Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)

by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  No, there was no getting out of it. He must go to Mariani’s. He was sufficiently master of himself to know that no harm could come of that. His absolute love for his wife shielded him from all danger. The very thought of infidelity nauseated him. And then, as the idea became more familiar to him, other emotions succeeded that of anger. There was an audacity about his old flame, a spirit and devilment, which appealed to his sporting instincts. Besides, it was complimentary to him, and flattering to his masculine vanity, that she should not give him up without a struggle. Merely as a friend it would not be disagreeable to see her again. Before he had reached Clapham Junction his anger had departed, and by the time that he arrived at Waterloo he was surprised to find himself looking forward to the interview.

  Mariani’s is a quiet restaurant, famous for its lachryma christi spumante, and situated in the network of sombre streets between Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The fact of its being in a by-street was not unfavourable to its particular class of business. Its customers were very free from the modern vice of self-advertisement, and would even take some trouble to avoid publicity. Nor were they gregarious or luxurious in their tastes. A small, simple apartment was usually more to their taste than a crowded salon, and they were even prepared to pay a higher sum for it.

  It was five minutes to four when Frank arrived, and the lady had not yet appeared. He stood near the door and waited. Presently a hansom rattled into the narrow street, and there she sat framed in its concavity. A pretty woman never looks prettier than in a hansom, with the shadows behind to give their Rembrandt effect to the face in front. She raised a yellow kid hand, and flashed a smile at him.

  ‘Just the same as ever,’ said she, as he handed her down.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘So glad you think so. I am afraid I can’t quite agree with you. Thirty-four yesterday. It’s simply awful. Thank you, I have some change. All right, cabby. Well, have you got a room?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you’ll come?’

  ‘Oh yes, I should like to have a chat.’

  The clean-shaven, round-faced manager, a man of suave voice and diplomatic manner, was standing in the passage. His strange life was spent in standing in the passage. He remembered the pair at once, and smiled paternally.

  ‘Not seen you for some time, sir!’

  ‘No, I have been engaged.’

  ‘Married,’ said the lady.

  ‘Dear me!’ said the proprietor. ‘Tea, sir?’

  ‘And muffins. You used to like the muffins.’

  ‘Oh yes, muffins by all means.’

  ‘Number ten,’ said the proprietor, and a waiter showed them upstairs. ‘All meals nine shillings each,’ he whispered, as Frank passed him at the door. He was a new waiter, and so mistook every one for a new customer, which is an error which runs through life.

  It was a dingy little room with a round table covered by a soiled cloth in the middle. Two windows, discreetly blinded, let in a dim London light. An armchair stood at each side of the empty fireplace, and an uncomfortable, old-fashioned, horsehair sofa lined the opposite wall. There were pink vases upon the mantelpiece, and a portrait of Garibaldi above it.

  The lady sat down and took off her gloves. Frank stood by the window and smoked a cigarette. The waiter rattled and banged and jingled with the final effect of producing a tea-tray and a hot-water dish. ‘You’ll ring if you want me, sir,’ said he, and shut the door with ostentatious completeness.

  ‘Now we can talk,’ said Frank, throwing his cigarette into the fireplace. ‘That waiter was getting on my nerves.’

  ‘I say, I hope you’re not angry.’

  ‘What at?’

  ‘Well, my saying I should come down to Woking, and all that.’

  ‘I should have been angry if I thought you had meant it.’

  ‘Oh, I meant it right enough.’

  ‘But with what object?’

  ‘Just to get level with you, Frankie, if you threw me over too completely. Hang it all, she has three hundred and sixty-five days in the year! Am I to be grudged a single hour?’

  ‘Well, Violet, we won’t quarrel about it. You see I came all right. Pull up your chair and have some tea.’

  ‘You haven’t even looked at me yet. I won’t take any tea until you do.’

  She stood up in front of him, and pushed up her veil. It was a face and a figure worth looking at. Hazel eyes, dark chestnut hair, a warm flush of pink in her cheeks, the features and outline of an old Grecian goddess, but with more of Juno than of Venus, for she might perhaps err a little upon the side of opulence. There was a challenge and defiance dancing in those dark devil-may-care eyes of hers which might have roused a more cold-blooded man than her companion. Her dress was simple and dark, but admirably cut. She was clever enough to know that a pretty woman should concentrate attention upon herself, and a plain one divert it to her adornments.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘By Jove, Violet, you look splendid.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The muffins are getting cold.’

  ‘Frankie, what is the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing is the matter.’

  ‘Well?’

  She put out her two hands and took hold of his. That well-remembered sweet, subtle scent of hers rose to his nostrils. There is nothing more insidious than a scent which carries suggestions and associations. ‘Frankie, you have not kissed me yet.’

  She turned her smiling face upwards and sideways, and for an instant he leaned forward towards it. But he had himself in hand again in a moment. It gave him confidence to find how quickly and completely he could do it. With a laugh, still holding her two hands, he pushed her back into the chair by the table.

  ‘There’s a good girl!’ said he. ‘Now we’ll have some tea, and I’ll give you a small lecture while we do so.’

  ‘You are a nice one to give lectures.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no such preacher as a converted sinner.’

  ‘You really are converted then?’

  ‘Rather. Two lumps, if I remember right. You ought to do this, not I. No milk, and very strong - how you keep your complexion I can’t imagine. But you do keep it; my word, you do! Now please don’t look so crossly at me.’

  Her flushed cheeks and resentful eyes had drawn forth the remonstrance.

  ‘You are changed,’ she said, with surprise as well as anger in her voice.

  ‘Why, of course I am. I am married.’

  ‘For that matter Charlie Scott is married.’

  ‘Don’t give Charlie Scott away.’

  ‘I think I give myself away. So you have lost all your love for me. I thought it was to last for ever.’

  ‘Now, do be sensible, Violet.’

  ‘Sensible! How I loathe that word! A man only uses it when he is going to do something cold-blooded and mean. It is always the beginning of the end.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to be my own Frankie - just the same as before. Ah do, Franck - don’t leave me! You know I would give any of them up for you. And you have a good influence over me - you have really! You call’t think how hard I am with other people. Ask Charlie Scott. He will tell you. I’ve been so different since I have lost sight of you. Now, Frankie, don’t be horrid to me! Kiss and be nice!’ Again her soft warm hand was upon his, and the faint sweet smell of violets went to his blood like wine. He jumped up, lit another cigarette, and paced about the room.

  ‘You shan’t have a cigarette, Frankie.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you said once it helped you to control yourself. I don’t want you to control yourself. I want you to feel as I feel.’

  ‘Do sit down, like a good girl!’

  ‘Cigarette out!’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Violet!’

  ‘Come, out with it, sir.’

  ‘No, no, leave it alone!’

  She had snatched it from his lips and thrown it into the grate.

  ‘What is the us
e of that? I have a case full.’

  ‘They shall all follow the first.’

  ‘Well, then, I won’t smoke.’

  ‘I’ll see that you don’t.’

  ‘Well, what the better are you for that?’

  ‘Now, be nice.’

  ‘Go back to your chair and have some more tea.’

  ‘Oh, bother the tea!’

  ‘Well, I won’t speak to you unless you sit down and behave yourself.’

  ‘There now! Speak away.’

  ‘Look here, dear Violet, you must not talk about this any more. Some things are possible and some are impossible. This is absolutely, finally impossible. We can never go back upon the past. It is finished and done with.’

  ‘Then what did you come here for?’

  ‘To bid you good-bye.’

  ‘A Platonic good-bye.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In a private room at Mariani’s.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She laughed bitterly.

  ‘You were always a little mad, Frankie.’

  He leaned earnestly over the table.

  ‘Look here, Violet, the chances are that we shall never meet again.’

  ‘It takes two to say that.’

  ‘Well, I mean that after to-day I should not meet you again. If you were not quite what you are it would be easier. But as it is I find it a little too much of a test. No, don’t mistake me or think that I am weakening. That is impossible. But all the same I don’t want to go through it again.’

  ‘So sorry if I have upset you.’

  He disregarded her irony.

  ‘We have been very good friends, Violet. Why should we part as enemies?’

  ‘Why should we part at all?’

  ‘We won’t go back over that. Now do please look facts in the face and help me to do the right thing, for it would be so much easier if you would help me. If you were a very good and kind girl you would shake my hand, like any other old pal, and wish me joy of my marriage. You know that I should do so if I knew that you were going to be married.’

  But the lady was not to be so easily appeased. She took her tea in silence or answered his remarks with monosyllables, while the occasional flash of her dark eyes as she raised them was like the distant lightning which heralds the storm. Suddenly, with a swift rustle of skirts, she was between the door and his chair.

  ‘Now, Frankie, we have had about enough of this nonsense,’ said she. ‘Don’t imagine that you are going to get out of this thing so easily. I’ve got you, and I’ll keep you.’

  He faced round in his chair and looked helplessly at her with a hand upon each knee.

  ‘O Lord! Don’t begin it all over again,’ said he.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she answered with an angry laugh. ‘I’ll try another line this time, Master Frank. I’m not the sort of woman who lets a thing go easily when once I have set my heart upon it. I won’t try coaxing any longer - ‘

  ‘So glad,’ he murmured.

  ‘You may say what you like, but you can’t do it, my boy. I knew you before she did, and I’ll keep you, or else I’ll make such a row that you will be sorry that you ever put my back up. It’s all very fine to sit there and preach, but it won’t do, Frankie. You can’t slip out of things as easily as all that.’

  ‘Why should you turn nasty like this, Violet? What do you think you will gain by it?’

  ‘I mean to gain you. I like you, Frankie. I’m not sure that I don’t really love you - real, real love, you know. Any way, I don’t intend to let you go, and if you go against my will I give you my word that I shall make it pretty sultry for you down at Woking.’

  He stared moodily into his teacup.

  ‘Besides, what rot it all is!’ she continued, laying her hand upon his shoulder. ‘When did you begin to ride the high moral horse? You were just as cheerful as the rest of them when last I saw you. You speak as if a man ceased to live just because he is married. What has changed you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what has changed me,’ said he, looking up. ‘My wife has changed me.’

  ‘Oh, bother your wife!’

  A look which was new to her came over his face.

  ‘Stop that!’ said he sharply.

  ‘Oh, no harm! How has your wife made this wonderful change?’

  His mood softened as his thoughts flew back to Woking.

  ‘By her own goodness - the atmosphere that she makes round her. If you knew how wholesome she was, how delicate in her most intimate thoughts, how fresh and how sweet and how pure, you would understand that the thought of being false to her is horrible. When I think of her as she sat at breakfast this morning, so loving and so innocent - ‘

  He would have been more discreet if he had been less eloquent. The lady’s temper suddenly overflowed.

  ‘Innocent!’ she cried. ‘As innocent as I am.’

  He sprang to his feet with eyes which were more angry than her own.

  ‘Hold your tongue! How dare you talk against my wife! You are not fit to mention her name.’

  ‘I’ll go to Woking,’ she gasped.

  ‘You can go to the devil!’ said he, and rang the bell for his bill. She stared at him with a surprise which had eclipsed her anger, while she pulled on her gloves with little sharp twitches. This was a new Frank Crosse to her. As long as a woman gets on very well with a man, she is apt, at the back of her soul, to suspect him of weakness. It is only when she differs from him that she can see the other side, and it always comes as a surprise. She liked him better than ever for the revelation.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ she whispered, as they went down the stair. ‘I’ll go, as sure as fate.’

  He took no notice, but passed on down the street without a word of farewell. When he came to the turning he looked back. She was standing by the curb, with her proud head high in the air, while the manager screamed loudly upon a whistle. A cab swung round a distant corner. Crosse reached her before it did.

  ‘I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings,’ said he. ‘I spoke too roughly.’

  ‘Trying to coax me away from Woking,’ she sneered. ‘I’m coming all the same.’

  ‘That’s your affair,’ said he, as he handed her into the cab.

  CHAPTER XIX - DANGER

  Again the bright little dining-room, with the morning sun gleaming upon the high silver coffee pot and the electro-plated toast-rack - everything the same, down to the plates which Jemima had once again forgotten to warm. Maude, with the golden light playing upon the fringes of her curls, and throwing two little epaulettes of the daintiest pink across her shoulders, sat in silence, glancing across from time to time with interrogative eyes at her husband. He ate his breakfast moodily, for he was very ill at ease. There was a struggle within him, for his conscience was pulling him one way and his instincts the other. Instincts are a fine old conservative force, while conscience is a thing of yesterday, so it is usually safe to prophesy which will sway the other.

  The matter at issue was whether he should tell Maude about Violet Wright. If she were going to carry out her threat, then certainly it would be better to prepare her. But after all, his arguments of yesterday might prevail with her when her first impetuous fit of passion was over. Why should he go half-way to meet danger? If it came, nothing which he could say would ward it off. If it did not come, there was no need for saying anything. Conscience told him that it would be better to be perfectly straight with his wife. Instinct told him that though she would probably be sweet and sympathetic over it, yet it would rankle in her mind and poison her thoughts. And perhaps for once, Instinct may have been better than Conscience. Do not ask too many questions, you young wife! Do not be too free with your reminiscences, you young husband. There are things which can be forgiven, but never, never, can they be forgotten. That highest thing on earth, the heart of a loving woman, is too tender, too sacred, to be bruised by a wanton confidence. You are hers. She is yours. The future lies with both of you. It is wiser to leave the past alone. The couples wh
o boast that they have never had a secret are sometimes happy because the boast is sometimes untrue.

  ‘You won’t be late to-day, Frank,’ said Maude at last, peeping round the tall coffee-pot.

  ‘No, dear, I won’t.’

  ‘You were yesterday, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know I was.’

  ‘Were you kept at the office?’

  ‘No, I had tea with a friend.’

  ‘At his house?’

  ‘No, no, at a restaurant. Where has Jemima put my boots? I wonder if she has cleaned them. I can never tell by looking. Here they are. And my coat? Anything I can get you in town? Well, good-bye, dear, good-bye!’ Maude had never seen him make so hurried an exit.

  It is always a mystery to the City man how his wife puts in the seven hours a day of loneliness while the E.C. has claimed him for its own. She cannot explain it to him, for she can hardly explain it to herself. It is frittered away in a thousand little tasks, each trivial in itself, and yet making in their sum the difference between a well-ordered and a neglected household. Under the illustrious guidance of the omniscient Mrs. Beeton there is the usual routine to be gone through. The cook has to be seen, the larder examined, the remains cunningly transformed into new and attractive shapes, the dinner to be ordered (anything will do for lunch), and the new supplies to be got in. The husband accepts the excellent little dinner, the fried sole, the ris de veau en caisse, the lemon pudding, as if they had grown automatically out of the table-cloth. He knows nothing of the care, the judgment, the prevision which ring the changes with every season, which never relax and never mistake. He enjoys the fruits, but he ignores the work which raised them. And yet the work goes cheerfully and uncomplainingly on.

  Then when every preparation has been made for the dinner - that solemn climax of the British day, there is plenty for Maude to do. There is the white chiffon to be taken out of the neck of that dress, and the pink to be put in. Amateur dressmaking is always going on at The Lindens, and Frank has become more careful in his caresses since he found one evening that his wife had a row of pins between her lips - which is not a pleasant discovery to make with your own. Then there are drawers to be tidied, and silver to be cleaned, and the leaves of the gutta-percha plant to be washed, and the feather which was damped yesterday to be re-curled before the fire. That leaves just time before lunch to begin the new novel by glancing at the last two pages to see what did happen, and then the three minutes lunch of a lonely woman. So much for business, now for the more trying social duties. The pink dressing-gown is shed and a trim little walking dress - French grey cloth with white lisse in front and a grey zouave jacket - takes its place. Visiting strangers is not nearly so hard when you are pleased with your dress, and even entertaining becomes more easy when your costumière lives in Regent Street. On Tuesdays Maude is at home. Every other day she hunts through her plate of cards, and is overwhelmed by the sense of her rudeness towards her neighbours. But her task is never finished, though day after day she comes back jaded with her exertions. Strangers still call upon her - ‘hope it is not too late to do the right thing, and to welcome,’ etc., etc. - and they have to be re-visited. While she is visiting them, other cards appear upon her hall table, and so the foolish and tiresome convention continues to exhaust the time and the energies of its victim.