The House of Peril (Ainslee's, 1911)/Chapter 3

Exactly a week had gone by, and no news, no explanation of her abrupt departure from Enghien had been received from Anna Olsen. Madame Malfait was still waiting for instructions as to what was to be done with the luggage and the various personal possessions the Danish lady had left scattered about her room.

To Mabel Blackett it seemed as if her friend had been obliterated, blotted out of existence, and she felt an ever-recurring surprise and discomfiture that it was so.

Outwardly the Danish lady's mysterious disappearance had been a ripple, and only a ripple, on the pleasant, lazy, agreeable life they were all leading. In fact, no one seemed to remember Anna Olsen excepting Mabel Blackett herself, and that kindly couple, Madame Wachner and her silent husband. As the days slipped by, the Wachners had grown more and more anxious, and each time Mabel saw them, and she met them daily, either the husband or the wife would ask her eagerly and sympathetically: “Has Madame Olsen returned?” or “Have you had news of Anna Olsen?” And they expressed increasing concern and surprise when her answer had always to be in the negative.

And now, as on the previous Saturday, Mrs. Blackett had come up to her room after déjeuner. She was sitting, as she had sat just a week ago, in her basket chair close to the window, and her mind went back to the day when she had sat there expecting her friend.

Somehow it seemed far more than a week ago since Anna had left Enghien. But then a good deal had happened in the last seven days. Mabel had made several pleasant new acquaintances, and and—above all, she had become far more really intimate with the Comte De Poupel than had been the case before Anna Olsen's departure. They had become almost inseparable, and yet so cleverly did the Comte De Poupel arrange their frequent meetings, their long talks in the large, deserted garden of the pension, their pleasant saunters through the little town, and their long saunters in the Forest, that no one, or so Mrs. Blackett believed, was even aware of any special intimacy between them.

The count was now spending the day in Paris, and Mabel was dull and rather listless. She had never before felt that aching longing for another human being's presence which, disguised under many names in our civilized life, was in her case, and by herself to herself, called “friendship.” She had been little more than a pretty child when her marriage to a man twenty years older than herself had taken place, and she had been widowed eight months later.

The Comte De Poupel seldom referred to his relations, and Mabel had felt pleased, almost flattered, when he had confided to her the insignificant fact that he had gone into Paris to-day to see his sister, the duchess, by appointment. Since she had got to know him so much better, she sometimes wondered, a little sorely, why he never suggested introducing her to any of “his people.” Mabel could not understand the Comte De Poupel, and her feelings about him disturbed, almost angered, her.

But just now, on this hot Saturday afternoon, Mabel Blackett's thoughts were being forced into a new channel, and one that led to the temporary exclusion of all that concerned her present life. She had learned that morning that a friend of hers, a man whom she had known all her life, who had not so very long ago wanted to marry her, and who was also, oddly enough, her trustee—was coming to Enghien in order to see her on his way to Switzerland.

Just now Mrs. Blackett could well have dispensed with Bill Oldchester's presence. When she had left Dallington six months ago she had felt very kindly disposed to Bill. In fact, she had almost brought herself to think that she would, in time, become Mrs. Oldchester. She knew that he loved her with a solid, enduring love which never faltered. But lately, during the last few weeks, she had told herself that life offered her far more than the New England country lawyer could give her.

There is in every woman a passion for romance. In Mabel Blackett this passion had been balked, not satisfied, by her first marriage. Oldchester's devotion had touched her, the more so that it was expressed in actions rather than words, for he was the type of man—seldom unfortunately a romantic type—who would have scorned to take advantage of his fiduciary position. Moreover, the fact that he was her trustee brought them into occasional conflict. Too often he was the candid friend instead of the devoted lover, and now Mabel told herself ruefully that Bill would certainly disapprove of the kind of life—idle, purposeless, frivolous—she was now leading.

Already Mabel and Oldchester had had one rather sharp “tiff.” He had vehemently disapproved of the way she had “invested” a few thousand dollars which had been left her by a distant relation within a few months of her widowhood. Mabel had insisted—after all, a woman has a right to do what she likes with her own money—on buying with this legacy a string of pearls.

Bill Oldchester had been really horrid about it, and Mabel even now had not quite forgiven him the “fuss” he had made. She had told him angrily that in the dull, stupid town set in which he lived the women were dowdy. All the New York ladies in whose doings the inhabitants of Dallington took so keen an interest, wore strings of real pearls, and, as she now reminded herself, nothing she had ever bought, nothing which had ever been given her, had given her such lasting pleasure as had her string of pearls. Indeed, they had become part of herself; she wore them night and day, and even Bill Oldchester had had to admit that as they increased in value every six months they had not been so bad an investment, after all.

“Missis Bla—quette, Missis Bla—quette!”

Mrs. Blackett jumped up eagerly from her chair, and ran to the window.

The Comte De Poupel stood below, in the garden which was one of the charms of the Pension Noir. In spite of the great heat the Frenchman looked, as he generally did look, cool, unruffled, self-possessed. There was a gay little smile on his face, and as their eyes met he took a cigarette from between his lips.

One of the things which fascinated Mabel was the count's fine breeding. He was so courteous, so delicately considerate in his manner. But she was so far the only one of his fellow visitors in the Pension Noir with whom he condescended to any real acquaintance. Mabel was puzzled by this aloofness. American gentlemen—she realized that her friend was a gentleman—are so hail fellow well met with everybody—but the Comte De Poupel was very distant to those of his own fellow countrymen and countrywomen who, like himself, came to Enghien to gamble.

Though he seemed as if he hadn't a care in the world, save the pleasant care to enjoy the present, life was looking very gray just then to Paul De Poupel.

To a Parisian, Paris in August is a depressing place, and his sister, who had journeyed all the way from Brittany to see him, had received him with that touch of painful affection which the kindly and the prosperous so often bestow on those whom they feel to be at once beloved and prodigal. They had lunched together in their eldest brother's house, the old family house in the Faubourg St. Germain, and both had been reminded of far-off, happy, childish days when life had stretched out so pleasantly before them.

As a matter of fact, the count ought to have felt exceptionally happy to-day. One of his great-aunts had died intestate, leaving a fair estate to be divided among her great-nephews and nieces. The sum meant little to the others, but it was a very agreeable windfall to Paul De Poupel. And then, just as he had said good-by to his sister, she had kissed him with extra warmth, slipping an envelope, as she did so, into his hand. It contained her share of the unexpected legacy. The prodigal had taken the gift, not only because he knew a refusal would have pained his kind sister, but also because he was ruefully aware that the time would come when he would be very glad of the money.

But he had returned to Enghien, hating his life—hating even the place where he was now leading so useless and ignoble an existence.

Just now the only bright spot in the count's life was pretty, simple, unsophisticated Mrs. Blackett. But even in this matter his conscience was not wholly at ease. He told himself, and that frequently, that this American, with her absurd, touching lack of worldly knowledge, had no business to be living at Enghien, wasting her money at the petits chevaux and baccarat tables. Apart from that he, Paul De Poupel, had no business to be flirting with her; for, though Mrs. Blackett was unaware of the fact, Paul De Poupel was carrying on a very interesting flirtation with the lady he called in his own mind his petite amie Américaine. And very much he enjoyed the experience.

Yet now, to-day, he had almost made up his mind to leave Enghien for a while and to spend the money his sister had given him in taking a healthy, respectable holiday in Switzerland. As a younger man, he had been a distinguished “Alpinist”—many Frenchmen of his class are intrepid mountaineers. Were he to go away, he suspected that Mrs. Blackett, especially now that her friend, Madame Olsen, had left the place with such odd abruptness, would almost certainly leave, too.

But when he looked up at the jasmine-framed window at which his petite amie Américaine stood smiling at him, Paul De Poupel made up his mind, manlike, that the immediate thing to do was to enjoy the present, and forget both the past and the future.

Mabel Blackett, wearing a pinkish mauve cotton gown and her large black tulle hat, looked enchantingly pretty. True, the count's critical French eyes objected to the alliance of the cotton frock and the beautiful string of pearls, but he was fast approaching the state of mind when a man of fastidious taste forgives even a lack of taste in the woman to whom he is acting as philosopher and friend.

“Come into the garden,” he quoted softly, and Mrs. Blackett, leaning over the bar of her window, thought he added the word “Maud,” but of course that could not be, for her name, as the count well knew, was Mabel.

“I am so comfortable up here—I don't believe it will be half as cool in the garden!”

She looked down at him coquettishly, pretending—only pretending—to hesitate as to what she would do in answer to his invitation.

But Mabel Blackett was but an amateur at the great game—the game at which only two can play, and yet which is capable of such infinite, such bewilderingly protean variations. And so her next move—one which Paul De Poupel, smiling behind his mustache, naturally foresaw—was to turn away from the window, and run down the steep staircase of the pension with the more haste that it had suddenly occurred to her that the count, taking her at her word, might have suddenly gone off to the Casino, there as usual to lose his money; for whatever he might be in love, he was singularly unlucky at cards.

Mrs. Blackett liked to think that she was gradually weaning her new friend from what she sorrowfully knew to be in his case, whatever it was in hers, and in that of the many people about them, the vice of gambling.

When, a little breathless, she joined him in the garden, she found that he had already dragged two rocking-chairs into a shady corner, out of sight of the house and of its inquisitive windows. The Pension Noir was very prosperous, and accordingly the garden was cared for and well kept; just now it was brilliant with the serpentine bedding-out to which the old-fashioned French gardener is addicted, and cool with the plashing of fountains.

As the pretty American came up to him, the count did not shake hands as one of her own countrymen would have done; instead he bowed low, and then conducted her ceremoniously to her chair.

“Well, petite madame,” he said, with the tired smile, the humorous twinkle in his eye which always made Mabel Blackett feel that he was, after all, not quite as serious as she would have liked him to be when with her. “Well, and how have you been all to-day? Dull?” And as she nodded, smiling, he added casually: “Any news of the vanished one?”

Mrs. Blackett shook her head. Somehow she did not care to joke about Anna Olsen's departure. The Danish woman's odd, and to her inexplicable, conduct had real hurt her.

The count leaned forward, and, speaking this time with the banter gone out of his voice, he said:

“Listen. I am now going to speak to you as frankly as if you were my—my sister. You should not waste a moment of your time in regretting Madame Olsen. She was no friend for you. She was an unhappy woman held tightly in the paws of the tiger—Play. That is the truth, ma belle petite madame. She could be no use to you, you could be no use to her. It is a pity you ever met her, and I am glad she went away without doing any further mischief. It was bad enough to have brought you to Enghien, and taught you to gamble. Had she stayed on, she would have tried in time to make you go on with her to Monte Carlo!”

He shook his head expressively.

Mrs. Blackett opened her lips; she hesitated, then said a little nervously:

“Tell me—you did not ask Madame Olsen to go away, did you, Count Paul?”

He looked at her, genuinely surprised.

“I ask Madame Olsen to go away?” he repeated. “Such a thought never even crossed my mind. It would have been very impertinent of me to do such a thing! Tell me what made you suppose 1t? You must think me a terrible hypocrite, petite madame! Have not shared your surprise at her leaving so suddenly—so mysteriously?”

Mabel grew very red. As a matter of fact, it had been Madame Wachner who had suggested to her the idea. “I should not be surprised,” she had said, “if that Count De Poupel persuaded your friend to go away. He wants the field clear for himself!” And then she had seemed to regret her imprudent words, and she had begged Mabel not to give the count any hint of her suspicion. Mrs, Blackett, till a moment ago, had faithfully kept her promise; even now she did not mean to break it.

She grew still redder, for she retained, to the count's satisfaction, the youthful habit of blushing.

“Of course I don't think you a hypocrite,” she said awkwardly; “but you never did like poor Anna—and you are always telling me that Enghien isn't a place where a nice woman ought to stay long. I thought you might have said something of the same kind to Madame Olsen.”

“And do you really think”—Count Paul spoke with a touch of sharp irony in his gentle, low voice—“that your friend would have taken my advice? Do you think that Madame Olsen would look either to the right or the left when the Goddess of Chance beckoned?” And he waved his hand in the direction where they both knew the great gambling établissement lay, crouching, like some huge, prehistoric monster, on the bank of the lake which is the innocent attraction Enghien offers in the dog days to the jaded Parisian.

“But the Goddess of Chance did not beckon to her to leave Enghien!” she exclaimed. “Why, she meant to stay on here till the middle of September.”

“You asked me a very indiscreet question just now.” The count leaned forward, and looked straight into Mrs. Blackett's eyes.

“Did I?” she said seriously.

“Yes. You asked me if I had persuaded Madame Olsen to leave Enghien. Well, now I ask you, in my turn, whether it has ever occurred to you that the Wachners know more of Madame Olsen's departure than they admit? I gathered that impression the only time I talked to your Madame Wachner about the matter. I felt sure that she knew more than she would say. Of course, it was only an impression.”

Mabel hesitated.

“At first Madame Wachner seemed annoyed that I made a fuss about it,” she said thoughtfully. “But lately she has seemed as surprised and sorry as I am myself. Oh, no, count; I am sure you are wrong. Why, you forget that Madame Wachner walked up to the Pension Malfait that same evening—I mean the evening of the day Anna left Enghien. In fact, it was Madame Wachner who first found out that Anna had not come home. She went up to her bedroom to look for her.”

“Then it was Madame Wachner who found the letter?” observed the count interrogatively.

“Oh, no, it wasn't! Che letter was found the next morning by the chambermaid. It was in a blotting book on Anna's table, but no one had thought of looking there. You see, they were all expecting her to come back that night. Madame Malfait still thinks that she went to the Casino in the afternoon, and, after having lost her money, came back to the pension, wrote the note, and then went out and left for Paris with out saying anything about it to any one.”

“Well, I suppose something of the sort did happen,” said the Comte De Poupel thoughtfully. He had never liked the Danish woman, and he had not thought her a suitable companion for his unsophisticated American friend.

“And now,” he said, getting up from his chair, “I think I will take a turn at the Casino.”

It had been tacitly agreed between Mabel and himself very early in their acquaintance that he and she would not go down to the établissement together, and Mrs, Blackett's face fell. It seemed too bad that the count could not spend even one afternoon, and in her company, without indulging in what he admitted to be his fatal vice. But though her lip quivered, she was too proud, in some ways too reserved a woman, to make any appeal to him to stay here, with her, in this shady, quiet garden.

“It doesn't seem quite so hot as it did,” she said, getting up. “I think I will go and have tea with the Wachners. They never go to the Casino on Saturday afternoons.”

A cloud came over the count's face.

“I can't think what you see to like in that vulgar old couple,” he exclaimed irritably. “To me there is something”—he hesitated, seeking for an English word which should exactly express the French word touche—“sinistaire—that is the word I am looking for—there is to me something sinistaire about the Wachners.”

“Sinister?” repeated Mabel, surprised. “Why, they seem to me to be the most good-natured, commonplace people in the world; and then they're so fond of one another!”

“I grant you that,” he said. “I quite agree that that ugly old woman is very fond of her 'Ami Fritz,' but I do not know if he returns the compliment!”

Mabel looked pained; nay, more, shocked.

“I suppose French husbands only like their wives when they are young and pretty,” she said slowly.

“Another of the many injustices you are always heaping on my poor country,” the count protested lightly. “But I confess I deserved it this time! Joking apart, I think 'L'Ami Fritz' is very fond of his”—he hesitated, then ended his sentence with “old Dutch!”

Mabel could not help laughing.

“It is too bad of you,” she exclaimed, “to talk like that! The Wachners are very nice people, and I won't allow you to say anything against them.”

“By the way, do you know to what nationality the Wachners belong?” asked the count casually. “I have always considered that 'L'Ami Fritz' looks like nothing so much as the popular notion of the Wandering Jew. But, mind you, I do not believe for a moment that he is an Israelite. Were he so, he would know how to take better care of his money.”

“But Monsieur Wachner does not lose much money,” said Mabel eagerly. “His wife told me not long ago that he came out almost 'even' each month. People who play on a 'system' always do.”

“Do they indeed?” The count made an ironical, little bow. “Let me inform you, ma belle madame, that it was on a 'system'—and a very good 'system,' too—that I myself became what you Americans would call 'dead broke,'” He sighed suddenly, deeply. “But I will not say anything more against the Wachners this afternoon, for your visit to them will give me your company for part of the way to the Casino, and your company always does me good!”

The Comte De Poupel was fond of saying things like that to Mabel Blackett, and when he said them she always wondered what he exactly meant by saying them. She had come to treasure his light compliments, to long for the pleasant, caressing words he sometimes uttered when they were alone together.

This time he was even better than his words, for he went on and on with Mabel; in fact, till they were actually within sight of the little, isolated villa where the Wachners lived.

There, womanlike, she made an effort to persuade him to go in with her.

“Do come,” she said urgently. “Madame Wachner would be so pleased! She was saying the other day that you had never been to their house.”

But Count Paul smilingly shook his head.

“And I have no intention of ever going there,” he said deliberately. “You see I do not like them. I suppose—I hope”—he looked again straight into Mabel Blackett's ingenuous, blue eyes—“that the Wachners have never tried to borrow money of you?”

“Never!” she cried, blushing violently. “Never, Count Paul! Your dislike of my poor friends makes you unjust—it really does.”

“It does! It does! I beg their pardon and yours, I was foolish, far worse, indiscreet, to ask you this question. I regret I did so. Accept my apology.”

She looked at him to see if he was sincere. His face was very grave; and she looked at him with perplexed, unhappy eyes.

“Oh, don't say that!” she said. “Why should you mind saying anything to me?”

But the Comte De Poupel was both vexed and angry with himself.

“It is always folly to interfere in any one else's affairs,” he muttered. “But I have this excuse—I happen to know that last week, or rather ten days ago, the Wachners were in considerable difficulty about money. Then suddenly they seemed to have found plenty; in fact, to be as we say here à flot. I confess that I foolishly imagined, nay I almost hoped, that they owed this temporary prosperity to you. But, of course, I had no business to think about it at all—still less any business to speak to you about the matter. Forgive me, I will not so err again.”

And then, with one of his sudden, stiff bows, the Comte De Poupel turned on his heel, leaving Mabel Blackett to make her way alone to the little wooden gate on which were painted the words: “Châlet des Muguets.”