An Eye for an Eye

“Oh, no, thanks, really,” she answered. “I’ve been in Regent Street to do some shopping, and I had tea there. I was on my way home, but thought that, being alone, I’d venture to try and find you.”

“I’m very glad we have met,” I said enthusiastically, for, truth to tell, I saw in her opportune invitation a means by which I might get at the truth I sought. There was something extremely puzzling in this allegation that the calm-mannered, affable Mrs Blain, whom I had known so well, was the actual tenant of the mysterious house in Phillimore Place. Then, looking at her steadily, I added: “In future our relations shall be, as you suggest, those of friendship, and not of affection – if you really wish.”

“Of course,” she replied. “It is the only sensible solution of the situation. We are both perfectly free, and there is no reason whatever why we should not remain friends – is there?”

“None at all,” I said. “Tell your mother that I shall be most delighted to pay you a visit. You have a boat, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. And a punt, too. This season I’ve learned to punt quite well.”

I smiled.

“Because that pastime shows off the feminine figure to greatest advantage,” I observed. “Girls who punt generally wear pretty brown shoes, and their dresses just a trifle short, so that as they skip from end to end of the punt they are enabled to display a discreet soupçon of lingerie and open-work stocking – eh?”

“Ah, no,” she protested, laughing. “You’re too sarcastic. Punting is really very good fun.”

“For ladies, no doubt,” I said. “But men prefer sculling. They’ve no waists to show, nor pretty flannel frocks to exhibit to the river crowd.”

“Ah, Frank, you always were a little harsh in your conclusions,” she sighed. “I suppose it is because you sometimes write criticisms. Critics, I have always imagined, should be old and quarrelsome persons – you are not.”

“No,” I responded. “But old critics too often view things through their own philosophical spectacles. The younger school take a much broader view of life. I’m not, however, a critic,” I added, “I’m only a journalist.”

I could hear old Mrs Joad growling to herself because the steak was ready and she could not lay the cloth because of my visitor. Meanwhile, the room had become filled to suffocation with the fumes of frizzling meat, until a blue haze seemed to hang over everything. So used was I to this choking state of things that until that moment I never noticed it. Then I quickly rose and opened the window with a word of apology that the place “smelt stuffy.”

She glanced around the shabby, smoke-mellowed room, and declared that it pleased her. Of course bachelors had to shift for themselves a good deal, she said, yet this place was not at all uncomfortable. I told her of my companion who shared the chambers with me, of his genius as a journalist, and how merrily we kept house together, at which she was much interested. All girls are more or less interested in bachelors’ arrangements.

Our gossip drifted mostly into the bygones – of events at Harwell, and the movements of various mutual friends, when suddenly Dick Cleugh burst into the room crying —

“I say, old chap, there’s another first-class horror! Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said in apology, drawing back on noticing Mary. “I didn’t know you had a visitor; forgive me.”

“Let me introduce you,” I said, laughing at his sudden confusion. “Mr Cleugh – Miss Blain.”

The pair exchanged greetings, when Cleugh, with that merry good humour that never deserted him, said —

“Ladies never come to our den, you know, Miss Blain; therefore please forgive me for blaring like a bull. Our old woman who cleans out the kennels is as deaf as a post, therefore we have contracted a habit of shouting.”

“What is the horror of which you spoke?” she asked, with a forced laugh, I was looking at her at that instant and noticed how unusually pale and agitated her face had suddenly become.

“Oh, only a startling discovery in to-night’s special,” he answered.

“A discovery!” she gasped, “Where?”

He glanced at the paper still in his hand, while she bent forward in her chair with an eagerness impossible of concealment. Her cheeks were pallid, her eyes dark, wild-looking and brilliant.

“The affair,” he said, “seems to have taken place in Loampit Vale, Lewisham.”

“Ah!” she ejaculated, quite involuntarily giving vent to a sigh of relief which Cleugh, quick and observant, did not fail to notice.

My friend threw the paper aside, sniffed at the odour of burnt meat, and suggested that the Hag was endeavouring to asphyxiate us.

“The Hag!” exclaimed Mary, surprised. “Who’s the Hag!”

“Old Mrs Joad,” responded Dick. “We call her that, first, because she’s so ugly; and secondly, because when she’s cooking for us she croons to herself like the Witch of Endor.”

“She certainly is decidedly ugly with that cross-eye of hers. It struck me, too, that she had an ancient and witch-like aspect when she admitted me,” she laughed.

Thus we chatted on until the bell on the Hall struck seven and she rose to go, first, however, inviting Dick to accompany me to Riverdene, an invitation which he gladly accepted. Then she bade him adieu and I accompanied her out into Holborn, where I placed her in a taxi for Waterloo.

On re-entering the room, Dick’s first exclamation was —

“Did you notice how her face changed when I mentioned the horror?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Her name’s Blain, and I presume she’s the daughter of Mrs Blain who is tenant of that house in Kensington?”

I nodded.

“An old flame of yours. I remember now that you once spoke of her.”

“Quite true.”

“Well, old fellow,” he said, “it was quite apparent when I mentioned the tragedy that she feared the discovery had been made in Kensington. Depend upon it she can, if she likes, tell us a good deal.”

“Yes,” I answered thoughtfully, “I agree with you entirely, Dick. I believe she can.”

Chapter Ten

On the Silent Highway

Whatever might have been Mary’s object in thus renewing my acquaintance at the very moment when I was about to seek her, one thing alone was apparent – she feared the revelation of the tragic affair at Kensington. There are times when men and women, whatever mastery they may possess over their countenances, must involuntarily betray joy or fear in a manner unmistakable. Those sudden and entirely unintentional words of Dick’s had, for the moment, frozen her heart. And yet it was incredible that she could have any connexion with this affair, so inexplicable that Superintendent Shaw, the chief of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, had himself visited the house, and, according to what Boyd had told me, had expressed himself utterly bewildered.

Next day passed uneventfully, but on the following afternoon we took train to Shepperton, where at the station we found Simpson, the chauffeur who had been at Shenley, awaiting us with a smart motor-car, in which we drove along the white winding road to Riverdene.

Dick’s description of the place was certainly not in the least exaggerated when he had said that it was one of the most charming old places on the Thames. Approached from the highway by a long drive through a thick belt of elms and beeches, it stood, a long, old-fashioned house, covered with honeysuckle and roses, facing the river, with a broad, well-kept lawn sloping down to the water’s edge. The gardens on either side were filled with bright flowers, the high leafy trees overshadowed the house and kept it delightfully cool, and the tent on the lawn and the several hammocks slung in the shadow testified to the ease and repose of those who lived there. Many riparian residences had I seen during my frequent picnics and Sunday excursions up and down the various reaches, but for picturesqueness, perfect quiet and rural beauty, none could compare with this. I had expected to find a mere cottage, or at most a villa, the humble retreat of a half-ruined man; yet on the contrary it was a fine house, furnished with an elegance that was surprising, with men-servants and every evidence of wealth. City men, I reflected, made money fast, and without doubt old Henry Blain had regained long ago all that he had lost.

How beautiful, how tranquil was that spot, how sweet-smelling that wealth of trailing roses which entirely hid one-half the house after the dust and stuffiness of Fleet Street, the incessant rattle of traffic, and the hoarse shouting of “the winners.” Beyond the lawn, which we now crossed to greet our hostess and her daughter, the river ran cool and deep, with its surface unruffled, so that the high poplars on the opposite bank were reflected into it with all their detail and colour as in a mirror. It was a warm afternoon, and during our drive the sun had beat down upon us mercilessly, but here in the shadow all was delightfully cool and refreshing. The porch of the house facing the river was one mass of yellow roses, which spread their fragrance everywhere.

Mrs Blain was seated in a wicker chair with some needlework, while Mary was lying in a chaise-longue reading the latest novel from Mudie’s, and our footsteps falling noiselessly upon the turf, neither noticed our approach until we stood before them.

“I’m so very pleased you’ve come, Frank,” exclaimed the elder lady, starting forward enthusiastically as she put down her work, “and I’m delighted to meet your friend. I have heard of you both several times through your father. I wonder he doesn’t exchange his living with some one. He seems so very unwell of late. I’ve always thought that Harwell doesn’t suit him.”

“He has tried on several occasions, but the offers he has had are in towns in the North of England, so he prefers Berkshire,” I answered.

“Well,” she said, inviting us both to be seated in comfortable wicker chairs standing near, “it is really very pleasant to see you again. Mary has spoken of you, and wondered how you were so many, many times.”

“I’m sure,” I said, “the pleasure is mutual.”

Dick, after I had introduced him to Mrs Blain, had seated himself at Mary’s side and was chatting to her, while I, leaning back in my chair, looked at this woman before me and remembered the object of my visit. There was certainly nothing in her face to arouse suspicion. She was perhaps fifty, with just a sign of grey hairs, dark-eyed, with a nose of that type one associates with employers of labour. A trifle inclined to embonpoint, she was a typical, well-preserved Englishwoman of motherly disposition, even though by birth she was of one of the first Shropshire families, and in the days of Shenley she had been quite a prominent figure in the May flutter of London. I had liked her exceedingly, for she had shown me many kindnesses. Indeed, she had distinctly favoured the match between Mary and myself, although her husband, a bustling, busy man, had scouted the idea. This Mary herself had told me long ago in those dreamy days of sweet confidences. The thought that she was in any way implicated in the mysterious affair under investigation seemed absolutely absurd, and I laughed within myself.

She was dressed, as she always had dressed after luncheon, in black satin duchesse, a quiet elegance which I think rather created an illusion that she was stout, and as she arranged her needlework aside in order to chat to me, she sighed as matronly ladies are wont to sigh during the drowsy after-luncheon hours.

From time to time I turned and laughed with Mary as she gaily sought my opinion on this and on that. She was dressed in dark blue serge trimmed with narrow white braid, her sailor hat cast aside lying on the grass, a smart river costume of a chic familiar to me in the fashion-plates of the ladies’ papers. As she lay back, her head pillowed on the cushion, there was in her eyes that coquettish smile, and she laughed that ringing musical laugh as of old.

A boatful of merrymakers went by, looking across, and no doubt envying us our ease, for sculling out there in the blazing sun could scarcely be a pleasure. Judging from their appearance they were shop-assistants making the best of the Thursday early-closing movement – a movement which happily gives the slaves of suburban counters opportunity for healthful recreation. The boat was laden to overflowing, and prominent in the bows was the inevitable basket of provisions and the tin kettle for making tea.

“It’s too hot, as yet, to go out,” Mary said, watching them. “We’ll go later.”

“Very well,” Dick answered. “I shall be delighted. I love the river, but since my Cambridge days I’ve unfortunately had but little opportunity for sculling.”

“You newspaper men,” observed Mrs Blain, addressing me, “must have very little leisure, I think. The newspapers are always full. Isn’t it very difficult to fill the pages?”

“No,” I answered. “That’s a common error. To every newspaper in the kingdom there comes daily sufficient news of one sort or another to fill three sheets the same size. The duty of the journalist, if, of course, he is not a reporter or leader-writer, is to make a judicious selection as to what he shall publish and what he shall omit. It is this that wears out one’s brains.”

“But the reporters,” she continued – “I mean those men who go and hunt up details of horrors, crimes and such things – are they well paid?”

That struck me as a strange question, and I think I must have glanced at her rather inquiringly.

“They are paid as well as most professions are paid nowadays,” I answered. “Better, perhaps, than some.”

“And their duty is to make inquiries and scrape up all kinds of details, just like detectives, I’ve heard it said. Is that so?”

“Exactly,” I replied. “One of the cleverest men in that branch of journalism is our friend here, Mr Cleugh.”

She looked at the man I indicated, and I thought her face went slightly paler. It may, however, only have been in my imagination.

“Is he really one of those?” she inquired in a low undertone.

“Yes,” I responded. “In all Fleet Street, he’s the shrewdest man in hunting out the truth. He is the Comet man, and may claim to have originated the reporter-investigation branch of journalism.”

She was silent for a few moments. Lines appeared between her eyes. Then she took up her needlework, as if to divert her thoughts.

“And Mr Blain?” I asked at last, in want of some better topic. “How is he?”

“Oh, busy as usual. He’s in Paris. He went a fortnight ago upon business connected with some company he is bringing out, and has not been able to get back yet. We shall join him for a week or two, only I so much dislike the Channel crossing. Besides, it is really very pleasant here just now.”

“Delightful,” I answered, looking round upon the peaceful scene. At the steps, opposite where we sat, was moored a motor-boat, together with Mary’s punt, a light wood one with crimson cushions, while behind us was a well-kept tennis-court.

Tea was brought after we had gossiped nearly an hour, and while we were taking it a boat suddenly drew up at the landing-stage, being hailed by Mary, who jumped up enthusiastically to welcome its occupants. These were two young men of rather dandified air and a young girl of twenty, smartly dressed, but not at all good-looking, whom I afterwards learnt was sister to the elder of her companions. When the boat was at last moored, and the trio landed amid much shouting and merriment, I was introduced to them. The name of sister and brother was Moberly, a family who lived somewhere up beyond Bell Weir, and their companion was a guest at their house.

“We thought we’d just catch you at tea, Mrs Blain,” cried Doris Moberly as she sprang ashore. “And we are so frightfully thirsty.”

“Come along, then,” said the elder lady. “Sit down, my dear. We have it all ready.”

And so the three joined us, and the circle quickly became a very merry one.

“They kept us so long in the lock that I feared tea would be all over before we arrived,” young Moberly said, with a rather affected drawl. He appeared to be one of those young sprigs of the city who travel first-class, read the Times, and ape the aristocrat.

“Yes,” Doris went on, “there was a slight collision between a barge and a launch, resulting in lots of strong language, and that delayed us, otherwise we should have been here half an hour ago.”

“Did you call on the Binsteads?” Mary asked. “You know their house-boat, the Flame? It’s moored just at the bend, half-way between the Lock and Staines Bridge.”

“We passed it, but the blinds were down. They were evidently taking a nap. So we didn’t hail them,” Doris responded.

Then the conversation drifted upon river topics, as it always drifts with those who spend the summer days idling about the upper reaches of the Thames – of punts, motor-launches, and sailing; of the prospects of regattas and the dresses at Sunbury Lock on the previous Sunday. They were all river enthusiasts, and river enthusiasm is a malady extremely contagious with those doomed to spend the dog-days gasping in a dusty office in stifled London.

After tea followed tennis as a natural sequence, and while Moberly and his sister played with Dick and the youth who had accompanied the Moberlys, Mary and I wandered away into the wood which skirted the grounds of Riverdene. She was bright and merry, quite her old self of Shenley days, save perhaps for a graver look which now and then came to her eyes. She showed me the extent of their grounds and led me down a narrow path in the dark shadow to the bank to show me a nest of kingfishers. The spot was so peaceful and rural that one could scarcely believe one’s self but twenty miles from London. The kingfisher, startled by our presence, flashed by us like a living emerald in the sunlight; black-headed buntings flitted alongside among the reeds, and the shy sedge warbler poured out his chattering imitations, while here and there we caught sight of moor-hens down in the sedge.

She had, I found, developed a love for fishing, for she took me further down where the willows trailed into the stream, and pointed out the swirl over the gravel where trout were known to lie, showed me a bush-shaped depth where she had caught many a big perch, and a long swim where, she said, were excellent roach.

“And you are happier here than you were at Shenley?” I inquired, as we were strolling back together, both bareheaded, she with her hat swinging in her hand.

“Happy? Oh, yes,” and she sighed, with her eyes cast upon the ground.

“That sigh of yours does not denote happiness,” I remarked, glancing at her. “What troubles you?”

“Nothing,” she declared, looking up at me with a forced smile.

“It is puzzling to me, Mary,” I said seriously, “that in all this time you’ve not married. You were engaged, yet it was broken off. Why?”

At my demand she answered, with a firmness that surprised me, “I will never marry a man I don’t love – never.”

“Then it was at your father’s suggestion – that proposed marriage of yours?”

“Of course, I hated him.”

“Surely it was unwise to allow the announcement to get into the papers, wasn’t it?”

“It was my father’s doing, not mine,” she responded. “When it was broken off I hastened to publish the contradiction.”

“On reading the first announcement,” I said, “I imagined that you had at length found a man whom you loved, and that you would marry and be happy. I am sure I regret that it is not so.”

“Why?” she asked, regarding me with some surprise. “Do you wish to see me married, then?”

“Not to a man you cannot love,” I hastened to assure her. I was trying to learn from her the reason of her sudden renewed friendship and confidence, yet she was careful not to refer to it. Her extreme care in this particular was, in itself, suspicious.

Her effort at coquetry when at my chambers two days before made it apparent that she was prepared to accept my love, if I so desired. Yet the remembrance of Eva Glaslyn was ever in my mind. This woman at my side had once played me false, and had caused a rent in my heart which was difficult to heal. She was pretty and charming, without doubt, yet she had never been frank, even in those long-past days at Shenley. Once again I told myself that the only woman I had looked upon with thoughts of real genuine affection was the mysterious Eva, whom once, with my own eyes, I had seen cold and dead. When I reflected upon the latter fact I became puzzled almost to the verge of madness.

Yet upon me, situated as I was, devolved the duty of solving the enigma.

Life, looked at philosophically, is a long succession of chances. It is a game of hazard played by the individual against the multiform forces to which we give the name of “circumstance,” with cards whose real strength is always either more or less than their face value, and which are “packed” and “forced” with an astuteness which would baffle the wiliest sharper. There are times in the game when the cards held by the mortal player have no value at all, when what seem to us kings, queens, and aces change to mere blanks; there are other moments when ignoble twos and threes flush into trumps and enable us to triumphantly sweep the board. Briefly, life is a game of roulette wherein we always play en plein.

As, walking at her side, I looked into her handsome face there came upon me a feeling of mournful disappointment.

Had we met like this a week before and she had spoken so softly to me I should, I verily believe, have repeated my declaration of love. But the time had passed, and all had changed. My gaze had been lost in the immensity of a pair of wondrous azure eyes. I, who tired before my time, world-weary, despondent and cynical, was angry and contemptuous at the success of my companions, had actually awakened to a new desire for life.

So I allowed this woman I had once loved to chatter on, listening to her light gossip, and now and then putting a question to her with a view to learning something of her connexion with that house of mystery. Still she told me nothing – absolutely nothing. Without apparent intention she evaded any direct question I put to her, and seemed brimming over with good spirits and merriment.

“It has been quite like old times to have a stroll and a chat with you, Frank,” she declared, as we emerged at last upon the lawn, where tennis was still in progress. The sun was now declining, the shadows lengthening, and a refreshing wind was already beginning to stir the tops of the elms.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Of our long walks around Harwell I have many pleasant recollections. Do you remember how secretly we used to meet, fearing the anger of your people; how sometimes I used to wait hours for you, and how we used to imagine that our love would last always?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “I recollect, too, how I used to send you notes down by one of the stable lads, and pay him with sweets.”

I laughed again.

“All that has gone by,” I said. “In those days of our experience we believed that our mutual liking was actual love. Even if we now smile at our recollections, they were, nevertheless, the happiest hours of all our lives. Love is never so fervent and devoted as in early youth.”

“Ah!” she answered in a serious tone. “You are quite right. I have never since those days known what it is to really love.”

I glanced at her sharply. Her eyes were cast upon the ground in sudden melancholy.

Was that speech of hers a veiled declaration that she loved me still! I held my breath for an instant, then looking straight before me, saw, standing a few yards away, in conversation with Mrs Blain, a female figure in a boating costume of cream flannel braided with coral pink.

“Look?” I exclaimed, glad to avoid responding. “You have another visitor, I think.”

She glanced in the direction I indicated, then hastened forward to greet the new-comer.

The slim-waisted figure turned, and next second I recognised the strikingly handsome profile of Eva Glaslyn, the mysterious woman I secretly loved with such passionate ardour and affection.

“Come, Frank, let me introduce you,” Mary cried, after enthusiastically kissing her friend.

I stepped forward, and as I did so, she turned and fixed on me her large, blue laughing eyes. Not a look, not an expression of her pure countenance was altered.

As I gazed into those eyes I saw that they were as dear as the purest crystal, and that I could look through them straight into her very soul. I bowed and grasped the tiny, refined hand she held forth to me – that soft hand which I had once before touched – when it was cold and lifeless.