CHAPTER XX

Vera Anerley had never acted better than that night when Joan secretly visited Victor. Some subtle excitement--born, perhaps, of an unusually passionate kiss of her beloved's when she left him alone in the house to interview the man he had spoken of--was perhaps the spur which had produced an access of fervour. Perhaps it was the approaching separation. Victor had announced that he would start on a journey in a few days. She herself was leaving for the North with the travelling company to which she was attached.

In any case, her disappointed would-be lover, the young stage-manager, came up to her with a smile at her final exit--a thing he had not done since she was betrayed into pushing him roughly away when he attempted an embrace--and condescendingly said a few words of praise, adding a proposal to introduce "a friend of his," who had been "much pleased."

"He is the dramatic critic of the _Parthenon_!" he pompously added, surprised when Vera knitted her brow and shook her head.

"You are very kind, Mr. Howard, but I must be getting home," she pleaded. What was the critic of the Parthenon to her in comparison with half-an-hour's _tete-a-tete_ with Victor? she asked herself, as she escaped into her dressing-room, leaving "Mr. Howard" anathematizing her "folly," and vindictively prophesying to himself that, in spite of her beauty and talent, she would "never rise an inch" in her profession. "Mother," as she called Victor's mother, her late father's second wife, was out with the mild student, Mr. Dobbs, at the hospital entertainment. She wanted to be home first!

"Put away all my things for me, won't you, Polly?" she said to the daughter of the veteran actress who took old women parts, and who travelled with the company as wardrobe keeper. "Thanks! You are a good sort!" and with a hasty hug of the girl she darted out of the dressing-room, along the passage to the stage-door, and into the cool, quiet alley.

Then she ran--into the still glaring, thronged thoroughfare--it was a neighbourhood whose inhabitants kept late hours, and "did their shopping" mostly at night--hailed a loitering hansom, and was driven to Haythorn Street. Eagerly glancing out at the house, she had noticed a tall lady with a swinging gait coming along. She noticed her as hardly the kind of feminine visitor frequenting Haythorn Street, and because she seemed to swerve now and then. When she stopped and seemed to watch her alight and pass into the house, Vera wondered if the gentleman Victor expected--he had hinted that his visitor was one moving in higher circles--had brought her with him, and that she was waiting for him outside.

"But I suppose a gentleman would hardly bring a lady here at this hour of the night, still less leave her in the street," was her second and more lucid thought, as she opened the hall door with her latch-key, passed in, and closing it, listened.

If there was any one with Victor upstairs, she knew she would hear voices. But the stillness was that of an empty house. As she stood, she heard the same loud, sober ticking of the kitchen clock which had seemed so almost terrible to Joan in her awful anxiety. Then came a plaintive "mew" from within the little front parlour--hers and her step-mother's. "Why, Kitty! Who could have shut you in?" she exclaimed, and she opened the door. The tortoise-shell cat--an old one troubled with a perpetually-moulting coat, ran out as she did so and rubbed itself against her old winsey "theatre skirt," purring loudly. "Victor must have shut her in," she mused, as she went slowly upstairs to find him.

Where was he? For the door of Mr. Mackenzie's, the absent lodger's, sitting-room stood open--and there was no sound within. Entering, for the first moment she deemed the room empty. Then she noted the two tumblers, one half full of dark liquid, and the glass jug of water, on the table--and her glance travelling further, alighted on the motionless form of her lover on the sofa.

"Asleep?" she wondered. It seemed strange--the mercurial, ever wide-awake Victor--so early in the evening, as he considered evenings, too! Still, she went towards him on tiptoe. "I will wake him with a kiss," she thought, with an incipient glow of passion as she imagined him rousing from sleep to clasp her close and fasten those adored lips on hers with that warm, possessive kiss of his which she felt was unlike every other kiss which had been given and taken since Adam's fresh lips first touched the ripe, yet innocent mouth of Eve in Paradise.

When she reached him she gave a cry of terror. Something was wrong! He never looked livid, sunken, his eyes half-open, like that!

She seized his hand and gasped with relief; for it was warm and limp; then she stooped and kissed his brow. It was damp and cold as clay after a frost.

"He has fainted!" she wildly thought. "I must call some one!"

She flew downstairs, intending to ask help next door, in spite of a disagreement with its proprietress after a too intimate acquaintance of the moulting tortoise-shell with some fowls kept for laying purposes in the backyard; but as she opened the hall door, her stepmother and the thin, amiable Mr. Dobbs had just come up.

"Why, Vera! You are home early," began Mrs. Wright, surprised. "But--why--child! what is it?" She stopped short, for Vera's eyes looked madly at her--the girl was deathly white.

"Victor is ill, I am going for a doctor," she gasped, distractedly--her efforts to be calm and self-possessed only seemed to aggravate her uncontrollable fear and anguish. "Do go upstairs and see to him, Mr. Dobbs, won't you? I think he has fainted. I will be back directly!"

"Thank Heaven they came!" was her thought, as she ran swiftly up the street and round the corner to the doctor who always attended them, the kind, shrewd old practitioner, Doctor Thompson, and springing up the steps of the house vigorously rang the bell. She heard it clang within with that ominous toll some bells have, and peered through the coloured glass at the side of the door. Were they all dead? she asked herself impatiently, staring in at the empty entry, with its umbrella-stand and grandfather clock. What miserable mismanagement! Once more, although only a few moments had elapsed since the bell rang, she gave a tug to the bell-pull. A girl in hat and jacket came in sight within, put her fingers in her ears, and hurried to the door, looking disgusted. It was the housemaid, who had been to the hospital entertainment.

"I am sorry to have rung twice," exclaimed Vera, breathlessly, as she opened the door--she knew the girl. "But--is the doctor in? No? Oh, what shall I do?"

"It isn't the old lady, miss?--I saw her just now in the Priscilla Ward, a-larfin' fit to split her sides at the comic singing gentleman--what? Your brother? The smart young gent with the black moustache? A fit? My! Why don't you go round to young Doctor Hampton, who 'as just set up the dispensary? He's some sort of relation of master's, and I've heard master a-talkin' of his cleverness--round there, miss, two doors up--red lamp--you can't miss it!"

"She do seem put about," thought the young woman, as she looked out and watched Vera flit across the road like a black shadow. "Fancy takin' on like that about a brother!"

Wildly, telling herself passionately that a moment's delay might mean death--death was in his face--Vera tore into the still open entry of the little house with the red lamp and gave such a violent knock and ring that the door opened before it was over.

A young man stared at her, astonished, as she clutched at his coat-sleeve, despairingly adjuring him to come and save her brother's life, he was in a fit. He felt quite shocked and concerned at being suddenly assailed with such a pathetic flow of appealing language from so young and beautiful a creature.

"Yes--certainly--at once! Only let me get my hat!" he exclaimed; and after he had seized upon the head-gear nearest at hand, which happened to be a cricket-cap, he also set off running at her side, entered by the open door of Number Twelve, Haythorn Street, and sprang up after this agile girl three steps at a time.

The room was light. He saw two figures--a woman, kneeling by the couch, a man with his back to him, who turned as they came in. He looked pale and scared.

"I am afraid there is nothing to be done, Doctor," he said, in those low, hushed tones, which even the most irreverent use in the presence of the dead.

The young man passed him, and going to the couch, looked down upon the solemn face of the dead man. He laid his hand almost tenderly upon his brow--he listened to the heart.

"Take the old lady away, please!" he said, peremptorily, to Vera. Then, after the girl had, with some difficulty, coaxed her step-mother out, he turned to the scared and guiltless John Dobbs. "How did this happen?" he sternly inquired.