PROLOGUE

It was very quiet within the little room perched high up under the roof of Wallater's Buildings. Even the glowing logs in the grate burned tranquilly, without any of those brisk cracklings and sputterings which make such cheerful company of a fire, while the distant roar of London's traffic came murmuringly, dulled to a gentle monotone by the honeycomb of narrow side streets that intervened between the gaunt, red-brick Buildings and the bustling highways of the city.

It seemed almost as though the little room were waiting for something—some one, just as the woman seated in the low chair at the hearthside was waiting.

She sat very still, looking towards the door, her folded hands lying quietly on her knees in an attitude of patient expectancy. It was as if, although she found the waiting long and wearisome, she were yet quite sure she would not have to wait in vain.

Once she bent forward and touched the little finger of her left hand, which bore, at its base, a slight circular depression such as comes from the constant wearing of a ring. She rubbed it softly with the forefinger of the other hand.

“He will come,” she muttered. “He promised he would come if ever I sent the little pearl ring.”

Then she leaned back once more, resuming her former attitude of patient waiting, and the insistent silence, momentarily broken by her movement, settled down again upon the room.

Presently the long rays of the westering sun crept round the edge of some projecting eaves and, slanting in suddenly through the window, rested upon the quiet figure in the chair.

Even in their clear, revealing light it would have been difficult to decide the woman's age, so worn and lined was the mask-like face outlined against the shabby cushion. She looked forty, yet there was something still girlish in the pose of her black-clad figure which seemed to suggest a shorter tale of years. Raven dark hair, lustreless and dull, framed a pale, emaciated face from which ill-health had stripped almost all that had once been beautiful. Only the immense dark eyes, feverishly bright beneath the sunken temples, and the still lovely line from jaw to pointed chin, remained unmarred, their beauty mocked by the pinched nostrils and drawn mouth, and by the scraggy, almost fleshless throat.

It might have been the face of a dead woman, so still, so waxen was it, were it not for the eager brilliance of the eyes. In them, fixed watchfully upon the closed door, was concentrated the whole vitality of the failing body.

Beyond that door, flight upon flight of some steps dropped seemingly endlessly one below the other, leading at last to a cement-floored vestibule, cheerless and uninviting, which opened on to the street.

Perhaps there was no particular reason why the vestibule should have been other than it was, seeing that Wallater's Buildings had not been designed for the habitual loiterer. For such as he there remains always the “luxurious entrance-hall” of hotel advertisement.

As far as the inhabitants of “Wallater's” were concerned, they clattered over the cement flooring of the vestibule in the mornings, on their way to work, without pausing to cast an eye of criticism upon its general aspect of uncomeliness, and dragged tired feet across it in an evening with no other thought but that of how many weary steps there were to climb before the room which served as “home” should be attained.

But to the well-dressed, middle-aged man who now paused, half in doubt, on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule, with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented an epitome of desolation.

His keen blue eyes, in one of which was stuck a monocle attached to a broad black ribbon, rested appraisingly upon the ascending spiral of the stone stairway that vanished into the gloomy upper reaches of the Building.

Against this chill background there suddenly took shape in his mind the picture of a spacious room, fragrant with the scent of roses—a room full of mellow tints of brown and gold, athwart which the afternoon sunlight lingered tenderly, picking out here the limpid blue of a bit of old Chinese “blue-and-white,” there the warm gleam of polished copper, or here again the bizarre, gem-encrusted image of an Eastern god. All that was rare and beautiful had gone to the making of the room, and rarer and more beautiful than all, in the eyes of the man whose memory now recalled it, had been the woman to whom it had belonged, whose loveliness had glowed within it like a jewel in a rich setting.

With a mental jolt his thoughts came back to the present, to the bare, commonplace ugliness of Wallater's Buildings.

“My God!” he muttered. “Pauline—here!”

Then with swift steps he began the ascent of the stone steps, gradually slackening in pace until, when he reached the summit and stood facing that door behind which a woman watched and waited, he had perforce to pause to regain his breath, whilst certain twinges in his right knee reminded him that he was no longer as young as he had been.

In answer to his knock a low voice bade him enter, and a minute later he was standing in the quiet little room, his eyes gazing levelly into the feverish dark ones of the woman who had risen at his entrance.

“So!” she said, while an odd smile twisted her bloodless lips. “You have come, after all. Sometimes—I began to doubt if you would. It is days—an eternity since I sent for you.”

“I have been away,” he replied simply. “And my mail was not forwarded. I came directly I received the ring—at once, as I told you I should.”

“Well, sit down and let us talk”—impatiently—“it doesn't matter—nothing matters since you have come in time.”

“In time? What do you mean? In time for what? Pauline, tell me”—advancing a step—“tell me, in God's Name, what are you doing in this place?” He glanced significantly round the shabby room with its threadbare carpet and distempered walls.

“I'm living here—”

“Living here? You?”

“Yes. Why not? Soon”—indifferently—“I shall be dying here. It is, at least, as good a place to die in as any other.”

“Dying?” The man's pleasant baritone voice suddenly shook. “Dying? Oh, no, no! You've been ill—I can see that—but with care and good nursing—”

“Don't deceive yourself, my friend,” she interrupted him remorselessly. “See, come to the window. Now look at me—and then don't talk any more twaddle about care and good nursing!”

She had drawn him towards the window, till they were standing together in the full blaze of the setting sun. Then she turned and faced him—a gaunt wreck of splendid womanhood, her fingers working nervously, whilst her too brilliant eyes, burning in their grey, sunken, sockets, searched his face curiously.

“You've worn better than I have,” she observed at last, breaking the silence with a short laugh, “you must be—let me see—fifty. While I'm barely thirty-one—and I look forty—and the rest.”

Suddenly he reached out and gathered her thin, restless hands into his, holding them in a kind, firm clasp.

“Oh, my dear!” he said sadly. “Is there nothing I can do?”

“Yes,” she answered steadily. “There is. And it's to ask you if you will do it that I sent for you. Do you suppose”—she swallowed, battling with the tremor in her voice—“that I wanted you to see me—as I am now? It was months—months before I could bring myself to send you the little pearl ring.”

He stooped and kissed one of the hands he held.

“Dear, foolish woman! You would always be—just Pauline—to me.”

Her eyes softened suddenly.

“So you never married, after all?”

He straightened his shoulders, meeting her glance squarely—almost sternly.

“Did you imagine that I should?” he asked quietly.

“No, no, I suppose not.” She looked away. “What a mess I made of things, didn't I? However, it's all past now; the game's nearly over, thank Heaven! Life, since that day”—the eyes of the man and woman met again in swift understanding—“has been one long hell.”

“He—the man you married—”

“Made that hell. I left him after six years of it, taking the child with me.”

“The child?” A curious expression came into his eyes, resentful, yet tinged at the same time with an oddly tender interest. “Was there a child?”

“Yes—I have a little daughter.”

“And did your husband never trace you?” he asked, after a pause.

“He never tried to”—grimly. “Afterwards—well, it was downhill all the way. I didn't know how to work, and by that time I had learned my health was going. Since then, I've lived on the proceeds of the pawnshop—I had my jewels, you know—and on the odd bits of money I could scrape together by taking in sewing.”

A groan burst from the man's dry lips.

“Oh, my God!” he cried. “Pauline, Pauline, it was cruel of you to keep me in ignorance! I could at least have helped.”

She shook her head.

“I couldn't take—your money,” she said quietly. “I was too proud for that. But, dear friend”—as she saw him wince—“I'm not proud any longer. I think Death very soon shows us how little—pride—matters; it falls into its right perspective when one is nearing the end of things. I'm so little proud now that I've sent for you to ask your help.”

“Anything—anything!” he said eagerly.

“It's rather a big thing that I'm going to ask, I'm afraid. I want you,” she spoke slowly, as though to focus his attention, “to take care of my child—when I am gone.”

He stared at her doubtfully.

“But her father? Will he consent?” he asked.

“He is dead. I received the news of his death six months ago. There is no one—no one who has any claim upon her. And no one upon whom she has any claim, poor little atom!”—smiling rather bitterly. “Ah! Don't deny me!”—her thin, eager hands clung to his—“don't deny me—say that you'll take her!”

“Deny you? But, of course I shan't deny you. I'm only thankful that you have turned to me at last—that you have not quite forgotten!”

“Forgotten?” Her voice vibrated. “Believe me or not, as you will, there has never been a day for nine long years when I have not remembered—never a night when I have not prayed God to bless you——” She broke off, her mouth working uncontrollably.

Very quietly, very tenderly, he drew her into his arms. There was no passion in the caress—for was it not eventide, and the lengthening shadows of night already fallen across her path?—but there was infinite love, and forgiveness, and understanding. . . .

“And now, may I see her—the little daughter?”

The twilight had gathered about them during that quiet hour of reunion, wherein old hurts had been healed, old sins forgiven, and now at last they had come back together out of the past to the recognition of all that yet remained to do.

There came a sound of running footsteps on the stairs outside—light, eager steps, buoyant with youth, that evidently found no hardship in the long ascent from the street level.

“Hark!” The woman paused, her head a little turned to listen. “Here she comes. No one else on this floor”—with a whimsical smile—“could take the last flight of those awful stairs at a run.”

The door flew open, and the man received an impressionist picture of which the salient features were a mop of black hair, a scarlet jersey, and a pair of abnormally long black legs.

Then the door closed with a bang, and the blur of black and scarlet resolved itself into a thin, eager-faced child of eight, who paused irresolutely upon perceiving a stranger in the room.

“Come here, kiddy,” the woman held out her hand. “This”—and her eyes sought those of the man as though beseeching confirmation—“is your uncle.”

The child advanced and shook hands politely, then stood still, staring at this unexpectedly acquired relative.

Her sharp-pointed face was so thin and small that her eyes, beneath their straight, dark brows, seemed to be enormous—black, sombre eyes, having no kinship with the intense, opaque brown so frequently miscalled black, but suggestive of the vibrating darkness of night itself.

Instinctively the man's glance wandered to the face of the child's mother.

“You think her like me?” she hazarded.

“She is very like you,” he assented gravely.

A wry smile wrung her mouth.

“Let us hope that the likeness is only skin-deep, then!” she said bitterly. “I don't want her life to be—as mine has been.”

“If,” he said gently, “if you will trust her to me, Pauline, I swear to you that I will do all in my power to save her from—what you've suffered.”

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

“It's all a matter of character,” she said nonchalantly.

“Yes,” he agreed simply. Then he turned to the child, who was standing a little distance away from him, eyeing him distrustfully. “What do you say, child! You wouldn't be afraid to come and live with me, would you?”

“I am never afraid of people,” she answered promptly. “Except the man who comes for the rent; he is fat, and red, and a beast. But I'd rather go on living with Mumsy, thank you—Uncle.” The designation came after a brief hesitation. “You see,” she added politely, as though fearful that she might have hurt his feelings, “we've always lived together.” She flung a glance of almost passionate adoration at her mother, who turned towards the man, smiling a little wistfully.

“You see how it is with her?” she said. “She lives by her affections—conversely from her mother, her heart rules her head. You will be gentle with her, won't you, when the wrench comes?”

“My dear,” he said, taking her hand in his and speaking with the quiet solemnity of a man who vows himself before some holy altar, “I shall never forget that she is your child—the child of the woman I love.”

CHAPTER I

A MORNING ADVENTURE

The dewy softness of early morning still hung about the woods, veiling their autumn tints in broken, drifting swathes of pearly mist, while towards the east, where the rising sun pushed long, dim fingers of light into the murky greyness of the sky, a tremulous golden haze grew and deepened.

Little, delicate twitterings vibrated on the air—the sleepy chirrup of awakening birds, the rustle of a fallen leaf beneath the pad of some belated cat stealing back to the domestic hearth, the stir of a rabbit in its burrow.

Presently these sank into insignificance beside a more definite sound—the crackle of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath a heavier footfall than that of any marauding Tom, and through a clearing in the woods slouched the figure of a man, gun on shoulder, the secret of his bulging side-pockets betrayed by the protruding tail feathers of a cock-pheasant.

He was not an attractive specimen of mankind. Beneath the peaked cap, crammed well down on to his head, gleamed a pair of surly, watchful eyes, and, beneath these again, the unshaven, brutal, out-thrust jaw offered little promise of better things.

Nor did his appearance in any way belie his reputation, which was unsavory in the extreme. Indeed, if report spoke truly, “Black Brady,” as he was commonly called, had on one occasion only escaped the gallows thanks to the evidence of a village girl—one who had loved him recklessly, to her own undoing. Every one had believed her evidence to be false, but, as she had stuck to what she said through thick and thin, and as no amount of cross-examination had been able to shake her, Brady had contrived to slip through the hands of the police.

Conceiving, however, that, after this episode, the air of his native place might prove somewhat insalubrious for a time, he had migrated thence to Fallowdene, establishing himself in a cottage on the outskirts of the village and finding the major portion of his sustenance by skillfully poaching the preserves of the principal landowners of the surrounding district.

On this particular morning he was well content with his night's work. He had raided the covers of one Patrick Lovell, the owner of Barrow Court, who, although himself a confirmed invalid and debarred from all manner of sport, employed two or three objectionably lynx-eyed keepers to safeguard his preserves for the benefit of his heirs and assigns.

No covers were better stocked than those of Barrow Court, but Brady rarely risked replenishing his larder from them, owing to the extreme wideawakeness of the head gamekeeper. It was therefore not without a warm glow of satisfaction about the region of his heart that he made his way homeward through the early morning, reflecting on the ease with which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even pursed his lips together and whistled softly—a low, flute-like sound that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird.

But it is unwise to whistle before you are out of the wood, and Brady's triumph was short-lived. Swift as a shadow, a lithe figure darted out from among the trees and planted itself directly in his path.

With equal swiftness, Brady brought his gunstock to his shoulder. Then he hesitated, finger on trigger, for the lion in his path was no burly gamekeeper, as, for the first moment, he had supposed. It was a woman who faced him—a mere girl of twenty, whose slender figure looked somehow boyish in its knitted sports coat and very short, workmanlike skirt. The suggestion of boyishness was emphasized by her attitude, as she stood squarely planted in front of Black Brady, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, her straight young back very flat, and her head a little tilted, so that her eyes might search the surly face beneath the peaked cap.

They were arresting eyes—amazingly dark, “like two patches o' the sky be night,” as Brady described them long afterwards to a crony of his, and they gazed up at the astonished poacher from a small, sharply angled face, as delicately cut as a cameo.

“Put that gun down!” commanded an imperious young voice, a voice that held something indescribably sweet and thrilling in its vibrant quality. “What are you doing in these woods?”

Brady, recovering from his first surprise, lowered his gun, but answered truculently—

“Never you mind what I'm doin'.”

The girl pointed significantly to his distended pockets.

“I don't need to ask. Empty out your pockets and take yourself off. Do you hear?” she added sharply, as the man made no movement to obey.

“I shan't do nothin' o' the sort,” he growled. “You go your ways and leave me to go mine—or it'll be the worse for 'ee.” He raised his gun threateningly.

The girl smiled.

“I'm not in the least afraid of that gun,” she said tranquilly. “But you are afraid to use it,” she added.

“Am I?” He wheeled suddenly, and, on the instant, a deafening report shattered the quiet of the woods. Then the smoke drifted slowly aside, revealing the man and the girl face to face once more.

But although she still stood her ground, dark shadows had suddenly painted themselves beneath her eyes, and the slight young breast beneath the jaunty sports coat rose and fell unevenly. Within the shelter of her coat-pockets her hands were clenched tightly.

“That was a waste of a good cartridge,” she observed quietly. “You only fired in the air.”

Black Brady glared at her.

“If I'd liked, I could 'ave killed 'ee as easy as knockin' a bird off a bough,” he said sullenly.

“You could,” she agreed. “And then I should have been dead and you would have been waiting for a hanging. Of the two, I think my position would have been the more comfortable.”

A look of unwilling admiration spread itself slowly over the man's face.

“You be a cool 'and, and no mistake,” he acknowledged. “I thought to frighten you off by firin'.”

The girl nodded.

“Well, as you haven't, suppose you allow that I've won and that it's up to me to dictate terms. If my uncle were to see you—”