Chapter Seven. The Missing Mariette

In London the January afternoon was wet and cheerless. Alone in his dingy chambers on the third floor of an ancient smoke-begrimed house in Clifford’s Inn, one of the old bits of New Babylon now sadly fallen from its once distinguished estate, George Stratfield sat gazing moodily into the fire. In his hand was a letter he had just received from Liane; a strange letter which caused him to ponder deeply, and vaguely wonder, whether after all he had not acted unwisely in sacrificing his fortune for her sake.

She had been nearly three months abroad, and although she had written weekly there was an increasing coldness about her letters which sorely puzzled him. Twice only had they met since he left the Court—on the two evenings she and her father had spent in London on their way to the Continent. He often looked back upon those hours, remembering every tender word she had uttered, and recalling the unmistakable light of love that lit up her face when he was nigh. Yet since she had been en séjour on the Riviera her letters were no longer long and gossipy, but brief, hurriedly-written scribbles which bore evidence that she wrote more for the fulfilment of her promise than from a desire to tell of her daily doings, as lovers will.

A dozen times he had read and re-read the letter, then lifting his eyes from it his gaze wandered around the shabby room with its ragged leather chairs, its carpet so faded that the original pattern had been lost, its two well-filled bookcases which had stood there and been used by various tenants for close upon a century, its panelled walls painted a dull drab, and its deep-set windows grimy with the soot of London. The two rooms which comprised this bachelor abode were decidedly depressing even on the brightest day, for the view from the windows was upon a small paved court, beyond which stood the small ancient Hall, the same in which Sir Matthew Hale and the seventeen judges sat after the Great Fire in 1666, to adjudicate on the claims of landlords and tenants of burned houses, so as to prevent lawsuits. An ocean of chimneys belched around, while inside the furniture had seen its best days fully twenty years before, and the tablecloth of faded green was full of brown holes burnt by some previous resident who had evidently been a careless cigarette smoker.

George drew his hand wearily across his brow, sighed, replaced the letter slowly in its envelope, examined the post-mark, then placed it in his pocket.

“No,” he said aloud, “I won’t believe it. She said she loved me, and she loves me still.”

And he poked the fire vigorously until it blazed and threw a welcome light over the gloomy, dismal room.

Suddenly a loud rapping sounded on the outer door, and rising unwillingly, expecting it to be one of his many friends of the “briefless brigade,” he went and opened it, confronting to his surprise his father’s solicitor, Harrison.

“Well, George,” exclaimed his visitor, thrusting his wet umbrella into the stand in the tiny cupboard-like space which served as hall, and walking on uninvited into the apartment which served as office and sitting-room. “Alone I see. I’m glad, for I want ten minutes’ chat with you.”

“At your service, Harrison,” Stratfield answered, in expectation of a five-guinea brief. “What is it? Something for opinion?”

“Yes,” answered the elder man, taking a chair. “It is for opinion, but it concerns yourself.”

George flung himself into the armchair from which he had just risen, placed his feet upon the fender and his hands at the back of his head, as was his habit when desiring to listen attentively.

“Well,” he said, sighing, “about that absurd provision of the old man’s will, I suppose? I’m comfortable enough, so what’s the use of worrying over it?”

“But it is necessary. You see, I’m bound to try and find this woman,” the other answered, taking from his pocket some blue foolscap whereon were some memoranda. “Besides, the first stage of the inquiry is complete.”

“And what have you discovered?” he asked eagerly. “I placed the matter in the hands of Rutter, the private inquiry agent, whose report I have here,” answered the solicitor. “It states that no such person as Madame Lepage is living at 89 Rue Toullier, Paris, but the concierge remembers that an elderly lady, believed to be a widow, once occupied with her daughter a flat on the fourth floor. The man, however forgets their name, as they only resided there a few months. During that time the daughter, whom he describes as young and of prepossessing appearance, mysteriously disappeared, and although a search was instituted, she was never found. There was no suspicion of suicide or foul play, but the police at the time inclined to the belief that, possessing a voice above the average, she had, like so many other girls who tire of the monotony of home life, forsaken it and obtained an engagement at some obscure café-concert under an assumed name. Rutter, following up this theory, then visited all the impressarios he could find in an endeavour to discover an artist whose real name was Lepage. But from the first this search was foredoomed to failure, for girls who desire to exchange home life for the stage seldom give their impressarios their correct names, hence no such person as Mariette Lepage could be traced.”

“Then, after all, we are as far off discovering who this mysterious woman is as we ever were,” George observed, glancing at his visitor with a half-amused smile.

“Well, not exactly,” the solicitor answered. “Undoubtedly the girl who disappeared from the house in the Rue Toullier was the woman for whom we are searching.”

“The letter found on Nelly Bridson is sufficient proof that she’s still alive,” said the younger man.

“Exactly; and from its tone it would appear that she is in the lower strata of society,” Harrison remarked.

“Whoever she is I shall, I suppose, be required to offer her marriage, even if she’s a hideous old hag! My father was certainly determined that I should be sufficiently punished for my refusal to comply with his desire,” George observed, smiling bitterly.

“Why regret the past?” Harrison asked slowly, referring again to the blue foolscap by the fitful light of the fire. “The inquiry has, up to the present, resulted in the elucidation of only one definite fact; nevertheless, Rutter is certainly on the right scent, and as he is now extensively advertising in the principal papers throughout France, I hope to be able ere long to report something more satisfactory.”

“It will be no satisfaction whatever to me if she is found,” observed the young man, grimly.

“But it is imperative that the matter should be cleared up,” the solicitor protested. “When we have discovered her you will, of course, be at liberty to offer her marriage, or not, just as you please.”

“It is a most remarkable phase of the affair that the only person acquainted with this mysterious woman was poor Nelly,” the young barrister exclaimed at last. “You will remember that in the letter, with its slang of the slums, Liane’s name was mentioned. Well, I have written asking her whether she is acquainted with any woman of the same name with which the curious letter is signed, but she has replied saying that neither herself nor her father ever knew any such person, and they had been quite at a loss to know how Nelly should have become acquainted with her. Here is her reply; read for yourself,” and from his pocket he took several letters, and selecting one, handed it to the keen-faced, grey-haired man, at the same time striking a vesta and lighting the lamp standing upon the table.

“You don’t seem to mind other people reading your love-letters,” the old solicitor said, laughing and turning towards the light. “When I was young I kept them tied up with pink tape in a box carefully locked.”

George smiled. “The pink tape was owing to the legal instinct, I suppose,” he said. Then he added, with a slight touch of sorrow, “There are not many secrets in Liane’s letters.”

The shrewd old man detected disappointment in his voice, and after glancing at the letter, looked up at him again, saying, “The course of true love is not running smooth, eh? This lady is in Nice, I see.”

“Yes, Harrison,” he answered gravely, leaning against the table with head slightly bent. “We are parted, and I fear that, after all, I have acted foolishly.”

“You will, no doubt, remember my advice on the day of your father’s death.”

“I do,” George answered, huskily. “At that time I fondly believed she loved me, and was prepared to sacrifice everything in order that she should be mine. But now—”

“Well?”

“Her letters have grown colder, and I have a distinct and painful belief that she loves me no longer, that she has, amid the mad whirl of gaiety on the Riviera, met some man who has the means to provide her with the pleasures to which she has been accustomed, and upon whom she looks with favour. Her letters now are little more than the formal correspondence of a friend. She has grown tired of waiting.”

“And are you surprised?” Harrison asked.

“I ought not to be, I suppose,” he said gloomily. “I can never hope to marry her.”

“Why despair?” the old solicitor exclaimed kindly. “You have youth, talent, and many influential friends, therefore there is no reason why your success at the Bar should not be as great as other men’s.”

“Or as small as most men’s,” he laughed bitterly. “No, Harrison, without good spirits it is impossible for one to do one’s best. Those I don’t possess just now.”

“Well, if, because you are parted a few months, the lady pleases to forsake you, as you suspect, then all I can say is that you are very fortunate in becoming aware of the truth ere it is too late,” the elder man argued.

“But I love her,” he blurted forth. “I can’t help it.”

“Then, under the circumstances, I would, if I were you, stick to my profession and try and forget all that’s past. Bitter memories shorten life and do nobody any good.”

“Ah! I only wish I could get rid of all thought of the past,” he sighed, gazing fixedly into the fire. “You are my friend and adviser, Harrison, or I should not have spoken thus to you.”

The old man, with his blue foolscap still in his thin, bony hand, paused, regarded his client’s son with a look of sympathy for a few moments, and sighed.

“Your case,” he said at last, “is only one of many thousands. All of us, in whatever station, have our little romances in life. We have at some time or another adored a woman who, after the first few months, has cast us aside for a newer and perhaps richer lover. There are few among us who cannot remember a sweet face of long ago, a voice that thrilled us, a soft, caressing hand that was smooth as satin to our lips. We sigh when we recollect those long-past days, and wonder where she is, who she married, and whether, in her little debauches of melancholy, she ever recollects the man who once vowed he would love her his whole life through. Years have gone since then, yet her memory clings to us as vividly as if she were still a reality in our lives. We still love her and revere her, even though she cast us aside, even though we are not certain whether she still exists. The reason of all this is because when we are young we are more impressionable than when we are older, with wider and more mature experience of the world. The woman we at twenty thought adorable we should pass by unnoticed if we were forty. Thus it is that almost all men cherish in their hearts a secret affection for some woman who has long ago gone out of their lives, passed on, and forgotten them.”

George smiled bitterly at the old man’s philosophy. “Are you, then, one of those with a romance within you?” he asked, his face suddenly becoming grave again.

“Yes,” the old lawyer answered, his features hard and cold. “I, dry-as-dust, matter-of-fact man that I am, I also have my romance. Years ago, how many I do not care to count, I loved a woman just as madly as you love Liane Brooker. She was of good family, wealthy, and so handsome that a well-known artist painted her portrait, which was hung at one of the Galleries as one of a collection of types of English beauty. That she loved me I could not doubt, and the first six months of our acquaintance in the quaint old cathedral town where we lived was a dream of sunny, never-ending days. At evening, when the office at which I was articled was closed, she met me, and we walked together in the sunset by the river. I see her now, as if it were but yesterday, in her simple white dress and large hat trimmed with roses. The years that have passed have not dimmed my memory.”

And the old man, pausing, sat with his steely eyes gazing into the fire, a hardness in the corners of his mouth as if the recollection of the past was painful.

“Months went by,” he continued in a harsh voice, quite unlike the tone habitual to him. “She knew that I was poor, yet against the wishes of her parents, purse-proud county people, she had announced her intention of waiting a year or two, and then marrying me. At length there came a day when I found it necessary to exchange the quiet respectability of Durham for the bustle of a London office, and left. Ours was a sad farewell, one night beneath the moon. She took my ring from my finger, kissed it and replaced it, while I kissed her hair, and we exchanged vows of undying love. Then we parted. Well, you may guess the rest. Within three months she was a wife, but I was not her husband. From the moment when we said farewell on that memorable night I never saw her nor heard from her again. Times without number I wrote, but my letters remained unanswered, until I saw in the papers the announcement of her marriage with some man who I ascertained later had amassed a fortune at the Cape and had taken her out there with him. Though I have grown old, I have never ceased to remember her, because she was the one woman I adored, the woman who comes once into the life of every man to lighten it, but who, alas! too often forsakes him for reasons incomprehensible and leaves him solitary and forgotten, with only a deep-cherished memory as consolation. So it is with you, George,” he added. “It may be, as you fear, that Liane Brooker has grown weary, yet remember the old adage that a woman’s mind and winter wind change oft, and reflect that if after her solemn vow to you she breaks her pledge, she is unworthy.”

“I know,” he answered. “Nevertheless she is my well-beloved.”

“So to me was the woman of whom I have just spoken,” he answered. “Nevertheless, that did not prevent me marrying ten years later and living in perfect happiness with my wife till her death six years ago. No, the thought of the past is the privilege of all men. I admit that it is doubly hard in your case that, having sacrificed your fortune for sake of her, you should now find yourself being slowly replaced in her heart by some other man. Nevertheless, I repeat I am not surprised.”

“But you sympathise with me, although I speak so foolishly,” he said, half apologetically.

“It is no foolish talk,” Harrison replied. “There is surely no foolishness in discussing a matter that so closely concerns a man’s future,” he said. “Of course you have my most sincere sympathy, and if at any time I can offer advice or render assistance, then command me.”

“You are extremely good,” the young man replied. “The mystery surrounding Liane, the tragic death of Nelly Bridson, the discovery of the missing miniature, and the unfortunate girl’s acquaintance with this unknown woman whom my father designated as my wife, form an enigma of which, try how I will, I am unable to obtain any elucidation. Through all these months not a single important fact has come to light.”

“True. It’s an extraordinary affair altogether,” Harrison acquiesced, replacing the inquiry agent’s report in his breast-pocket. “But I still hope we may discover Mariette Lepage, and through her we shall certainly be able to learn something. Until then, we must remain patient.”

The pained, thoughtful expression that had rested upon his face, while he had been telling George the romance of his life, had been succeeded by that keen business-like air he always wore. He was again the plain, matter-of-fact lawyer, with his clean-shaven aquiline face, his cold steel-blue eyes and thin lips that gave those who did not know him an impression of almost ascetic austerity.

George Stratfield made no answer, but when a few minutes later his visitor had gone, after placing his hand sympathetically upon his shoulder and bidding him bear up against misfortune, he cast himself again into his chair and sat immovable, heedless of everything save the one woman who was his idol.