The mysterious Mr. Quin
Mr. Satterthwaite shivered. She moved away from him, was swallowed up
in the shadows.
He never knew quite how long he sat on there, but suddenly he started
up with the feeling that he had been wasting valuable time. He hurried
away, impelled in a certain direction almost in spite of himself.
As he came out into the lane he had a strange feeling of unreality.
Magic--magic and moonlight. And two figures coming toward him.
Oranoff in his Harlequin dress. So he thought at first. Then as they
passed him he knew his mistake. That lithe swaying figure belonged to
one person only--Mr. Quin.
They went on down the lane--their feet light as though they were
treading on air. Mr. Quin turned his head and looked back, and Mr.
Satterthwaite had a shock, for it was not the face of Mr. Quin as he
had ever seen it before. It was the face of a stranger--no, not quite a
stranger. Ah! he had it now, it was the face of John Denman as it might
have looked before life went too well with him! Eager, adventurous, the
face at once of a boy and of a lover.
Her laugh floated down to him, clear and happy.... He looked after them
and saw in the distance the lights of a little cottage. He gazed after
them like a man in a dream.
He was rudely awakened by a hand that fell on his shoulder and he
was jerked round to face Sergius Oranoff. The man looked white and
distracted.
"Where is she? Where is she? She promised--and she has not come."
"Madame has just gone up the lane--alone."
It was Mrs. Denman's maid who spoke from the shadow of the door behind
them. She had been waiting with her mistress's wraps.
"I was standing here and saw her pass," she added.
Mr. Satterthwaite threw one harsh word at her.
"Alone? Alone, did you say?"
The maid's eyes widened in surprise. "Yes, sir. Didn't you see her?"
Mr. Satterthwaite clutched at Oranoff. "Quickly," he muttered.
"I'm--I'm afraid."
They hurried down the lane together, the Russian talking in quick,
disjointed sentences.
"She is a wonderful creature. Ah! how she danced tonight. And that
friend of yours. Who is he? Ah! but he is wonderful--unique. In the
old days, when she danced the Columbine of Rimsky-Korsakoff, she never
found the perfect Harlequin. Mordroff, Kassnine--none of them was quite
perfect. She had her own little fancy. She told me of it once. Always
she danced with a dream Harlequin--a man who was not really there. It
was Harlequin himself, she said, who came to dance with her. It was
that fancy of hers that made her Columbine so wonderful."
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. There was only one thought in his head.
"Hurry," he said. "We must be in time. Oh! we must be in time."
They came round the last corner--came to the deep pit and to something
lying in it that had not been there before, the body of a woman lying
in a wonderful pose, arms flung wide and head thrown back. A dead face
and body that were triumphant and beautiful in the moonlight.
Words came back to Mr. Satterthwaite dimly--Mr. Quin's
words:--"_wonderful things on a rubbish heap_...." He understood them
now.
Oranoff was murmuring broken phrases. The tears were streaming down his
face.
"I loved her. Always I loved her." He used almost the same words that
had occurred to Mr. Satterthwaite earlier in the day. "We were of the
same world, she and I. We had the same thoughts, the same dreams. I
would have loved her always--"
"How do you know?"
The Russian stared at him--at the fretful peevishness of the tone.
"How do you know?" went on Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is what all lovers
think--what all lovers say. There is only one lover--"
He turned and almost ran into Mr. Quin. In an agitated manner, Mr.
Satterthwaite caught him by the arm and drew him aside.
"It was _you_," he said. "It was _you_ who were with her just now?"
Mr. Quin waited a minute and then said gently, "You can put it that
way, if you like."
"And the maid didn't see you?"
"The maid didn't see me."
"But _I_ did. Why was that?"
"Perhaps, as a result of the price you have paid, you see things that
other people--do not."
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him uncomprehendingly for a minute or two.
Then he began suddenly to quiver all over like an aspen leaf. "What is
this place?" he whispered. "What is this place?"
"I told you earlier today. It is _My_ lane."
"A 'Lovers' Lane,'" murmured Mr. Satterthwaite. "And people pass along
it."
"Most people, sooner or later."
"And at the end of it--what do they find?"
Mr. Quin smiled. His voice was very gentle. He pointed at the ruined
cottage above them. "The house of their dreams--or a rubbish heap--who
shall say?"
Mr. Satterthwaite looked up at him suddenly. A wild rebellion surged
over him. He felt cheated, defrauded.
"But _I_--" his voice shook. "_I_ have never passed down your lane."
"And do you regret?"
Mr. Satterthwaite quailed. Mr. Quin seemed to have loomed to enormous
proportions. Mr. Satterthwaite had a vista of something at once
menacing and terrifying. Joy, Sorrow, Despair.
And his comfortable little soul shrank back appalled.
"Do you regret?" Mr. Quin repeated his question. There was something
terrible about him.
"No," Mr. Satterthwaite stammered. "N--No."
And then suddenly he rallied.
"But I see things," he cried. "I may have been only a looker-on at
Life--but I see things that other people do not. You said so yourself,
Mr. Quin."
But Mr. Quin had vanished.