XIII

Mrs. Greta Gurden seldom permitted herself the luxury of brooding upon her injuries. She was no philosopher, and it was sheer necessity which made her disregard the irritations, petty and great, of life, and concentrate her mind upon pleasant things. But she found herself helpless with a leg that throbbed and throbbed, and the memory of Anita Bellini’s insolence rankled as sorely. She was propped up in bed with a heap of papers on her lap, and though there was no immediate need for the work she had taken in hand, and, in truth, sought it only as a relief from boredom, she permitted herself the illusion that she was the victim of a taskmistress who was not satisfied with her normal and heavy exactions, but must needs add to her offence this tormentation of a sick woman.

Old letters, old bills, a receipt or two, a few ancient telegrams about nothing in particular, dozens of letters dealing earnestly with forgotten accounts, an interminable correspondence between Anita and a house agent⁠—she turned the pages one by one, sorting the sheep from the goats.

Presently she came to an old letter typewritten on plain paper⁠—Anita, like her dependent, used a small portable typewriter for years. The letter was unfinished; halfway through the Princess had changed her mind, or probably substituted this for another, and had tossed the rejected scrap aside, to be gathered to the heap which had accumulated and which was now being sorted.

She read the letter through as far as it went; she was sourly amused. Anita must have been in a careless mood when she threw this away. The old instinct of service told her that it ought to be destroyed at once; she gripped the paper to tear it, thought better of her impulse, and began to consider certain possibilities. To say that she felt bitterly against Anita Bellini at that moment would be to grade her emotion charitably. She was “getting old,” was she? She had lost her looks and was unlikely to get a job in the chorus. Anita had taken it for granted that she would be forever satisfied with the humiliating position of companion. Capri was to be a kind of bonus.

The Princess was a woman of temperament, sometimes feverishly elated, sometimes savagely depressed. Yet in all her permutations of mood, she had been consistently contemptuous of her hireling. Greta grew red and hot and cold at the memory of the insults which this woman had heaped upon her, and the hand that held the letter shook. And then an idea began to take shape in her mind; it was half formed when she called Mrs. Hobbs.

“Get my address book.”

She was a systematic woman, and entered without fail the location even of chance acquaintances who might be of no value to her. She ran her thumb down the index till it stopped at D; the last entry on the crowded page was “Peter Dawlish.”

“Give me an envelope, please, and my fountain pen; and take this letter to the post⁠—no, bring my little typewriter.”

The obedient Mrs. Hobbs carried the tiny machine, which was a replica of Anita’s, and laid it on the invalid’s lap. Greta inserted the envelope, typed the address, and while the instrument was being removed, inserted the torn sheet of paper and licked down the flap of the envelope.

“Go to the General Post Office⁠—you’d better take a bus each way⁠—and post this. If anybody asks you whether you’ve posted a letter for me, you’re to say no.”

It was not the first time Mrs. Hobbs had received similar instructions.

The houses in Severall Street are not equipped with letter-boxes, and postmen have learnt by experience that inserting letters under doors which are backed by coarse fibre mats is a difficult and sometimes an impossible proposition.

Peter heard the heavy rat-tat of the postman, and, going downstairs, opened the door.

“Dawlish?” asked the postman.

“That is my name,” said Peter, in surprise. He took the letter and closed the door. Had he followed the practice of Severall Street and its people, which is never to go to the door without making a scrutiny up and down the street, he could not have failed to see Leslie on her way home.

His first thought was that it was a letter from her, but when he brought it to the light of his room, he saw that it was typewritten and had been posted in the City. He opened the envelope and took out a sheet of typewriting paper. It was discoloured, and one corner had been torn off. He looked at the date and had a mild shock.

“July 7th, 1916.”

1916! And yet (as he saw) it had been posted that afternoon. There were just three or four lines, the last of which stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence. Only dimly did he comprehend the significance of the fragment.

“Dear Jane,

“Druze has found a very good home for your son in a middle-class family. There are no other children. He will be well cared for. And⁠—”

Scribbled below in pencil, and almost indecipherable, were the words: “Martha’s servant.”

He must have read the letter a dozen times before he understood.

“Jane’s son⁠—Jane’s little son.” He came to his feet slowly, his limbs trembling, the paper swimming before his eyes.

Jane’s son⁠—his son! The consciousness of fatherhood momentarily overwhelmed him. Jane had had a child. He had never dreamt⁠—somewhere in the world was a little boy, fatherless⁠—his little boy! He grew hot at the thought. And then, in a frenzy of impatience, he took up his coat, struggled into it, and, not stopping to extinguish the lamp, ran down the stairs and out of the house.

The bus that carried him to Piccadilly seemed to crawl. He got down at a traffic block at Bond Street, half walked, half ran, into Berkeley Street, and came at last to the dark portals of Lady Raytham’s house. It was past ten. She might be out. But he would wait for her⁠—all night if necessary. He hated her at that moment, and there was jealousy behind the hate. He hated her for not telling him, for excluding him from the knowledge and inspiration of their gift. Perhaps he was being brought up as Raytham’s child, to call him “father.” Peter grew insanely furious at the thought.

To the new butler who opened the door all callers were as yet strange; Peter seemed no stranger than others, and he was met civilly.

“What name shall I tell her ladyship?” he asked.

“Mr. Peter,” said Peter, after thought.

He was shown into the small drawing-room, and paced up and down like a caged animal until he heard the door open and, turning, met face to face, for the first time in eight years, the woman of The Adventure.

She was pale but very calm and sure of herself as she closed the door behind her. For a while they stood, looking at one another. She had matured, grown more beautiful; the old graceful carriage was unchanged; the enticing lines of her had come to a greater perfection. He had grown older, she thought; was much more of a man than when she had known him before. His face had formed; resolution and strength and a balance that had been missing; in his eyes she read something that chilled her.

“You wish to see me⁠—Peter?” she asked.

He nodded.

He was trembling; feared to speak lest his voice betrayed him.

“What is it you wish to see me about?”

“I want my child.” His voice was low; the words seemed to choke him, so that he ended on a cough.

“You want⁠—your child?”

She shook her head so slightly that if he had not been watching her closely the gesture would have escaped him.

“Will you tell me what you mean?”

She was fencing. She wanted time to take all this in. He had shocked her very badly.

“Why pretend, Jane? You know what I want, and what I mean. Where is our child?”

She passed her hand wearily across her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. She made no attempt to evade the question, accepted his knowledge, startling as it was. “I don’t know. Is it worth while knowing? He is very happy. I did what was best, Peter. I told nobody. When I went to Reno⁠—”

“You have divorced me?”

She did not answer. A lie trembled on her lips and was instantly rejected impatiently.

“No, I have not divorced you,” she said. “They would not grant me a divorce because you had not been served with the papers or something of the sort. I don’t understand the law very well. I was a fool, of course.”

Another intense silence.

“That puts me in your hand, doesn’t it?” she went on. “Though I don’t imagine you will⁠—”

He stopped her with an impatient gesture.

“I’m not thinking of you and I’m not thinking of me,” he said. “I am thinking of the boy. Jane, you horrify me! You don’t know where your own child⁠—! Good God! I thought he might not be here, but that you should tell me so quietly and calmly that you’ve lost track of him⁠—as if he were a⁠—”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. Honestly, Peter, I don’t know. I was terrified when I knew he was coming. I just dimly remember seeing the little thing, and then they took him away⁠—we had arranged it beforehand.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“Anita was very good to me, and so was Druze. It was only then I discovered that Druze was a woman. I had to pay for it afterwards⁠—Druze’s knowledge, I mean. I don’t really remember the child⁠—only just that vague, queer impression like the elusive memory of a dream. Peter, be a little pitiful. I was in a terrible condition; my father was writing asking me to make up my mind about Raytham. You knew he wanted to marry me? Raytham had lent father a lot of money, and I was afraid, terribly afraid, of what would happen if father came to learn⁠—about the marriage and everything. He knew I’d been to America, of course; I was supposed to have taken an engagement to sing⁠—you remember that, don’t you, Peter? But he didn’t know I’d returned, or what had become of me. I had to send all my letters to a friend in New York to be posted back to him.”

She stopped.

“Where is the child? That is all I want to know.”

She shook her head.

“Druze knew. She told me something just before she went out⁠—she had been drinking, Peter. She told me a ghastly thing.” Her voice broke. “Terrible, terrible!” She covered her eyes again, and he waited, his heart a heavy stone.

“This ghastly thing⁠—what was it?” he said at last.

“She said”⁠—this needed courage to think; it was a torture to say⁠—“that even she didn’t know where the child was; that she had handed the boy to the first person who, for a consideration, offered to adopt it; and all the time I had been comforting myself with the thought that⁠—that he at least was being brought up happily, however much a blackguard his foster-father was.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“I’ve been paying money, big sums of money,” she said at last, “as I supposed to the man who had adopted him, and who, learning of my marriage to Raytham, had for years blackmailed me. Too late I discovered that this blackmailer was mythical, that it was Druze who was robbing me all the time.”

Peter drew a deep breath.

“How awful! How perfectly awful!” he whispered. “Just disappeared into the mass⁠—and you allowed him to go. I can’t understand that. I thought that women⁠—”

She stopped him with a weary gesture.

“I don’t understand women either. I wish I’d kept him and had faced all the trouble that would have followed. You know about it for the first time, Peter, and you have the support of your righteousness. It has been a bad dream for me⁠—an eight-year-long discomfort. And now it is a nightmare.” She pressed her throbbing temples. “I can’t sleep for thinking of him. That little mite of a boy⁠—my boy and yours⁠—perhaps being starved, or dead perhaps, or suffering.”

She screwed her eyes tight as though to shut out a horrible vision.

“Does Bellini know?” He was like ice now.

“Anita?” She looked at him in surprise. “No; why should she? You hate Anita, of course. I’m not really⁠—fond of her. She’s difficult. But she was very helpful to me, Peter.”

He looked at her steadily.

“Who was Martha?”

He saw from her frown that she did not understand him.

“Do you know a woman called Martha?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t remember anybody of that name. Why?”

“Martha’s servant had the child. Bellini knows. And what Bellini knows, I will know.”

He made as though to leave the room, but she barred the way.

“Peter, will you forgive me? I’ve been a fool⁠—a wicked fool, Peter. I’d gladly change places with my own kitchen-maid to undo all the past. You loathe me, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t loathe you,” he said quietly. “I’m awfully sorry for you in a way; but I’m disappointed in you too, Jane. You’ve been a weakling.”

“Have I? I suppose I have.” She saw him, a blurred figure, through a mist of tears. “I suppose I have. And one pays dearer for weakness than for wickedness, I think. Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find the child.”

She threw out her arms in a gesture of despair.

“Find the child! If only you could! Peter, if you could bring him to me⁠—”

“You!” He laughed harshly. “The child belongs to me! To me⁠—do you hear? You had him and lost him. If I find him I will keep him.”

He brushed past her, threw open the door, and stalked through the hall into the night.

He had still the greater part of the twenty pounds left that Leslie had given to him, and at this moment of crisis he must spend; he could not afford to economize. A taxi-driver accepted with some reluctance his order to drive to Wimbledon Common. It was a long journey, and he had time to put in order the confusion of his mind.

Anita Bellini knew; he was confident of that. And if she knew, he should know. Her residence was a mansion standing in two acres of ground on the fashionable side of Wimbledon Common; a big, somewhat old-fashioned house, garnished with the square towers and big Gothic turrets which were the joy of the Victorian architects. It had something of a medieval appearance, and seemed to be a veritable castle of despair when he ordered the cab to wait. The cautious man demanded something on account, and wisely, as it proved.

He strode up the gravelled drive. No light showed in any window; even the transom above the massive front door was lifeless. He pulled the bell and the faint clang of it came back to him. After a long time he heard the rattle of chains, the shooting back of a bolt, and a faint light was reflected behind the fanlight. The door was opened a few inches by a very old man with dirty white hair and wearing the slovenly uniform of a footman. Peter saw that the longer chain was still fastened to the door, and that the aperture was not big enough to squeeze through.

“You’re Simms, aren’t you?” He remembered the ancient. “I want to see the Princess.”

The old man made the grimace that Peter remembered.

“You can’t see the Princess; she’s not at home,” he said, in a loud, cracked voice.

“Tell her Peter Dawlish wishes to see her, and if she will not let me in she can come to the door,” he said.

He was not prepared to have the door slammed in his face, yet that was what happened. He waited for five minutes, and then he heard the lock turn. This time he saw Anita. She wore a long green dress, smothered as usual with beading which glittered in the dim hall light.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to speak to you privately.”

“This is as private an interview as you’ll get,” she said coolly.

The reflection of the hall light on her monocle produced an eerie illusion. It was as though she was glaring at him with one malignant, golden eye.

“What do you want?” she repeated. “If it’s money, you can’t have it. This is not a charitable institution or a home for convicts.”

In the pause that followed he made a mental calculation as to the strength of the chain that held him from admission. He might at a pinch break it and force an entrance⁠—he was prepared to go to any mad lengths to get the information he sought.

“Where is my child?” he asked.

Not a muscle of the big face moved.

“I didn’t know you’d been raising a family. Surely I’m the last person in the world to be acquainted with your vicarious progeny.”

“Where is Jane’s child? Perhaps you’ll understand that.”

She had been taken aback by the first question, he was sure. The length of time that elapsed before she answered betrayed her.

“So you know that, do you? The child? I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I have something better to do than to keep track of the indiscretions of my friends, and certainly I do not concern myself with the bastards of convicted forgers.”

“You lie,” said Peter quietly. “You know I was married to Jane.”

Anita Bellini chuckled.

“The marriage was illegal⁠—didn’t you know that? You didn’t comply with certain formalities⁠—”

“I have seen Jane tonight. She has no doubt about its legality. Where is my son?”

“Where you will never find him.” All the pent-up malignity of the woman suddenly took expression. Her face, never attractive, was contorted by rage to an appearance that was almost ludicrous. “Where you will never find him! In the slime and the mud where his father belongs⁠—dead, I hope!”

A sudden insane fury possessed him. He was scarcely human, saw the hateful face of this woman through a redness, and flung himself against the door. It jerked back with a crash and suddenly flew open. The chain was broken.

To him she was no longer a woman, but some obscene devil that had taken human shape. He wanted to kill her, to grip that big throat and choke the life out of her. As the chain broke, she stepped back, and he found himself looking into the black muzzle of a pistol.

“Don’t move,” she said gratingly. “Don’t move, Peter Dawlish. I am justified in shooting you in defence of my life.”

She did not see his hand move. The pistol was struck down from her grip and fell with a clatter on the floor, and, in his mad anger, with murder in his heart, his hand was outflung. Then somebody called him.

“Peter!”

At the sound of the voice his arm dropped, paralyzed with amazement. A woman was in the hall; she had come out of a room at the foot of the broad stairway; a woman in black silk, white-haired, hard-faced⁠—it was his mother!

“Come in here.”

She pointed to the open door of the room, and he walked past her without another glance at Anita Bellini⁠—shrinking back against the wall, frightened for the first time in her life.

It was a small study furnished in the Oriental fashion; there was a great silken divan, and a shaded lantern hung from the ceiling. Something more modern he saw; a telephone on the tiny octagonal table. The receiver was off; he had interrupted her in the act of telephoning.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Mrs. Dawlish had assumed the old pontifical air that he knew so well and detested so much.

He was still shaking, but he was calmer.

“I presume you don’t need to be told⁠—you must have heard. I came to your friend⁠—”

“To the Princess Bellini,” interrupted the woman. “Yes?”

“⁠—to discover where was my child.”

“Really?” The grey eyebrows rose, “I was not aware that I was a grandmother.”

The old devil rose again in him.

“Then your hearing is affected,” he said harshly. “You know⁠—of course you know! The whole damned gang of you know! You know about Jane, you know about my marriage, you know about the child. Perhaps you know where he is.”

And then, to add to the fire of his fury, he saw her smile.

“You have always been a fool, Peter. I suppose you will be a fool to the end of your days,” she said. “You had better go back to your envelope addressing and forget there are such things in the world as children. I have been trying very hard to do the same for the past seven years.”

She was a surprising woman, for without warning, she came back to the offer she had made to him.

“You would be well advised to go to Canada or Australia, or any other place that takes your fancy,” she said, and went on in a conversational tone to discuss the advantages which might accrue.

He was puzzled. Then it occurred to him that she was talking to gain time⁠—for what? His back had been to the door, and now he edged round until it was under his view. But if Anita Bellini contemplated any treachery, there was no visible or audible evidence.

He heard the front door bell ring, and an exchange of voices in the hall, and then the door opened, and two men entered, and it was not necessary that he should be very experienced in such matters to realize that they were detectives. His mother’s narrative stopped automatically. Her white, skinny finger pointed to him.

“This man is Peter Dawlish⁠—an ex-convict!” she said. “I charge him with threatening to murder my friend, Princess Anita Bellini.”

A quarter of an hour after, the taxicab which Peter had employed to bring him to Wimbledon deposited him at the police station, and he was sitting, dazed and wrathful, behind the locked door of a police cell.