat.

"So I perceive," she remarked. "He will return?"

"Yes," I admitted, "he will return."

She folded the veil upon her knee and looked across at me thoughtfully.

"What an idiot I have been!" she murmured. "After all, that emerald necklace might easily have been mine."

"I am not so sure about that," I answered. "I think I know what is in your mind, but I might remind you that suspicion is one thing and proof another."

"The motive," she answered, "is the difficult thing, and that is found.

I suppose the police are good for something. They should be able to work backwards from a certainty."

"Are you," I asked, "going to employ the police? Don't you think that, for the good of everyone, and even for your husband's own sake, the thing had better remain where it is?"

She laughed scornfully.

"You would have me let the man go free who shot another in the back treacherously and without warning?" she exclaimed. "Thank you for your advice, Arnold Greatson. I have a different purpose in my mind."

I moved my chair and drew a little nearer to her.