The Coward Behind the Curtain

Richard Marsh

Marsh Richard

The Coward Behind the Curtain

CHAPTER I

DOROTHY SETS OFF WITH HER GUARDIAN

The girls were in the convent garden, when word came that Dorothy Gilbert was wanted. Dorothy was walking with Frances Vernon. Ever since she could remember her world had been that garden, with its shaded walks and its high walls; never before had a visitor come to her. The moment she was told that someone desired her presence she turned to Frances, exclaiming:

"It is he!"

With characteristic impetuosity Frances threw her arms about her, remarking as she did so:

"Just as we were speaking of him!"

As if there were anything strange in that. The strangeness would have been if he had come when they had not been speaking of him; for, of late, they had spoken of little else. Elsie Farquhar, who had brought the message, pressed it home.

"You had better be quick, Dorothy. Sister Celestine said you were to hurry."

So Dorothy hurried, her tall slender figure held very straight, her pretty head a little in the air, in her eyes a gleaming light. She believed herself to be passing from a world she knew into one of which she had dreamed. But she was mistaken; she was going into a world of which she had not dreamed. Sister Celestine met her at the door.

"It is Mr Emmett?" she inquired.

"Yes," replied the Sister, "it is Mr Emmett."

Something in her tone; on her face; in her glance; struck quick-witted Dorothy.

"What is the matter? Why do you look at me like that? What is he like?"

"Who am I that I should be able to tell you what he is like, when I have seen him for scarcely five minutes?"

The Sister smiled, it seemed to Dorothy, not with that brightness which she knew so well. The young lady's mental processes were rapid. She divined, on the instant, that Sister Celestine was disappointed with Mr Emmett. As she went with the Sister from the garden to the guest-room she wondered why. Would she be disappointed also? – after all her talks with Frances? – her communings with herself? She had fashioned the unknown Mr Emmett in so many shapes that she could not have told which of them she expected to see; certainly it was not the person she actually saw. Her knowledge of men had practically been restricted to the personages in the storybooks which found their way into the convent precincts. These had to undergo a severe examination before being admitted, as one bad character was enough to damn them; and, as the conventual standard of masculine morals was peculiar, even if the individuals who figured in the tales were not drawn from imagination they certainly were not taken from life. One requirement all the men in the books had to satisfy: they all had to be gentlemen, or what the convent censor took to be gentlemen. Dorothy Gilbert might have had more or less vague doubts, but it never had been brought clearly home to her that a man could be anything but a gentleman till she entered that guest-room and was introduced to Mr Emmett. When she saw him, any illusions she may have had upon that point were shattered at once and for ever.

A big, burly man was sitting on the edge of the table. One foot rested on the floor, the other dangled in the air. He did not move when she entered; he merely looked round at her and stared. His great bald head had a narrow fringe of sandy hair which was just turning grey. He wore a huge sandy moustache, whose hue was more than matched by his head and face. A large, angry-looking spot was on the left of his big nose, a smaller one was on his right cheek near the ear. His eyes were so bloodshot that it was not easy to tell what colour they really were; they reminded her of the eyes of a wicked giant who had played a prominent, and disreputable, part in a fairy tale she had once read. Indeed, the whole man recalled that giant; she had an uncomfortable feeling that he might, at any moment, set about the-to him-agreeable business of devouring her. Sister Celestine performed the ceremony of introduction.

"This,