The Long Arm of Mannister/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
HIS LAST QUEST
WITHIN twenty-four hours of his arrival in Nice, Mannister came face to face upon the Promenade with the man he sought. Yet it is certain that if Dunster, with whom he was walking, had not called attention to him, Mannister would have passed him by without recognition. Sinclair was old and bent. His face was haggard, and he walked with tottering footsteps, leaning upon the arm of a servant. He recognized Mannister quickly enough, and there was a flash in his eyes which bespoke other things than the mere meeting again of two men who had once been friends. Dunster, who saw that the meeting of these two was no ordinary encounter, passed on. Mannister and Sinclair stood face to face. The latter turned to his servant.
"I will go to that seat," he said, pointing. "I want to talk for a few minutes with this gentleman."
"I am sorry," Mannister said politely, as they walked thither, "to see you in such indifferent health."
Sinclair answered him with a look of hatred, but he did not speak a word until the servant had gone.
"Don't tell lies, Mannister," he said then. "I am what you made me. I have never been myself for a single day since you chased me half over the world. Don't tell lies about being sorry for me. You are sorry for no one who stands in your way, or who does you ill. Oh, I've heard things!" he went on. "I've heard—never mind! There is nothing you could do to me. I'm past it. You couldn't even strike a helpless brute like I am. I at least can defy you."
"Where is your wife?" Mannister asked.
"I have no wife," the other answered. "I have never been married."
Mannister was very quiet, but there was something in his still voice which made the other, notwithstanding his assurance, crouch back in his seat.
"Do you remember, Gaston Sinclair, what I told you would happen if you failed to take up the charge I laid upon you?"
"I was willing to do it," Sinclair answered. "Upon my soul I was willing to do it. Look here, I knew I should meet you some day, and I made her write this."
With trembling fingers he drew from his breast pocket a sheet of paper and handed it to Mannister. Upon it was written a few sentences in delicate feminine handwriting.
"Gaston Sinclair has offered to marry me and I have refused. Nothing would induce me to become his wife. I write this at his request. Christine."
Mannister held the paper in his hand much longer than was necessary to decipher those few sentences. He read it over and over again. He fancied even that there came from its folds a faint suggestion of the perfume which always hung about her clothes and her belongings. Then he folded it up, but he did not pass it back to the other man.
"Why did she refuse to marry you?" he asked.
Sinclair laughed, a hard unpleasant sound it was.
"Because from the day you left us on the Oomanda Plain, she hated me. Because from that day to this she never even suffered her fingers to rest in my hand."
"Where is she?" Mannister asked coldly.
"I do not know," Sinclair answered. "I have neither seen nor heard from her since the day she left the hospital at Buenos Ayres."
"She was ill, then?" Mannister asked.
"She was taken ill with a fever the day you left," Sinclair answered. "They got her back to the city and into the hospital. I stayed there, although she refused always to see me. When she was well enough to leave I saw her for five minutes only. I made her write down her refusal of what I offered. Apart from that she declined to have anything to say to me. She would not tell me her plans, where she was going or what she meant to do. She had finished with me, and she told me so as plainly as a woman could speak. I came back to England, and I have been as you see me ever since."
"You left her in Buenos Ayres?" Mannister said.
"I know only that she came to London," Sinclair answered.
Mannister's teeth were hard set. He was looking out through the network of luxurious shrubs to where the blue sea was dotted everywhere with white sails. Sinclair leaned a little forward in his seat watching him. His long lean fingers were shaking, his eyes were bright with malicious satisfaction.
"Mannister," he said, "if one comes near to death one sees things clearly. It was a hellish trick those men sought to play upon you. They made only one mistake. They did not think that you would leave me alive. I had some of the money they robbed you of. Do you want it back?"
"No!" Mannister answered. "I am a rich man. It was never the money, Sinclair."
"I came back to England," Sinclair continued, "and I watched them go, broken men, one by one. I am the last of them, Mannister. Are you sure that there is nothing you would like to do to me? Can't you think of something in the shape of suffering you could bring down upon my shoulders?"
Mannister rose to his feet.
"No!" he said. "As you are I am content to leave you."
The other plucked at his sleeve.
"Sit down, Mannister," he said. "listen calmly if you can. Do not strike me. Look at what I am, and restrain yourself. I did not win your wife away from you fairly. She did not go because she loved me and hated you. I forged letters and showed them to her. I invented lies and filled her ears with them. She charged me with it that day after you had caught us, and I told her the truth."
Mannister looked at him as one might regard some noxious insect.
"I shall not strike you, Gaston Sinclair," he said. "To be what you are, and to know yourself for what you are, is punishment enough for any one on earth."
Mannister turned on his heel and walked back to the villa where he was staying. A travelling carriage, piled with luggage, was standing there at the door. May Dunster, who had just arrived from Rome, came out to meet him.
"Mr. Mannister," she said, a little shyly, "this is delightful. I had no idea that I should find you here."
"I had no idea of coming," he answered, "but your father in his invitation happened to mention the name of a man whom I was very anxious to see. I came and I have seen him, and now I am afraid that I must go away."
"Not just yet," she pleaded. "You must stay for a few days. And I forgot, I must call you Sir George, mustn't I?"
"You can call me anything you like," he answered. "Have you seen your father? I left him upon the promenade."
"Never mind about my father yet," she answered. "I want to talk to you for a few minutes. There was no one else in the world whom I wanted so much to see. Come down into the garden."
He followed her a little unwillingly to a spot where the shrubs had been cleared away, and where one looked down upon the whitewashed villas and gardens of Nice, and beyond the sea. She turned and motioned him to lean by her side against the railing.
"I wanted," she said, "so much to see you. I wanted to ask your advice."
He smiled a little bitterly.
"I am afraid," he said, "that one who has done so ill with his own life, is a poor person to show others the way to happiness. However, tell me what it is that troubles you, and I will do my best."
"I have been in Rome," she said, "for two months with my aunt, and on the whole—yes, I am sure that I have enjoyed it very much indeed. From the first there was someone there who was very nice and kind to me. He took us, my aunt and myself, to all the places I wanted to see. He always danced with me and rode. No one could have been so kind or so delightful as he was. And then, a few days before I came away, he asked me to marry him."
Mannister nodded.
"What was his name?" he asked.
"Phillimore," she answered. "He is a son of Lord Ernest Phillimore, the ambassador at Rome."
"I know him," Mannister remarked. "At least, that is I have met him once or twice. If he is only half such a decent fellow as I thought he was, and as I know his father is, you ought to be very happy."
She turned and looked into his face, looked with such earnestness that he felt obliged to turn toward her. There was nothing in his eyes which answered in the least the somewhat wistful gleam which shone in hers. She looked at him steadily, and when she turned away she sighed a little.
"Well," she said, "when he asked me I could not answer him. It seemed to me that I liked him very much, but there was something away back in my thoughts which kept me from saying yes to him, as it would have kept me from saying yes to any one. Perhaps it was a little girlish sentiment, perhaps it was something more. But I do not know, I could not feel sure of myself, because, you see, it was something which, however foolish it may seem, has somehow grown almost dear to me. I did not feel that I could part with it very easily. I did not feel that I could many any one unless I found out really whether it was just a fancy founded upon a dream, or whether there was anything real beneath it all. I thought," she added wistfully, "that I should know the truth when I met you again. I told him that I could not answer him for a little time. When I said a little time, what I really meant was that I could not answer him until I had seen you."
Mannister smiled down upon her with the grave seriousness of a person belonging to some elder generation.
"My dear child," he said, "I do not quite understand. If it is my advice you are asking, I give it to you frankly and honestly. I should like to hear that you were engaged to many Arthur Phillimore."
"Do you mean that?" she asked, and he fancied that there was a shade of disappointment in her tone.
"I mean it," he answered.
And then for a moment he let his hand rest upon hers.
"Little girl," he said, "I think I know what it is that you have had in your mind. You have been a little sorry for me because you have known that I have not been altogether happy, and your kind little heart was touched. It was very sweet of you, and I shall never forget it, but that sort of thing has nothing to do with the love which you must have for your husband. I am old enough to be your father, and although I do not speak of these things because there is trouble connected with them, I have a wife who lives still somewhere. Write and tell him your answer. I should like so much to see him before I leave Nice."
He raised the hand upon which his fingers were resting to his lips, and turned away toward the house. Those few tears he knew very well would soon have passed. Already he was only anxious to leave the place.
Then Mannister became a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He sought no new lands, nor did he betray the traveller's inters est in unexplored places. He passed from country to country of Europe, he was heard of even in the great cities of America. To all appearance his journeying was the journeying of a restless man. For two years he neither shot nor hunted, sport of no kind seemed able to attract him. The few people who met him spoke of him as aged. With the scattering to the winds of those fragments of paper, it seemed as though the purpose had gone out of his life. There was no one who suspected that his restless travelling hither and thither was in reality nothing more nor less than a search. It was in Paris that he received the first gleam of encouragement in all those weary two years. He was driving down from the Bois one afternoon, and when in the Champs Elysées he passed a carriage in which were seated two ladies, one old and one young. He himself was in a hired voiture, looking down with only faintly simulated interest upon the constant stream of automobiles and carriages. Nevertheless their eyes met, although it was only for a second, and Mannister, galvanized into sudden and complete life, springing to his feel, stopped the cocher and upset the whole traffic for several moments, as in obedience to his peremptory orders they turned round and endeavoured to overtake the retreating carriage. Their effort was in vain. The tired hack had no chance against the pair of thoroughbreds, who were already almost out of sight But Mannister was too much in earnest to be easily turned aside from his purpose. The liveries of the carriage, dark green, and the small coronet upon the panels, served him as a basis for a restless fire of inquiries directed to the gendarmes, the commissionaire at the famous restaurant in the Bois, wherever there seemed a chance of obtaining information. Late that night Mannister obtained the information he sought, and at mid-day the next morning he was ushered into the presence of Madame la Comtesse de Lanier, in whom he recognized at once the elder of those two women. Mannister's apologies were brief.
"I trust, Madame," he said, "that you will pardon my intrusion, but for two years I have been searching for the lady whom I saw in your carriage yesterday afternoon. She is perhaps your guest in Paris."
Madame la Comtesse touched the bell even as she answered him.
"Monsieur," she said, "the history of that lady is very well known to me. Be assured that you will never hear of her or from her under this roof. She was my guest. I was hoping that she would remain so for some time to come. But at the sight of you she packed her trunks. By this time she is far from Paris."
"Her address?" Mannister demanded. "She does not understand. I do not wish her any harm."
Madame la Comtesse turned to the servant who had answered her summons.
"The door to Monsieur," she ordered, and Mannister had no option but to go.
He returned to London, accepted an invitation to visit some friends in Scotland, and left again at the end of two days absolutely incapable of devoting himself to the purpose of his visit, the shooting of his host's grouse. He spent a few days in London, and was on the point of leaving it when he received a letter from May Dunster, written from a small town in the north of Italy.
- "I am writing," she said, "not only to remind you of your promise to come to my wedding in Rome next month, but to ask you to do something which you will probably think strange, but which I will explain when I see you. I want you to take the first train you can catch and come here. You must come direct to Florence, and at the Hotel Splendide you will find a letter from me telling you how to reach this place. My father is with me, and also Mr. Phillimore. When you come I will explain."
Two nights afterwards he dined on the balcony of a long, low white villa overlooking the Adriatic, with the perfume of the orange groves floating from the land, and the soft sea-breeze, travelling across a sea almost as still as glass, rustling gently amongst the shrubs and lemon trees which encircled the house. After dinner she drew him on one side and pointed across the water, faintly agleam now with the light of the rising moon, to a tiny island barely a mile away.
"I wonder," she said, "whether you can see amongst the trees there a little villa, the villa D'Ajuta they call it. It has been empty for three years. A fortnight ago it was taken by a countrywoman of ours."
He looked at it without interest.
"Well?" he asked.
"Do you know," she said, hesitatingly, "I am not sure even now whether I have been justified in sending you that letter. You see in Rome every one knows every one else's business. I have heard new things of my oldest friends, and amongst others I have heard things about Sir George Mannister."
He smiled a little wearily.
"People have had many things to say about me," he answered, "and I fear that it could have been nothing good that you heard from the tongues of gossips."
"I heard this, at any rate," she answered, "that for two years you had travelled about in the fashion of a man who seeks something which he can never find. I heard other things, and I heard other people's construction of these things and of your journeyings, and then I put them together and I came to a different conclusion from any of them, and I may have been right, and I may have been wrong, but I sent for you to tell you that I believe that the woman who has taken the villa that you can see amongst the trees there, is the woman for whom you have been searching these last two years."
Mannister would take no boatman, or heed the warnings of those who spoke to him of the sudden squalls. It seemed to him that the suppressed energy of years throbbed in his muscles as he drove the long sharp-prowed boat through the still waters. He felt no fatigue. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, but only to that faintly burning light towards which he held his way. The phosphorus which gleamed in the water, which dropped even amongst the spray which fell from his oars, he took no heed of. The brown-sailed fishing smack which crossed his bows, with a quaint horn lantern hanging from the mast, passed him unnoticed. He returned no answer to the musical greetings of the men who lounged there smoking their long cigarettes. To him there was but one object in life, and he attained it when he drove with one last powerful stroke his little boat on to the sandy beach of the island toward which May Dunster had pointed. He scarcely waited to ship his oars and make the boat secure. Up through a little avenue of trees, whose perfume seemed to make fragrant the cool night, he hastened toward the villa. One by one the lights had been extinguished, until at last when he reached the front he found the place in utter darkness. He stumbled round until he found a door, and hammered at it until an elderly man-servant drew back the chains and showed himself. It struck Mannister from the first that he was not so much surprised as one living on an island might be at a midnight visitor. Mannister inquired impatiently for his mistress. The man stretched out his hands. Only this afternoon, he explained, the Signora had departed. She had had news. It might have been bad, it might have been good. He could not say. But he only knew that she had gone. For a month, perhaps, or two—who could tell? She had promised to write, but certain it was that she had gone, and gone for some time.
Mannister was at first incredulous. He produced gold, but the old man, though his eyes were lit with desire, kept to his story.
"I will show the Signor," he declared, "every room in the villa, and he will see that the Signora has indeed gone."
Mannister accepted his challenge. The villa was a small one, the apartments in the front of the house were certainly all empty, and showed signs of a hasty departure. There were traces of packing, several trunks were already there ready for forwarding, and the rooms themselves were devoid of any signs of present occupation. Mannister asked for pen and ink, and wrote a letter.
"You have trunks there," he said, "to forward to the Signora. You will forward with them this letter."
He placed gold upon the table, and the old man promised. Then Mannister rowed back to the mainland, but he rowed as a man weary and tired, and daylight was breaking eastward before his journey was over. Then he went wearily up to his room and slept.
On the morrow he turned homeward again. For three weeks he stayed in his rooms. Then one night he received a telegram from Rome.
"I am breaking a promise," it said, "but I do it for your sake. Meet the Continental train at Victoria, due 6.45."
Mannister was there half an hour before the train was due, only to find that it was an hour late. Restlessly he walked up and down the platform. Was this, then, to be the end of his search, a meeting in a railway station? What could he say to her there, or she to him? What was there to be said? What could be the possible outcome? His heart sank, and rose again as he thought over the possibilities of the next few minutes. At one time it seemed to him that he was following a will-o'-the-wisp. At another he felt that the new life which he knew so well was possible to him, might start within the next few hours. The train came, and with a fever of impatience he peered into the carriages as they glided by. And then, exactly opposite to him as the train stopped, a tall, heavily veiled woman stepped out on to the platform almost into his arms
"Christine!" he said, and held out his hands.
The woman clutched at the shoulder of her maid, who was close behind. She looked at Mannister as one might look at a ghost. Mannister calmly took the cloak from her arm and held her hand in his.
"Christine," he said, "I have been looking for you for more than two years. It has seemed a very long time that you have been coming. Won't you give your maid that luggage ticket? She can take your things wherever you will. The carriage is waiting for you and for me at the entrance here."
She looked long and steadily into his face and the longer she looked the more the terror which at first had seized her seemed to pass away.
"George," she whispered, "is it possible that you have forgiven?"
"It is possible," he answered, "it is true. I am here to welcome you home."
She passed her arm through his, and a little sob broke from her throat.
"And you have been looking for me," she murmured, "for two years, and all the time I have been flying from you, terrified. And I have been lonely all the time."
Mannister laughed softly as he handed her into his brougham.
"I, too," he answered, "but that is over."
THE END.