Chapter 9

How amazing the fact that here, amid these pretentiously ugly and commonplace surroundings, innumerable human beings had stood, and would stand, trembling with fear, suspense, and hope! Vanderlyn reminded himself that here also Tom Pargeter, a man accustomed to measure everything by the money standard, had waited many a time in the sure belief that this was the ante-chamber to august and awe-inspiring mysteries; here, all unknowing of what the future held, he would come to-morrow morning, to learn, for once, the truth--the terrible truth--from the charlatan to whom he, poor fool, pinned his faith.

Suddenly a door opened, and Vanderlyn turned round with eager curiosity, a curiosity which became merged in astonishment. The woman advancing towards him made her vulgar surroundings sink into blurred insignificance; for Madame d'Elphis, with her slight, sinuous figure, draped in a red peplum, her pale face lit by dark tragic eyes, looked the sybil to the life....

Vanderlyn bowed, with voluntary deference. "Monsieur," she said, in a low, deep voice, "I must ask you to follow me; this is my sister's _appartement_. I live next door."

She preceding him, they walked through an untidy dining-room of which the furniture--the sham Renaissance chairs and walnut-wood buffet--looked strangely alien to Vanderlyn's guide, into a short, ill-lighted passage, which terminated in a locked, handleless door.

The woman whom he now knew to be Madame d'Elphis turned, and, facing Vanderlyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy eyes to rest full on her unknown visitor.

"You have your stick, your hat?" she asked. "Yes?--that is well; for when our séance is over, you will leave by another way, a way which leads into the garden, and so into the street."

She unlocked the door, and he followed her into a large book-lined study--masculine in its sober colouring and simple furnishings. Above the mantelpiece was arranged a trophy of swords and fencing-sticks; opposite hung a superb painting by Henner. Vanderlyn remembered having seen this picture exhibited in the Salon some five years before. It had been shown under the title "The Crystal-Gazer," and it was even now an admirable portrait of his hostess, for so, unconsciously, had Vanderlyn begun to regard the woman who was so little like what he had expected to find her.

Madame d'Elphis beckoned to him to follow her into yet another, and a much smaller, room. Ah! This was evidently the place where she pursued her strange calling; for here--so Vanderlyn, trying to combat the eerie impression she produced on him, sardonically told himself--were the stage properties of her singular craft.

The high walls were hung with red cloth, against which gleamed innumerable plaster casts of hands. The only furniture consisted of a round, polished table, which took up a good deal of the space in the room; on the table stood an old-fashioned lamp, and in the middle of the circle of light cast by the lamp on its shining surface, a round crystal ball. Two chairs were drawn up to the table.

An extraordinary sensation of awe--of vague disquiet--crept over Laurence Vanderlyn; he suddenly remembered the tragic story of Jeanne de Léra. Was it here that the sinister interview with the doomed girl had taken place?

It was Madame d'Elphis who broke the long silence:--

"I must ask you, Monsieur," she said, stiffly, "to depose the fee on the table. It is the custom."

Vanderlyn's thin nervous hand shot up to his mouth to hide a smile; the eerie feeling which had so curiously possessed him dropped away, leaving him slightly ashamed.

"Poor woman," he said to himself, "she cannot even divine that I am an honest man!"

He bent his head gravely, and took the roll of notes with which he had come provided out of his pocket. He placed a thousand-franc note on the table. "What a fool she must think me!" he mentally exclaimed; then came the consoling reflection, "But she won't think me a fool for long."

Madame d'Elphis scarcely glanced at the thousand-franc note; she left it lying where Vanderlyn had put it. "Will you please sit down, Monsieur?" she said.

Vanderlyn rather reluctantly obeyed her. As she seated herself opposite to him, he was struck by the sad intensity of her face; he told himself that she had once been--nay, that she was still--beautiful, but it was the tortured beauty of a woman who lives by and through her emotions.

He also realised that his task would not be quite as easy as he had hoped it would be; the manner of La d'Elphis was cold, correct, and ladylike--no other word would serve--to the point of severity. He saw that he would have to word his offer of a bribe in as least offensive a fashion as was possible. But while he was trying to find a sentence with which to embark on the delicate negotiation, he suddenly felt his left hand grasped and turned over, with a firm and yet impersonal touch.

The centre of the soothsayer's cool palm rested itself on the ring--his mother's wedding ring--loosely encircling his little finger, and then Madame d'Elphis began speaking in a low, quiet, and yet hesitating, voice,--a voice which suddenly recalled to her listener her Southern birth and breeding; it was strangely unlike the accents in which she had asked him to produce the promised fee.

Surprise, a growing, ever-deepening surprise, kept Vanderlyn silent. He soon forgot completely, for the time being, the business which had brought him there.

"For you the crystal," she whispered, "for others the Grand Jeu. You have not come, as others do, to learn the future; you do not care what happens to you--now."

She waited a moment, then, "the ring brings with it two visions," she said, fixing her eyes on the polished depths before her. "Visions of love and death--of pain and parting; one, if clear, yet recedes far into the past...."

She raised her voice, and began speaking in a monotonous recitative:

"I see you with a woman standing in a garden; behind you both is a great expanse of water. She is so like you that I think she must be your mother. She wears her grey hair in Madonna bands; she puts her arms round your neck; as she does so, I see on her left hand one ring--the ring which you are now wearing, and which I am now touching. She, your mother, is bidding you good-bye, she knows that she will never see you again, but you do not know it, so she smiles, for she is a brave woman----"

Madame d'Elphis stopped speaking. Vanderlyn stared at her with a sense of growing excitement and amazement; he was telling himself that this woman undoubtedly possessed the power of reading not only the minds, but even the emotional memories, of those who came to consult her.... Yes, it was true; his last parting with his mother had been out of doors, in the garden of their own family house on the shores of Lake Champlain.

As he looked fixedly at the crystal-gazer's downcast eyes, his own emotions seemed to become reflected in her countenance. She grasped his hand with a firmer, a more convulsive pressure.

"I see you again," she exclaimed, "and again with a woman! This vision is very clear; it evokes the immediate past--almost the present. The woman is young; her hair is fair, and in a cloud about her head. You are together on a journey. It is night----"

Madame d'Elphis stopped speaking abruptly; she looked up at Vanderlyn, and he saw that her dark eyes were brimming with tears, her mouth quivering.

"Do you wish me to describe what I see?" she asked, in an almost inaudible voice.

"No," said Vanderlyn, hoarsely,--he seemed to feel Peggy's arms about his neck, her soft lips brushing his cheek.

The soothsayer bent down till her face was within a few inches of the polished surface into which she was gazing.

"Now she is lying down," she whispered. "Her face is turned away. Is she asleep? No, she is dead!--dead!"

"Can you see her now?" asked Vanderlyn. "For God's sake tell me where she is! Can I hope to see her again--once more?"

Madame d'Elphis withdrew her hand from that of Vanderlyn.

"You will only see her face," she answered, slowly, "through the coffin-lid. That you will see. As to where she is now--I see her clearly, and yet,"--she went on, as if to herself, "nay, but that's impossible! I see her," she went on, raising her voice, "laid out for burial under a shed in a beautiful garden. The garden is that of Dr. Fortoul's house at Orange. At the head of the pallet on which she lies there are two blessed candles; a nun kneels on the ground. Stay,--who is that coming in from the garden? It is the wife of the doctor, it is Madame Fortoul,"--again there came a note of wavering doubt into the voice of the crystal-gazer. "She is whispering to the nun, and I hear her words; she says, 'Poor child, she is young, too young to have died like this, alone. I am having a mass said for her soul to-morrow morning.'"

Madame d'Elphis looked up. Her large eyes, of which the lids were slightly reddened, rested on Vanderlyn's pale, drawn face.

"Monsieur," she said, in a low, reluctant voice, "to be honest with you, I fear I have been leading you astray. During the last few moments it is my own past life that has been rising before me, not the present of this poor dead woman. When I am tired--and I am very tired to-night--some such trick is sometimes played me. I was born at Orange; as a child I spent many hours in the beautiful garden which just now rose up before me; I once saw a dead body in that shed--Madame Fortoul, who is devout, often has masses said for those who meet with sudden deaths and whose bodies are brought to her husband."

The soothsayer rose from her chair.

"If you will come to me to-morrow," she said, "bringing with you something which belonged to this lady, I am sure I shall be able to tell you all you wish to know. For that second séance," she added hurriedly, "I shall of course ask no further fee."

Vanderlyn, waking as from a dream, heard sounds in the other room, the coming and going of a man's footsteps. He also got up.

"Madame," he said, quietly, "I thank you from my heart. I recognise the truth of all you have told me, _with one paramount exception_. It is true that the woman whom you saw lying dead is now in the house of Dr. Fortoul at Orange; the fact that you once knew the place is an accident--and nothing but an accident. You have, however, Madame, made one strange mistake."

He took out of his pocket and held in his hand the large open envelope containing, in addition to the remainder of the notes he had brought, the slip he had cut from the newspaper. "Here is the proof that all you have seen is true," he repeated, "with one exception--_This lady was alone in the train_. It is important that this should be thoroughly understood by you, for to-morrow you will be called upon to testify to the fact."

Madame d'Elphis stiffened into deep attention.

"To-morrow morning," continued Vanderlyn, very deliberately, "one of your regular clients is coming to ask you to assist him to solve a terrible mystery. I will tell you his name--it is Mr. Pargeter, the well-known sportsman. He is coming to ask you to help him to find Mrs. Pargeter, who some days ago mysteriously disappeared. This lady's death, but he does not yet know it, took place while she was travelling--travelling alone. I repeat, Madame, that she was _alone--quite alone--on her fatal journey_."

Vanderlyn stopped speaking a moment; then his voice lowered, became troubled and beseeching.

"Once you have revealed the truth to Mr. Pargeter,--and he will believe implicitly all you say,--then, Madame, you will not only have accomplished a good action, but a sum, bringing the fee for the séance which is just concluded up to ten thousand francs, will be placed at your disposal by me."

Madame d'Elphis looked long and searchingly at the man standing before her.

"Monsieur," she said, "will you give me your word that the death of Mrs. Pargeter was as this paper declares it to have been--that is to say, a natural death?"

"Yes," answered Vanderlyn, "she knew that she would die in this way--suddenly."

"Then," said the fortune-teller, coldly, "I will do as you desire."

Vanderlyn, following a sudden impulse, put the envelope he held in his hand on the table. "Here is the fee," he said, briefly. "I know that I can trust in your discretion, your loyalty,--may I add, Madame, in your kindness?"

"I am ashamed," she whispered, "ashamed to take this money." She clasped her hands together in an unconscious gesture of supplication, and then asked, with a curious childish directness, "It is a great deal--can you afford it, Monsieur?"

"Yes," he said, hastily; the suffering, shamed expression on her face moved him strangely.

"When you next see Mr. Pargeter," she murmured, "you shall have written proof that I have carried out your wish."

She tapped the table twice, sharply,--then led the way into the larger room. It was empty, but Vanderlyn, even as he entered, saw a door closing quietly.

Madame d'Elphis walked across to an un-curtained window; she opened it and stepped through on to a broad terrace balcony.

"Walk down the iron stairway," she said, in a low voice, "there are not many steps. A little door leads from the garden below straight into the street; the door has been left unlocked to-night."

Vanderlyn held out his hand; she took it and held it for a moment. "Ah!" she said, softly, "would that _I_ had died when I was still young, still beautiful, still loved!--"

XII.

The bright May sun was pouring into Tom Pargeter's large smoking-room, making more alive and vivid the fantastic and brilliantly-coloured posters lining the walls.

Laurence Vanderlyn, standing there in a peopled solitude, caught a glimpse of his own strained and tired face in a mirror which filled up the space between two windows, and what he saw startled him, for it seemed to him that none could look at his countenance and not see written there the tale of his anguish, remorse, and suspense. And yet he knew that now his ordeal was drawing to a close; in a few moments Pargeter was due to return from his interview with Madame d'Elphis.

Walking up and down the sunny room which held for him such agonising memories of the long hours spent there during the last three days in Tom Pargeter's company, Vanderlyn lived again every moment of his own strange interview with the soothsayer. The impression of sincerity which Madame d'Elphis had produced on him had now had time to fade, and he asked himself with nervous dread whether she was, after all, likely to do what she had promised. Nay, was it in her power to lie,--or rather to tell the half-truth which was all that he had asked her to tell?

At last there came the sound of the front-door of the villa opening, shutting; and then those made by Pargeter's quick, short footsteps striking the marble floor of the hall, and echoing through the silent house.

Vanderlyn stopped short in his restless pacing. He turned and waited.

The door was flung open, and Pargeter came in. Quietly shutting the door behind him, he walked down the room to where the other man, with his back to the window, stood waiting for him. The three days and nights which had carved indelible lines on the American's already seamed face, had left Pargeter's untouched; just now he looked grave, subdued, but his face had lost the expression of perplexed anger and anxiety which had alone betrayed the varying emotions he had experienced since the disappearance of his wife.

At last, when close to Vanderlyn, he spoke--in a low, gruff whisper. "Grid!" he exclaimed, "Grid, old man, don't be shocked! La d'Elphis says that Peggy's dead--that she's been dead three days!"

Vanderlyn could not speak. He stared dumbly at the other, and as he realised the relief, almost the joy, in Pargeter's voice, there came over him a horrible impulse to strike--and then to flee.

"There, you can see it for yourself--" Pargeter held out, with fingers twitching with excitement, a sheet of note-paper. "La d'Elphis wrote it all down! I didn't see her--she's ill. But this is not the first time I've had to work her in that way, and it does just as well. Her sister managed everything,--she took her in one of Peggy's gloves which I'd brought with me."

Vanderlyn shuddered. He opened his mouth, but no words would come. Then he looked down at the sheet of paper Pargeter had handed him:--

"The person to whom this glove belonged has been dead three days. She died on a journey--alone. Think of the bridal flower,--it will guide you to where she now lies waiting for those who loved her to claim her."

Pargeter laid one hand on Vanderlyn's arm--with the other he took out of one of his pockets a sheaf of thin slips of paper. The American knew them to contain accounts of accidents and untoward occurrences registered at the Prefecture of Police.

Pargeter detached one of the slips and laid it across the sheet of paper on which Madame d'Elphis had written her laconic message:--

"Look--look at _this_, Grid! And don't say again I'm a fool for believing in La d'Elphis! I've had this since the day before yesterday; but I didn't bother to show it to you, for I didn't think anything of it--I shouldn't now, but for La d'Elphis! But do look--'the body of a young, fair woman found in a train at _Orange_,'--'the bridal flower,' as La d'Elphis says--eh, what?"

But still Vanderlyn did not speak.

"I've thought it all out," Pargeter went on, excitedly. "Peggy was driven to the wrong station--see? Got into the wrong train--and then--then, Grid, when she found out what she'd done, she got upset----" For the first time a note of awe, of horror, came into his voice--"You see, my sister Sophy was right, after all; the poor girl's heart was queer!"

"And what are you going to do now?" asked Vanderlyn in a low, dry tone. "Arrange for a special to Orange, I suppose? What time will you start, Tom? Would you like me to come with you?"

Pargeter reddened; his green eye blinked as if he felt suddenly blinded by the bright sun.

"I'm not thinking of going myself," he said, rather ashamedly. "Where would be the good of it? Her brother and that cousin of hers are sure to want to go. They can take Plimmer. The truth is--well, old man, I don't feel up to it! I've always had an awful horror of death. Peggy knew that well enough----" the colour faded from his face; he looked at the other with a nervous, dejected expression.

"Tom," said Vanderlyn, slowly, "why shouldn't _I_ go to Orange--with Madame de Léra? Why say anything to Peggy's people till we really know?"

For the first time Pargeter seemed moved to genuine human feeling. "Well," he said, "you _are_ a good friend, Grid! I'll never forget how you've stood by me during this worrying time. I wish I could do something for you in return----" he looked at the other doubtfully. To poor Tom Pargeter, "doing something" always meant parting with money, and Laurence Vanderlyn was, if not rich, then quite well off.

Vanderlyn's hand suddenly shook. He dropped the piece of paper he had been holding. "Perhaps you'll let me have Jasper sometimes--in the holidays," he said, huskily.

"Lord, yes! Of course I will! There's nothing would please poor Peggy more! Then--then when will you start, Grid? I mean for Orange?"

"At once," said Vanderlyn. Then he looked long, hesitatingly at Pargeter, and the millionaire, with most unusual perspicacity, read and answered the question contained in that strange, uncertain gaze.

"Don't bring her back, Grid! I couldn't stand a big funeral here. I don't want to hear any more about it than I can help! Of course, it isn't much good my going over to England _now_; but I won't stay in Paris, I'll get away,--right away for a bit, on the yacht,--and take some of the crowd with me."

* * * * *

No one ever knew the truth. To the Prefect of Police the mystery of the disappearance of Mrs. Pargeter is still unsolved--unsolvable. When he meets a pretty woman out at dinner he tells her the story--and asks her what she thinks.

As for Laurence Vanderlyn, he has gone home--home to the old colonial house which was built by his great-grandfather, the friend of Franklin, on the shores of Lake Champlain. He never speaks of Peggy excepting to Jasper; but to the lad he sometimes talks of her as if she were still there, still very near to them both, near enough to be grieved if her boy should ever forget that he had a mother who loved him dearly.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Uttermost Farthing, by Marie Belloc Lowndes