"But why are you so averse to my friendship?" I demanded. "I a.s.sure you that I will do my utmost to serve you if you will accept me as your friend."
"I do not doubt it. I can only regret that our friendship is debarred,"
she answered.
"Why debarred?"
"Because of circ.u.mstances which, as I have already told you, I am unable to explain. Besides, I have long ago read in the newspapers that you reside abroad. I could not think of keeping you here in England on my account."
"I intend to live in England for the future," I hastened to a.s.sure her.
"In fact, I"m on the lookout for a home at an easy distance from London, and in the meantime I am the guest of my old schoolfellow and friend, Captain Wyman, of whose recent explorations in Central Africa you may have heard."
She shook her head slowly, and in a low, mechanical voice, almost as though speaking to herself, said, "I cannot see why you should be so ready to sacrifice everything for my sake. It is far best if we part now, never to meet again. It will be best for both of us, Mr Kennedy, I a.s.sure you. Remember, once and for all, that our friendship is forbidden."
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
THE STRANGER IN BLACK.
"Forbidden!" I cried, taking her proffered hand and keeping possession of it. "Why is our friendship forbidden? I thought you had accepted my friendship! I do not know the truth about yourself--nor do I wish to know. I only know that I desire to serve you in every way a man is capable. I only ask you to allow me to love you, to let me think of you as my own."
"Ah, no!" she said, withdrawing her hand. "It is not just that I should allow you to thus go headlong into ruin. My duty is to warn you of the dire consequences of this reckless devotion to myself," she added with that sweet touch of her woman"s nature that had all along held me charmed. "Hear me, Mr Kennedy, I beseech of you. Pause and reflect upon the consequences. You say you are my friend. That may be so, but when I tell you in reply that no friendship is permissible between us, will it not be best if we part at once--
[About five lines missing here.]
of my return to London--not by mere chance surely, but because I am destined to serve you."
A man"s arguments in such circ.u.mstances are never very logical. What other words I uttered I do not recollect. I only know that her determination to tell me nothing about herself rendered her the more attractive.
But to all my persuasions, my pleadings, and my utterances she was still the same woman of honour, fearful lest I should come to harm through a.s.sociation with her, fearful lest the unknown fate she dreaded should fall upon us both at the hour of our supreme happiness.
At one moment I felt that I was acting foolishly in thus trying to persuade her into accepting me as her friend, and at others the fact that in social standing I was far beneath her, the daughter of a n.o.ble house and well known in London, impressed itself upon me.
For half an hour we walked onward, heedless of where our footsteps led us. She told me of her recent travels in the East with her father, of their delightful time in the cold weather in India, and afterwards in Sydney and Melbourne.
"My father has been a wanderer ever since my poor mother"s death," she exclaimed, with a touch of sadness. "He will never remain in England long, because life here always brings back recollections of her. They were a very devoted pair," she added.
"And so you have accompanied him?"
"Yes, ever since I left the convent school in France. My journeys already have included two trips round the world and a yachting voyage to Spitzbergen."
"Well," I laughed, "I thought I had some claim to be a traveller; but you entirely eclipse me."
"Ah, but I am tired of it--terribly tired, I can a.s.sure you."
I told her how I, too, had suffered from that nostalgia that comes sooner or later to most persons who live abroad, that curious indefinite malady of the heart which causes one to long for home and friends, and to waste in the flesh if the desire is ungratified. You who have lived abroad have experienced it.
I told her how I had lived for years beside that brilliant tideless sea until I had become sun-sick and tired of blue skies, whereupon she sighed and said:
"Italy!--ah, yes! I know Italy. I have, alas! cause to remember my visit there."
"Is the recollection of it so bitter?" I inquired, quickly on the alert.
"Yes," she answered in a hard voice. "It is years ago now; but I recollect every one of those incidents as vividly as though they only happened yesterday. Milan, Florence, Perugia, Rome--all cities whose very names are now hateful to me. Yet I suppose the past should be of the past." And she sighed again, her eyes fixed upon the pavement.
What could I say? What question could I put to her?
Could it be that her journey to Italy had had any connection with the strange conspiracy that seemed to be in progress, or was it possible that her travels in the South had been fraught with some youthful love episode of a tragic nature?
Her character, sweet and modest, was yet so utterly complex that I could not understand it. I was, therefore, uncertain of the security of my own position, and thus feared to explain to her that The Closed Book stolen from Harpur Street was in my hands, lest it might be against the interests of the investigations I had undertaken.
She made no mention of the old hunchback from Leghorn, who had no doubt visited at Harpur Street, perhaps even made the house his headquarters.
Yet I felt sure that she was acquainted with Graniani just as she knew Selby.
Again and again I reverted to my affection for her, begging and imploring her to view my suit with favour, or if not, at least to allow me to stand her friend. But she was obdurate, although my words caused her much genuine emotion.
I saw that, although driven to desperation by reason of some unspeakable secret, she was nevertheless a woman of honour. If I sought to a.s.sist her, I should place myself in deadly peril of my life, she declared.
This she would not allow me to do. Why? Was it because at heart she was really my friend?
I wonder if there are others who have experienced a similar feeling--a desire to commence life afresh, guided by a good woman? If they have, they will know the feelings which were mine. I was no mawkish youth, callow in his first affection, and carrying his heart upon his sleeve.
On the contrary, I had known love, I had enjoyed my allotted share of it, and just as prosperity had come to me the great sorrow of my life had come also to me, and I had gone abroad to bury myself in an Italian village.
Dusk darkened into night, and the street lamps commenced to glimmer as we strolled on and on westward, through that maze of highly respectable streets and squares which const.i.tute Bayswater, until we suddenly found ourselves in the boarding-house region of Powis Square. Then, at her suggestion, we turned and retraced our steps to the Edgware Road, proceeding towards the Park. The cloud that had earlier fallen upon her seemed now removed, and she grew brighter.
Her father, she told me, had returned to London, and was at home; but she expected they would both leave again tomorrow for the North.
"To Scotland?" I suggested with some anxiety.
"Oh, I really don"t know," was her reply. "My father is most erratic in his movements. I only know that he goes to the North, and that I go with him."
"But tell me," I asked very earnestly, "has your father ever mentioned his intention of going to Galloway?"
She looked up at me in some surprise.
"Yes, he did so the other day, while we were at Saxlingham," she responded. "But why do you wish to know?"
"Because I have a reason--a very strong one," I answered. "He goes with friends, doesn"t he?"
"With me--I know of no one else who is going. We may be going to Castle-Douglas; but of course I am quite in the dark. Very often I have set out from Charing Cross with him and have not known our destination until we have been in Paris or Brussels. Again, we have, on several occasions, been living quietly at home in Grosvenor Street when all our friends have believed us to be on the other side of the equator. It is quite exciting, I a.s.sure you, to live in secret at home, see n.o.body, and only go out at night, and then always in fear of being recognised," she added.
"But why does your father do these things; he surely has some motive?"
I recollected that the town of Castle-Douglas was near the castle of Threave.
She gave her well-formed shoulders a shrug, and her countenance was overspread by a blank look of ignorance which I was compelled to admit was feigned.
Mystery crowded on mystery. I could make nothing out of it all. Put yourself for a moment in my place, and ask yourself whether you could solve the extraordinary problem surrounding this popular peer and his daughter who, while appearing frequently at the most exclusive functions in London, were sometimes living in absolute secrecy in their own house, or wandering over the face of the world without apparent motive, yet evidently with some fixed but secret object.
The more I reflected, the more utterly mystified I became.
"It is impossible--quite impossible?" she said when, at the Park Lane corner of Grosvenor Street I halted to take leave of her. "We must not meet again. I hope, Mr Kennedy, you will think no more of me," she added; "because it pains me quite as much as it does you. As I have already told you, I would explain the truth if I were allowed--but I cannot."