Shadows of Flames Part 135

"But, Belinda-- I really need to rest a moment!" protested Mrs. Horton.

"You can rest all the time you're eating your luncheon," replied her step-daughter. "Come along, Morry!"

Sophy thanked Heaven that she was not called upon to hear Morris's voice. He was evidently sulky about something. He made no reply. Mrs.

Horton grumbled a little, calling Belinda "selfish." Again Belinda laughed. Then the three went on up the narrow, twisting Rio.

Sophy, trembling all through, leaned there against the columns, with eyes closed. Round and round in her mind the old adage went humming: "_It never rains but it pours.... It never rains but it pours_...."

She remembered that Loring and Belinda had been married last May. She felt ashamed and sick for herself, for them, for life, for human nature, for the whole social scheme, for civilisation.... Everything seemed to her like a sickness in that moment. This life that the world crawled with was like the swarming of maggots in a cheese.... She hated herself--she hated the existing order of things. She understood the darkest throes of pessimists and cynics in that moment. And under it all her heart burnt fiercely with the supreme pang of the proud, chaste being, who has yielded to lesser loves before the one, great, real love has been revealed.

Sophy went back into the church and stayed there a long time. She felt faint and ill. She was grateful for the quiet darkness in which she could sit still without attracting attention. At last she went out into the street again. When she reached the Piazza, she took a gondola and returned to the Rio San Vio. She had forgotten that she had not lunched.

She looked so pale and strange that Rosa exclaimed when she saw her. She lay down on a sofa in the little sitting-room and let the kind soul bring her a cup of hot tea. This revived her a little, and by and by as she lay there she fell asleep. It was nearly six o'clock when she waked.

Her eyes and the back of her head ached dully; but she felt that she must refresh herself and change her morning gown before Lady Wychcote came back with Bobby. She bathed her face and eyes, put on a tea-gown, and returned to the drawing-room to wait for them. Taking up a book, she tried to read, but found that she could not command her attention. It occurred to her that she ought to write to Amaldi, but this also she found impossible. She could not write to him on the same day that she had seen Loring for the first time since her divorce. Then suddenly memories of Cecil began to haunt her. Incidents of their early love-days together came back to her with words and looks distinct as reality itself.

She went and leaned on the little balcony. The sun had just gone down.

Air and water were suffused with the afterglow. High overhead, the Venice swifts flew shrilling as with ecstasy. Their musical arabesques of flight patterned the upper blue like joy made visible. Some dementia of supernal bliss seemed to impel them. The fine, exultant, piercing notes were like showers of tiny, crystal arrows shot earthward from the heights of heaven.

Sophy stood gazing up at them, and the mystery of their joy, and of her pain, filled her with a new aching.

She leaned there until the afterglow had died away; but it was not until seven o'clock that she began to feel anxious. By the time that it was nearly eight and Lady Wychcote and Bobby had not come, she was greatly alarmed, and this alarm swept away all lesser considerations. She sent a wire to Amaldi, saying: "_Bobby and his grandmother went to Murano this morning. Expected to return at six. Not here yet. Fear some accident.

Will you come and advise me._" Then she had a consultation with Lorenzo, the first gondoliere, a quiet, capable man of about forty. She thought of going herself to Murano to make inquiries, but it would take a long time by gondola. Could Lorenzo think of any way of getting there more quickly. Lorenzo said that his cousin Ippolito had a steam-launch in which he took out pleasure-parties. He might try to get that; but then he must remind the Signora that the gla.s.s-works at Murano would be closed at this hour. It would be very difficult to make inquiries. Why did not the Signora go to the Questura for aid? The police might be able to think of some way in which to get at the people of the gla.s.s-works.

An idea came to her suddenly. She wondered at herself for not thinking of it before. She would go to the hotel at which Lady Wychcote had been stopping. It was quite possible that they might know something at the office. She might even find Lady Wychcote herself. Yes--she was quite capable of doing an inconsiderate thing like this for her own convenience. She might have stopped there for tea on the way back, and, feeling tired, might have lingered to rest a while, not troubling to send Sophy word. Yes, yes. It might very well be like that. Sophy had ordered dinner for half-past eight that evening out of consideration for her mother-in-law's habits. It was now only ten minutes past eight. Lady Wychcote might consider it quite sufficient if she arrived in time for dinner.

LIV

Sophy ordered the gondola, took Rosa with her, and went to the Grand Hotel.

The head official at the bureau looked rather surprised by her questions. Lady Wychcote? No, her ladys.h.i.+p was not there. She had been there that morning, however. She had sent a message late the night before--after twelve o'clock, in fact--to tell them to keep her luggage at the hotel until further instructions, instead of sending it to 35 Rio San Vio next day, as she had at first ordered.

"To keep her luggage?" Sophy interrupted blankly.

"_Si, Signora._ But I was about to explain," answered the clerk. "This morning, about nine, Lady Wychcote came again with her railway tickets so that we might check her luggage straight through to Paris...."

Sophy turned white.

"You must be mistaken!..." she said.

"_Ma, no, Signora--scusi_.... I am not mistaken," said the clerk decidedly. "The tickets were through from Venice to Paris. Her ladys.h.i.+p wished her luggage sent by the ten-thirty train this morning. I think that she herself left by that train also. Shall I send for the head porter? He will know."

"Yes, please," Sophy managed to murmur. She sank down into the nearest chair.

The head porter came shortly. He had just returned from the station.

Yes. Lady Wychcote had left that morning on the through train for Paris.

Sophy could not articulate for a moment. Then she said, her lips stiff and dry:

"Was she ... was she ... alone?"

The porter replied that Miladi had been alone when he last saw her, as she had insisted on being taken to the station an hour before the train left. But that the tickets were for herself and her maid. So that he supposed that the maid had joined her later. There happened to be no other guests leaving on the through train for Paris that morning, and as Miladi had insisted that he should not wait, he had returned to the hotel. Miladi was very positive.

"You are sure there was not a ... a little boy with her?" Sophy asked.

Yes--the porter was quite sure that there had been no little boy with Miladi.

Sophy's mind was working in terrible, clear flashes.

She turned to Rosa, who stood a little apart, rather scared, feeling that something puzzling and dreadful was in the air, but only understanding now and then a word of the English in which all were speaking.

"You said that Lady Wychcote took her maid with her this morning, didn't you?" Sophy asked.

Rosa replied that Anna had certainly started for Murano with Lady Wychcote and Bobby.

It seemed to Sophy that she saw it all now. Her mother-in-law, afraid of being traced too easily if she kept the boy with her, had left him somewhere with Anna until a few minutes before the train started. Anna was a clever, middle-aged Yorks.h.i.+re woman who had been with her ladys.h.i.+p some twenty years. She could be trusted to hold her tongue and act intelligently in such a case. She was, oddly enough, devoted to her mistress, and would never have thought of questioning her commands, no matter how singular they might have appeared to her.

And yet--could Lady Wychcote really have dared to kidnap the boy--for it was nothing less than kidnapping if she had taken him away with her in that determined, secret fas.h.i.+on. But why? What excuse could she give?

And had she really done it! And, if not, where was Bobby? Where was her little son at this late hour of the evening? She felt quite crazy and witless for a few moments. What to do? How to act? And time was going.

If Bobby had really been stolen from her, then she must follow on the next train, if possible. But where? Where would that relentless old woman take him? If she (Sophy) went to Paris--she would have no further clue on reaching it. Lady Wychcote might go on to England; she might not. And why? Why?

Suddenly she knew. In a searing flash she knew just why it was that Lady Wychcote had taken the boy--and that she had surely taken him. She remembered that strange tone in her voice last night, when she had spoken with her after Amaldi had left. Yes--that was it! She had thought the worst of her late return in company with Amaldi. She would give that as her reason for taking away the boy--his mother's unfitness to be his guardian.

Something wild and potent sprang to life in her. She got to her feet.

She looked like another woman. Now she was asking when the next through train left for Paris. At ten o'clock, they told her. It was now twenty-five minutes past nine. She might make it if she went straight to the station in the gown she wore, without stopping to get even a small travelling-bag. But no--she was not sure enough that that was the best thing to do. The through tickets that Lady Wychcote had bought to Paris might be only a blind. She must be very certain when she acted to act in the surest way. A favourite saying of Judge Macon's came into her mind.

"Be sure you're right--then go ahead." Besides, Amaldi might be at the Rio San Vio by now. He would be sure to advise her in the sanest, most clear-sighted way. He was the very man to stand firm in a crisis, not to lose his head. Then, with a hot recoil of shame, she thought of what she must tell him. She had not yet taken in what all this might also mean to her and Amaldi. She could think only of Bobby, bewildered, unhappy, rus.h.i.+ng away from her on the night express to Paris in company with the bitter old woman who had always hated her. She recalled the feeling of his strong little body as he had snuggled close to her last night. A fury of impotent love and rage shook her. The gondola seemed to crawl over the light-jewelled water of the ca.n.a.l, though Lorenzo and Mario were sending it along at racing speed. A gaily lighted barge filled with singers and musicians pa.s.sed them.

As they turned into the little Rio, by the Palace of Don Carlos, another barge began burning Bengal lights. The dark, narrow water-way, with its crowding houses and little bridges, flared red before her as in some operatic scene. Why were things always so brutally ironical? Why should there be a festival in Venice on the night that her boy had been stolen from her?

When she reached her flat she found a wire from Amaldi, saying that he would take the train from Cortola to Venice, and be with her by ten o'clock. It was the quickest way that he could reach her. As she put down the telegram she heard his voice on the stair, speaking to Lorenzo.

Then he came in alone. He took her in his arms, held her close a moment, then led her to a sofa, and sat down beside her, keeping her hands in his.

"Now tell me," he said.

She told him everything. As she spoke he kept muttering, "What infamy!... What infamy!..." He was as convinced as she was of the truth of her conjectures.

Her dark, tortured eyes made him wince with a double pain. It was only her son that she was thinking of in those moments, not of him, her lover--not of what this parting would mean to him and her. "What must I do?" she kept asking him. "What must I do next? Ought I to have tried to catch that ten o'clock train? Tell me, Marco ... for G.o.d's sake, tell me what I'd best do...."

"Wait, dearest...." he said. "Give me time to think...."

He sat frowning down at the floor for a few moments. Then he turned to her. He asked her about the Wychcotes' solicitor.

"Do you think this Mr. Surtees is really your friend?" he said when she had told him all about her relations with the old lawyer.

"Yes. I'm sure he is," she said positively. "Why?"