Under the really remarkable circumstances of the case, Mr. Philpotts preserved his composure to a singular degree. He looked round the room; there was no one there. He again fixedly regarded the chair at his side; there could be no doubt that it was empty. To make quite sure, he passed his hand two or three times over the seat; it met with not the slightest opposition. Where could the man have got to? Mr. Philpotts had not, consciously, heard the slightest sound; there had not been time for him to have reached the door. Mr. Philpotts knocked the ash off his cigar. He stood up. He paced leisurely two or three times up and down the room.
"If Bloxham is ill, I am not. I was never better in my life. And the man who tells me that I have been the victim of an optical delusion is talking of what he knows nothing. I am prepared to swear that it was Geoffrey Fleming who touched me on the shoulder; that he spoke to me; and that he seated himself upon that chair. Where he came from, or where he has gone to, are other questions entirely." He critically examined his finger nails.
"If those Psychical Research people have an address in town, I think I'll have a talk with them. I suppose it's three or four minutes since the man vanished. What's the time now? Whatever has become of my watch?"
He might well ask--it had gone, both watch and chain--vanished, with Mr. Fleming, into air. Mr. Philpotts stared at his waistcoat, too astonished for speech. Then he gave a little gasp.
"This comes of playing Didymus! The brute has stolen it! I must apologise to Bloxham. As he himself said, this is a queer start, upon my honour! Now, if you like, I do feel a little out of sorts; this sort of thing is enough to make one. Before I go, I think I'll have a drop of brandy."
As he was hesitating, the smoking-room door opened to admit Frank Osborne. Mr. Osborne nodded to Mr. Philpotts as he crossed the room.
"You're not looking quite yourself, Philpotts."
Mr. Philpotts seemed to regard the observation almost in the light of an impertinence.
"Am I not? I was not aware that there was anything in my appearance to call for remark." Smiling, Mr. Osborne seated himself in the chair which the other had not long ago vacated. Mr. Philpotts regarded him attentively. "You're not looking quite yourself, either."
The smile vanished from Mr. Osborne's face.
"I'm not feeling myself!--I'm not! I'm worried about Geoff Fleming."
Mr. Philpotts slightly started.
"About Geoff Fleming?--what about Fleming?'
"I'm afraid--well, Phil, the truth is that I'm afraid that Geoff's a hopeless case."
Mr. Philpotts was once more busying himself with the papers which were on the side table.
"What do you mean?"
"As you know, he and I have been very thick in our time, and when he came a cropper it was I who suggested that we who were at school with him might have a whip round among ourselves to get the old chap a fresh start elsewhere. You all of you behaved like bricks, and when I told him what you had done, poor Geoff was quite knocked over. He promised voluntarily that he would never touch a card again, or make another bet, until he had paid you fellows off with thumping interest. Well, he doesn't seem to have kept his promise long."
"How do you know he hasn't?"
"I've heard from Deecie."
"From Deecie?--where's Fleming?"
"In Ceylon--they'd both got there before Deecie's letter left."
"In Ceylon!" exclaimed Mr. Philpotts excitedly, staring hard at Mr. Osborne. "You are sure he isn't back in town?"
In his turn, Mr. Osborne was staring at Mr. Philpotts.
"Not unless he came back by the same boat which brought Deecie's letter. What made you ask?"
"I only wondered."
Mr. Philpotts turned again to the paper. The other went on.
"It seems that a lot of Australian sporting men were on the boat on which they went out. Fleming got in with them. They played--he played too. Deecie remonstrated--but he says that it only seemed to make bad worse. At first Geoff won--you know the usual sort of thing; he wound up by losing all he had, and about four hundred pounds beside. He had the cheek to ask Deecie for the money." Mr. Osborne paused. Mr. Philpotts uttered a sound which might have been indicative of contempt--or anything. "Deecie says that when the winners found out that he couldn't pay, there was a regular row. Geoff swore, in that wild way of his, that if he couldn't pay them before he died, he would rise from the dead to get the money."
Mr. Philpotts looked round with a show of added interest.
"What was that he said?"
"Oh, it was only his wild way of speaking--you know that way of his. If they don't get their money before he dies, and I fancy that it's rather more than even betting that they won't, I don't think that there's much chance of his rising from his grave to get it for them. He'll break that promise, as he has broken so many more. Poor Geoff! It seems that we might as well have kept our money in our pockets; it doesn't seem to have done him much good. His prospects don't look very rosy--without money, and with a bad name to start with."
"As I fancy you have more than once suspected, Frank, I never have had a high opinion of Mr. Geoffrey Fleming. I am not in the least surprised at what you tell me, any more than I was surprised when he came his cropper. I have always felt that, at a pinch, he would do anything to save his own skin." Mr. Osborne said nothing, but he shook his head. "Did you see anything of Bloxham when you came in?"
"I saw him going along the street in a cab."
"I want to speak to him! I think I'll just go and see if I can find him in his rooms."
Mr. Frank Osborne scarcely seemed to be enjoying his own society when Mr. Philpotts had left him. As all the world knows, he is a man of sentiment--of the true sort, not the false. He has had one great passion in his life--Geoffrey Fleming. They began when they were at Chilchester together, when he was big, and Fleming still little. He did his work for him, fought for him, took his scrapes upon himself, believed in him, almost worshipped him. The thing continued when Fleming joined him at the University. Perhaps the fact that they both were orphans had something to do with it; neither of them had kith nor kin. The odd part of the business was that Osborne was not only a clear-sighted, he was a hard-headed man. It could not have been long before it dawned upon him that the man with whom he fraternised was a naturally bad egg. Fleming was continually coming to grief; he would have come to eternal grief at the very commencement of his career if it had not been for Osborne at his back. He went through his own money; he went through as much of his friend's as his friend would let him. Then came the final smash. There were features about the thing which made it clear, even to Frank Osborne, that in England, at least, for some years to come, Geoffrey Fleming had run his course right out. He strained all his already strained resources in his efforts to extricate the man from the mire. When he found that he himself was insufficient, going to his old schoolfellows, he begged them, for his sake--if not for Fleming's--to join hands with him in giving the scapegrace still another start. As a result, interest was made for him in a Ceylon plantation, and Mr. Fleming with, under the circumstances, well-lined pockets, was despatched over the seas to turn over a new leaf in a sunnier clime.
How he had vowed that he would turn over a new leaf, actually with tears upon his knees! And this was how he had done it; before he had reached his journey's end, he had gambled away the money which was not his, and was in debt besides. Frank Osborne must have been fashioned something like the dog which loves its master the more, the more he ill-treats it. His heart went out in pity to the scamp across the seas. He had no delusions; he had long been conscious that the man was hopeless. And yet he knew very well that if he could have had his way he would have gone at once to comfort him. Poor Geoff! What an all-round mess he seemed to have made of things--and he had had the ball at his feet when he started--poor, dear old Geoff! With his knuckles Mr. Osborne wiped a suspicious moisture from his eyes. Geoff was all right--if he had only been able to prevent money from slipping from between his fingers, had been gifted with a sense ofmeum et tuum--not a nicer fellow in the world!
Mr. Osborne sat trying to persuade himself into the belief that the man was an injured paragon though he knew very well that he was an irredeemable scamp. He endeavoured to see only his good qualities, which was a task of exceeding difficulty--they were hidden in such a cloud of blackness. At least, whatever might be said against Geoff--and Mr. Osborne admitted to himself that there might be something--it was certain that Geoff loved him almost as much as he loved Geoff. Mr. Osborne declared to himself--putting pressure on himself to prevent his making a single mental reservation--that Geoff Fleming, in spite of all his faults, was the only person in the wide, wide world who did love him. And he was a stranger in a strange land, and in trouble again--poor dear old Geoff! Once more Mr. Osborne's knuckles went up to wipe that suspicious moisture from his eyes.
While he was engaged in doing this, a hand was laid gently on his shoulder from behind. It was, perhaps, because he was unwilling to be detected in such an act that, at the touch, he rose from his seat with a start--which became so to speak, a start of petrified amazement when he perceived who it was who had touched him. It was the man of whom he had been thinking, the friend of his boyhood--Geoffrey Fleming.
"Geoff!" he gasped. "Dear old Geoff!" He paused, seemingly in doubt whether to laugh or cry. "I thought you were in Ceylon!"
Mr. Fleming did exactly what he had done when he came so unexpectedly on Mr. Philpotts--he moved to the chair at Mr. Osborne's side. His manner was in contrast to his friend's--it was emphatically not emotional.
"I've just dropped in," he drawled.
"My dear old boy!" Mr. Osborne, as he surveyed his friend, seemed to become more and more torn by conflicting emotions. "Of course I'm very glad to see you Geoff, but how did you get in here? I thought that they had taken your name off the books of the club." He was perfectly aware that Mr. Fleming's name had been taken off the books of the club, and in a manner the reverse of complimentary. Mr. Fleming offered no remark. He sat looking down at the carpet stroking his moustache. Mr. Osborne went stammeringly on--
"As I say, Geoff--and as, of course you know,--I am very glad to see you, anywhere; but--we don't want any unpleasantness, do we? If some of the fellows came in and found you here, they might make themselves nasty. Come round to my rooms; we shall be a lot more comfortable there, old man."
Mr. Fleming raised his eyes. He looked his friend full in the face. As he met his glance, Mr. Osborne was conscious of a curious sort of shiver. It was not only because the man's glance was, to say the least, less friendly than it might have been--it was because of something else, something which Mr. Osborne could scarcely have defined.
"I want some money."
Mr. Osborne smiled, rather fatuously.
"Ah, Geoff, the same old tale! Deecie has told me all about it. I won't reproach you; you know, if I had some, you should have it; but I'm not sure that it isn't just as well for both ourselves that I haven't, Geoff."
"You have some money in your pocket now."
Mr. Osborne's amazement grew apace--his friend's manner was so very strange.
"What a nose you always have for money; however did you find that out? But it isn't mine. You know Jim Baker left me guardian to that boy of his, and I've been drawing the youngster's dividends--it's only seventy pounds, Geoff."
Mr. Fleming stretched out his hand--his reply was brief and to the point.
"Give it to me!"
"Give it to you!--Geoff!--young Baker's money!"
Mr. Fleming reiterated his demand.
"Give it to me!"
His manner was not only distinctly threatening, it had a peculiar effect upon his friend. Although Mr. Osborne had never before shewn fear of any living man, and had, in that respect, proved his superiority over Fleming many a time, there was something at that moment in the speaker's voice, or words, or bearing, or in all three together, which set him shivering, as if with fear, from head to foot.
"Geoff!--you are mad! I'll see what I can find for you, but I can't give you young Baker's dividends."
Mr. Osborne was not quite clear as to exactly what it was that happened. He only knew that the friend of his boyhood--the man for whom he had done so much--the only person in the world who loved him--rose and took him by the throat, and, forcing him backwards, began to rifle the pocket which contained the seventy pounds. He was so taken by surprise, so overwhelmed by a feeling of utter horror, against which he was unable even to struggle, that it was only when he felt the money being actually withdrawn from his pocket that he made an attempt at self-defence. Then, when he made a frantic clutch at his assailant's felonious arm, all he succeeded in grasping was the empty air. The pressure was removed from his throat. He was able to look about him. Mr. Fleming was gone. He thrust a trembling hand into his pocket--the seventy pounds had vanished too.
"Geoff! Geoff!" he cried, the tears streaming from his eyes. "Don't play tricks with me! Give me back young Baker's dividends!"
When no one answered and there seemed no one to hear, he began to searching round and round the room with his eyes, as if he suspected Mr. Fleming of concealing himself behind some article of furniture.
"Geoff! Geoff!" he continued crying. "Dear old boy!--give me back young Baker's dividends!"
"Hullo!" exclaimed a voice--which certainly was not Mr. Fleming's. Mr. Osborne turned. Colonel Lanyon was standing with the handle of the open door in his hand. "Frank, are you rehearsing for a five-act tragedy?"
Mr. Osborne replied to the Colonel's question with another.
"Lanyon, did Geoffrey Fleming pass you as you came in?"
"Geoffrey Fleming!" The Colonel wheeled round on his heels like a teetotum. He glanced behind him. "What the deuce do you mean, Frank? If I catch that thief under the roof which covers me, I'll make a case for the police of him."
Then Mr. Osborne remembered what, in his agitation, he had momentarily forgotten, that Geoffrey Fleming had had no bitterer, more out-spoken, and, it may be added, more well-merited an opponent than Colonel Lanyon in the Climax Club. The Colonel advanced towards Mr. Osborne.
"Do you know that that's the blackguard's chair you're standing by?"
"His chair!"
Mr. Osborne was leaning with one hand on the chair on which Mr. Fleming had, not long ago, been sitting.
"That's what he used to call it himself,--with his usual impudence. He used to sit in it whenever he took a hand. The men would give it up to him--you know how you gave everything up to him, all the lot of you. If he couldn't get it he'd turn nasty--wouldn't play. It seems that he had the cheek to cut his initials on the chair--I only heard of it the other day, or there'd have been a clearance of him long ago. Look here--what do you think of that for a piece of rowdiness?"
The Colonel turned the chair upside down. Sure enough in the woodwork underneath the seat were the letters, cut in good-sized characters--"G. F."
"You know that rubbishing way in which he used to talk. When men questioned his exclusive right to the chair, I've heard him say he'd prove his right by coming and sitting in it after he was dead and buried--he swore he'd haunt the chair. Idiot!--What is the matter with you Frank? You look as if you'd been in a rough and tumble--your necktie's all anyhow."
"I think I must have dropped asleep, and dreamed--yes, I fancy I've been dreaming."
Mr. Osborne staggered, rather than walked, to the door, keeping one hand in the inside pocket of his coat. The Colonel followed him with his eyes.
"Frank's ageing fast," was his mental comment as Mr. Osborne disappeared. "He'll be an old man yet before I am."
He seated himself in Geoffrey Fleming's chair.
It was, perhaps, ten minutes afterwards that Edward Jackson went into the smoking room--"Scientific" Jackson, as they call him, because of the sort of catch phrase he is always using--"Give me science!" He had scarcely been in the room a minute before he came rushing to the door shouting--
"Help, help!"
Men came hurrying from all parts of the building. Mr. Griffin came from the billiard-room, where he is always to be found. He had a cue in one hand, and a piece of chalk in the other. He was the first to address the vociferous gentleman standing at the smoking-room door.
"Jackson!--What's the matter?"
Mr. Jackson was in such a condition of fluster and excitement that it was a little difficult to make out, from his own statement, what was the matter.
"Lanyon's dead! Have any of you seen Geoff Fleming? Stop him if you do--he's stolen my pocket-book!" He began mopping his brow with his bandanna handkerchief, "God bless my soul! an awful thing!--I've been robbed--and old Lanyon's dead!"
One thing was quickly made clear--as they saw for themselves when they went crowding into the smoking-room--Lanyon was dead. He was kneeling in front of Geoffrey Fleming's chair, clutching at either side of it with a tenacity which suggested some sort of convulsion. His head was thrown back, his eyes were still staring wide open, his face was distorted by a something which was half fear, half horror--as if, as those who saw him afterwards agreed, he had seen sudden, certain death approaching him, in a form which even he, a seasoned soldier, had found too horrible for contemplation.
Mr. Jackson's story, in one sense, was plain enough, though it was odd enough in another. He told it to an audience which evinced unmistakable interest in every word uttered.
"I often come in for a smoke about this time, because generally the place is empty, so that you get it all to yourself."
He cast a somewhat aggressive look upon his hearers--a look which could hardly be said to convey a flattering suggestion.
"When I first came in I thought that the room was empty. It was only when I was half-way across that something caused me to look round. I saw that someone was kneeling on the floor. I looked to see who it was. It was Lanyon. 'Lanyon!' I cried. 'Whatever are you doing there?' He didn't answer. Wondering what was up with him and why he didn't speak, I went closer to where he was. When I got there I didn't like the look of him at all. I thought he was in some sort of a fit. I was hesitating whether to pick him up, or at once to summon assistance, when--"
Mr. Jackson paused. He looked about him with an obvious shiver.
"By George! when I think of it now, it makes me go quite creepy. Cathcart, would you mind ringing for another drop of brandy?"
The brandy was rung for. Mr. Jackson went on.
"All of a sudden, as I was stooping over Lanyon, someone touched me on the shoulder. You know, there hadn't been a sound--I hadn't heard the door open, not a thing which could suggest that anyone was approaching. Finding Lanyon like that had make me go quite queer, and when I felt that touch on my shoulder it so startled me that I fairly screeched. I jumped up to see who it was, And when I saw"--Mr. Jackson's bandanna came into play--"who it was, I thought my eyes would have started out of my head. It was Geoff Fleming."
"Who?" came in chorus from his auditors.
"It was Geoffrey Fleming. 'Good God!--Fleming!' I cried. 'Where did you come from? I never heard you. Anyhow, you're just in the nick of time. Lanyon's come to grief--lend me a hand with him.' I bent down, to take hold of one side of poor old Lanyon, meaning Fleming to take hold of the other. Before I had a chance of touching Lanyon, Fleming, catching me by the shoulder, whirled me round--I had had no idea the fellow was so strong, he gripped me like a vice. I was just going to ask what the dickens he meant by handling me like that, when, before I could say Jack Robinson, or even had time to get my mouth open, Fleming, darting his hand into my coat pocket, snatched my pocket-book clean out of it."
He stopped, apparently to gasp for breath. "And, pray, what were you doing while Mr. Fleming behaved in this exceedingly peculiar way--even for Mr. Fleming?" inquired Mr. Cathcart.
"Doing!" Mr. Jackson was indignant. "Don't I tell you I was doing nothing? There was no time to do anything--it all happened in a flash. I had just come from my bankers--there were a hundred and thirty pounds in that pocket-book. When I realised that the fellow had taken it, I made a grab at him. And"--again Mr. Jackson looked furtively about him, and once more the bandanna came into active play--"directly I did so, I don't know where he went to, but it seemed to me that he vanished into air--he was gone, like a flash of lightning. I told myself I was mad--stark mad! but when I felt for my pocketbook, and found that that was also gone, I ran yelling to the door."
It was, as the old-time novelists used to phrase it, about three weeks after the events transpired which we have recorded in the previous chapter. Evening--after dinner. There was a goodly company assembled in the smoking room at the Climax Club. Conversation was general. They were talking of some of the curious circumstances which had attended the death of Colonel Lanyon. The medical evidence at the inquest had gone to shew that the Colonel had died of one of the numerous, and, indeed, almost innumerable, varieties of heart disease. The finding had been in accordance with the medical evidence. It seemed to be felt, by some of the speakers, that such a finding scarcely met the case.
"It's all very well," observed Mr. Cathcart, who seemed disposed to side with the coroner's jury, "for you fellows to talk, but in such a case, you must bring in some sort of verdict--and what other verdict could they bring? There was not a trace of any mark of violence to be found upon the man.
"It's my belief that he saw Fleming, and that Fleming frightened him to death."
It was Mr. Jackson who said this. Mr. Cathcart smiled a rather provoking smile.
"So far as I observed, you did not drop any hint of your belief when you were before the coroner."
"No, because I didn't want to be treated as a laughing-stock by a lot of idiots."
"Quite so; I can understand your natural objection to that, but still I don't see your line of argument. I should not have cared to question Lanyon's courage to Lanyon's face while he was living. Why should you suppose that such a man as Geoffrey Fleming was capable of such a thing as, as you put it, actually frightening him to death? I should say it was rather the other way about. I have seen Fleming turn green, with what looked very much like funk, at the sight of Lanyon."
Mr. Jackson for some moments smoked in silence.
"If you had seen Geoffrey Fleming under the circumstances in which I did, you would understand better what it is I mean."
"But, my dear Jackson, if you will forgive my saying so, it seems to me that you don't shew to great advantage in your own story. Have you communicated the fact of your having been robbed to the police?"
"I have."
"And have you furnished them with the numbers of the notes which were taken?"
"I have."
"Then, in that case, I shouldn't be surprised if Mr. Fleming were brought to book any hour of any day. You'll find he has been lying close in London all the time--he soon had enough of Ceylon."
A new comer joined the group of talkers--Frank Osborne. They noticed, as he seated himself, how much he seemed to have aged of late and how particularly shabby he seemed just then. The first remark which he made took them all aback.
"Geoff Fleming's dead."
"Dead!" cried Mr. Philpotts, who was sitting next to Mr. Osborne.
"Yes--dead. I've heard from Deecie. He died three weeks ago."
"Three weeks ago!"
"On the day on which Lanyon died."
Mr. Cathcart turned to Mr. Jackson, with a smile.
"Then that knocks on the head your theory about his having frightened Lanyon to death; and how about your interview with him--eh Jackson?"
Mr. Jackson did not answer. He suddenly went white. An intervention came from an unexpected quarter--from Mr. Philpotts.
"It seems to me that you are rather taking things for granted, Cathcart. I take leave to inform you that I saw Geoffrey Fleming, perhaps less than half-an-hour before Jackson did."
Mr. Cathcart stared.
"You saw him!--Philpotts!"
Then Mr. Bloxham arose and spoke.
"Yes, and I saw him, too--didn't I, Philpott's?"
Any tendency on the part of the auditors to smile was checked by the tone of exceeding bitterness in which Frank Osborne was also moved to testify.
"And I--I saw him, too!--Geoff!--dear old boy!"
"Deecie says that there were two strange things about Geoff's death. He was struck by a fit of apoplexy. He was dead within the hour. Soon after he died, the servant came running to say that the bed was empty on which the body had been lying. Deecie went to see. He says that, when he got into the room, Geoff was back again upon the bed, but it was plain enough that he had moved. His clothes and hair were in disorder, his fists were clenched, and there was a look upon his face which had not been there at the moment of his death, and which, Deecie says, seemed a look partly of rage and partly of triumph.
"I have been calculating the difference between Cingalese and Greenwich time. It must have been between three and four o'clock when the servant went running to say that Geoff's body was not upon the bed--it was about that time that Lanyon died."
He paused--and then continued--
"The other strange thing that happened was this. Deecie says that the day after Geoff died a telegram came for him, which, of course, he opened. It was an Australian wire, and purported to come from the Melbourne sporting man of whom I told you." He turned to Mr. Philpotts. "It ran, 'Remittance to hand. It comes in rather a miscellaneous form. Thanks all the same.' Deecie can only suppose that Geoff had managed, in some way, to procure the four hundred pounds which he had lost and couldn't pay, and had also managed, in some way, to send it on to Melbourne."
There was silence when Frank Osborne ceased to speak--silence which was broken in a somewhat startling fashion.
"Who's that touched me?" suddenly exclaimed Mr. Cathcart, springing from his seat.
They stared.
"Touched you!" said someone. "No one's within half a mile of you. You're dreaming, my dear fellow."
Considering the provocation was so slight, Mr. Cathcart seemed strangely moved.
"Don't tell me that I'm dreaming--someone touched me on the shoulder!--What's that?"
"That" was the sound of laughter proceeding from the, apparently, vacant seat. As if inspired by a common impulse, the listeners simultaneously moved back.
"That's Fleming's chair," said Mr. Philpotts, beneath his breath.
"Why!" Mr. Gibbs paused. He gave a little gasp. He bent still closer. Then the words came with a rush: "It's Nelly!"
He glanced at the catalogue. "No. 259--'Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!'--Philip Bodenham." It was a small canvas, representing the interior of an ill-furnished apartment in which a woman sat, on a rickety chair, at a rickety table, sewing. The picture was an illustration of "The Song of the Shirt."
Mr. Gibbs gazed at the woman's face depicted on the canvas, with gaping eyes.
"It's Nelly!" he repeated. There was a catch in his voice. "Nelly!"
He tore himself away as if he were loth to leave the woman who sat there sewing. He went to the price list which the Academicians keep in the lobby. He turned the leaves. The picture was unsold. The artist had appraised it at a modest figure. Mr. Gibbs bought it there and then. Then he turned to his catalogue to discover the artist's address. Mr. Bodenham lived in Manresa Road, Chelsea.
Not many minutes after a cab drove up to the Manresa Studios. Mr. Gibbs knocked at a door on the panels of which was inscribed Mr. Bodenham's name.
"Come in!" cried a voice.
Mr. Gibbs entered. An artist stood at his easel.
"Mr. Bodenham?"
"I am Mr. Bodenham."
"I am Mr. Gibbs. I have just purchased your picture at the Academy, 'Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!'" Mr. Bodenham bowed. "I--I wish to make a--a few inquiries about--about the picture."
Mr. Gibbs was as nervous as a schoolboy. He stammered and he blushed. The artist seemed to be amused. He smiled.
"You wish to make a few inquiries about the picture--yes?"
"About the--about the subject of the picture. That is, about--about the model."
Mr. Gibbs became a peony red. The artist's smile grew more pronounced.
"About the model?"
"Yes, about the model. Where does she live?"
Although the day was comparatively cool, Mr. Gibbs was so hot that it became necessary for him to take out his handkerchief to wipe his brow. Mr. Bodenham was a sunny-faced young man. He looked at his visitor with laughter in his eyes.
"You are aware, Mr. Gibbs, that yours is rather an unusual question. I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, and we artists are not in the habit of giving information about our models to perfect strangers. It would not do. Moreover, how do you know that I painted from a model? The faces in pictures are sometimes creations of the artist's imagination. Perhaps oftener than the public think."
"I know the model in 'Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!'"
"You know her? Then why do you come to me for information?"
"I should have said that I knew her years ago."
Mr. Gibbs looked round the room a little doubtfully. Then he laid his hand on the back of a chair, as if for the support, moral and physical, which it afforded him. He looked at the artist with his big, grave eyes.
"As I say, Mr. Bodenham, I knew her years ago--and I loved her."
There was a catch in his voice. The artist seemed to be growing more and more amused. Mr. Gibbs went on:
"I was a younger man then. She was but a girl. We both of us were poor. We loved each other dearly. We agreed that I should go abroad and make my fortune. When I had made it, I was to come back to her."
The big man paused. His listener was surprised to find how much his visitor's curious earnestness impressed him. "I had hard times of it at first. Now and then I heard from her. At last her letters ceased. About the time her letters ceased, my prospects bettered. Now I'm doing pretty well. So I've come to take her back with me to the other side. Mr. Bodenham, I've looked for her everywhere. As they say, high and low. I've been to her old home, and to mine--I've been just everywhere. But no one seems to know anything about her. She has just clean gone, vanished out of sight. I was thinking that I should have to go back, after all, without her, when I saw your picture in the Academy, and I knew the girl you had painted was Nelly. So I bought your picture--her picture. And now I want you to tell me where she lives."
There was a momentary silence when the big man finished.
"Yours is a very romantic story, Mr. Gibbs. Since you have done me the honour to make of me your confidant, I shall have pleasure in giving you the address of the original of my little picture--the address, that is, at which I last heard of her. I have reason to believe that her address is not infrequently changed. When I last heard of her, she was--what shall I say?--hard up."
"Hard up, was she? Was she very hard up, Mr. Bodenham?"
"I'm afraid, Mr. Gibbs, that she was as hard up as she could be--and live."
Mr. Gibbs cleared his throat:
"Thank you. Will you give me her address, Mr. Bodenham?"
Mr. Bodenham wrote something on a slip of paper.
"There it is. It is a street behind Chelsea Hospital--about as unsavoury a neighbourhood as you will easily find."
Mr. Gibbs found that the artist's words were justified by facts--it was an unsavoury neighbourhood into which the cabman found his way. No. 20 was the number which Mr. Bodenham had given him. The door of No. 20 stood wide open. Mr. Gibbs knocked with his stick. A dirty woman appeared from a room on the left.
"Does Miss Brock live here?"
"Never heard tell of no such name. Unless it's the young woman what lives at the top of the 'ouse--third floor back. Perhaps it's her you want. Is it a model that you're after? Because, that's what she is--leastways I've heard 'em saying so. Top o' the stairs, first door to your left."
Mr. Gibbs started to ascend.
"Take care of them stairs," cried the woman after him. "They wants knowing."
Mr. Gibbs found that what the woman said was true--they did want knowing. Better light, too would have been an assistant to a better knowledge. He had to strike a match to enable him to ascertain if he had reached the top. A squalid top it was--it smelt! By the light of the flickering match he perceived that there was a door upon his left. He knocked. A voice cried to him, for the second time that day:
"Come in!"
But this voice was a woman's. At the sound of it, the heart in the man's great chest beat, in a sledge-hammer fashion, against his ribs. His hand trembled as he turned the handle, and when he had opened the door, and stood within the room, his heart, which had been beating so tumultuously a moment before, stood still.
The room, which was nothing but a bare attic with raftered ceiling, was imperfectly lighted by a small skylight--a skylight which seemed as though it had not been cleaned for ages, so obscured was the glass by the accumulations of the years. By the light of this skylight Mr. Gibbs could see that a woman was standing in the centre of the room.
"Nelly!" he cried.
The woman shrank back with, as it were, a gesture of repulsion. Mr. Gibbs moved forward. "Nelly! Don't you know me? I am Tom."
"Tom?"
The woman's voice was but an echo.
"Tom! Yes, my own, own darling, I am Tom."
Mr. Gibbs advanced. He held out his arms. He was just in time to catch the woman, or she would have fallen to the floor.
"Nelly, don't you know me?" The woman was coming to.
"Haven't you a light?" The woman faintly shook her head.
"See, I have your portrait where you placed it; it has never left me all the time. But when I saw your picture I did not need your portrait to tell me it was you."
"When you saw my picture?"
"Your portrait in Mr. Bodenham's picture at Academy 'Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!'"
"Mr. Bodenham's--I see."
The woman's tone was curiously cold.
"Nelly, you don't seem to be very glad to see me."
"Have you got any money?"
"Any money, Nelly?"
"I am hungry."
"Hungry!"
The woman's words seemed to come to him with the force of revelation.
"Hungry!" She turned her head away. "Oh, my God, Nelly." His voice trembled. "Wa-wait here, I--I sha'n't be a moment. I've a cab at the door."
He was back almost as soon as he went. He brought with him half the contents of a shop--among other things, a packet of candles. These he lighted, standing them, on their own ends, here and there about the room. The woman ate shyly, as if, in spite of her confession of hunger, she had little taste for food. She was fingering the faded photograph of a girl which Mr. Gibbs had taken from his pocket-book.
"Is this my portrait?"
"Nelly! Don't you remember it?"
"How long is it since it was taken?"
"Why, it's more than seven years, isn't it?"
"Do you think I've altered much?"
Mr. Gibbs went to her. He studied her by the light of the candles.
"Well, you might be plumper, and you might look happier, perhaps, but all that we'll quickly alter. For the rest, thank God, you're my old Nelly." He took her in his arms. As he did so she drew a long, deep breath. Holding her at arms-length, he studied her again. "Nelly, I'm afraid you haven't been having the best of times."
She broke from him with sudden passion.
"Don't speak of it! Don't speak of it! The life I've lived----" She paused. All at once her voice became curiously hard. "But through it all I've been good. I swear it. No one knows what the temptation is, to a woman who has lived the life I have, to go wrong. But I never went. Tom"--she laid her hand upon Mr. Gibb's arm as, with marked awkwardness, his name issued from her lips--"say that you believe that I've been good."
His only answer was to take her in his arms again, and to kiss her.
Mr. Gibbs provided his new-found lost love with money. With that money she renewed her wardrobe. He found her other lodgings in a more savoury neighbourhood at Putney. In those lodgings he once more courted her.
He told himself during those courtship days, that, after all, the years had changed her. She was a little hard. He did not remember the Nelly of the old time as being hard. But, then, what had happened during the years which had come between! Father and mother both had died. She had been thrown out into the world without a friend, without a penny! His letters had gone astray. In those early days he had been continually wandering hither and thither. Her letters had strayed as well as his. Struggling for existence, when she saw that no letters reached her, she told herself either that he too had died, or that he had forgotten her. Her heart hardened. It was with her a bitter striving for daily bread. She had tried everything. Teaching, domestic service, chorus singing, needlework, acting as an artist's model--she had failed in everything alike. At the best she had only been able to keep body and soul together. It had come to the worst at last. On the morning on which he found her, she had been two days without food. She had decided that, that night, if things did not mend during the intervening hours--of which she had no hope--that she would seek for better fortune--in the Thames.
She told her story, not all at once, but at different times, and in answer to her lover's urgent solicitations. She herself at first evinced a desire for reticence. The theme seemed too painful a theme for her to dwell upon. But the man's hungry heart poured forth such copious stores of uncritical sympathy that, after a while, it seemed to do her good to pour into his listening ears a particular record of her woes. She certainly had suffered. But now that the days of suffering were ended, it began almost to be a pleasure to recall the sorrows which were past.
In the sunshine of prosperity the woman's heart became young again, and softer. It was not only that she became plumper--which she certainly did--but she became, inwardly and outwardly, more beautiful. Her lover told himself, and her, that she was more beautiful even than she had been as a girl. He declared that she was far prettier than she appeared in the old-time photograph. She smiled, and she charmed him with an infinite charm.
The days drew near to the wedding. Had he had his way he would have married her, off-hand, when he found her in the top attic in that Chelsea slum. But she said no. Then she would not even talk of marriage. To hear her, one would have thought that the trials she had undergone had unfitted her for wedded life. He laughed her out of that--a day was fixed. She postponed it once, and then again. She had it that she needed time to recuperate--that she would not marry with the shadow of that grisly past still haunting her at night. He argued that the royal road to recuperation was in his arms. He declared that she would be troubled by no haunting shadows as his dear wife. And, at last, she yielded. A final date was fixed. That day drew near.
As the day drew near, she grew more tender. On the night before the wedding-day her tenderness reached, as it were, its culminating point. Never before had she been so sweet--so softly caressing. They were but to part for a few short hours. In the morning they were to meet, never, perhaps, to part again. But it seemed as if he could not tear himself away, and as if she could not let him go.
Just before he left her a little dialogue took place between them, which if lover-like, none the less was curious.
"Tom" she said, "suppose, after we are married, you should find out that I have not been so good as you thought, what would you say?"
"Say?--nothing."
"Oh yes, you would, else you would be less than man. Suppose, for instance, that you found out I had deceived you."
"I decline to suppose impossibilities."
She had been circled by his arms. Now she drew herself away from him. She stood where the gaslight fell right on her.
"Tom, look at me carefully! Are you sure you know me?"
"Nelly!"
"Are you quite sure you are not mistaking me for some one else? Are you quite sure, Tom?"
"My own!"
He took her in his arms again. As he did so, she looked him steadfastly in the face.
"Tom, I think it possible that, some day, you may think less of me than you do now. But"--she put her hand over his mouth to stop his speaking--"whatever you may think of me, I shall always love you"--there was an appreciable pause, and an appreciable catching of her breath--"better than my life."
She kissed him, with unusual abandonment, long and fervently, upon the lips.
The morning of the following day came with the promise of fine weather. Theirs had been an unfashionable courtship--it was to be an unfashionable wedding. Mr. Gibbs was to call for his bride, at her lodgings. They were to drive together, in a single hired brougham, to the church.
Even before the appointed hour, the expectant bridegroom drew up to the door of the house in which his lady-love resided. His knock was answered with an instant readiness which showed that his arrival had been watched and waited for. The landlady herself opened the door, her countenance big with tidings.
"Miss Brock has gone, sir."
"Gone!" Mr. Gibbs was puzzled by the woman's tone. "Gone where? For a walk?"
"No, sir, she's gone away. She's left this letter, sir, for you."
The landlady thrust an envelope into his hand. It was addressed simply, "Thomas Gibbs, Esq." With the envelope in his hand, and an odd something clutching at his heart, he went into the empty sitting-room. He took the letter out of its enclosure, and this is what he read:
"My own, own Tom,--You never were mine, and it is the last time I shall ever call you so. I am going back, I have only too good reason to fear, to the life from which you took me, because--I am not your Nelly."
The words were doubly underlined, they were unmistakable, yet he had to read them over and over again before he was able to grasp their meaning. What did they mean? Had his darling suddenly gone mad? The written sheet swam before his eyes. It was with an effort he read on.
"How you ever came to mistake me for her I cannot understand. The more I have thought of it, the stranger it has seemed. I suppose there must be a resemblance between us--between your Nelly and me. Though I expect the resemblance is more to the face in Mr. Bodenham's picture than it is to mine. I never did think the woman in Mr. Bodenham's picture was like me--though I was his model. I never could have been the original of your photograph of Nelly--it is not in the least like me. I think that you came to England with your heart and mind and eyes so full of Nelly, and so eager for a sight of her, that, in your great hunger of love, you grasped at the first chance resemblance you encountered. That is the only explanation I can think of, Tom, of how you can have mistaken me for her.
"My part is easier to explain. It is quite true, as I told you, that I was starving when you came to me. I was so weak and faint, and sick at heart, that your sudden appearance and strange behaviour--in a perfect stranger, for you were a perfect stranger, Tom--drove from me the few senses I had left. When I recovered I found myself in the arms of a man who seemed to know me, and who spoke to me words of love--words which I had never heard from the lips of a man before. I sent you to buy me food. While you were gone I told myself--wickedly! I know, Tom it was wickedly!--what a chance had come at last, which would save me from the river, at least for a time, and I should be a fool to let it slip. I perceived that you were mistaking me for some one else. I resolved to allow you to continue under your misapprehension. I did not doubt that you would soon discover your mistake. What would happen then I did not pause to think. But events marched quicker than I, in that first moment of mad impulse, had bargained for. You never did discover your mistake. How that was, even now I do not understand. But you began to talk of marriage. That was a prospect I dared not face.
"For one thing--forgive me for writing it, but I must write it, now that I am writing to you for the first and for the last time--I began to love you. Not for the man I supposed you to be, but for the man I knew you were. I loved you--and I love you! I shall never cease to love you, with a love of which I did not think I was capable. As I told you, Tom, last night--when I kissed you!--I love you better than my own life. Better, far better, for my life is worthless, and you--you are not worthless, Tom! And I would not--even had I dared!--allow you to marry me; not for myself, but for another; not for the present, but for the past; not for the thing I was, but for the thing which you supposed I had been, once. I would have married you for your own sake; you would not have married me for mine. And so, since I dared not undeceive you--I feared to see the look which would come in your face and your eyes--I am going to steal back, like a thief, to the life from which you took me. I have had a greater happiness than ever I expected. I have enjoyed those stolen kisses which they say are sweetest. Your happiness is still to come. You will find Nelly. Such love as yours will not go unrewarded. I have been but an incident, a chapter in your life, which now is closed. God bless you, Tom! I am yours, although you are not mine--not yours, Nelly Brock--but yours, Helen Reeves."
Mr. Gibbs read this letter once, then twice, and then again. Then he rang the bell. The landlady appeared with a suspicious promptitude which suggested the possibility of her having been a spectator of his proceedings through the keyhole.
"When did Miss Brock go out?"
"Quite early, sir. I'm sure, sir, I was quite taken aback when she said that she was going--on her wedding-day and all."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"Not a word, sir. She said: 'Mrs. Horner, I am going away. Give this letter to Mr. Gibbs when he comes.' That was every word she says, sir; then she goes right out of the front door."
"Did she take any luggage?"
"Just the merest mite of a bag, sir--not another thing."
Mr. Gibbs asked no other questions. He left the room and went out into the street. The driver of the brougham was instructed to drive, not to church, but--to his evident and unconcealed surprise--to that slum in Chelsea. She had written that she was returning to the old life. The old life was connected with that top attic. He thought it might be worth his while to inquire if anything had been seen or heard of her. Nothing had. He left his card, with instructions to write him should any tidings come that way. Then, since it was unadvisable to drive about all day under the ægis of a Jehu, whose button-hole was adorned with a monstrous wedding favour, he dismissed the carriage and sent it home.
He turned into the King's Road. He was walking in the direction of Sloane Square, when a voice addressed him from behind.
"Tom!"
It was a woman's voice. He turned. A woman was standing close behind him, looking and smiling at him--a stout and a dowdy woman. Cheaply and flashily dressed in faded finery--not the sort of woman whose recognition one would be over-anxious to compel. Mr. Gibbs looked at her. There was something in her face and in her voice which struck faintly some forgotten chord in his memory.
"Tom! don't you know me? I am Nelly."
He looked at her intently for some instants. Then it all flashed over him. This was Nelly, the real Nelly, the Nelly of his younger days, the Nelly he had come to find. This dandy sloven, whose shrill voice proclaimed her little vulgar soul--so different from that other Nelly, whose soft, musical tones had not been among the least of her charms. The recognition came on him with the force of a sudden shock. He reeled, so that he had to clutch at a railing to help him stand.
"Tom! what's the matter? Aren't you well? Or is it the joy of seeing me has sent you silly?"
She laughed, the dissonant laughter of the female Cockney of a certain class. Mr. Gibbs recovered his balance and his civility.
"Thank you, I am very well. And you?"
"Oh, I'm all right. There's never much the matter with me. I can't afford the time to be ill." She laughed again. "Well, this is a start my meeting you. Come and have a bit o' dinner along with us."
"Who is us? Your father and your mother?"
"Why, father, he's been dead these five years, and mother, she's been dead these three. I don't want you to have a bit of dinner along with them--not hardly." Again she laughed. "It's my old man I mean. Why, you don't mean to say you don't know I'm married! Why, I'm the mother of five."
He had fallen in at her side. They were walking on together--he like a man in a dream.
"We're doing pretty well considering, we manage to live, you know." She laughed again. She seemed filled with laughter, which was more than Mr. Gibbs was then. "We're fishmongers, that's what we are. William he's got a very tidy trade, as good as any in the road. There, here's our shop!" She paused in front of a fishmonger's shop. "And there's our name"--she pointed up at it. "Nelly Brock I used to be, and now I'm Mrs. William Morgan."
She laughed again. She led the way through the shop to a little room beyond. A man was seated on the table, reading a newspaper, a man without a coat on, and with a blue apron tied about his waist.
"William, who do you think I've brought to see you? You'll never guess in a month of Sundays. This is Tom Gibbs, of whom you've heard me speak dozens of times."
Mr. Morgan wiped his hand upon his apron.
Then he held it out to Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs was conscious, as he grasped it, that it reeked of fish.
"How are you, Gibbs? Glad to see you!" Mr. Morgan turned to his wife. "Where's that George? There's a pair of soles got to be sent up to Sydney Street, and there's not a soul about the place to take 'em."
"That George is a dratted nuisance, that's what he is. He never is anywhere to be found when you want him. You remember, William, me telling you about Tom Gibbs? My old sweetheart, you know, he was. He went away to make his fortune, and I was to wait for him till he came back, and I daresay I should have waited if you hadn't just happened to come along."
"I wish I hadn't just happened, then. I wish she'd waited for you, Gibbs. It'd have been better for me, and worse for you, old man."
"That's what they all say, you know, after a time."
Mrs. Morgan laughed. But Mr. Morgan did not seem to be in a particularly jovial frame of mind.
"It's all very well for you to talk, you know, but I don't like the way things are managed in this house, and so I tell you. There's your new lodger come while you've been out, and her room's like a regular pig-sty, and I had to show her upstairs myself, with the shop chock-full of customers." Mr. Morgan drew his hand across his nose. "See you directly, Gibbs; some one must attend to business."
Mr. Morgan withdrew to the shop. Mr. Gibbs and his old love were left alone.
"Never you mind, William. He's all right; but he's a bit huffy--men will get huffy when things don't go just as they want 'em. I'll just run upstairs and send the lodger down here, while I tidy up her room. The children slept in it last night. I never expected her till this afternoon; she's took me unawares. You wait here; I shan't be half a minute. Then we'll have a bit of dinner."
Mr. Gibbs, left alone, sat in a sort of waking dream. Could this be Nelly--the Nelly of whom he had dreamed, for whom he had striven, whom he had come to find--this mother of five? Why, she must have begun to play him false almost as soon as his back was turned. She must have already been almost standing at the altar steps with William Morgan while writing the last of her letters to him. And had his imagination, or his memory, tricked him? Had youth, or distance, lent enchantment to the view? Had she gone back, or had he advanced? Could she have been the vulgar drab which she now appeared to be, in the days of long ago?
As he sat there, endeavouring to resolve these riddles which had been so suddenly presented for solution, the door opened and some one entered.
"I beg your pardon," said the voice of the intruder, on perceiving that the room was already provided with an occupant.
Mr. Gibbs glanced up. The voice fell like the voice of a magician on his ear. He rose to his feet, all trembling. In the doorway was standing the other Nelly--the false, and yet the true one. The Nelly of his imagination. The Nelly to whom he was to have been married that day. He went to her with a sudden cry.
"Nelly!"
"Tom!" She shrank away. But in spite of her shrinking, he took her in his arms.
"My own, own darling."
"Tom," she moaned, "don't you understand--I'm not Nelly!"
"I know it, and I thank God, my darling, you are not."
"Tom! What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have found Nelly, and I mean that, thank Heaven! I have found you too--never, my darling, please Heaven! to lose sight of you again."
They had only just time to withdraw from a too suspicious neighbourhood, before the door opened again to admit Mrs. Morgan.
"Tom, this is our new lodger. I just asked her if she'd mind stepping downstairs while I tidied up her room a bit. Miss Reeves, this is an old sweetheart of mine--Mr. Gibbs."
Mr. Gibbs turned to the "new lodger."
"Miss Reeves and I are already acquainted. Miss Reeves, you have heard me speak of Mrs. Morgan, though not by that name. This is Nelly."
Miss Reeves turned and looked at Mrs. Morgan, and as she looked--she gasped.