Anna the Adventuress. Oppenheim Edward Phillips

is,” he replied, “the one humiliation of my life. My opportunities have been immense, and my failure utter. If I had been your companion only, and not your master, I might very well have been content to accept you for what you seem. But there have been times, Anna, when your work has startled me. Ill-drawn, without method or sense of proportion, you have put wonderful things on to canvas, have drawn them out of yourself, notwithstanding your mechanical inefficiency. God knows how you did it. You are utterly baffling.”

      She laughed at him easily and mirthfully.

      “Dear friend,” she said, “do not magnify me into a physiological problem. I should only disappoint you terribly some day. I think I know where I am puzzling you now – ”

      “Then for Heaven’s sake be merciful,” he exclaimed. “Lift up one corner of the curtain for me.”

      “Very well. You shall tell me if I am wrong. You see me here, an admitted failure in the object to which I have devoted two years of my life. You know that I am practically destitute, without means or any certain knowledge of where my next meal is coming from. I speak frankly, because you also know that no possible extremity would induce me to accept help from any living person. You notice that I have recently spent ten francs on a box of the best Russian cigarettes, and that there are roses upon my table. You observe that I am, as usual, fairly cheerful, and moderately amiable. It surprises you. You do not understand, and you would like to. Very well! I will try to help you.”

      Her hand hung over the side of her chair nearest to him. He looked at it eagerly, but made no movement to take it. During all their long comradeship he had never so much as ventured to hold her fingers. This was David Courtlaw, whose ways, too, had never been very different from the ways of other men as regards her sex.

      “You see, it comes after all,” she continued, “from certain original convictions which have become my religion. Rather a magniloquent term, perhaps, but what else am I to say? One of these is that the most absolutely selfish thing in the world is to give way to depression, to think of one’s troubles at all except of how to overcome them. I spend many delightful hours thinking of the pleasant and beautiful things of life. I decline to waste a single second even in considering the ugly ones. Do you know that this becomes a habit?”

      “If you would only teach us all,” he murmured, “how to acquire it.”

      “I suppose people would say that it is a matter of temperament,” she continued. “With me I believe that it is more. It has become a part of the order of my life. Whatever may happen to-morrow I shall be none the better for anticipating its miseries to-day.”

      “I wonder,” he said, a trifle irrelevantly, “what the future has in store for you.”

      She shrugged her shoulders.

      “Is that not rather a profitless speculation, my friend?”

      He seemed deaf to her interruption. His grey eyes burned under his shaggy eyebrows. He leaned towards her as though anxious to see more of her face than that faint delicate profile gleaming like marble in the uncertain light.

      “You were born for great things,” he said huskily. “For great passions, for great accomplishments. Will you find your destiny, I wonder, or will you go through life like so many others – a wanderer, knocking ever at empty doors, homeless to the last? Oh, if one could but find the way to your heart.”

      She laughed gaily.

      “Dear friend,” she said, “remember that you are speaking to one who has failed in the only serious object which she has ever sought to accomplish. My destiny, I am afraid, is going to lead me into the ruts.”

      He shook his head.

      “You were never born,” he declared, “to follow the well worn roads. I wonder,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “whether you ever realize how young you are.”

      “Young? I am twenty-four.”

      “Yet you are very young. Anna, why will you persist in this single-handed combat with life?”

      “Don’t!” she cried.

      “But I must, I will,” he answered fiercely. “Oh, I know you would stop me if you could. This time you cannot. You are the woman I love, Anna. Let me make your future for you. Don’t be afraid that I shall stunt it. I will give you a broad free life. You shall have room to develop, you shall live as you will, where you will, only give me the right to protect you, to free you from all these petty material cares.”

      She laid her hand softly upon his.

      “Dear friend,” she said, “do you not think that you are breaking an unspoken compact? I am very sorry. In your heart you know quite well that all that you have said is useless.”

      “Ay,” he repeated, looking away from her. “Useless – worse than useless.”

      “You are foolish,” she declared, with a note of irritability in her tone. “You would appear to be trying to destroy a comradeship which has been very, very pleasant. For you know that I have made up my mind to dig a little way into life single-handed. I, too, want to understand – to walk with my head in the light. Love is a great thing, and happiness a joy. Let me go my own way towards them. We may meet – who can tell? But I will not be fettered, even though you would make the chains of roses. Listen.”

      She stopped short. There was a sharp knocking at the outside door. Courtlaw rose to his feet.

      “It is too late for visitors,” she remarked. “I wonder would you mind seeing who it is.”

      Courtlaw crossed the room and threw open the door. He had come to Anna’s rooms from a dinner party, and he was in evening dress. Sir John, who was standing outside, looked past him at the girl still sitting in the shadow.

      “I believe,” he said stiffly, “that these are the apartments of Miss Pellissier. I must apologize for disturbing you at such an unseemly hour, but I should be very much obliged if Miss Pellissier would allow me a few minutes’ conversation. My name is Ferringhall – Sir John Ferringhall.”

      Chapter V

      “ALCIDE”

      Courtlaw took up his hat and coat at once, but Anna motioned him to remain.

      “Please stay,” she said briefly. “Will you come in, Sir John. I believe that I have heard my sister speak of you. This is my friend, Mr. David Courtlaw – Sir John Ferringhall.”

      Sir John acknowledged the introduction without cordiality. He entered the room with his usual deliberation, and looked covertly about him. He noticed the two chairs close together. Anna was still holding her cigarette between her fingers. Her likeness to her sister gave him at first almost a shock; a moment afterwards he was conscious of a wonderful sense of relief. For if the likeness between the sisters was remarkable, the likeness between this girl and the poster which he had come from studying was more remarkable still.

      “I must repeat,” Sir John said, “that I much regret disturbing you at such an unseemly hour. My only excuse is that I missed my way here, and I am leaving Paris early to-morrow morning.”

      “If your business with me is of any importance,” Anna said calmly, “it does not matter in the least about the hour. Have you brought me a message from my sister? I understood, I believe, that she was seeing you last night.”

      “Your sister,” he answered, “did me the honour of dining with me last night.”

      “Yes.”

      After all, it was not so easy. The girl’s eyes never left his face. She was civil, but she was obviously impatient to know his errand. Afraid, no doubt, he thought grimly, that her other visitor would leave.

      “I believe,” he said slowly, “that I shall do best to throw myself upon your consideration and tell you the truth. I have recently made your sister’s acquaintance, and in the course of conversation I understood from her that her Christian name was Anna. Some friends who saw us dining together persist in alluding to her as Miss Annabel Pellissier. I am guilty practically