"You lonely, taking out typewriters to dine!" she mocked tenderly.
"It is lonely," he repeated, "and I am afraid of you here in all this luxury. I am so far away. I come from my attic to this, and I am afraid.
Do you know why?"
She sat quite still for a moment. Dimly she felt the presage of a coming change in their relations. Up to now she had been the mistress, she had held him so easily in check with her practised skill, with an unfinished sentence, a look, a touch. And now the man was rising up in him, and she felt her powers weaken.
"Shall I change my abode?" she murmured.
"Ah! but you would be just as wonderful and as far away even if we changed places--if you sat in my attic and I took your place here. That isn"t why I torture myself, why I am always asking myself if you are real, if the things we talk about are real, if the things we feel belong to ourselves, well up from our own hearts for one another or are just the secondary emotions of other people we catch up without knowing why. This is foolish, but you understand--you do understand. It is because you keep me so far away from yourself, when my fingers are burning for yours, when even to touch your face, to feel your cheek against mine, would banish every fear I have ever had. Elizabeth, you do understand! I have never kissed you, I have never held you for one moment in my arms--and I love you!"
He was leaning over her chair and she held him tightly by the shoulders.
There was nothing left of that hidden fear in his dark eyes. They shone now with another light, and she began to tremble.
"I wanted to wait a little, Philip, but if you feel like that--well, I can"t."
He took her silently into his arms. With the half closing of her eyes, the first touch of her responsive lips, himself dimly conscious of the change, he pa.s.sed into the world where stronger men live.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
Three months later, a very different Philip stood in the smaller of a handsome suite of reception rooms in a fashionable Fifth Avenue hotel. He was wearing evening clothes of the most approved cut and carried himself with a dignity and a.s.surance entirely transforming. The distinction of birth and breeding, little apparent in those half-starved, pa.s.sionate days of his misery, had come easily to the surface. His shoulders, too, seemed to have broadened, and his face had lost its cadaverous pallor.
The apartment in which he stood was plainly but handsomely furnished as a small withdrawing room. On the oak chiffonier stood a silver tray on which were half a dozen frosted c.o.c.ktails. Through the curtains was apparent a room beyond, in which a round table, smothered with flowers, was arranged for supper; in the distance, from the public restaurant, came the sound of softly played music. Philip glanced at the clock. The whole of the anxieties of this momentous evening had pa.s.sed. Telephone messages had reached him every quarter of an hour. The play was a great success. Elizabeth was coming to him with her producer and a few theatrical friends, flushed with triumph. They were all to meet for the first time that night the man who for the last three months had lived as a hermit--Merton Ware, the author of "The House of Shams," the new-found dramatist.
A maitre d"hotel appeared in the s.p.a.ce between the two rooms, and bowed.
"Everything is quite ready, Mr. Ware," he said, in the friendly yet deferential manner of an American head-waiter. "Won"t you take a c.o.c.ktail, sir, while you are waiting?"
"Very thoughtful of you, Louis. I think I will," Philip a.s.sented, taking a little case from his pocket and lighting a cigarette.
The man pa.s.sed him a gla.s.s upon a small salver.
"You"ll pardon the liberty, I am sure, sir," he continued, dropping his voice a little. "I"ve just heard that "The House of Shams" seems to be a huge success, sir. If I might take the liberty of offering my congratulations!"
Philip smiled genially.
"You are the first, Louis," he said. "Thank you very much indeed."
"I think you will find the supper everything that could be desired, Mr.
Ware," the man went on. "Our head chef, Monsieur Raconnot, has given it his personal attention. The wine will be slightly iced, as you desired. I shall be outside in the corridor to announce the guests."
"Capital, Louis!" Ware replied, sipping his c.o.c.ktail. "It will be another quarter of an hour yet before we see anything of them, I am afraid."
The man disappeared and left Philip once more alone. He looked through the walls of the room as though, indeed, he could see into the packed theatre and could hear the cries for "Author!" which even then were echoing through the house. From the moment when Elizabeth, abandoning her reserve, had given him the love he craved, a new strength seemed to have shone out of the man. Step by step he had thought out subtly and with infinite care every small detail of his life. It was he who had elected to live those three months in absolute seclusion. It was he, indirectly, who had arranged that many more photographs of Douglas Romilly, the English shoe manufacturer, should appear in the newspapers. One moment"s horror he had certainly had. He could see the little paragraph now, almost lost in the shoals of more important news:
GHASTLY DISCOVERY IN A DERBYSHIRE Ca.n.a.l
Yesterday the police recovered the body of a man who had apparently been dead for some weeks, from a ca.n.a.l close to Detton Magna. The body was unrecognisable but it is believed that the remains are those of Mr. Philip Romilly, the missing art teacher from London, who is alleged to have committed suicide in January last.
The thought of that gruesome find scarcely blanched his cheeks. His nerves now were stronger and tenser things. He crushed back those memories with all the strength of his will. Whatever might lie behind, he had struck for the future which he meant to live and enjoy. They were only weaklings who brooded over an unalterable past. It was for the present and the near future that he lived, and both, in that moment, were more alluring than ever before. Even his intellectual powers seemed to have developed in his new-found happiness. The play which he had written, every line of which appeared to gain in vital and literary force towards its conclusion, was only the first of his children. Already other images and ideas were flowing into his brain. The power of creation was triumphantly throwing out its tendrils. He was filled with an amazing and almost inspired confidence. He was ready to start upon fresh work that hour, to-morrow, or when he chose. And before him now was the prospect of stimulating companionship. Elizabeth and he had decided that the time had come for him to take his fate into his hands. He was to be introduced to the magnates of the dramatic profession, to become a clubman in the world"s most hospitable city, to mix freely in the circles where he would find himself in constant a.s.sociation with the keenest brains and most brilliant men of letters in the world. He was safe. They had both decided it.
He walked to the mirror and looked at himself. The nervous, highly-strung, half-starved, neurotic stripling had become the perfectly a.s.sured, well-mannered, and well-dressed man of the world. He had studied various details with a peculiar care, suffered a barber to take summary measures with his overlong black hair, had accustomed himself to the use of an eyegla.s.s, which hung around his neck by a thin, black ribbon. Men might talk of likenesses, men who were close students of their fellows, yet there was no living person who could point to him and say--"You are, beyond a shadow of doubt, a man with whom I travelled on the _Elletania_." The thing was impossible.
Louis once more made a noiseless appearance. There was the slightest of frowns upon his face.
"A gentleman wishes a word with you before the arrival of your guests, Mr. Ware," he announced.
"A journalist?" Philip enquired carelessly.
"I do not think so, sir."
Even as he spoke the door was opened and closed again. The man who had entered bowed slightly to Philip. He was tall and clean-shaven, self-a.s.sured, and with manner almost significantly reserved. He held a bowler hat in his hand and glanced towards Louis. He had the air of being somewhat out of place in so fashionable a rendezvous.
"Good evening, Mr. Ware!" he began. "Could I have just a word with you?"
Philip nodded to Louis, who at once left the room. The newcomer drew a little nearer.
"My name, sir," he said, "is Dane--Edward Dane."
Philip bowed politely. He was just a little annoyed at the intrusion, an annoyance which he failed altogether to conceal.
"What do you want with me?" he asked. "I am expecting some friends to supper in about ten minutes."
"Ten minutes will perhaps be sufficient for what I have to say," the other promised. "You don"t know me, then, Mr. Ware?"
"Never saw you before, to the best of my knowledge," Philip replied nonchalantly. "Are you a journalist?"
The man laid his hat upon a corner of the table.
"I am a detective," he said, "attached to the Cherry Street headquarters.
Your last rooms, Mr. Ware, were in my beat."
Philip nodded with some slight indication of interest. He faced his ordeal with the courage of a man of steel.
"That so?" he remarked indifferently. "Well, Mr. Dane, I have heard a good deal about you American detectives. Pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?"
The detective eyed Philip steadfastly. There was just the shadow of something that looked like admiration in his hard, grey eyes.
"Well, Mr. Ware," he said, "nothing that need disturb your supper party, I am sure. Over in this country we sometimes do things in an unusual way. That"s why I am paying you this visit. I have been watching you for exactly three months and fourteen days."
"Watching me?" Philip repeated.