XV

Clive stood staring blankly at the mysterious words.

“A poor penitent!” “A story to tell!” What in Heaven’s name did it mean?

Who could have entered the room while Lord Culvers slept, and have left a message whose full import it seemed impossible to gauge?

For that the story which might “interest Lord Culvers” had reference to their one pressing cause of anxiety, he did not for a moment doubt.

All his wonderings, however, had to be swept on one side unanswered, to make way for the more practical question, What was to be done for the best?

And to this question there seemed but one answer: “Go yourself without a moment’s delay to No. 11, Rue Corot.”

He threw one glance at Lord Culvers as he slept. His face, fitfully lighted by the one candle and the patch of light thrown by the outside gas-lamp, showed painfully worn and aged. It did not need a second glance to convince Clive that to awaken him and explain matters to him would mean not only delay in setting forth, but impediment to progress afterwards if, in his present nerveless, spiritless condition, he should insist on accompanying him.

“And how thankful he will be to be spared as much exertion as possible!” thought the young man, as having folded and put away the sheet of notepaper, he softly closed the door behind him, and made his way down the stairs.

He did not stop to interrogate the waiters as to who had entered his sitting room during his absence.

“Where would be the use?” he said to himself, as he called a voiture, and desired the man to drive him to the Rue Corot; “the message was the thing, the messenger mattered but little.”

Oddly enough, with the thought of the messenger there came into his mind a recollection of the sweet, careworn face of which he had caught a passing glimpse under a Salvationist poke-bonnet.

With his curiosity intensified to burning point by his anxieties, the wings of the wind would have seemed a tardy means of conveyance to his destination; so it was scarcely surprising that the jolting voiture with its sorry horse taxed his patience to its utmost limits.

The Rue Corot lies in the unfashionable quarter of the Porte Saint Martin, in close vicinity to the Théâtre Beaumarchais. It is a narrow and somewhat noisy thoroughfare of tall seven-storied houses that are let and sublet to all sorts and conditions of men.

Clive dismissed his voiture at the corner of the street, and found No. 11 for himself. The door was open, no porter was in attendance, and the entrance seemed all in darkness.

It was not until he had his foot absolutely on the first of the narrow flight of stairs, that he realised the awkwardness of his position in coming to a house to enquire for a sick person without knowledge of either the name or the sex of the individual.

Halfway up the stairs he had to draw back to the wall to allow a young woman to pass. She appeared to be of the sempstress or shop-attendant class, and was smartly dressed, as if for a café chantant, or some other bourgeois place of entertainment.

Clive seized his opportunity, and, lifting his hat, asked the girl if she could tell him if anyone were ill in the house.

“Mais oui, M’sieu,” she replied; “c’est la pauvre Marie Schira qui va mourir.”

“Marie Schira.”

Clive repeated the name to himself once or twice, and then remembered that he had seen it frequently on Parisian playbills.

Now what in the name of all that was wonderful could such a person as Marie Schira know or have to tell about such an one as Ida Culvers?

He ventured to address another question or two to the girl, and elicited the fact that Marie Schira, while dressing in her tiny dressing-room behind the scenes at the Théâtre Beaumarchais, had set her gauze sleeve on fire with the candles on her table, and, before assistance could be procured, had been so severely burned that her life was despaired of. This had happened three nights ago.

It was an awkward place for a colloquy this, on a small landing in the middle of a flight of stairs lighted only by a dim oil-lamp on a very high bracket. Yet Clive hazarded one more question.

“On which floor were Mademoiselle Schira’s rooms? Was there anyone there who could receive him?”

The young girl eyed him dubiously for a moment, as if wondering over the motive for his questions concerning a person of whom he evidently knew next to nothing.

She, however, answered him politely that Marie Schira’s rooms were on the floor above the one on which they stood; that Marie had a sister who had been summoned from England, and who was in attendance on her night and day. This sister was a member of a religious order, and wore a big “chapeau comme ça”⁠—here the girl with her finger as nearly as possible described the shape of a coal-scuttle in the air. If she were out there would be sure to be someone else in attendance on Marie, for she was never left alone.

Then the girl wished him good evening, and passed down the stairs.

The “chapeau comme ça” at once conjured up to Clive’s fancy a vision of a Salvation Army poke-bonnet and a sweet, careworn face beneath it. He wondered if the bearer of the mysterious message stood revealed.

When he knocked at one of two doors that faced him on the second floor, the “someone else” left in charge of Marie Schira proved to be an elderly woman of most untidy appearance, with a yellow handkerchief tied over her head.

Her French was alarmingly bourgeois, and her sentences ran one into the other with such rapidity as to be almost unintelligible.

Clive could just make out that Marie was suffering agonies; that delirium had set in, and that it was not likely she would live till morning.

Would M’sieu enter and sit down in the salon? Marie’s sister, who had gone out early in the afternoon, would no doubt soon return and be able to answer any questions.

As she finished speaking the woman opened a door adjoining the one at which she stood, and showed Clive into a room dimly lighted by a single candle in a girandole over the mantelpiece.

He conjectured that a door on one side of the fireplace led into the room of the sufferer, for he presently heard the woman’s voice on the other side of it, together with what he fancied to be the creaking of an iron bedstead. It seemed as if the poor girl were tossing restlessly on her couch of pain, for presently he heard a faint moan, followed at an interval by a low, incoherent muttering.

It was a dreary waiting-time, this, that had its dreariness doubled and trebled by the fear lest even as he sat there the dying girl might pass away with the story it behoved him to hear untold.

His eye wandered round the dimly-lighted room. It was of the type one might expect as the half-salon, half-salle-à-manger of an actress not at the head of her profession.

A general air of gaudiness prevailed. There was plenty of gilding and bright colour in the furniture, but nowhere the touch of daintiness and order that proclaims the gentlewoman’s sitting-room.

Side by side with the gaudiness and untidiness, there lingered pathetic traces of the sad episode that was ending poor Marie’s career. A heavy cloak flung over the back of a chair, with its lining burned away, proclaimed the last service it had rendered to its owner. A pair of tiny, silver trimmed slippers, scorched and blackened, lay beside it on the floor. A portrait of Marie Schira, that of a beaming, brilliant brunette, smiled down from an opposite wall on these tokens of the last tragedy in which she had played her part; and on a table immediately beneath this portrait the light of the one candle found out the diamonds in a massive gold bracelet, which lay side by side with a broken fan and a withered bouquet of carnations.

A step on the outside landing made Clive turn his head towards the door, which he had left slightly ajar. Presently a man’s head, with a hat on, looked in, and as hurriedly withdrew. Clive had a good memory for faces, and, slight as was the glimpse he had of this one, it recalled that of one of the two men who had passed him on the previous day in the Rue Vervien, and whose remark respecting Captain Culvers he had overheard.

The fact struck him as strange. He might have doubted the evidence of his eyesight, if it had not, a moment after, been corroborated by a voice in the adjoining room, whose tones he at once identified with those of the man who had animadverted upon Captain Culvers’s liking for the “two B’s.”

“Who is that man in there?” were the words that Clive heard in French, that had an unmistakeable English flavour to it. “Has Mattie sent for him or what does he want?”

The woman’s reply did not reach Clive’s ear.

Then the opening and shutting of a door, and the sound of heavy footsteps descending the stairs, told him that the man had departed.

Half an hour, marked by the jarringly merry chimes of a showy ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, slowly told itself out, and then there came the sound of other and lighter footsteps on the outer landing, followed once more by the opening and shutting of the door of the adjoining room.

“Mary, my poor child!” were the words that reached Clive now; “let me raise your pillows. It is I⁠—your own Mattie back again.”

It was said in English, and in sweet, low tones, that might have been a lady’s.

Three minutes after, the door that divided the salon from the bedroom was softly opened, and Clive, looking up, saw standing, framed as it were in the doorway, the figure of a woman in a straight black gown, and with a black poke-bonnet on her head. Beneath the bonnet showed the sweet, careworn face of which he had caught a glimpse at the door of the hotel.

The woman closed the door behind her, and advanced into the dim room.

“Are you Lord Culvers, sir?” she asked. “It is very good of you to come. I suppose you saw my message on the writing-table? I did not like to disturb the gentleman asleep in the easy-chair, so I ventured to make use of the pen and ink I saw there.”

Clive explained that he was not Lord Culvers, but one of his most intimate friends, and that any story Marie Schira or her friends might have to tell, they might rely upon it would be faithfully and literally transmitted by him to Lord Culvers.

The woman kept her eyes fixed on him as he spoke.

“I fear it is too late, sir,” she said, sadly. “Since I went out this afternoon a sad change has set in, and I fear my poor sister will carry her story into the grave with her. Something has been preying on her mind for days past⁠—something in connection with the name of Culvers, which has been very often on her lips in her delirium. I would have gone to you sooner if it had been possible.”

“But have you no idea what has been preying on her mind?” asked Clive, eagerly. “Can you conjecture nothing, absolutely nothing, as to the story she wished to tell Lord Culvers?”

“I will tell you all I know, sir, with pleasure,” she answered. “But it is very little. Till I was fetched from my work in London the other day I had not seen Mary for years. I had prayed night and day that the lost sheep might be brought back to the Fold; but⁠—”

“Can you tell me who the man was who came in and went out about half an hour ago?” interrupted Clive, eager to snatch at any and every scattered thread that presented itself, in hopes that thus he might unravel something of the mystery which seemed to deepen at every turn.

“My brother John, sir, I suppose,” she answered. “There are three of us⁠—Mary, John, and Martha⁠—that’s me. Holy names these, sir; but, alas they have been but unworthily borne.”

It was between pious ejaculations so charged with deep feeling, that on her lips they became a prayer, that Clive gathered fragments of the family history of the bearers of these “holy names” that enabled him to understand something of the condition of things he was now called upon to face.

John had begun life as a stable help, from that he had risen to be a head groom. After that his career had become dubious. He had fallen into bad company, taken to gambling and betting, and for years his family had seen nothing of him.

Mary, a beautiful but frivolous girl, had run away from home, when little more than a child, to join a company of strolling players, and for years she, too, had been a stranger to her family and friends. Subsequently, John, in his somewhat vagrant career, had lighted upon her on the racecourse at Chantilly with her first name Frenchified, and the family patronymic of Skinner Italianised into Schira. Under this nom de guerre she had made something of a reputation as an actress of low comedy parts at an inferior theatre.

Of herself Miss Skinner said nothing. Her straight black gown, and poke-bonnet, seemed sufficiently to tell her story.

She ended her fragmentary scraps of her family history in a faltering voice, and with eyes that swam in tears.

“I pray for the two night and day, sir,” she said, clasping her hands together, “without ceasing, I beseech the Good Shepherd to⁠—”

“But,” interrupted Clive, anxious to bring her back to the point where his interest was keenest, “did your sister on your arrival here give you no hint as to what was on her mind?”

“I know up to a certain point, sir. When I first arrived here, although she was suffering terribly, there was no fever on her, and she could talk calmly at intervals. In her sleep she used to mutter a good deal about some diamonds which, she seemed to fear, might get her and someone else into trouble.”

Clive gave a great start.

“Diamonds!” he ejaculated.

“Yes, sir. So once, when she seemed suffering a little less, I asked her if she had anything in her possession that did not rightfully belong to her. At first she refused to answer; but when I spoke to her about the great judgement seat before which she must shortly stand, she grew frightened, and told me to fetch her a certain box out of one of her drawers. I did so, and found in it a magnificent diamond brooch that had had some of its stones removed. This she desired me to take to the church of the Carmelites on Sunday, and put into the offertory bag. It would then, she said, no doubt, get back to its rightful owner, for there had been advertisements out offering a large reward for it.”

“But did she give you no idea how the brooch came into her possession?” exclaimed Clive.

It was hard to be brought thus to the edge of an explanation, and then be left as much in the dark as ever.

“None whatever, sir, and she grew so rapidly worse that it became impossible to question her. In her delirium the name of Culvers was very often on her lips. I spoke to John about this, and told him also about the brooch, and what I had done with it. Upon this he was very angry; he called me a fool, and said that if I had given the brooch to him he would have returned it to Lord Culvers, and had five hundred pounds for his pains.”

“And does John know nothing of how your sister obtained the brooch?”

“He says not, sir, and flies into a passion whenever I mention it to him. And although my poor sister has again and again in her delirium muttered the name of Culvers, she has never again alluded to the brooch. Last night, as I watched beside her, she muttered once or twice, ‘send for him⁠—send for him.’ I could think of no one but Lord Culvers that she could wish sent for; so the first thing this morning I went to John, and asked him if he knew Lord Culvers’s address so that I might telegraph to him Mary’s wish to see him, for I could not tell what might lie behind it. John was rough, and refused me any information. One of John’s associates, however, a man who once or twice has been moved by the Lord to show me a kindness, followed me down the stairs from John’s rooms, and told me that Lord Culvers would be in Paris today, and most likely at the Hôtel Bristol in the afternoon.”

Mystery seemed increasing upon mystery.

“Who was that man? How on earth could he know anything of Lord Culvers’s movements?” exclaimed Clive.

“I don’t know, sir. His name is Johnson; off and on he is a good deal with John. I wish I could tell you more, sir. Mary seemed slightly better, and was sleeping quietly when I went out this afternoon, and I was hoping that she might have rallied enough to explain matters to you; but alas! while I was away a change set in, and I fear now that she will carry her secret into the grave with her.”

It was a long story. Clive had listened to it with the closest attention, summing up, meanwhile, in an undercurrent of thought, its many and diverse details, weighing them, as it were, in order to discover what bearing they might have on the main facts.

“I must see your brother,” he said, as she finished speaking, “and ask him a few questions. Give me his address, that is if you do not expect him back again here shortly.”

Miss Skinner shook her head.

“I may not see him for days, sir,” she answered, “unless I go to him, and then, most likely, I shall find him sound asleep, for he is up half the night and in bed half the day.”

Then she fetched pen and ink and wrote her brother’s address upon a slip of paper.

“I have done my best, sir,” she said, as she handed it to Clive and noted his dissatisfied expression of countenance. “I have felt all through that a great deal lies behind all this; but how to get at it I do not know.”

Clive needed no telling that a great deal lay behind the story he had just heard. Mystery seemed accumulating upon mystery; clouds seemed thickening, not lifting.

“I must go back to the sickroom now, sir,” she said, after waiting a moment for an answer. “My poor Mary may want me. And I must pray⁠—pray for the poor lost lamb to the very last. Will you care to wait here on the chance that a moment of consciousness may come to her, or will you go back?”

There could be but one answer to this from Clive: he would wait hours, days, if need were, on the faintest chance of a word being spoken by Marie Schira that might throw light on her possession of Ida’s diamonds.

There was, however, Lord Culvers to be thought of. So he borrowed pen and paper, and asked if a trusty messenger could be found.

Miss Skinner answered him that the watcher beside Marie’s couch, who was going off duty now for the night, might be trusted to carry a note for him.

Clive, therefore, sent by her a brief line to Lord Culvers, telling him not to expect him till he saw him, as he had been detained on a matter of importance.

A dreary night’s vigil he was to keep in that dim, silent room. The doctor came and the doctor went, saying that another six or eight hours would see the end of it, and telling Clive, as he passed through the outer room on his way downstairs, that, if he wanted to speak with Marie Schira, he might as well go home at once, for she would never again recover consciousness.

Nevertheless, Clive remained. After midnight outside noises died down and the silence deepened on the house within, a silence which, so far as he was concerned, was broken only by the merry chimes of the showy clock on the mantelpiece, the creaking of the bedstead in the adjoining room, and the moans of the poor sufferer.

And through it all⁠—running, so to speak, as a soft, sad accompaniment to those moans of pain⁠—went ceaselessly the prayers of the Sister kneeling beside the dying girl: “Spare her, good Lord! Have mercy upon her, a miserable sinner!”