"There--he"s just pa.s.sing through the next ward; shall I speak to him for you?"
"No, thank you: I don"t want anything from him: I only wanted the lady"s name," said John Smith, in a dogged sullen kind of way, which made the whitecapped nurse look at him suspiciously.
"Brooke!--Kenyon?"--How oddly familiar the names seemed to him! Of course they were not very uncommon names; but there was a distinct familiarity about them which had nothing to do with the names themselves, as if they had some connection with his own history and his own affairs.
He was discharged--"cured." He went out into the streets with half-a-crown in his pocket, and a fixed determination to know the truth, sooner or later, about himself. At the same time he had a great fear of letting any one know the extent of the blanks in his memory. He thought that people might shut him up in a madhouse if he told them that he could not recollect his own name. A certain amount of intellectual force and knowledge remained to him. He could read, and understand what he read. But of his own history he had absolutely no idea; and the only clue to it that he could find lay in those two names--Brooke and Kenyon.
Could he discover anything about the possessors of these names which would help him? He entered a shop where a Post Office Directory was to be found, and looked at Maurice Kenyon"s name amongst the doctors. He found Mr. Kenyon"s private address; but as yet it told him nothing.
Woburn Place? Well, of course he had heard of Woburn Place, it was no wonder that he should know it so well; but the name told him nothing more.
He sat staring at it so long that the people of the shop grew impatient, and asked him to shut the book. He went away, and wandered about the streets, vaguely seeking for he knew not what. And after a time he bought a newspaper. Here again he found the name that had attracted his attention--the name of Kenyon. "Last appearance of Miss Kenyon at the Frivolity Theatre--this week only."
"Who"s Miss Ethel Kenyon?" he asked--drawing a bow at a venture--of his neighbor in the dingy little coffeehouse into which he had turned. It was ten to one that the man would not know; but he would ask.
As it happened, the young man did know. "She"s an actress," he said. "I went to see her the other night. Pretty girl--going to get married and leave the stage. My brother"s a scene shifter at the Frivolity--knows all about her."
"Who is she going to marry?"
"Oh, I don"t know--some idle young chap that wants her money, I believe.
She ain"t the common sort of actress, you know. Bit of a swell, with sixty thousand pounds of her own."
"Oh," said his interlocutor, vaguely. "And--has she any relations?"
"Well, that I can"t tell you. Stop a bit, though: I did hear tell of a brother--a doctor, I believe. But I couldn"t be sure of it."
"Could you get to know if you wanted?"
The young fellow turned and surveyed his questioner with some doubt.
"Dare say I could if I chose," he said. "What do you want to know for, mate?"
"I"ve been away--out of England for a long time--and I think they"re people who used to know me," said Francis Trent, improvising his story readily. "I thought they could put me on the way of work if I could come across them; but I don"t know if it"s the same."
"Why don"t you go to see her to-night? She"s worth a look: she"s a pretty little thing--but she don"t draw crowds: the gallery"s never full."
"I think I"ll go to-night," said Francis, rising suddenly from his seat.
He fancied that the young man looked at him suspiciously. "Yes, no doubt, I should know her if I saw her: I"ll go to-night."
He made his way hastily into the street, while his late companion sent a puzzled glance after him. "Got a tile loose, that chap has," he said to the girl at the counter as he also pa.s.sed out. "Or else he was a bit screwed."
So that night Francis Trent went to the Frivolity, and witnessed, from a half-empty gallery, a smart, sparkling little society play, in which Ethel Kenyon had elected to say farewell to her admirers.
He saw her, but her face produced no impression upon his mind.
It was not familiar to him, although her name was familiar enough. Those gleaming dark eyes in the saucy piquante face, the tiny graceful figure, the silvery accents of her voice, were perfectly strange to him. They suggested absolutely nothing. It was the name alone that he knew; and he was sure that it was in some way connected with his own.
Before the end of the play, he got up and went out. The lights of the theatre made him dizzy: his head ached from the hot atmosphere and from his own physical weakness. He was afraid that he should cry out or do something strange which would make people look at him, if he sat there much longer. So he turned into a side street and leaned against a wall for a little time, until he felt cool and refreshed. The evening was warm, considering that the month was March, and the air that played upon his face was soft and balmy. When he had recovered himself a little, he noticed a group of young men lighting their cigarettes and loitering about a door in the vicinity. Presently he made out that this was the stage-door, and that these young men were waiting to see one of the actresses come out. By the fragments of their talk that floated to him on the still evening air in the quiet side street, Francis Trent gathered that they spoke a good deal of Ethel Kenyon.
"So this is the last we shall see of pretty little Ethel," he heard one man say. "Who"s the man she"s hooked, eh?"
n.o.body seemed to know.
"Why did she go on the boards at all, I wonder? She"s got money, and belongs to a pre-eminently respectable family. Her brother"s a doctor."
"Stage-struck," said another. "She"ll give it up now, of course. Here"s her carriage. She"ll be here directly."
"And the happy man at her heels, I suppose," sneered the first speaker.
"They say she"s madly in love with him, and that he, of course, wants her money."
"He"s a cad, I know that," growled a younger man.
Impelled by an interest of which he himself did not know the source, Francis Trent had drawn nearer to the stage door as the young fellows spoke. He was quite close to it, when it opened at last and the pretty actress came forth.
She was escorted by a train of admirers, rich and poor. Her maid was laden with wraps and bouquets. The manager and the actor who played the leading part were on either side of her, and Ethel was laughing the merry, unaffected laugh of a perfectly happy woman as she made her triumphal exit from the little theatre where she had achieved all her artistic success. Another kind of success, she thought, was in store for her now. She was to know another sort of happiness. And the whole world looked very bright to her, although there was one little cloud--no bigger than a man"s hand, perhaps--which had already shown itself above the horizon, and might one day cloud the noontide of her love.
Francis Trent was so absorbed in watching her lovely face, and in wondering why her name had seemed so familiar, that he paid scant attention to her followers. It was only as the carriage drove off that his eye was caught by the face of a man who sat beside her. A gleam from a gas-lamp had fallen full upon it, revealing the regular, pa.s.sionless features, the dark eyes and pale complexion of Ethel"s lover. And as soon as he saw that face, a great change came over the mental condition of Francis Trent. He stood for a moment as if paralyzed, his worn features strangely convulsed, a strange lurid light showed itself in his haggard eyes. Then he threw his arms wildly in the air, uttered a choked, gasping cry, and rushed madly and vainly after the retreating carriage, heedless of the shouts which the little crowd sent after him.
"He"s mad--he"ll never catch up that carriage! What does he run after it for, the fool?" said one of the men on the pavement.
And indeed he soon relinquished the attempt, and sat down on a doorstep, panting and exhausted, with his face buried upon his arms.
But he was not mad. He was sure of that now. It was only that he had--partially and feebly, but to some extent effectually--remembered what had happened to him in the dark dead Past.
CHAPTER XXVII.
DOUBT.
It was a difficult matter for Maurice Kenyon so to word his report to Caspar Brooke as not to excite his displeasure against Lesley. He felt himself bound to respect Lesley"s confidences--if such they might be called--respecting the promise which kept her from returning his love; but he could not help a certain bitterness of tone in referring to his interview with her; and his friend observed the bitterness.
"What reason did she give for refusing you?" he asked sharply.
"I suppose she does not care for me."
"There is something else--to judge from your look. Perhaps there is--somebody else?" said Brooke.
"Well, I don"t know that I"m doing right in telling you--but--G.o.d help me!--I believe there is," said Maurice, with a groan.
"She did not tell you who?"
"No."
Mr. Brooke knitted his brows. He was inclined to think that Oliver Trent had produced an impression on Lesley"s susceptible heart. He could not ask questions of any of the persons concerned; but he had his suspicions, and they made him angry as well as anxious.
He made it his business during the next day or two to find out whether Oliver had been to the house since the day when he had interrupted the interview; but he could not learn that he had ventured there again. It was no use asking Dr. Sophy about Lesley"s comings and goings: it was almost impossible for him to question Lesley herself.