Barnaby Part 37

There was no mistaking it. Barnaby was in earnest. For the second time Kilgour had a twinge, an uncomfortable recollection of a brown leather arm-chair in Wimpole Street and long white fingers handling one or two queer little scientific dodges that pried into hidden things.

Once he had had to go with a friend. It had turned him sick, that minute or two of waiting in dead silence to hear the verdict.... Had Barnaby been there? ... He shook off the unwelcome fancy. If he knew anything of that girl she would not let Barnaby go into a lions' den without her.

"Half an hour ago," he said. "With your cousin in attendance. I met them coming out of What's-his-name's,--that jeweller's shop in Bond Street."

"What?" said Barnaby. He looked like a man whose wits were staggering under a mortal blow. Then his mouth set hard, in a fighting line.

"Bond Street," he called up the trap to the driver, and the hansom dashed jingling on. Kilgour was left marvelling on the kerb.

"By Jove!" he said to himself, proceeding to cool his perturbation in the peaceable atmosphere of his club, and stoutly refusing, though troubled in mind, to draw the inevitable conclusion.

CHAPTER XIII

Susan hardly knew how she reached the dreary place that was her refuge.

Meeting Rackham had shaken her. An unaccountable restlessness took possession of her as she thought of him; she felt him pursuing her; she had an impulse to run and run until she was hidden from the penetrating intentness of his regard. In the shop whither she had fled she had tried to argue with herself, but it had been useless. The relief with which she had found herself for the moment free from him taught her too much.

She had glanced desperately backwards. He was not walking on with Kilgour.... What did she want; what excuse had she for staying till he was gone? She must buy something. Clothes for travelling;--was she not going to America?--and she had nothing, not even a handkerchief.

The suggestion steadied her. How soon could she sail? She must find out at once; must engage her pa.s.sage.--They had nothing but hats in here, but an a.s.sistant directed her to another shop upstairs.

Recklessly,--since the prices here were extravagant prices for one who had only a handful of sovereigns between her and want,--she made purchases. It seemed to quiet her silly agitation, to restore to her something of her despairing calm.

But when she issued into the street again panic ruled her. She could not breathe freely until she was far from this dangerous neighbourhood, until at last she was shut inside the gloomy house in a side street, that barred out imaginary pursuers with the ma.s.sive security of its blistered door.

But she must go out again; she must discover how quickly she could sail:--perhaps she was missing an opportunity.

The girl who had talked to her in the morning came in and brushed against her as she pa.s.sed in the dim hall.

"Oh, it's you!" she said, stopping. "How dark it is in the pa.s.sage! I wish they'd light the gas. How did you get on? I found something else of yours up there. It didn't look worth much, but it's no good leaving things about, and there isn't a key in your chest of drawers."

As she spoke she held out something.

"They've been talking about you," she went on, "saying things about you turning up at night without a bag or anything. They can't understand you calling yourself Miss and wearing a wedding ring. I told them it would be worse if you called yourself Mrs. and didn't.--You'll have to get some things, won't you?"

She looked inquisitively at Susan, who had sunk on to the hard wooden chair in the hall, unable to face the stairs. But the mysterious stranger was hardly attending to what she said, amounting as it did to a declaration that she had found a supporter. Lady Henrietta's unlucky brooch, that she had inadvertently taken with her, was just then a precious thing. She remembered how Barnaby had laughed at his mother, while she persisted in telling its history, and how she had vainly tried once or twice to throw it away, but had given up.

"I know it's bewitched," she had said.

"It is always bringing me small misfortunes, but I have an uncanny feeling that I mustn't part with it. Besides, I can't. It has fallen in the fire, and been left in a railway carriage, and had all kinds of mischances, but it has always come back to me. It's attached to me for ever and ever. I don't know what would break the spell."

Susan smiled a little as she gazed at that bit of dinted silver. Fate had made an end of the superst.i.tion. Surely she might keep it, valueless in itself, for the sake of the woman she would never see again. Its unluckiness did not matter....

"Yes," she said vaguely. "I must go and get some things."

What had the girl been saying? There was a kind of sympathy in her face.

"Would you come with me?" she asked, yielding to her instinctive need of companions.h.i.+p. She could not go out alone....

"Rather!" said the girl.

They set out, an ill-matched couple, flotsam that had drifted together, and would as casually drift apart. The Londoner led the way confidently, but surprised at Susan's first errand, the s.h.i.+pping office. It heightened her interest, and she listened closely to the stranger's eager inquiries. No, there was no room on the next boat sailing. She could have a berth in the following steamer if she liked, only three days later. But was there no boat to-morrow?--Oh, yes, but no cabin accommodation. The traveller did not care. She would go steerage.

"You're in a dreadful hurry to sail, aren't you?" said the Londoner, to whom the trip represented a tremendous voyage.

Yes, she was in a hurry.

"And you keep so close to me; you turn your head sometimes as if you thought we were followed. What are you afraid of?"

Susan tried to smile, but the truth was too near her lips.

"A man," she said nervously, with her thoughts on Rackham.

The other seemed to understand. She did not ask any more questions, but was kind and useful, advising her, helping her, reminding her that she must buy a trunk. Till they turned the last corner, and were within a few yards of the Rabbit Warren, as this old inhabitant called the house; then she hung back a little, glancing right and left.

"You're not quite yourself, are you?" she said, consideringly. Her eyes had the brightened gleam of one plunging alive into a serial tale, one of these in which lords and ladies behave strangely and the typewriting girl rules the tempest. As she put her key in the latch she looked round again. But there were no untoward appearances d.o.g.g.i.ng them in the distance. There was a disappointing emptiness in the street.

The gas was lit in the hall at last, accentuating its gloom. The rather dismal illumination fell on a mahogany table under the stair where stood a row of candlesticks, each bearing a different length of candle and a slip of paper.

Susan's ally paused to examine them, reading out the names scribbled on the slips. It was the custom for those who were to be out late to leave their candles in the hall, and the last one in, finding a solitary candlestick left downstairs, knew that it was her business to chain the door.

"Miss Shanklin, Miss Friend, Miss Mitch.e.l.l--" read out the inquisitor.

"Mitch.e.l.l is burnt down into the socket; she reads in bed. She'll set us on fire one night.--Miss Robinson--that's me, but I've changed my mind:--Miss Grahame--"

Susan made no sign. Then she remembered.--That was her name again.

"Oh, yes," she said, "is that mine?"

The other girl nodded to herself.

"Well," she said. "It's been brought down by mistake. Better take it up with you; they don't turn the gas off till ten."

She watched Susan go wearily up the long flights, and then ran swiftly along the pa.s.sage and called down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. The boy who opened the door to strangers and carried coals answered her call out of the black gulf of the kitchen stair;--his eyes glittering, like a demon invisible in the dark.

"What are you ladies wanting now?" he asked in an injured voice--"You can't have 'em!"

"Gerald," said the girl mysteriously, "come up. Higher;--higher! If anybody calls here asking for a lady, darkish, with grey eyes, and middling tall,--never mind what name he says--! Don't breathe a word of it, but fetch me."

"Doesn't sound like you," said Gerald, but grinned, diving backwards into his native gloom.

Miss Robinson turned from the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs and began her long journey to the top of the house. No, wild horses would not drag her out that night. Did they always write down a traveller's address at the s.h.i.+pping office? Supposing it were her lot to draw two sundered hearts together?

The Rabbit Warren was a depressing house. As the day waned its dreariness increased; it grew fuller of tired women whose search for work had been useless, and who came trudging in with the twilight to join the rest who had been listening all day with straining ears for the postman, while they studied ceaselessly the advertis.e.m.e.nt sheets in the daily paper.

It was chiefly the incapable, the discouraged, those who had fallen out of the ranks through ill health, or were losing their hold because they were not any longer young, who drifted into this harbour. They were all in a manner waifs, and they had nothing to hope for but that they might die in harness.

Susan sat with her cheek on her hand, withdrawn a little, in the dingy sitting room. She was unconscious of the whispering interest she excited; she did not hear the subdued discussion that raged around her.