Red Shadow (6 page)

He tore open the telegram, looked at it, and threw it down. “Yes, it's mine. Is she out?”

Amelia gave a most rending sniff.

“Went away Friday,” she said.

Jim Mackenzie stared.

“
Went away?
What do you mean?”

“Went away Friday,” said Amelia, and choked.

A horrid cold feeling began to creep over Jim. There was some mistake. Laura couldn't have gone away when she was expecting him. Not unless——

“She isn't ill?”

“Not as I knows of—but I shouldn't wonder.” She had her apron at her eyes now, and the sentence ended on a sob.

Jim put a hand on her shoulder and shook it.

“What's all this? Can't you say?”

Amelia twitched away from him.

“I got a letter for you, sir.”

He held out his hand, took the envelope, and after one glance at the writing walked away from her into the sitting-room. He left the door open, and Amelia, fluttering and weeping, saw him go over to the window and open the letter. As he unfolded the paper, he was conscious of bitter disappointment, and behind the disappointment—fear. What could possibly have taken Laura away when he was coming home?

A bleak light fell on what Laura had written. He looked at those few unbelievable words, and his mind rejected them. He went on looking at them in the cold foggy light:

“I am marrying Basil Stevens to-day at the Chelsea registry office.” Then her name: “Laura”. And written below it, written hastily, three shaky words: “Don't be unhappy.”

In some horrible way the words were effecting an entrance into his mind.

He turned abruptly and called to Amelia. The thing was impossible, a stark lie. But then—she must be ill—she must be. He took hold of Amelia by the arm.

“What's all this? Where is she?”

“Oh, sir, I don't know—I don't indeed!”

“But she's gone away.”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“When?”

“Friday morning, sir, and no address left, only a bank, and the letter for you, which I'd rather have died than give it you, sir—and—and—what
h'ever
come over her, 'eaven knows, for I don't.”

“She's—
married,
” said Jim Mackenzie.

“If you can call it married—in a registry, and no wedding dress nor nothing.”

He said it again as if he had not heard her,

“She's
married
—” Then, very suddenly, “No! My God, no!” And with that he let go of Amelia's arm and went reeling back against the wall.

After a moment he groped for a chair and sat down.

The tears ran down Amelia's cheeks.

“She was trying on her wedding dress when he come, and I hadn't no more than opened the door, when I knew that what he brought with him was trouble for Miss Laura. I hadn't no more than got the door ajar, when I felt it. And when he come in, he brought it with him, and I says to Miss Laura——”

Jim Mackenzie lifted a hand that felt as heavy as lead.

“What are you talking about?”

“Him,” said Amelia. “Him that put the trouble on Miss Laura and stole her away, with his registries, and his banks, instead of a lawful address like any honest gentleman would have.”

“Basil Stevens—” said Jim Mackenzie slowly.

“I never seen him before. Mr Basil Stevens was the name on the card, and when I took it to Miss Laura, she looks at it and she says, ‘But I hardly know him—' just like that she says it. And in two days they was married—and in a registry office, which I wouldn't have believed if the Archbishop of Canterbury had taken his Bible oath on it—no, I wouldn't. And whath'ever Miss Wimborough's a-going to say when she hears, I don't know, but 'eaven help me when she does, for she'll be neither to hold nor to bind.”

Jim Mackenzie kept his grey face turned towards her.

“She's—
married
—” he said again.

“I wouldn't go and see it,” said Amelia—“not if she'd begged and prayed me, I wouldn't. And she only says, just like she might have said she was a-going to the post, ‘I'm a-going to marry Mr Stevens,' she says. And 'eaven knows why I didn't drop.”

“You didn't—
see
her married?”

“I couldn't have brung myself to it. But it's no good you a-building on that, for when I'd had my cry out and put her room to rights, I went round to the registry and ast the clerk, I couldn't have faced Miss Wimborough if I hadn't a-made sure—and 'eaven knows how I'm a-going to face her now. But married they was and gone away in a private car, so the clerk could tell me.”

“Why?” said Jim Mackenzie. “Oh, God! Why?”

He was not speaking to Amelia, but she had an answer for him.

“I don't know no more than the babe in h'arms, except that it was something to do with money, sir.”

“Money?” he said. “
Money?
”

Amelia sniffed, the sniff of a superior being in grief.

“It's a 'orrible thing for money to come between two loving 'earts—but something to do with money it was, for I 'eard what he said with my own lawful ears.” She sniffed again, deprecatingly this time. “I'd scorn to listen at a door, but I was a-folding up Miss Jenny's dress—'er bridesmaid's dress what she'd been a-trying on, and skipped out of the other door when Mr Stevens come in. Well, there I was, in the bedroom, a-shaking of it out and a-folding of it up, and I 'eard him say a gentleman's name, as plain as plain I 'eard it—Mr Bertram Hallingdon—and there's been enough about him in the papers since to make me sure that I didn't make no mistake.”

Jim Mackenzie stared at her.

“Bertram Hallingdon?”

“Him that's died and left a mint of money. Well, I 'eard that Stevens say, ‘Mr Bertram Hallingdon', and I 'eard him say, ‘He's dead.' And I 'eard him say, ‘You're his heiress.' And I didn't 'ear no more, because it wasn't my business—and I shouldn't have stayed all these years with Miss Wimborough if I didn't know how to mind my own business and let other folk mind theirs.” She went on talking. There were words and there were sniffs, and sometimes there was a sob.

But Jim Mackenzie was not listening. He scarcely knew there was anything to listen to. He sat sunk down in his chair with an elbow on the arm of it and the hand across his eyes. Amelia's plaintive voice went by him, and her many words. He had gone into the secret place which belonged to Laura. It was a place in which he had always found her waiting for him. It was lighted by her eyes and sweetened by her smile. It was romance, and home, and his very heart. When he had waited for death in the Bolshevist prison, he had been able to go into this secret place and find Laura there. He was in it now—and it was empty. It was more dreadful than if Laura had been dead; because if she had been dead, he would still have been able to find her there. She was not dead—she had never been alive. It was all a cheat and a lie. There wasn't any Laura.

He got up out of his chair and walked past Amelia, and so out of the flat. He walked with a most careful steadiness; he even remembered to shut the door. It closed quite gently. There wasn't any Laura. He had shut the door upon the place where she had ceased to be.

CHAPTER VIII

Laura did not know how long she had been ill. All the familiar divisions of time had vanished. There was a darkened room, and sometimes a shaded light, and sometimes a cold streak of daylight at the edge of a blind. Sometimes there was a whispering in the room, and sometimes there was a voice that wearied her until she opened her lips and drank what she was told to drink. She did not want to eat, or to drink, or to open her eyes; she wanted to be let alone; she wanted to sink deeper and deeper into the weakness and lethargy in which she was drowning, until they closed over her and blotted her out. Instead, they began to recede, and as they receded, it came to her to wonder where she was. There was more light in the room, but it showed her nothing that she had ever seen before—nothing, and no one. She was in a strange place, and served by strangers. This latter fact was most comforting.

The room had drab walls, but when the light fell on them, you could see that they were not really drab, but covered with a close pattern of little flowers in dingy shades of mauve, and pink, and blue, and green, and yellow. The effect ought to have been gay, but it wasn't; the colours all ran together in a fog. The other things in the room fitted in very well with the paper. The windows had dark green blinds and faded crimson curtains that were not meant to draw; they were just strips of stuff with an edging of woolly balls. There was one strip across the top of each window, and one on either side of it, and the strips at the sides were looped back with crimson cords. There were two windows, and between them a bow-fronted mahogany chest of drawers. Laura's milk, and Laura's Benger, and Laura's beef-tea stood on the top of this chest, and over it there was a framed engraving of Queen Victoria's marriage, with lots and lots of beautiful bridesmaids in flowery wreaths, bare shoulders, and billowing skirts.

On the opposite side of the room there was a gloomy wardrobe and a very large double wash-stand with a marble top, and china patterned with roses as big as peonies and of a most insistent pink.

For a long time Laura couldn't see the carpet. As she came up out of the waters of lethargy, she thought about it vaguely and wondered what it was like. The first time she really saw it, she received a most curious shock. It wasn't at all the sort of carpet that you would expect to find in that sort of room. It had been woven in Persia a very long time ago, and it made Laura think of princesses and bulbuls, and fountains and enchanters, and the scent of attar of roses. It was very old and very much worn, but it had been beautiful, and the ghost of its beauty haunted it. It was as much out of place amongst repp curtains and ball-fringe and brightly patterned china as Laura herself.

The bed in which Laura lay stood facing the wardrobe, with the windows on its right. On the left of the bed was a single upright chair with a cane seat, and a screen covered with crimson repp to match the curtains. Behind the screen was the door, and through the door there came and went the three people who made up Laura's world. Only two of them really counted; for the third was the wooden-faced tow-headed girl who did the room, tearing at the old carpet with a merciless broom and flapping dust off the furniture with a bright yellow duster. She wore a dirty cap and a washed-out print dress that was too tight for her and had split under the arms. She made a surprising amount of noise at the wash-stand without actually breaking anything. She didn't count.

The people who counted were the woman and the man.

The woman was a deft and competent nurse, which was surprising, because she looked more like a
Vogue
fashion-plate—a rather dashed and not quite up to date one, but still a fashion-plate. Her shiny black hair fitted her head like a cap; her eyebrows, plucked to a single line, made a queer pointed arch over very brilliant black eyes. She used a greenish face-powder, an orange lipstick, and some out of the way kind of scent. As Laura got better, the woman puzzled her. She wore such odd clothes—
outré
, elegant garments that had seen better days. Her stockings were sometimes laddered but always silk, and her slender elegant feet trod the floor of Laura's sick-room in rubbed satin slippers. She spoke English, but not the English of an Englishwoman. She made no mistakes, and she had no accent, yet from the very beginning Laura knew that she wasn't English. Laura called her “Nurse,” and came to have a secret appreciation of the incongruity.

The man, Laura supposed to be a doctor. He was young, with fair hair inclining to be red, sharp features, and a trick of studying his nails. He came twice a day, looked at her, felt her pulse, conversed in a low voice with the woman, and went away again. What they said trickled past Laura's ears as running sound. She never heard a word she knew; there was just a sound of speech.

Laura began to grow stronger. The tide had turned, and every day it rose a little higher. She was not unhappy. Everything that had happened to her seemed a long way off and a long time ago. Between her and the twenty-five years of her life there was a great gulf fixed. She had passed over the gulf, and all the bridges behind her were broken down. The things that she had done, and said, and thought on the other side of the gulf she would never think, or do, or say again. She had no part in them any more for ever. They were gone; the bridges were broken down. Presently she would begin to live through another twenty-five years. The events, the thoughts, and the feelings which belonged to this new part of her life were hidden from her. She was content that they should be hidden. She did not want to look back, and she did not want to look forward. She stayed in a kind of truce of God—a truce which compelled the complete cessation of thought and feeling. Laura's mind was quiet and quite clear. She knew that she had been torn by feeling, ravaged almost to the point of death. She knew that she would feel again, and that for her, feeling and suffering would go hand in hand; but during this time of illness and convalescence there was a truce in which she neither felt nor suffered.

She began to be propped up in bed. Everything looked different. She could see the carpet, and she could see a great bare bough not a yard away from the left-hand window. On a windy day thin fingering twigs reached towards the pane. Laura used to watch them and wait to hear whether they would tap against it or, just falling short, strain creaking in the wind. She could watch a thing like that for hours—clouds piling up against a shower; or mist gathering, thickening, coming up to the windows and blocking them. She liked to wake in the night and see a star like a bright thought in the black waste places of the sky. She liked to see the cloudwrack hurrying past before the wind.

She never saw Basil Stevens, and no one mentioned his name.