Chapter Fifteen. More about Marion.

The following Sunday afternoon was warm and bright, perfect for up-river excursions, and, as was their usual habit, Max and Marion were spending the day together.

Released from the eternal bustle of Oxford Street, the girl looked forward with eager anticipation to each Saturday afternoon and Sunday—the weekly period of rest and recreation. To the assistant in shops where the “living-in” system pertains, Sunday is the one bright interval in an otherwise dull, dreary, and monotonous life, the day when he or she gets away from the weariness of being businesslike, the smell of the “goods,” and the keen eye of the buyer or shop-walker, and when one is one’s own master for a few happy hours.

To those not apprenticed in their youth to shop-life who, being born in a higher status, have been compelled to enter business as a means of livelihood, the long hours are terribly irksome, especially in winter, when artificial light is used nearly the whole day. The work is soul-killing in its monotony and the pay very meagre, therefore customers need hardly be surprised when a tired assistant does not take the trouble to exert herself unduly to satisfy her requirements.

In summer, Marion loved the river. The air was fresh and healthful, after the vitiated atmosphere of the costume department at Cunnington’s. Usually Max brought his little motor-boat from Biffen’s, at Hammersmith Bridge, where he kept it, up to Kew, and there they would embark in the morning and run up to Hampton Court, Staines, or even Windsor, getting their luncheon or tea at one or other of the old riverside inns, and spending a lazy afternoon up some quiet, leafy backwater, where, though so near the metropolis, the king-fishers skimmed the surface of the stream and the water-lilies lay upon their broad, green leaves.

Those lazy hours spent together were always delightful, therefore, to the devoted pair, a wet Sunday was indeed a calamity. On the afternoon in question they had met at Kew Bridge at four o’clock, and as she sat upon the crimson cushions in the stern, they were ascending the broad Thames, the motor running as evenly as a clock, and leaving a small wash in their wake. Marion could not meet her lover before, because she had spent the morning with a poor girl who had been a fellow assistant at Cunnington’s, and was now in Guy’s Hospital. The girl was friendless and in a dangerous condition, therefore Marion had given up her morning and taken her some grapes.

There were not many people on the river, for pleasure-seekers usually prefer the reaches above Richmond. The craft they passed was mostly sailing boats, belonging to the club Chiswick, and the inevitable launch of the Thames Conservancy.

In a well-cut gown of plain white cotton, with lace and muslin at the throat, a straw hat of mushroom shape, with a band of pale blue velvet, and a white sunshade over her shoulder, she looked delightfully fresh and cool. He was in navy serge suit and a peaked cap, and in his mouth a pipe.

Seated sideways in the boat, with the throbbing motor at his feet, he thought he never had seen her looking so chic and indescribably charming. Those stiff black dresses, which custom forced her to wear in business, did not suit her soft beauty. But in her river dress she looked delightfully dainty, and he tried to conjure up a vision of what figure she would present in a well-cut evening gown. The latter, however, she did not possess. The shop-assistant has but little need of décolleté, and, indeed, its very possession arouses comment among the plainer, more prudish, and more elderly section of the girls in the “house.”

More than once Max had wanted to take her to the stalls of a theatre in an evening gown, but she had always declared that she preferred wearing a light blouse. As a man generally is, he was a blunderer, and she could not well explain how, by the purchase of evening clothes, she would at once debase herself in the eyes of her fellow-assistants. As was well-known, her salary at Cunnington’s certainly did not allow of such luxuries as theatre gowns, and from the very first she had always declined to accept Max’s well-meant presents.

The only present of his that she had kept was the pretty ring now upon her slim, white hand, a ring set with sapphires and diamonds and inscribed within “From Max to Marion,” with the date.

As she leaned back enjoying the fresh air, after the dust and stifling heat of London, she was relating how pleased the poor invalid had been at her visit, and he was listening to her description of her friend’s desperate condition. A difficult operation had turned out badly, and the surgeons held out very little hope. Not a soul had been to see the poor girl all the week, the nurse had said, for she had no relatives, and all her friends were in business and unable to get out, except on Sunday.

“I very much fear she won’t live to see next Sunday,” Marion was saying, with a sigh, a cloud passing over her bright face. “It is so very sad. She’s only twenty, and such a nice girl. Her father was a naval officer, but she was left penniless, and had to earn her own living.”

“Like you yourself, dearest,” he answered. “Ah! how I wish I could take you from that life of drudgery. I can’t bear to think of you being compelled to slave as you do, and to wait upon those crotchety old cats, as many of your customers are. It’s a shame that you should ever have gone into Cunnington’s.”

“Mr Statham, Charlie’s employer, holds the controlling interest in our business. It was through him that I got in there. Without his influence they would never have taken me, for I had no experience. As a matter of fact,” she added, “I’m considered very lucky in obtaining a situation at Cunnington’s, and Mr Warner, our buyer, is extremely kind to me.”

“I know all that; but it’s the long hours that most wear you out,” he said, “especially in this close, muggy weather.”

“Oh! I’m pretty strong,” she declared lightly, her beautiful eyes fixed upon him. “At first I used to feel terribly tired about tea-time, but nowadays I can stand it very much better.”

“But you really must leave the place,” Max declared. “Charlie should so arrange things that you could leave. His salary from old Statham is surely sufficient to enable him to do that!”

“Yes; but if he keeps me, how can he keep a wife as well?” asked Marion. “Dear old Charlie is awfully good to me. I never want for anything; but he’ll marry Maud before long, I expect, and then I shall—”

“Marry me, darling,” he exclaimed, concluding her sentence.

She blushed slightly and smiled.

“Ah!” she said, in mock reproof. “That may occur perhaps in the dim future. We’ll first see how Charlie’s marriage turns out—eh?”

“No, Marion,” he cried. “Come, that isn’t fair! You know how I love you—and you surely recollect your promise to me, don’t you?” he asked seriously.

“Of course I do,” she replied. “You dear old boy, you know I’m only joking.”

He seemed instantly relieved at her words, and steered across to the Middlesex banks as they approached Brentford Dock in order to get the full advantage of the rising tide.

“Has Charlie seen Maud of late?” he asked, a few moments later.

“I don’t know at all. I suppose he’s in the East. I haven’t seen him since he came to the shop to say good-bye to me.”

“I wonder if the Doctor and his daughter have returned to their own country?” he suggested.

“What! Have you heard nothing of them?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “I have endeavoured to discover where their furniture was taken, or where they themselves went, but all has been in vain. Both they and their belongings have entirely disappeared.”

The girl did not utter a word. She was leaning back, with her fine eyes fixed straight before her, reflecting deeply.

“It is all very extraordinary,” she remarked at last.

“Yes. I only wish, darling, you were at liberty to tell me the whole truth regarding Maud, and what she has told you,” he said, his gaze fixed upon her pale, beautiful face.

“I cannot do that, Max,” was her prompt answer, “so please do not ask me. I have already told you that in this matter my lips are sealed by a solemn promise—a promise which I cannot break.”

“I know! Yet I somehow cannot help thinking that you could reveal to me some fact which might expose the motive of this strange and unaccountable disappearance,” he said. “Do you know, I cannot get rid of the suspicion that the Doctor, and possibly Maud herself, have been victims of foul play. Remember that as a politician he had many enemies in his own country. A political career in the Balkans is not the peaceful profession it is here at St. Stephen’s. Take Bulgaria, for instance, and recall the political assassinations of Stambuloff, Petkoff, and a dozen others. The same in Servia and in Roumania. The whole of the Balkans is permeated by an air of political conspiracy, for there life is indeed cheap, more especially the life of the public man.”

“What! Then you really suspect that both Maud and her father have actually been the victims of some political plot?” she asked, regarding him with a strange expression.

“Well—how can I conjecture otherwise? The Doctor would never have left suddenly without sending word to me. Have you written to Charlie telling him of the sudden disappearance?”

“Yes. I wrote the same day that you told me, and addressed the letter to the Grand Hotel, at Belgrade.”

“Then he has it by now?”

“Certainly. I’m expecting a wire from him asking for further particulars. He should have got my letter the day before yesterday, but up to the present I’ve received no acknowledgment.”

Max did not tell her that her brother had not left London on the night when he was believed to have done so, and that it was more than probable he had never started from Charing Cross. He kept his own counsel, at the same time wondering what was the real reason why Marion so steadfastly refused to tell him the nature of Maud’s confession. That it had been of a startling nature she had already admitted, therefore he could only suppose that it had some direct connection with the astounding disappearance of both father and daughter.

On the other hand, however, he was suspicious of some ingenious plot, because he felt convinced that the Doctor would never have effaced himself without giving him confidential news of his whereabouts.

“Have you written to Maud?” he asked, after a fen; moments.

“No. I don’t know her address.”

“And you have not seen her?”

“No.”

“But you don’t seem in the least alarmed about her disappearance?”

“Why should I be? I rather expected it,” she answered; and it suddenly occurred to him whether, after all, she had been with Maud to the concert at Queen’s Hall on the night of the sudden removal.

A distinct suspicion seized him that she was concealing from him some fact which she feared to reveal—some fact that concerned herself more than Maud. He could see, in her refusal to satisfy him as to the girl’s confession, an attempt to mislead and mystify him, and he was just a trifle annoyed thereby. He liked open and honest dealing, and began to wonder whether this pretended promise of loyalty to her friend was not being put forward to hide some secret that was her own!

The two girls had, during the past few months, been inseparable. Had Maud really made a startling confession, or was the girl seated before him, with that strangely uneasy expression upon her beautiful countenance, endeavouring to deceive him?

He tried to put such thoughts behind him as unworthy of his devotion to her. But, alas! he could not.

Mystery was there—mystery that he was determined to elucidate.