The Lone Wolf, Louis Joseph Vance [best historical fiction books of all time txt] 📗

Hotels, caf�s and restaurants are out of the question: in the

first place, we’ve barely money enough for our dinner; besides, they’ll

be watched closely; as for our embassies and consulates, they aren’t

open at all hours, and will likewise be watched. There remain—unless

you can suggest something—only the churches; and I can think of none

better suited to our purposes than the Sacr�-Cour.”

 

Her fingers tightened gently upon his.

 

“I understand,” she said quietly; “if we’re obliged to separate, I’m to

go direct to the Sacr�-Cour and await you there.”

 

“Right! …But let’s hope there’ll be no such necessity.”

 

Hand-in-hand like frightened children, these two stole down the

tunnel-like passageway, through a forlorn little court cramped between

two tall old tenements, and so came out into the gloomy, sinuous and

silent rue d’Assas.

 

Here they encountered few wayfarers; and to these, preoccupied with

anxiety to gain shelter from the inclement night, they seemed, no doubt,

some student of the Quarter with his sweetheart—Lanyard in his shabby

raincoat, striding rapidly, head and shoulders bowed against the driving

mist, the girl in her trim Burberry clinging to his arm….

 

Avoiding the nearer stations as dangerous, Lanyard steered a roundabout

course through by-ways to the rue de S�vres station of the Nord-Sud

subway; from which in due course they came to the surface again at the

place de la Concorde, walked several blocks, took a taxicab, and in

less than half an hour after leaving the impasse Stanislas were

comfortably ensconced in a cabinet particulier of a little restaurant

of modest pretensions just north of Les Halles.

 

They feasted famously: the cuisine, if bourgeois, was admirable and,

better still, well within the resources of Lanyard’s emaciated purse.

Nor did he fret with consciousness that, when the bill had been paid

and the essential tips bestowed, there would remain in his pocket

hardly more than cab fare. Supremely self-confident, he harboured no

doubts of a smiling future—now that the dark pages in his record had

been turned and sealed by a resolution he held irrevocable.

 

His spirits had mounted to a high pitch, thanks to their successful

evasion. He was young, he was in love, he was hungry, he was—in

short—very much alive. And the consciousness of common peril knitted

an enchanting intimacy into their communications. For the first time in

his history Lanyard found himself in the company of a woman with whom

he dared—and cared—to speak without reserve: a circumstance

intrinsically intoxicating. And stimulated by her unquestionable

interest and sympathy, he did talk without reserve of old Troyon’s and

its drudge, Marcel; of Bourke and his wanderings; of the education of

the Lone Wolf and his career, less in pride than in relief that it was

ended; of the future he must achieve for himself.

 

And sitting with chin cradled on the backs of her interlaced fingers,

the girl listened with such indulgence as women find always for their

lovers. Of herself she had little to say: Lanyard filled in to his

taste the outlines of the simple history of a young woman of good

family obliged to become self-supporting.

 

And if at times her grave eyes clouded and her attention wandered, it

was less in ennui than because of occult trains of thought set astir by

some chance word or phrase of Lanyard’s.

 

“I’m boring you,” he surmised once with quick contrition, waking up to

the fact that he had monopolized the conversation for many minutes on

end.

 

She shook a pensive head. “No, again…. But I wonder, do you

appreciate the magnitude of the task you’ve undertaken?”

 

“Possibly not,” he conceded arrogantly; “but it doesn’t matter. The

heavier the odds, the greater the incentive to win.”

 

“But,” she objected, “you’ve told me a curious story of one who never

had a chance or incentive to ‘go straight’—as you put it. And yet you

seem to think that an overnight resolution to reform is all that’s

needed to change all the habits of a lifetime. You persuade me of your

sincerity of today; but how will it be with you tomorrow—and not so

much tomorrow as six months from tomorrow, when you’ve found the going

rough and know you’ve only to take one step aside to gain a smooth and

easy way?”

 

“If I fail, then, it will be because I’m unfit—and I’ll go under, and

never be heard of again…. But I shan’t fail. It seems to me the very

fact that I want to go straight is proof enough that I’ve something

inherently decent in me to build on.”

 

“I do believe that, and yet…” She lowered her head and began to trace

a meaningless pattern on the cloth before she resumed. “You’ve given me

to understand I’m responsible for your sudden awakening, that it’s

because of a regard conceived for me you’re so anxious to become an

honest man. Suppose … suppose you were to find out … you’d been

mistaken in me?”

 

“That isn’t possible,” he objected promptly.

 

She smiled upon him wistfully—and leniently from her remote coign of

superior intuitive knowledge of human nature.

 

“But if it were—?”

 

“Then—I think,” he said soberly—“I think I’d feel as though there

were nothing but emptiness beneath my feet!”

 

“And you’d backslide—?”

 

“How can I tell?” he expostulated. “It’s not a fair question. I don’t

know what I’d do, but I do know it would need something damnable to

shake my faith in you!”

 

“You think so now,” she said tolerantly. “But if appearances were

against me—”

 

“They’d have to be black!”

 

“If you found I had deceived you—?”

 

“Miss Shannon!” He threw an arm across the table and suddenly

imprisoned her hand. “There’s no use beating about the bush. You’ve got

to know—”

 

She drew back suddenly with a frightened look and a monosyllable of

sharp protest: “No!”

 

“But you must listen to me. I want you to understand…. Bourke used to

say to me: ‘The man who lets love into his life opens a door no mortal

hand can close—and God only knows what will follow in!’ And Bourke was

right…. Now that door is open in my heart, and I think that whatever

follows in won’t be evil or degrading…. Oh, I’ve said it a dozen

different ways of indirection, but I may as well say it squarely now:

I love you; it’s love of you makes me want to go straight—the hope that

when I’ve proved myself you’ll maybe let me ask you to marry me….

Perhaps you’re in love with a better man today; I’m willing to chance

that; a year brings many changes. Perhaps there’s something I don’t

fathom in your doubting my strength and constancy. Only the outcome can

declare that. But please understand this: if I fail to make good, it

will be no fault of yours; it will be because I’m unfit and have proved

it…. All I ask is what you’ve generously promised me: opportunity to

come to you at the end of the year and make my report…. And then, if

you will, you can say no to the question I’ll ask you and I shan’t

resent it, and it won’t ruin me; for if a man can stick to a purpose

for a year, he can stick to it forever, with or without the love of the

woman he loves.”

 

She heard him out without attempt at interruption, but her answer was

prefaced by a sad little shake of her head.

 

“That’s what makes it so hard, so terribly hard,” she said…. “Of

course I’ve understood you. All that you’ve said by indirection, and

much besides, has had its meaning to me. And I’m glad and proud of the

honour you offer me. But I can’t accept it; I can never accept it—not

now nor a year from now. It wouldn’t be fair to let you go on hoping I

might some time consent to marry you…. For that’s impossible.”

 

“You—forgive me—you’re not already married?”

 

“No….”

 

“Or promised?”

 

“No….”

 

“Or in love with someone else?”

 

Again she told him, gently, “No.”

 

His face cleared. He squared his shoulders. He even mustered up a smile.

 

“Then it isn’t impossible. No human obstacle exists that time can’t

overthrow. In spite of all you say, I shall go on hoping with all my

heart and soul and strength.”

 

“But you don’t understand—”

 

“Can you tell me—make me understand?”

 

After a long pause, she told him once more, and very sadly: “No.”

XV SHEER IMPUDENCE

Though it had been nearly eight when they entered the restaurant, it

was something after eleven before Lanyard called for his bill.

 

“We’ve plenty of time,” he had explained; “it’ll be midnight before we

can move. The gentle art of housebreaking has its technique, you know,

its professional ethics: we can’t well violate the privacy of Madame

Omber’s strong-box before the caretakers on the premises are sound

asleep. It isn’t done, you know, it isn’t class, to go burglarizing

when decent, law-abiding folk are wide-awake…. Meantime we’re better

off here than trapezing the streets….”

 

It’s a silent web of side ways and a gloomy one by night that backs up

north of Les Halles: old Paris, taciturn and sombre, steeped in its

memories of grim romance. But for infrequent, flickering, corner lamps,

the street that welcomed them from the doors of the warm and cosy

restaurant was as dismal as an alley in some city of the dead. Its

houses with their mansard roofs and boarded windows bent their heads

together like mutes at a wake, black-cloaked and hooded; seldom one

showed a light; never one betrayed by any sound the life that lurked

behind its jealous blinds. Now again the rain had ceased and, though

the sky remained overcast, the atmosphere was clear and brisk with a

touch of frost, in grateful contrast to the dull and muggy airs that

had obtained for the last twenty-four hours.

 

“We’ll walk,” Lanyard suggested—“if you don’t mind—part of the way at

least; it’ll eat up time, and a bit of exercise will do us both good.”

 

The girl assented quietly….

 

The drum of their heels on fast-drying sidewalks struck sharp echoes

from the silence of that drowsy quarter, a lonely clamour that rendered

it impossible to ignore their apparent solitude—as impossible as it

was for Lanyard to ignore the fact that they were followed.

 

The shadow dogging them on the far side of the street, some fifty yards

behind, was as noiseless as any cat; but for this circumstance—had it

moved boldly with unmuffled footsteps—Lanyard would have been slow to

believe it concerned with him, so confident had be felt, till that moment,

of having given the Pack the slip.

 

And from this he diagnosed still another symptom of the Pack’s

incurable stupidity!

 

Supremely on the alert, he had discovered the pursuit before they left

the block of the restaurant. Dissembling, partly to avoid alarming the

girl, partly to trick the spy, he turned this way and that round

several corners, until quite convinced that the shadow was dedicated to

himself exclusively, then promptly revised his first purpose and,

instead of sticking to darker back ways, struck out directly for the

broad, well-lighted and lively boulevard de S�bastopol.

 

Crossing this without a backward glance, he turned north, seeking some

caf� whose arrangements suited his designs; and, presently, though not

before their tramp had brought them almost to the Grand Boulevards,

found one to his taste, a cheerful and well-lighted establishment

occupying a corner, with entrances from both streets. A hedge of

forlorn fir-trees knee-deep in wooden tubs guarded its terrasse of

round metal tables and spindle-shanked chairs; of which few were

occupied. Inside, visible through