Part 23

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.