Читать книгу The Chink in the Armour - Marie Belloc Lowndes - Страница 3

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A small, shiny, pink card lay on the round table in Sylvia Bailey's sitting-room at the Hôtel de l'Horloge in Paris.

She had become quite accustomed to finding one or more cards—cards from dressmakers, cards from corset-makers, cards from hairdressers—lying on her sitting-room table, but there had never been a card quite like this card.

Although it was pink, it looked more like a visiting-card than a tradesman's advertisement, and she took it up with some curiosity. It was inscribed "Madame Cagliostra," and underneath the name were written the words "Diseuse de la Bonne Aventure," and then, in a corner, in very small black letters, the address, "5, Rue Jolie, Montmartre."

A fortune-teller's card? What an extraordinary thing!

Like many pretty, prosperous, idle women, Sylvia was rather superstitious. Not long before this, her first visit to Paris, a London acquaintance had taken her to see a noted palmist named "Pharaoh," in Bond Street. She had paid her guinea willingly enough, but the result had vaguely disappointed her, and she had had the feeling, all the time she was with him, that the man was not really reading her hand.

True, "Pharaoh" had told her she was going abroad, and at that time she had no intention of doing so. The palmist had also told her—and this was really rather curious—that she would meet, when abroad, a foreign woman who would have a considerable influence on her life. Well, in this very Hôtel de l'Horloge Mrs. Bailey had come across a Polish lady, named Anna Wolsky, who was, like Sylvia herself, a young widow, and the two had taken a great fancy to one another.

It was most unlikely that Madame Wolsky would have the slightest influence on her, Sylvia Bailey's, life, but at any rate it was very curious coincidence. "Pharaoh" had proved to be right as to these two things—she had come abroad, and she had formed a friendship with a foreign woman.

Mrs. Bailey was still standing by the table, and still holding the pink card in her hand, when her new friend came into the room.

"Well?" said Anna Wolsky, speaking English with a strong foreign accent, but still speaking it remarkably well, "Have you yet decided, my dear, what we shall do this afternoon? There are a dozen things open to us, and I am absolutely at your service to do any one of them!"

Sylvia Bailey laughingly shook her head.

"I feel lazy," she said. "I've been at the Bon Marché ever since nine o'clock, and I feel more like having a rest than going out again, though it does seem a shame to stay in a day like this!"

The windows were wide open, the June sun was streaming in, and on the light breeze was borne the murmur of the traffic in the Avenue de l'Opéra, within a few yards of the quiet street where the Hôtel de l'Horloge is situated.

The other woman—Anna Wolsky was some years older than Sylvia Bailey—smiled indulgently.

"Tiens!" she cried suddenly, "what have you got there?" and she took the pink card out of Sylvia's hand.

"Madame Cagliostra?" she repeated, musingly. "Now where did I hear that name? Yes, of course it was from our chambermaid! Cagliostra is a friend of hers, and, according to her, a marvellous person—one from whom the devil keeps no secrets! She charges only five francs for a consultation, and it appears that all sorts of well-known people go to her, even those whom the Parisians call the Gratin, that is, the Upper Crust, from the Champs Elysées and the Faubourg St. Germain!"

"I don't think much of fortune-tellers," said Sylvia, thoughtfully. "I went to one last time I was in London and he really didn't tell me anything of the slightest interest."

Her conscience pricked her a little as she said this, for "Pharaoh" had certainly predicted a journey which she had then no intention of taking, and a meeting with a foreign woman. Yet here she was in Paris, and here was the foreign woman standing close to her!

Nay more, Anna Wolsky had become—it was really rather odd that it should be so—the first intimate friend of her own sex Sylvia had made since she was a grown-up woman.

"I do believe in fortune-tellers," said Madame Wolsky deliberately, "and that being so I shall spend my afternoon in going up to Montmartre, to the Rue Jolie, to hear what this Cagliostra has to say. It will be what you in England call 'a lark'! And I do not see why I should not give myself so cheap a lark as a five-franc lark!"

"Oh, if you really mean to go, I think I will go too!" cried Sylvia, gaily.

She was beginning to feel less tired, and the thought of a long lonely afternoon spent indoors and by herself lacked attraction.

Linking her arm through her friend's, she went downstairs and into the barely furnished dining-room, which was so very unlike an English hotel dining-room. In this dining-room the wallpaper simulated a vine-covered trellis, from out of which peeped blue-plumaged birds, and on each little table, covered by an unbleached table-cloth, stood an oil and vinegar cruet and a half-bottle of wine.

The Hôtel de l'Horloge was a typical French hotel, and foreigners very seldom stayed there. Sylvia had been told of the place by the old French lady who had been her governess, and who had taught her to speak French exceptionally well.

Several quiet Frenchmen, who had offices in the neighbourhood, were "en pension" at the Hôtel de l'Horloge, and as the two friends came in many were the steady, speculative glances cast in their direction.

To the average Frenchman every woman is interesting; for every Frenchman is in love with love, and in each fair stranger he sees the possible heroine of a romance in which he may play the agreeable part of hero. So it was that Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky both had their silent admirers among those who lunched and dined in the narrow green and white dining-room of the Hôtel de l'Horloge.

Only a Frenchman would have given a second look at the Polish lady while Sylvia was by, but a Frenchman, being both a philosopher and a logician by nature, is very apt to content himself with the second-best when he knows the best is not for him.

The two friends were in entire contrast to one another. Madame Wolsky was tall, dark, almost swarthy; there was a look of rather haughty pride and reserve on her strong-featured face. She dressed extremely plainly, the only ornament ever worn by her being a small gold horseshoe, in the centre of which was treasured—so, not long ago, she had confided to Sylvia, who had been at once horrified and thrilled—a piece of the rope with which a man had hanged himself at Monte Carlo two years before! For Madame Wolsky—and she made no secret of the fact to her new friend—was a gambler.

Anna Wolsky was never really happy, she did not feel more than half alive, when away from the green cloth. She had only left Monte Carlo when the heat began to make the place unbearable to one of her northern temperament, and she was soon moving on to one of the French watering-places, where gambling of sorts can be indulged in all the summer through.

Different in looks, in temperament, and in tastes were the two young widows, and this, perhaps, was why they got on so excellently well together.

Sylvia Bailey was the foreign ideal of a beautiful Englishwoman. Her hair was fair, and curled naturally. Her eyes were of that blue which looks violet in the sunlight; and she had a delicate, rose leaf complexion.

Married when only nineteen to a man much older than herself, she was now at twenty-five a widow, and one without any intimate duties or close ties to fill her existence. Though she had mourned George Bailey sincerely, she had soon recovered all her normal interest and pleasure in life.

Mrs. Bailey was fond of dress and able to indulge her taste; but, even so, good feeling and the standard of propriety of the English country town of Market Dalling where she had spent most of her life, perhaps also a subtle instinct that nothing else would ever suit her so well, made her remain rigidly faithful to white and black, pale grey, and lavender. She also wore only one ornament, but it was a very becoming and an exceedingly costly ornament, for it consisted of a string of large and finely-matched pearls.

As the two friends went upstairs after luncheon Madame Wolsky said earnestly, "If I were you, Sylvia, I would certainly leave your pearls in the office this afternoon. Where is the use of wearing them on such an expedition as that to a fortune-teller?"

"But why shouldn't I wear them?" asked Sylvia, rather surprised.

"Well, in your place I should certainly leave anything as valuable as your pearls in safe keeping. After all, we know nothing of this Madame Cagliostra, and Montmartre is what Parisians call an eccentric quarter."

Sylvia Bailey disliked very much taking off her pearls. Though she could not have put the fact into words, this string of pearls was to her a symbol of her freedom, almost of her womanhood.

As a child and young girl she had been under the close guardianship of a stern father, and it was to please him that she had married the rich, middle-aged man at Market Dalling whose adoration she had endured rather than reciprocated. George Bailey also had been a determined man—determined that his young wife should live his way, not hers. During their brief married life he had heaped on her showy, rather than beautiful, jewels; nothing of great value, nothing she could wear when in mourning.

And then, four months after her husband's death, Sylvia's own aunt had died and left her a thousand pounds. It was this legacy—which her trustee, a young solicitor named William Chester, who was also a friend and an admirer of hers, as well as her trustee, had been proposing to invest in what he called "a remarkably good thing"—Mrs. Bailey had insisted on squandering on a string of pearls!

Sylvia had become aware, in the subtle way in which Women become aware of such things, that pearls were the fashion—in fact, in one sense, "the only wear." She had noticed that most of the great ladies of the neighbourhood of Market Dalling, those whom she saw on those occasions when town and county meet, each wore a string of pearls. She had also come to know that pearls seem to be the only gems which can be worn with absolute propriety by a widow, and so, suddenly, she had made up her mind to invest—she called it an "investment," while Chester called it an "absurd extravagance"—in a string of pearls.

Bill Chester had done his very best to persuade her to give up her silly notion, but she had held good; she had shown herself, at any rate on this one occasion, and in spite of her kindly, yielding nature, obstinate.

This was why her beautiful pearls had become to Sylvia Bailey a symbol of her freedom. The thousand pounds, invested as Bill Chester had meant to invest it, would have brought her in £55 a year, so he had told her in a grave, disapproving tone.

In return she had told him, the colour rushing into her pretty face, that after all she had the right to do what she chose with her legacy, the more so that this thousand pounds was in a peculiar sense her own money, as the woman who had left it her was her mother's sister, having nothing to do either with her father or with the late George Bailey!

And so she had had her way—nay, more; Chester, at the very last, had gone to great trouble in order that she might not be cheated over her purchase. Best of all, Bill—Sylvia always called the serious-minded young lawyer "Bill"—had lived to admit that Mrs. Bailey had made a good investment after all, for her pearls had increased in value in the two years she had had them.

Be that as it may, the young widow often reminded herself that nothing she had ever bought, and nothing that had ever been given her, had caused her such lasting pleasure as her beloved string of pearls!

But on this pleasant June afternoon, in deference to her determined friend's advice, she took off her pearls before starting out for Montmartre, leaving the case in the charge of M. Girard, the genial proprietor of the Hôtel de l'Horloge.