The mysterious Mr. Quin
a woman so completely expressionless. She was, he knew, a Russian by
birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European
War; he had fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped
with his life at the outbreak of the revolution, and had brought
this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong
disapproval from his parents he had married her.
Mrs. Denman's room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly
furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture--a trifle more masculine
than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item:
a Chinese lacquer screen--a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any
museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector's piece, rare
and beautiful.
It was out of place against that solid English background. It should
have been the keynote of the room with everything arranged to harmonize
subtly with it. And yet Mr. Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans
of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended
accord.
He shook his head. The thing, trivial though it was--puzzled him.
Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to
the house. It was, perhaps, a woman's fantasy--but that solution did
not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs. Denman--a quiet, hard-featured
woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have
guessed her a foreigner.
The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still
dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denmans'
house was Ashmead, and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath,
which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred feet above sea
level, and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample
incomes.
The butler received Mr. Satterthwaite suavely. Mr. and Mrs. Denman
were both out--at a rehearsal--they hoped Mr. Satterthwaite would make
himself at home until they returned.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions
by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower
beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in
the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a
narrow lane.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked to left and right. A very charming lane,
shady and green, with high hedges--a rural lane that twisted and
turned in good old-fashioned style. He remembered the stamped address:
_Ashmead, Harlequin's Lane_--remembered, too, a local name for it that
Mrs. Denman had once told him.
"Harlequin's Lane," he murmured to himself softly. "I wonder--"
He turned a corner.
Not at the time, but afterward, he wondered why this time he felt no
surprise at meeting that elusive friend of his: Mr. Harley Quin. The
two men clasped hands.
"So _you're_ down here," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Yes," said Mr. Quin. "I'm staying in the same house as you are."
"Staying there?"
"Yes. Does it surprise you?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite slowly. "Only--well, you never stay
anywhere for long, do you?"
"Only as long as is necessary," said Mr. Quin gravely.
"I see," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
They walked on in silence for some minutes.
"This lane--" began Mr. Satterthwaite, and stopped.
"Belongs to me," said Mr. Quin.
"I thought it did," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Somehow I thought it must.
There's the other name for it, too, the local name. They call it the
'Lovers' Lane.' You know that?"
Mr. Quin nodded. "But surely," he said gently, "there is a 'Lovers'
Lane' in every village."
"I suppose so," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and he sighed a little.
He felt suddenly rather old and out of things, a little dried-up
wizened old fogey of a man. Each side of him were the hedges, very
green and alive.
"Where does this lane end, I wonder?" he asked suddenly.
"It ends--_here_," said Mr. Quin.
They came round a last bend. The lane ended in a piece of waste ground,
and almost at their feet a great pit opened. In it were tin cans
gleaming in the sun, and other cans that were too red with rust to
gleam, old boots, fragments of newspapers, a hundred and one odds and
ends that were no longer of account to anybody.
"A rubbish heap," exclaimed Mr. Satterthwaite, and breathed deeply and
indignantly.
"Sometimes there are very wonderful things on a rubbish heap," said Mr.
Quin.
"I know, I know," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, and quoted with just a trace
of self-consciousness: "_'Bring me the two most beautiful things in the
city,' said God._ You know how it goes, eh?"
Mr. Quin nodded.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at the ruins of a small cottage perched on
the brink of the wall of cliff.
"Hardly a pretty view for a house," he remarked.
"I fancy this wasn't a rubbish heap in those days," said Mr. Quin. "I
believe the Denmans lived there when they were first married. They
moved into the big house when the old people died. The cottage was
pulled down when they began to quarry the rock here--but nothing much
was done, as you can see."
They turned and began retracing their steps.
"I suppose," said Mr. Satterthwaite, smiling, "that many couples come
wandering down this lane on these warm summer evenings."
"Probably."
"Lovers," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He repeated the word thoughtfully
and quite without the normal embarrassment of the Englishman. Mr. Quin
had that effect upon him. "Lovers. You have done a lot for lovers, Mr.
Quin."
The other bowed his head without replying.
"You have saved them from sorrow--from worse than sorrow, from death.
You have been an advocate for the dead themselves."
"You are speaking of yourself--of what _you_ have done--not of me."
"It is the same thing," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "You know it is," he
urged, as the other did not speak. "You have acted--through me. For
some reason or other you do not act directly--yourself."
"Sometimes I do," said Mr. Quin.
His voice held a new note. In spite of himself Mr. Satterthwaite
shivered a little. The afternoon, he thought, must be growing chilly.
And yet the sun seemed as bright as ever.
At that moment a girl turned the corner ahead of them and came into
sight. She was a very pretty girl, fair-haired and blue-eyed, wearing a
pink cotton frock. Mr. Satterthwaite recognized her as Molly Stanwell,
whom he had met down here before.
She waved a hand in welcome to him. "John and Anna have just gone
back," she cried. "They thought you must have come, but they simply had
to be at the rehearsal."
"Rehearsal of what?" inquired Mr. Satterthwaite.
"This masquerade thing--I don't quite know what you'd call it. There
is singing and dancing and all sorts of things in it. Mr. Manly (do
you remember him down here?), he has quite a good tenor voice, is to
be Pierrot, and I am Pierrette. Two professionals are coming down for
the dancing--Harlequin and Columbine, you know. And then there is a
big chorus of girls. Lady Roscheimer is so keen on training village
girls to sing. She's really getting the thing up for that. The music
is rather lovely--but very modern--next to no tune anywhere. Claude
Wickam. Perhaps you know him?"
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded, for, as has been mentioned before, it was his
métier to know everybody. He knew about that aspiring genius Claude
Wickam, and about Lady Roscheimer, who was fat and had a penchant
for young men of the artistic persuasion. And he knew all about Sir
Leopold Roscheimer, who liked his wife to be happy and, most rare among
husbands, did not mind her being happy in her own way.
They found Claude Wickam at tea with the Denmans, cramming his mouth
indiscriminately with anything handy, talking rapidly, and waving long
white hands that had a double-jointed appearance. His short-sighted
eyes peered through large horn-rimmed spectacles.
John Denman, upright, slightly florid with the faintest possible
tendency to sleekness, listened with an air of bored attention. On the
appearance of Mr. Satterthwaite, the musician transferred his remarks
to him. Anna Denman sat behind the tea things, quiet and expressionless
as usual.
Mr. Satterthwaite stole a covert glance at her. Tall, gaunt, very thin,
with the skin tightly stretched over high cheekbones, black hair parted
in the middle, a skin that was weather-beaten. An out-of-door woman
who cared nothing for the use of cosmetics. A Dutch Doll of a woman,
wooden, lifeless--and yet--
He thought, _There_ should _be meaning behind that face, and yet there
isn't. That's what's all wrong. Yes, all wrong._ And to Claude Wickam
he said, "I beg your pardon? You were saying?"
Claude Wickam, who liked the sound of his own voice, began all over
again. Russia, he said, that was the only country in the world worth
being interested in. They experimented. With lives, if you like, but
still they experimented. "Magnificent!" He crammed a sandwich into his
mouth with one hand, and added a bite of the chocolate éclair he was
waving about in the other. "Take," he said (with his mouthful), "the
Russian Ballet." Remembering his hostess, he turned to her. What did
_she_ think of the Russian Ballet?
The question was obviously only a prelude to the important point--what
Claude Wickam thought of the Russian Ballet--but her answer was
unexpected and threw him completely out of his stride.
"I have never seen it."
"What?" He gazed at her open-mouthed. "But--surely--"
Her voice went on level and emotionless. "Before my marriage, I was a
dancer. So now--"
"A busman's holiday," said her husband.
"Dancing." She shrugged her shoulders. "I know all the tricks of it. It
does not interest me."
"Oh!"
It took but a moment for Claude to recover his aplomb.
"Talking of lives," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "and experimenting in them,
the Russian nation made one costly experiment."
Claude Wickam swung round on him. "I know what you are going to say,"
he cried. "Kharsanova! The immortal, the only Kharsanova! You saw her
dance?"
"Three times," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Twice in Paris, once in London.
I shall--not forget it."
He spoke in an almost reverent voice.
"I saw her too," said Claude Wickam. "I was ten years old. An uncle
took me. God! I shall never forget it."
He threw a piece of bun fiercely into a flower bed.
"There is a statuette of her in a museum in Berlin," said Mr.
Satterthwaite. "It is marvelous. That impression of fragility--as
though you could break her with a flip of the thumbnail. I have seen
her as Columbine, in the Swan, as the dying Nymph." He paused, shaking
his head. "There was genius. It will be long years before such another
is born. She was young too. Destroyed ignorantly and wantonly in the
first days of the Revolution."
"Fools! Madmen! Apes!" said Claude Wickam. He choked with a mouthful of
tea.
"I studied with Kharsanova," said Mrs. Denman. "I remember her well."
"She was wonderful?" said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Yes," said Mrs. Denman quietly. "She was wonderful."
Claude Wickam departed, and John Denman drew a deep sigh of relief, at
which his wife laughed.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. "I know what you think. But in spite of
everything, the music that that boy writes _is_ music."
"I suppose it is," said Denman.
"Oh! undoubtedly. How long it will be--well, that is different."
John Denman looked at him curiously. "You mean?"
"I mean that success has come early. And that is dangerous. Always
dangerous." He looked across at Mr. Quin. "You agree with me?"
"You are always right," said Mr. Quin.
"We will come upstairs to my room," said Mrs. Denman. "It is pleasant
there."
She led the way, and they followed her. Mr. Satterthwaite drew a deep
breath as he caught sight of the Chinese screen. He looked up to find
Mrs. Denman watching him.