The Lady in the Car

“Men friends are sometimes dangerous, you know,” he laughed.

“Not if the man is a true gentleman,” was her rather disconcerting answer. Then, raising her eyes again, and gazing straight into his face she asked, “Will you really be my friend?”

“As I’ve already said, I’d only be too delighted. What do you want me to do?”

“I – I want you to help me, and – and to preserve my secret.”

“What secret?” he inquired, surprised that a girl of her age should possess a secret.

He saw the sudden change in her countenance. Her lips were trembling, the corners of her mouth hardened, and, without warning, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“Oh! come, come, Elfrida!” he exclaimed quickly, placing his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. “No, don’t give way like this! I am your friend, and will help you in what ever way you desire, if you will tell me all about it. You are in distress. Why? Confide in me now that I have promised to stand your friend.”

“And – and you promise,” she sobbed. “You promise to be my friend – whatever happens.”

“I promise,” he said, perhaps foolishly. “Whatever happens you may rely upon my friendship.”

Then, next instant, his instructions from his Highness flashed across his mind. He was there for some secret reason to play a treacherous part – that of the faithless lover.

She stood immovable, dabbing her eyes with a little wisp of lace. He was waiting for her to reveal the reason of her unhappiness. But she suddenly walked on mechanically, in her eyes a strange look of terror, nay of despair.

He strode beside her, much puzzled at her demeanour. She wished to tell him something of which she was ashamed. Only the desperation of her position prompted her to make the admission, and seek his advice.

They had gone, perhaps, three hundred yards still in the wood. The crimson light had faded, and the December dusk was quickly darkening, as it does in Scotland, when again she halted and faced him, saying in a faltering tone:

“Mr Hebberdine, I – I do hope you will not think any the worse of me – I mean, I hope you won’t think me fast, when I tell you that I – well, somehow, I don’t know how it is – but I feel that Fate has brought you here purposely to be my friend —and to save me!”

“To save you!” he echoed. “What do you mean? Be more explicit.”

“I know my words must sound very strange to you. But it is the truth! Ah!” she cried, “you cannot know all that I am suffering – or of the deadly peril in which I find myself. It is because of that, I ask the assistance of you – an honest man.”

Honest! Save the mark! He foresaw himself falling into some horrible complication, but the romance of the situation, together with the extreme beauty of his newly found little friend held the young man fascinated.

“I cannot be of assistance, Miss Elfrida, until I know the truth.”

“If we are to be friends you must call me Elfrida,” she said in her girlish way, “but in private only.”

“You are right. Other people might suspect, and misconstrue what is a platonic friendship,” he said, and he took her hand in order to seal their compact.

For a long time he held it, his gaze fixed upon her pale, agitated countenance. Why was she in peril? Of what?

He asked her to tell him. A slight shudder ran through her, and she shook her head mournfully, no word escaping her lips. She sighed, the sigh of a young girl who had a burden of apprehension upon her sorely troubled mind. He could scarcely believe that this was the bright, happy, laughing girl who, half an hour ago, had been putting her stones along the ice, wielding her besom with all her might, and clapping her dainty little hands with delight when any of her own side knocked an opponent off “the pot lid.”

At last, after long persuasion, during which time dusk had almost deepened into darkness in that silent snow-covered wood, she, in a faltering voice, and with many sentences broken by her emotion, which she vainly strived to suppress, told him a most curious and startling story to which he listened with breathless interest.

The first of the series of remarkable incidents had occurred about two years ago, while she was at school in Versailles. She, with a number of other elder girls, had gone to spend the summer at a branch of the college close to Fontainebleau, and they often succeeded, when cycling, in getting away unobserved and enjoying long runs in the forest alone. One summer’s evening she was riding alone along a leafy by-way of the great forest when, by some means, her skirt got entangled in the machine and she was thrown and hurt her ankle. A rather well-dressed Frenchman who was coming along assisted her. He appeared to be very kind, gave her a card, with the name “Paul Berton” upon it, was told her name in response, and very quickly a friendship sprang up between them. He was an engineer, and staying at the Lion d’Or, in Fontainebleau, he said, and having wheeled her machine several miles to a spot quite near the college, suggested another meeting. She, with the school-girl’s adventurous spirit, consented, and that proved to be the first of many clandestine rendezvous. She was not quite seventeen while he was, she thought, about twenty-six.

She kept her secret from all, even from her most intimate schoolmate, fearing to be betrayed to the head governess, so all the summer these secret meetings went on, she becoming more and more infatuated on every occasion, while he, with apparent carelessness, learned from her the history of her family, who they were, and where they resided.

“One thing about Paul puzzled me from the very first evening we met,” she said reflectively as she was describing those halcyon days of forbidden love. “It was that I noticed, high upon his left wrist, about four inches from the base of the hand, a scarlet mark, encircling the whole arm. It looked as though he had worn a bracelet that had chafed him, or perhaps it had been tattooed there. Several times I referred to it, but he always evaded my question, and seemed to grow uneasy because I noticed it. Indeed, after a few meetings I noticed that he wore shirts with the cuffs buttoned over with solitaires, instead of open links. Well – ” she went on slowly with a strange, far-away look in her face. “I – I hardly like to tell you further.”

“Go on, little friend,” he urged, “your secret is in safe keeping with me – whatever it may be. You loved the man, eh?”

“Ah! yes!” she cried. “You are right. I – I loved him – and I did not know. We met again in Paris – many times. All sorts of ruses I resorted to, in order to get out, if only for half an hour. He followed me to London – when I left school – and he came up here.”

“Up here!” he gasped. “He loved you, then?”

“Yes. And when I went to Dresden he went there also.”

“Why?”

She held her breath. Her eyes looked straight into his, and then were downcast.

“Because – because,” she faltered hoarsely, “because he is my husband!”

“Your husband. Great heavens!”

“Yes. I married him six months ago at the registry office in the Blackfriars Road, in London,” she said in a strangely blank voice. “I am Madame Berton.”

He stood utterly dumbfounded. The sweet, refined face of the child-wife was ashen pale, her white lips were trembling, and tears were welling in her eyes. He could see she wished to confide further in him.

“Well?” he asked. It was the only word he could utter.

“We parted half an hour after our marriage, and I have only seen him six times since. He comes here surreptitiously,” she said in a low voice of despair.

“Why?”

“Because evil fortune has pursued him. He – he confessed to me a few weeks ago that he was not so rich as he had been. He will be rich some day, but now he is horribly poor. He being my husband, it is my duty to help him – is it not?”

Garrett’s heart rose against this cowardly foreigner, who had inveigled her into a secret marriage, whoever he might be, for, according to French law, he might at once repudiate her. Poor child! She was evidently devoted to him.

“Well,” he said, “that depends upon circumstances. In what manner is he seeking your assistance?”

She hesitated. At last she said:

“Well – I give him a little money sometimes. But I never have enough. All the trinkets I dare spare are gone.”

“You love him – eh?” asked the young man seriously.

“Yes,” was her frank reply. “I am looking forward to the day when he can acknowledge me as his wife. Being an engineer he has a brilliant idea, namely, to perform a great service to my father in furthering his business aims, so that it will be impossible for him to denounce our marriage. Towards this end I am helping him. Ah! Mr Hebberdine, you don’t know what a dear, good fellow Paul is.”

The young man sniffed suspiciously.

“He has invented a new submarine boat which will revolutionise the naval warfare of the future. Father, in secret, builds submarine boats, you know. But Paul is anxious to ascertain what difference there is between those now secretly building and his own invention, prior to placing it before dear old dad.”

“Well?”

She hesitated.