Mysterious Mr. Sabin - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best free ebook reader for android .TXT) 📗

Frenchwoman, you see, and to me there is no city on earth like Paris, and no country like my own.”

“The women of your nation,” he remarked, “are always patriotic. I have never met a Frenchwoman who cared for England.”

“We have reason to be patriotic,” she said, “or rather, we had,” she added, with a curious note of sadness in her tone. “But, come, I do not desire to talk about my country. I admitted you here to be an entertaining companion, and you have made me speak already of the subject which is to me the most mournful in the world. I do not wish to talk any more about France. Will you please think of another subject?”

“Mr. Sabin is not with you,” he remarked.

“He intended to come. Something important kept him at the last moment. He will follow me, perhaps, by a later train to-day, if not to-morrow.”

“It is certainly a coincidence,” he said, “that you should be going to Cromer. My home is quite near there.”

“And you are going there now?” she asked.

“I am delighted to say that I am.”

“You did not mention it the other evening,” she remarked. “You talked as though you had no intention at all of leaving London.”

“Neither had I at that time,” he said. “I had a letter from home this morning which decided me.”

She smiled softly.

“Well, it is strange,” she said. “On the whole, it is perhaps fortunate that you did not contemplate this journey when we had supper together the other night.”

He caught at her meaning, and laughed.

“It is more than fortunate,” he declared. “If I had known of it, and told Mr. Sabin, you would not have been travelling by this train alone.”

“I certainly should not,” she admitted demurely.

He saw his opportunity, and swiftly availed himself of it.

“Why does your uncle object to me so much?” he asked.

“Object to you!” she repeated. “On the contrary, I think that he rather approves of you. You saved his life, or something very much like it. He should be very grateful! I think that he is!”

“Yet,” he persisted, “he does not seem to desire my acquaintance—for you, at any rate. You have just admitted, that if he had known that there was any chance of our being fellow passengers you would not have been here.”

She did not answer him immediately. She was looking fixedly out of the window. Her face seemed to him more than ordinarily grave. When she turned her head, her eyes were thoughtful—a little sad.

“You are quite right,” she said. “My uncle does not think it well for me to make any acquaintances in this country. We are not here for very long. No doubt he is right. He has at least reason on his side. Only it is a little dull for me, and it is not what I have been used to. Yet there are sacrifices always. I cannot tell you any more. You must please not ask me. You are here, and I am pleased that you are here! There! will not that content you?”

“It gives me,” he answered earnestly, “more than contentment! It is happiness!”

“That is precisely the sort of thing,” she said slowly to him, with laughter in her eyes, “which you are not to say! Please understand that!”

He accepted the rebuke lightly. He was far too happy in being with her to be troubled by vague limitations. The present was good enough for him, and he did his best to entertain her. He noticed with pleasure that she did not even glance at the pile of papers at her side. They talked without intermission. She was interested, even gay. Yet he could not but notice that every now and then, especially at any reference to the future, her tone grew graver and a shadow passed across her face. Once he said something which suggested the possibility of her living always in England. She had shaken her head at once, gently but firmly.

“No, I could never live in this country,” she said, “even if my liking for it grew. It would be impossible!”

He was puzzled for a moment.

“You think that you could never care for it enough,” he suggested; “yet you have scarcely had time to judge it fairly. London in the spring is gay enough, and the life at some of our country houses is very different to what it was a few years ago. Society is so much more tolerant and broader.”

“It is scarcely a question,” she said, “of my likes or dislikes. Next to Paris, I prefer London in the spring to any city in Europe, and a week I spent at Radnett was very delightful. But, nevertheless, I could never live here. It is not my destiny!”

The old curiosity was strong upon him. Radnett was the home of the Duchess of Radnett and Ilchester, who had the reputation of being the most exclusive hostess in Europe! He was bewildered.

“I would give a great deal,” he said earnestly, “to know what you believe that destiny to be.”

“We are bordering upon the forbidden subject,” she reminded him, with a look which was almost reproachful. “You must please believe me when I tell you, that for me things have already been arranged otherwise. Come, I want you to tell me all about this country into which we are going. You must remember that to me it is all new!”

He suffered her to lead the conversation into other channels, with a vague feeling of disquiet. The mystery which hung around the girl and her uncle seemed only to grow denser as his desire to penetrate it grew. At present, at any rate, he was baffled. He dared ask no more questions.

The train glided into Peterborough station before either of them were well aware that they had entered in earnest upon the journey. Wolfenden looked out of the window with amazement.

“Why, we are nearly half way there!” he exclaimed. “How wretched!”

She smiled, and took up a magazine. Wolfenden’s servant came respectfully to the window.

“Can I get you anything, my lord?” he inquired.

Wolfenden shook his head, and opening the door, stepped out on to the platform.

“Nothing, thanks, Selby,” he said. “You had better get yourself some lunch. We don’t get to Deringham until four o’clock.”

The man raised his hat and turned away. In a moment, however, he was back again.

“You will pardon my mentioning it, my lord,” he said, “but the young lady’s maid has been travelling in my carriage, and a nice fidget she’s been in all the way. She’s been muttering to herself in French, and she seems terribly frightened about something or other. The moment the train stopped here, she rushed off to the telegraph office.”

“She seems a little excitable,” Wolfenden remarked. “All right, Selby, you’d better hurry up and get what you want to eat.”

“Certainly, my lord; and perhaps your lordship knows that there is a flower-stall in the corner there.”

Wolfenden nodded and hurried off. He returned to the carriage just as the train was moving off, with a handful of fresh, wet violets, whose perfume seemed instantly to fill the compartment. The girl held out her hands with a little exclamation of pleasure.

“What a delightful travelling companion you are,” she declared. “I think these English violets are the sweetest flowers in the world.”

She held them up to her lips. Wolfenden was looking at a paper bag in her lap.

“May I inquire what that is?” he asked.

“Buns!” she answered. “You must not think that because I am a girl I am never hungry. It is two o’clock, and I am positively famished. I sent my maid for them.”

He smiled, and sweeping away the bundles of rugs and coats, produced the luncheon basket which he had secured at King’s Cross, and opening it, spread out the contents.

“For two!” she exclaimed, “and what a delightful looking salad! Where on earth did that come from?”

“Oh, I am no magician,” he exclaimed. “I ordered the basket at King’s Cross, after I had seen you. Let me spread the cloth here. My dressing-case will make a capital table!”

They picnicked together gaily. It seemed to Wolfenden that chicken and tongue had never tasted so well before, or claret, at three shillings the bottle, so full and delicious. They cleared everything up, and then sat and talked over the cigarette which she had insisted upon. But although he tried more than once, he could not lead the conversation into any serious channel—she would not talk of her past, she distinctly avoided the future. Once, when he had made a deliberate effort to gain some knowledge as to her earlier surroundings, she reproved him with a silence so marked that he hastened to talk of something else.

“Your maid,” he said, “is greatly distressed about something. She sent a telegram off at Peterborough. I hope that your uncle will not make himself unpleasant because of my travelling with you.”

She smiled at him quite undisturbed.

“Poor Céleste,” she said. “Your presence here has upset her terribly. Mr. Sabin has some rather strange notions about me, and I am quite sure that he would rather have sent me down in a special train than have had this happen. You need not look so serious about it.”

“It is only on your account,” he assured her.

“Then you need not look serious at all,” she continued. “I am not under my uncle’s jurisdiction. In fact, I am quite an independent person.”

“I am delighted to hear it,” he said heartily. “I should imagine that Mr. Sabin would not be at all a pleasant person to be on bad terms with.”

She smiled thoughtfully.

“There are a good many people,” she said, “who would agree with you. There are a great many people in the world who have cause to regret having offended him. Let us talk of something else. I believe that I can see the sea!”

They were indeed at Cromer. He found a carriage for her, and collected her belongings. He was almost amused at her absolute indolence in the midst of the bustle of arrival. She was evidently unused to doing the slightest thing for herself. He took the address which she gave to him, and repeated it to the driver. Then he asked the question which had been trembling many times upon his lips.

“May I come and see you?”

She had evidently been considering the matter, for she answered him at once and deliberately.

“I should like you to,” she said; “but if for any reason it did not suit my uncle to have you come, it would not be pleasant for either of us. He is going to play golf on the Deringham links. You will be certain to see him there, and you must be guided by his manner towards you.”

“And if he is still—as he was in London—must this be goodbye, then?” he asked earnestly.

She looked at him with a faint colour in her cheeks and a softer light in her proud, clear eyes.

“Well,” she said, “goodbye would be the last word which could be spoken between us. But, n’importe, we shall see.”

She flashed a suddenly brilliant smile upon him, and leaned back amongst the cushions. The carriage drove off, and Wolfenden, humming pleasantly to himself, stepped into the dogcart which was waiting for him.

CHAPTER XIII A GREAT WORK

The Countess of Deringham might be excused for considering herself the most unfortunate woman in England. In a single week she had passed from the position of one of the most brilliant leaders of English society to be the keeper of a recluse, whose sanity was at least doubtful. Her husband, Admiral the Earl of Deringham, had been a man of iron nerve and constitution, with a splendid reputation, and undoubtedly a fine seaman. The horror of a single day had broken up his life. He had been the awe-stricken witness of a great naval catastrophe, in which