Edward Oppenheim - Anna the Adventuress

“But it may matter very much indeed,” Anna declared. “Perhaps for myself I do not mind, but this man is sure to find out some day, and he will not like having been deceived. Tell him the truth, Annabel.”

“The truth!”

There was a brief but intense silence. Anna felt that her words had become charged with a fuller and more subtle meaning than any which she had intended to impart. “The truth!” It was a moment of awkwardness between the two sisters – a moment, too, charged with its own psychological interest, for there were secrets between them which for many months had made their intercourse a constrained and difficult thing. It was Annabel who spoke.

“How crude you are, Anna!” she exclaimed with a little sigh. “Sir John is not at all that sort. He is the kind of man who would much prefer a little dust in his eyes. But heavens, I must pack!”

She sprang to her feet and disappeared in the room beyond, from which she emerged a few minutes later with flushed cheeks and dishevelled hair.

“It is positively no use, Anna,” she declared, appealingly. “You must pack for me. I am sorry, but you have spoilt me. I can’t do it even decently myself, and I dare not run the risk of ruining all my clothes.”

Anna laughed, gave in and with deft fingers created order out of chaos. Soon the trunk, portmanteau and hat box were ready. Then she took her sister’s hand.

“Annabel,” she said, “I have never asked you for your confidence. We have lived under the same roof, but our ways seem to have lain wide apart. There are many things which I do not understand. Have you anything to tell me before you go?”

Annabel laughed lightly.

“My dear Anna! As though I should think of depressing you with my long list of misdeeds.”

“You have nothing to tell me?”

“Nothing!”

So Annabel departed with the slightest of farewells, wearing a thick travelling veil, and sitting far back in the corner of a closed carriage. Anna watched her from the windows, watched the carriage jolt away along the cobbled street and disappear. Then she stepped back into the empty room and stood for a moment looking down upon the scattered fragments of her last canvas.

“It is a night of endings,” she murmured to herself. “Perhaps for me,” she added, with a sudden wistful look out of the bare high window, “a night of beginnings.”

Sir John was wholly unable to understand the laugh and semi-ironical cheer which greeted his entrance to the smoking-room of the English Club on the following evening. He stood upon the threshold, dangling his eye-glasses in his fingers, stolid, imperturbable, mildly interrogative. He wanted to know what the joke against him was – if any.

“May I enquire,” he asked smoothly, “in what way my appearance contributes to your amusement? If there is a joke I should like to share it.”

A fair-haired young Englishman looked up from the depths of his easy chair.

“You hear him?” he remarked, looking impressively around. “A joke! Sir John, if you had presented yourself here an hour ago we should have greeted you in pained silence. We had not then recovered from the shock. Our ideal had fallen. A sense of loss was amongst us. Drummond,” he continued, looking across at his vis-à-vis , “we look to you to give expression to our sentiments. Your career at the bar had given you a command of language, also a self-control not vouchsafed to us ordinary mortals. Explain to Sir John our feelings.”

Drummond, a few years older, dark, clean-shaven, with bright eyes and humorous mouth, laid down his paper and turned towards Sir John. He removed his cigarette from his lips and waved it gently in the air.

“Holcroft,” he remarked, “in bald language, and with the usual limitations of his clouded intellect, has still given some slight expression to the consternation which I believe I may say is general amongst us. We looked upon you, my dear Sir John, with reverence, almost with awe. You represented to us the immaculate Briton, the one Englishman who typified the Saxonism, if I may coin a word, of our race. We have seen great and sober-minded men come to this unholy city, and become degenerates. We have known men who have come here for no other purpose than to prove their unassailable virtue, who have strode into the arena of temptation, waving the – the what is it – the white flower of a blameless life, only to exchange it with marvellous facility for the violets of the Parisienne. But you, Ferringhall, our pattern, an erstwhile Sheriff of London, a county magistrate, a prospective politician, a sober and an upright man, one who, had he aspired to it, might even have filled the glorious position of Lord Mayor – James, a whisky and Apollinaris at once. I cannot go on. My feelings overpower me.”

“You all seem to be trying to pull my leg,” Sir John remarked quietly. “I suppose you’ll come to the point soon – if there is one.”

Drummond shook his head in melancholy fashion.

“He dissembles,” he said. “After all, how easy the descent is, even for the greatest of us. I hope that James will not be long with that whisky and Apollinaris. My nerves are shaken. I require stimulant.”

Sir John seated himself deliberately.

“I should imagine,” he said, shaking out a copy of The Times , “that it is your brain which is addled.”

Drummond looked up with mock eagerness.

“This,” he exclaimed, “must be either the indifference of an utterly callous nature, or it may be – ye gods, it may be – innocence. Holcroft, we may have been mistaken.”

“Think not,” that young man remarked laconically.

“I will put the question,” Drummond said gravely. “Ferringhall, were you or were you not dining last night at a certain restaurant in the Boulevard des Italiennes with — la petite Pellissier?”

Now indeed Sir John was moved. He sat up in his chair as though the question had stung him. The Times slipped from his fingers. His eyes were bright, and his voice had in it an unaccustomed timbre .

“It is true,” he said, “that I was dining last night at a restaurant in the Boulevard des Italiennes, and it is true that my companion was a young lady whose name is Pellissier. What of it?”

There was a shout of laughter. Sir John looked about him, and somehow the laugh died away. If such a thing in connexion with him had been possible they would have declared that he was in a towering rage. An uncomfortable silence followed. Sir John once more looked around him.

“I repeat, gentlemen,” he said, in an ominously low tone, “what of it?”

Drummond shrugged his shoulders.

“You seem to be taking our little joke more seriously than it deserves, Ferringhall,” he remarked.

“I fail to see the joke,” Sir John said. “Kindly explain it to me.”

“Certainly! The thing which appeals to our sense of humour is the fact that you and la petite Pellissier were dining together.”

“Will you tell me,” Sir John said ponderously, “by what right you call that young lady — la petite Pellissier? I should be glad to know how you dare to allude to her in a public place in such a disrespectful manner!”

Drummond looked at him and smiled.

“Don’t be an ass, Ferringhall,” he said tersely. “Annabel Pellissier is known to most of us. I myself have had the pleasure of dining with her. She is very charming, and we all admire her immensely. She sings twice a week at the ‘Ambassador’s’ and the ‘Casino Mavise’ – ”

Sir John held up his hand.

“Stop,” he said. “You do not even know what you are talking about. The young lady with whom I was dining last night was Miss Anna Pellissier. Miss Annabel is her sister. I know nothing of that young lady.”