XXXIX
Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the previous evening.
Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would benefit noone; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there were obligations notto be tested by that standard. She owed it, at any rate, as much to hispride as to hers to abstain from the repetition of such scenes; andshe had learned that it was beyond her power to do so while theywere together. Yet when he had given her the chance to free herself,everything had vanished from her mind but the blind fear of losing him;and she saw that he and she were as profoundly and inextricably boundtogether as two trees with interwoven roots. For a long time she broodedon her plight, vaguely conscious that the only escape from it must comefrom some external chance. And slowly the occasion shaped itself in hermind. It was Sophy Viner only who could save her--Sophy Viner only whocould give her back her lost serenity. She would seek the girl out andtell her that she had given Darrow up; and that step once taken therewould be no retracing it, and she would perforce have to go forwardalone.
Any pretext for action was a kind of anodyne, and she despatched hermaid to the Farlows' with a note asking if Miss Viner would receive her.There was a long delay before the maid returned, and when at last sheappeared it was with a slip of paper on which an address was written,and a verbal message to the effect that Miss Viner had left some dayspreviously, and was staying with her sister in a hotel near the Place del'Etoile. The maid added that Mrs. Farlow, on the plea that Miss Viner'splans were uncertain, had at first made some difficulty about givingthis information; and Anna guessed that the girl had left her friends'roof, and instructed them to withhold her address, with the objectof avoiding Owen. "She's kept faith with herself and I haven't," Annamused; and the thought was a fresh incentive to action.
Darrow had announced his intention of coming soon after luncheon, andthe morning was already so far advanced that Anna, still mistrustful ofher strength, decided to drive immediately to the address Mrs. Farlowhad given. On the way there she tried to recall what she had heard ofSophy Viner's sister, but beyond the girl's enthusiastic report ofthe absent Laura's loveliness she could remember only certain vagueallusions of Mrs. Farlow's to her artistic endowments and matrimonialvicissitudes. Darrow had mentioned her but once, and in the briefestterms, as having apparently very little concern for Sophy's welfare, andbeing, at any rate, too geographically remote to give her any practicalsupport; and Anna wondered what chance had brought her to her sister'sside at this conjunction. Mrs. Farlow had spoken of her as a celebrity(in what line Anna failed to recall); but Mrs. Farlow's celebrities werelegion, and the name on the slip of paper--Mrs. McTarvie-Birch--did notseem to have any definite association with fame.
While Anna waited in the dingy vestibule of the Hotel Chicago she had sodistinct a vision of what she meant to say to Sophy Viner that the girlseemed already to be before her; and her heart dropped from all theheight of its courage when the porter, after a long delay, returnedwith the announcement that Miss Viner was no longer in the hotel. Anna,doubtful if she understood, asked if he merely meant that the young ladywas out at the moment; but he replied that she had gone away theday before. Beyond this he had no information to impart, and after amoment's hesitation Anna sent him back to enquire if Mrs. McTarvie-Birchwould receive her. She reflected that Sophy had probably pledged hersister to the same secrecy as Mrs. Farlow, and that a personal appeal toMrs. Birch might lead to less negative results.
There was another long interval of suspense before the porter reappearedwith an affirmative answer; and a third while an exiguous and hesitatinglift bore her up past a succession of shabby landings.
When the last was reached, and her guide had directed her down a windingpassage that smelt of sea-going luggage, she found herself before a doorthrough which a strong odour of tobacco reached her simultaneously withthe sounds of a suppressed altercation. Her knock was followed by asilence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a handsomeyoung man whose ruffled hair and general air of creased disorder led herto conclude that he had just risen from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofastrewn with tumbled cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing abasket of faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray,almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining corner of whichanother man, short, swarthy and humble, sat examining the lining of hishat.
Anna paused in doubt; but on her naming Mrs. Birch the young manpolitely invited her to enter, at the same time casting an impatientglance at the mute spectator in the background.
The latter, raising his eyes, which were round and bulging, fixed them,not on the young man but on Anna, whom, for a moment, he scrutinized assearchingly as the interior of his hat. Under his gaze she had the senseof being minutely catalogued and valued; and the impression, when hefinally rose and moved toward the door, of having been accepted asa better guarantee than he had had any reason to hope for. On thethreshold his glance crossed that of the young man in an exchange ofintelligence as full as it was rapid; and this brief scene left Anna sooddly enlightened that she felt no surprise when her companion,pushing an arm-chair forward, sociably asked her if she wouldn't havea cigarette. Her polite refusal provoked the remark that he would,if she'd no objection; and while he groped for matches in his loosepockets, and behind the photographs and letters crowding the narrowmantel-shelf, she ventured another enquiry for Mrs. Birch.
"Just a minute," he smiled; "I think the masseur's with her." Hespoke in a smooth denationalized English, which, like the look in hislong-lashed eyes and the promptness of his charming smile, suggested along training in all the arts of expediency. Having finally discovered amatch-box on the floor beside the sofa, he lit his cigarette and droppedback among the cushions; and on Anna's remarking that she was sorryto disturb Mrs. Birch he replied that that was all right, and that shealways kept everybody waiting.
After this, through the haze of his perpetually renewed cigarettes, theycontinued to chat for some time of indifferent topics; but when at lastAnna again suggested the possibility of her seeing Mrs. Birch he rosefrom his corner with a slight shrug, and murmuring: "She's perfectlyhopeless," lounged off through an inner door.
Anna was still wondering when and in what conjunction of circumstancesthe much-married Laura had acquired a partner so conspicuous for hispersonal charms, when the young man returned to announce: "She says it'sall right, if you don't mind seeing her in bed."
He drew aside to let Anna pass, and she found herself in a dim untidyscented room, with a pink curtain pinned across its single window, anda lady with a great deal of fair hair and uncovered neck smiling at herfrom a pink bed on which an immense powder-puff trailed.
"You don't mind, do you? He costs such a frightful lot that Ican't afford to send him off," Mrs. Birch explained, extending athickly-ringed hand to Anna, and leaving her in doubt as to whether theperson alluded to were her masseur or her husband. Before a reply waspossible there was a convulsive stir beneath the pink expanse, andsomething that resembled another powder-puff hurled itself at Anna witha volley of sounds like the popping of Lilliputian champagne corks. Mrs.Birch, flinging herself forward, gasped out: "If you'd just give hima caramel...there, in that box on the dressing-table...it's the onlyearthly thing to stop him..." and when Anna had proffered this sop toher assailant, and he had withdrawn with it beneath the bedspread, hismistress sank back with a laugh.
"Isn't he a beauty? The Prince gave him to me down at Nice the otherday--but he's perfectly awful," she confessed, beaming intimately on hervisitor. In the roseate penumbra of the bed-curtains she presented toAnna's startled gaze an odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, ora suggestion, rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and inspite of the powder-puff, become. Larger, blonder, heavier-featured,she yet had glances and movements that disturbingly suggested what wasfreshest and most engaging in the girl; and as she stretched her bareplump arm across the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil fromdingy distances of family history.
"Do sit down, if there's a place to sit on," she cordially advised;adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with miscellaneousraiment: "My singing takes so much time that I don't get a chance towalk the fat off--that's the worst of being an artist."
Anna murmured an assent. "I hope it hasn't inconvenienced you to see me;I told Mr. Birch--"
"Mr. WHO?" the recumbent beauty asked; and then: "Oh, JIMMY!" shefaintly laughed, as if more for her own enlightenment than Anna's.
The latter continued eagerly: "I understand from Mrs. Farlow that yoursister was with you, and I ventured to come up because I wanted to askyou when I should have a chance of finding her."
Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare. "Do youmean to say the idiot at the door didn't tell you? Sophy went away lastnight."
"Last night?" Anna echoed. A sudden terror had possessed her. Could itbe that the girl had tricked them all and gone with Owen? The idea wasincredible, yet it took such hold of her that she could hardly steadyher lips to say: "The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he wasmistaken. Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find her here."
"It was all so sudden that I don't suppose she had time to let theFarlows know. She didn't get Mrs. Murrett's wire till yesterday, and shejust pitched her things into a trunk and rushed----"
"Mrs. Murrett?"
"Why, yes. Sophy's gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they're to meet atBrindisi," Sophy's sister said with a calm smile.
Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink bed, thetrivial face among the pillows.
Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: "They had a fearful kick-up last spring--Idaresay you knew about it--but I told Sophy she'd better lump it, aslong as the old woman was willing to...As an artist, of course, it'sperfectly impossible for me to have her with me..."
"Of course," Anna mechanically assented.
Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly aware thatMrs. Birch's explanations were still continuing. "Naturally I didn'taltogether approve of her going back to that beast of a woman. I saidall I could...I told her she was a fool to chuck up such a place asyours. But Sophy's restless--always was--and she's taken it into herhead she'd rather travel..."
Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave-taking. Thepushing back of her chair roused the white dog's smouldering animosity,and he drowned his mistress's further confidences in another outburstof hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, andMrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under apillow, called out: "Do come again! I'd love to sing to you."
Anna murmured a word of thanks and turned to the door. As she opened itshe heard her hostess crying after her: "Jimmy! Do you hear me? JimmyBRANCE!" and then, there being no response from the person summoned: "DOtell him he must go and call the lift for you!"
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