“Yes, with pleasure,” she said, sweetening the rebuke with a blush, and stultifying it by affecting to look on the mantelpiece for a card, which eventually she produced from another place. “These are my terms.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “What do you say to a contra account—you to do my work, and I to set my professional attendance against it? I am a doctor.”
She looked at me mute and amazed.
“But there is nothing the matter with me,” she murmured, and broke into a nervous smile.
“O, I beg your pardon!” I said. “Then it was only your instrument which was out of sorts?”
Her face fell at once.
“You heard me—of course,” she said. “Yes, I—it was out of sorts, as you say. One gets fancies, perhaps, living alone, and typing—typing.”
I thought of the discordant clack going on hour by hour—the dead words of others made brassily vociferous, until one’s own individuality would become merged in the infernal harmonics.
“And so,” I said, “like the dog’s master in the fable, you quarrelled with an old servant.”
“O, no!” she answered. “I had only had it for a week—since I came here.”
“You have only been here a week?”
“Little more,” she replied. “I had to move from my old rooms. It is very kind of you to take such an interest in me. Will you tell me what I can do for you?”
My instructions were soon given. The morrow would see them attended to. No, she need not send the copies on. I would myself call for them in the afternoon.
“I hopethismachine will be more to the purpose,” I said.
“Ihope so, too,” she answered.
“Well, she seems a lady,” I thought, as I walked home; “a little anæmic flower of gentility.” But sentiment was not to the point.
That evening, “over the walnuts and the wine,” I tackled Master Jack, my second son. He was a promising youth; was reading for the Bar, and, for all I knew, might have contributed to the “Gownsman.”
“Jack,” I said, when we were alone, “I never knew till to-day that you considered yourself a poet.”
He looked at me coolly and inquiringly, but said nothing.
“Do you consider yourself a marrying man, too?” I asked.
He shook his head, with a little amazed smile.
“Then what the devil do you mean by addressing a copy of love verses to Miss Phillida Gray?”
He was on his feet in a moment, as pale as death.
“If you were not my father”—he began.
“But I am, my boy,” I answered, “and an indulgent one, I think you’ll grant.”
He turned, and stalked out of the room; returned in a minute, and flung down a duplicate draft ofthepoem on the table before me. I put down the crackers, took up the paper, and finished my reading of it.
“Jack,” I said, “I beg your pardon. It does credit to your heart—you understand the emphasis? You are a young gentleman of some prospects. Miss Gray is a young lady of none.”
He hesitated a moment; then flung himself on his knees before me. He was only a great boy.
“Dad,” he said; “dear old Dad; you’ve seen them—you’ve seen her?”
I admitted the facts. “But that is not at all an answer to me,” I said.
“Where is she?” he entreated, pawing me.
“You don’t know?”
“Not from Adam. I drove her hard, and she ran away from me. She said she would, if I insisted—not to kill those same prospects of mine. My prospects! Good God! What are they without her? She left her old rooms, and no address. How did you get to see her—and my stuff?”
I could satisfy him on these points.
“But it’s true,” he said; “and—and I’m in love, Dad—Dad, I’m in love.”
He leaned his arms on the table, and his head on his arms.
“Well,” I said, “how didyouget to know her?”
“Business,” he muttered, “pure business. I just answered her advertisement—took her some of my twaddle. She’s an orphan—daughter of a Captain Gray, navy man; and—and she’s an angel.”
“I hope he is,” I answered. “But anyhow, that settles it. There’s no marrying and giving in marriage in heaven.”
He looked up.
“You don’t mean it? No! you dearest and most indulgent of old Dads! Tell me where she is.”
I rose.
“I may be all that; but I’m not such a fool. I shall see her to-morrow. Give me till after then.”
“O, you perfect saint!”
“I promise absolutely nothing.”
“I don’t want you to. I leave you to her. She could beguile a Saint Anthony.”
“Hey!”
“I mean as a Christian woman should.”
“O! that explains it.”
The following afternoon I went to West Kensington. The little drab was snuffling when she opened the door. She had a little hat on her head.
“Missus wasn’t well,” she said; “and she hadn’t liked to leave her, though by rights she was only engaged for an hour or two in the day.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m a doctor, and will attend to her. You can go.”
She gladly shut me in and herself out. The clang of the door echoed up the narrow staircase, and was succeeded, as if it had started it, by the quick toing and froing of a footfall in the room above. There was something inexpressibly ghostly in the sound, in the reeling dusk which transmitted it.
I perceived, the moment I set eyes on the girl, that there was something seriously wrong with her. Her face was white as wax, and quivered with an incessant horror of laughter. She tried to rally, to greet me, but broke down at the first attempt, and stood as mute as stone.
I thank my God I can be a sympathetic without being a fanciful man. I went to her at once, and imprisoned her icy hands in the human strength of my own.
“What is it? Have you the papers ready for me?”
She shook her head, and spoke only after a second effort.
“I am very sorry.”
“You haven’t done them, then? Never mind. But why not? Didn’t the new machine suit either?”
I felt her hands twitch in mine. She made another movement of dissent.
“That’s odd,” I said. “It looks as if it wasn’t the fault of the tools, but of the workwoman.”
All in a moment she was clinging to me convulsively, and crying—
“You are a doctor—you’ll understand—don’t leave me alone—don’t let me stop here!”
“Now listen,” I said; “listen, and control yourself. Do you hear? I have comepreparedto take you away. I’ll explain why presently.”
“I thought at first it was my fault,” she wept distressfully, “working, perhaps, until I grew light-headed” (Ah, hunger and loneliness and that grinding labour!); “but when I was sure of myself, still it went on, and I could not do my tasks to earn money. Then I thought—how can God let such things be!—that the instrument itself must be haunted. It took to going at night; and in the morning”—she gripped my hands—“I burnt them. I tried to think I had done it myself in my sleep, and I always burnt them. But it didn’t stop, and at last I made up my mind to take it back and ask for another—another—you remember?”
She pressed closer to me, and looked fearfully over her shoulder.
“It does the same,” she whispered, gulping. “It wasn’t the machine at all. It’s the place—itself—that’s haunted.”
I confess a tremor ran through me. The room was dusking—hugging itself into secrecy over its own sordid details. Out near the window, the type-writer, like a watchful sentient thing, seemed grinning at us with all its ivory teeth. She had carried it there, that it might be as far from herself as possible.
“First let me light the gas,” I said, gently but resolutely detaching her hands.
“There is none,” she murmured.
None. It was beyond her means. This poor creature kept her deadly vigils with a couple of candles. I lit them—they served but to make the gloom more visible—and went to pull down the blind.
“O, take care of it!” she whispered fearfully, meaning the type-writer. “It is awful to shut out the daylight so soon.”
God in heaven, what she must have suffered! But I admitted nothing, and took her determinedly in hand.
“Now,” I said, returning to her, “tell me plainly and distinctly what it is that the machine does.”
She did not answer. I repeated my question.
“It writes things,” she muttered—“things that don’t come from me. Day and night it’s the same. The words on the paper aren’t the words that come from my fingers.”
“But that is impossible, you know.”
“SoIshould have thought once. Perhaps—what is it to be possessed? There was another type-writer—another girl—lived in these rooms before me.”
“Indeed! And what became of her?”
“She disappeared mysteriously—no one knows why or where. Maria, my little maid, told me about her. Her name was Lucy Rivers, and—she just disappeared. The landlord advertised her effects, to be claimed, or sold to pay the rent; and that was done, and she made no sign. It was about two months ago.”
“Well, will you now practically demonstrate to me this reprehensible eccentricity on the part of your instrument?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t dare.”
“I would do it myself; but of course you will understand that a more satisfactory conclusion would be come to by my watching your fingers. Make an effort—you needn’t even look at the result—and I will take you away immediately after.”
“You are very good,” she answered pathetically; “but I don’t know that I ought to accept. Where to, please? And—and I don’t even know your name.”
“Well, I have my own reasons for withholding it.”
“It is all so horrible,” she said; “and I am in your hands.”
“They are waiting to transfer you to mamma’s,” said I.
The name seemed an instant inspiration and solace to her. She looked at me, without a word, full of wonder and gratitude; then asked me to bring the candles, and she would acquit herself of her task. She showed the best pluck over it, though her face was ashy, and her mouth a line, and her little nostrils pulsing the whole time she was at work.
I had got her down to one of my circulars, and, watching her fingers intently, was as sure as observer could be that she had followed the text verbatim.
“Now,” I said, when she came to a pause, “give me a hint how to remove this paper, and go you to the other end of the room.”
She flicked up a catch. “You have only to pull it off the roller,” she said; and rose and obeyed. The moment she was away I followed my instructions, and drew forth the printed sheet and looked at it.
It may have occupied me longer than I intended. But I was folding it very deliberately, and putting it away in my pocket when I walked across to her with a smile. She gazed at me one intent moment, and dropped her eyes.
“Yes,” she said; and I knew that she had satisfied herself. “Will you take me away now, at once, please?”
The idea of escape, of liberty once realized, it would have been dangerous to balk her by a moment. I had acquainted mamma that I might possibly bring her a visitor. Well, it simply meant that the suggested visit must be indefinitely prolonged.
Miss Gray accompanied me home, where certain surprises, in addition to the tenderest of ministrations, were awaiting her. All that becomes private history, and outside my story. I am not a man of sentiment; and if people choose to write poems and make general asses of themselves, why—God bless them!
The problem I had setmyself to unravel was what looked deucedly like a tough psychologic poser. But I was resolute to face it, and had formed my plan. It was no unusual thing for me to be out all night. That night, after dining, I spent in the “converted” flat in West Kensington.
I had brought with me—I confess to so much weakness—one of your portable electric lamps. The moment I was shut in and established, I pulled out the paper Miss Gray had typed for me, spread it under the glow and stared at it. Was it a copy of my circular? Would a sober “First Aid Society” Secretary be likely, do you think, to require circulars containing such expressions as “William! William! Come back to me! O, William, in God’s name! William! William! William!”—in monstrous iteration—the one cry, or the gist of it, for lines and lines in succession?
I am at the other end from humour in saying this. It is heaven’s truth. Line after line, half down the page, went that monotonous, heart-breaking appeal. It was so piercingly moving, my human terror of its unearthliness was all drowned, absorbed in an overflowing pity.
I am not going to record the experiences of that night. That unchanging mood of mine upheld me through consciousnesses and sub-consciousnesses which shall be sacred. Sometimes, submerged in these, I seemed to hear the clack of the instrument in the window, but at a vast distance. I may have seen—I may have dreamt—I accepted it all. Awaking in the chill grey of morning, I felt no surprise at seeing some loose sheets of paper lying on the floor. “William! William!” their text ran down, “Come back to me!” It was all that same wail of a broken heart. I followed Miss Gray’s example. I took out my match-box, and reverently, reverently burned them.
An hour or two later I was at Paul’s Exchange, privately interviewing my manager.
“Did you ever employ a Miss Lucy Rivers?”
“Certainly we did. Poor Lucy Rivers! She rented a machine of us. In fact——”
He paused.
“Well?”
“Well—it is a mere matter of business—she ‘flitted,’ and we had to reclaim our instrument. As it happens, it was the very one purchased by the young lady who so interested you here two days ago.”
“The first machine, you mean?”
“The first—andthe second.” He smiled. “As a matter of fact, she took away again what she brought.”
“Miss Rivers’s?”
He nodded.
“There was absolutely nothing wrong with it—mere fad. Women start these fancies. The click of the thing gets on their nerves, I suppose. We must protect ourselves, you see; and I’ll warrant she finds it perfection now.”
“Perhaps she does. What was Miss Rivers’s address?”
He gave me, with a positive grin this time, the “converted” flat.
“But that was only latterly,” he said. “She had moved from——”
He directed me elsewhere.
“Why,” said I, taking up my hat, “did you call her ‘poor Lucy Rivers’?”
“O, I don’t know!” he said. “She was rather an attractive young lady. But we had to discontinue our patronage. She developed the most extraordinary—but it’s no business of mine. She was one of the submerged tenth; and she’s gone under for good, I suppose.”
I made my way to theotheraddress—a little lodging in a shabby-genteel street. A bitter-faced landlady, one of the “preordained” sort, greeted me with resignation when she thought I came for rooms, and with acerbity when she heard that my sole mission was to inquire about a Miss Lucy Rivers.
“I won’t deceive you, sir,” she said. “When it come to receiving gentlemen privately, I told her she must go.”
“Gentlemen!”
“I won’t do Miss Rivers an injustice,” she said. “It washagentleman.”
“Was that latterly?”
“It was not latterly, sir. But it was the effects of its not being latterly which made her take to things.”
“What things?”
“Well, sir, she grew strange company, and took to the roof.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Just precisely what I say, sir; through the trap-door by the steps, and up among the chimney-pots.He’dbeen there with her before, and perhaps she thought she’d find him hiding among the stacks. He called himself an astronomer; but it’s my belief it was another sort of star-gazing. I couldn’t stand it at last, and I had to give her notice.”
It was falling near a gloomy midday when I again entered the flat, and shut myself in with its ghosts and echoes. I had a set conviction, a set purpose in my mind. There was that which seemed to scuttle, like a little demon of laughter, in my wake, now urging me on, now slipping round and above to trip me as I mounted. I went steadily on and up, past the sitting-room door, to the floor above. And here, for the first time, a thrill in my blood seemed to shock and hold me for a moment. Before my eyes, rising to a skylight, now dark and choked with snow, went a flight of steps. Pulling myself together, I mounted these, and with a huge effort (the bolt was not shot) shouldered the trap open. There were a fall and rustle without; daylight entered; and, levering the door over, I emerged upon the roof.
Snow, grim and grimy and knee-deep, was over everything, muffling the contours of the chimneys, the parapets, the irregularities of the leads. The dull thunder of the streets came up to me; a fog of thaw was in the air; a thin drizzle was already falling. I drove my foot forward into a mound, and hitched it on something. In an instant I was down on my knees, scattering the sodden raff right and left, and—my God!—a face!
She lay there as she had been overwhelmed, and frozen, and preserved these two months. She had closed the trap behind her, and nobody had known. Pure as wax—pitiful as hunger—dead! Poor Lucy Rivers!
Who was she, and who the man? We could never learn. She had woven his name, his desertion, her own ruin and despair into the texture of her broken life. Only on the great day of retribution shall he answer to that agonized cry.
Ho! bring me somelovers, fat or lean,That I may crunch ’em my teeth between!I could eat so many, so many, so many,That in the wide world there would not be left any.Ho! Here is Avenant to be seen,Who comes to draw your teeth so keen;He’s not the greatest man to view,But he’s big enough to conquer you.Planché’s“D’Aulnoy,” slightly misquoted.
Ho! bring me somelovers, fat or lean,
That I may crunch ’em my teeth between!
I could eat so many, so many, so many,
That in the wide world there would not be left any.
Ho! Here is Avenant to be seen,
Who comes to draw your teeth so keen;
He’s not the greatest man to view,
But he’s big enough to conquer you.
Planché’s“D’Aulnoy,” slightly misquoted.
Sir Richard Avenantcame home from Abyssinia to an interesting notoriety. He had been associated—a sort of explorative free-lance—with the expedition of Mr. Bruce, who was not yet returned from his adventures up the Nile in quest of the sources of that bewildering water; and, upon his arrival in London, he found himself engaged to a romance which was certainly remote from his deserts.
Now he was a strong, saturnine man, but apt to whimsical decisions, whose consequences, the fruits of whatever odd impulses, he never had a thought but to hold by; and as the self-reserved must suffer the character accorded to their appearance (the only side of them confessed), Sir Richard found himself accredited, by anticipation, with deeds adapted to the countenance he had always addressed to the world.
He was strolling, some days after his return, through the streets, when he was accosted by an acquaintance, apreux chevalierof the highestton, curled, be-ruffed, and imperturbably self-assured.
“Why, strike me silly, Dick!” cried this exquisite, “what do you, wandering unsociable in a shag coat, and all London by the ears to lionize ye?”
“Well, I know not, George. What have I done to be lionized?”
“Done!Done?asks the man that will not devour a steak but ’tis cut raw from the buttock of the living beast!Done?asks Bluebeard (and stap me, Dick, but your chin is as blue as a watchman’s!)—done, he says, that brings grass-petticoats in his train enough to furnish the Paradise of the Grand Turk! Prithee, Dick, where hast stowed ’em all? O, thou hast a great famous reputation, I assure thee, to justify thyself of with the women! Such is the report of thy peris—their teeth, their raven hair, their eyes like stars of the night—there’s no virtue in town could resist, if asked, to be thy queen and theirs.”
He was chuckling, and taking a delicate pinch of martinique, with his little finger cocked to display a glittering stone, when his eyes lighted on a house over against which they were standing.
“Hist!” said he, pointing with his cane; “pan my honour, the single reservation.”
“Single reservation?” repeated the explorer. “To what? To this London of frailties?”
“To be sure,” said the other. “The one party, I’ll dare swear, that would not put her nose in a ring for thy sake.”
“Indeed!” said Avenant. “Then she’s the one I must wed.”
The elegant cocked his head, squinting derisive.
“I lay you a double pony to a tester you don’t, within the decade.”
“Done! Tell me about her.”
“I’ll do more. I’ll carry you in to her, here and at once. Tell me about her, quotha! She’s the Fair with Golden Hair, and a guinea and a suitor to every thread of it.”
“Whence comes she?”
“From Arcadia, man, with a fortune of gold and roses. She cuts out hearts raw, as you do steaks, and devours them by the dozen. O, you shall know her!”
“But by what name, George, by what name?”
“Have I not told you? It shall suffice for all your needs. Thou shalt take a pack of Cabriolles, and never hunt her to the death. Come, my friend!”
He led Sir Richard to the house, and had himself announced. They ascended a flight of stairs, going up into a heaven of floating fragrance and melodious sounds. Their feet moved noiseless over silken carpets. They crossed an anteroom ruffling with lackeys, and were ushered into the Fair’s boudoir.
She sat at her mirror, in the hands of her perruquier. She was the most beautiful insolent creature Sir Richard had ever seen. There was not an inch of her which Nature could have altered to its improvement. The very patch on her cheek was a theft from perfection. But to so much loveliness her hair was the glory, a nimbus which, condensing in the heavy atmosphere of adoration, dropped in a melting flood of gold, which, short of the ground only, shrank and curled back from its gross contact.
All round and about her hummed her court—poets, lords, minstrels—suitors straining their wits and their talents for her delectation, while they bled internally. Many of them greeted Sir Richard’s chaperon, many Sir Richard himself—good-humouredly, jealously, satirically, as the case might be—as the two pushed by. A stir went round, however, when the rough new-comer’s name was put about; and some rose in their seats, and all dwelt inquisitively on the explorer’s reception.
It was condescending enough; as was that of his friend, who loved himself too well, and too wittily, to show a heart worth the beauty’s discussing.
“Have you got back your appetite, sir,” said the Fair to Avenant, “for dressed meats?”
“And ladies?” whispered Sir Richard’s friend.
“O, fie!” said madam.
“I will return the question on you,” said Sir Richard, in a low voice.
The Fair lifted her brows.
“Why, I am told, madam,” said Avenant, “that you feed on raw hearts; but I am willing to believe that the one lie is as certain as the other.”
The imperious beauty bit her underlip, and laughed.
“I perceive, Sir Richard,” she said, “that you do not court by flattery.”
“I do not court at all, madam,” he answered.
“Ah, true!” she replied. “You buy in the open market. It must be simpler; though, in the plain lodging where I hear you lie at present, the disposal of so responsible an establishment must exercise your diplomacy.”
She spoke aloud, evoking a general titter; and so aloud Avenant answered her.
“By no means, madam. I have in my sleeping-room a closet with three shelves. On one of these lies Beauty, unspoiled by adulation; on another lies Virtue, that respects her sex too well to traduce it; on the third lies feminine Truth, loveliest of her sisters. These are my whole establishment; and as they are shadows all, existing only in the imagination, they exercise nothing but my fondness for unattainable ideals.”
The company broke into much laughter over this Jeremiad; and the girl joined her young voice to theirs. But a little glow of colour was showing in her cheek, verily as if Sir Richard had flicked that fair surface with his glove.
“O!” she said, “this is a sad regale! Sure, sir, does the climate of Abyssinia breed no hotter than Leicestershire Quakers? Why, I have heard a lion roar fiercer in a caravan. Now, pray, Sir Richard, put off your civilities, and give us news instead of lessons. They say there is a form of lawless possession in the women of the country you visited.”
“It is very true there is, madam. It is called theTigrétier—a seizure of uncontrollable vanity, during which the victim is so self-centred that she is unable to attend to the interests, or even to distinguish the sexes of those about her. She will, for instance, surround herself with a circle of male admirers, assuming all the time, apparently, that they are the gossips of her own sex, with whom, like a decent woman, she would wont ordinarily, of course, to consort in private.”
The Fair cried out, “Enough! Your stories are the most intolerable stuff, sir. I wish Mr. Bruce joy of your return, as I hear you are not to remain in England.”
Then she turned her shoulder to him, her flush deepening to fire; and Sir Richard, bowing and moving away, fell into conversation with one or two of his acquaintances. Presently, looking up, he was surprised to see the room near empty. Goldenlocks had, in fact, issued her wilful mandate, and her court was dismissing itself.
The explorer was pressing out after the rest, when a maidservant touched his sleeve, and begged him to return to her lady, who desired a word with him. Sir Richard acquiesced immediately. He found the Fair standing solitary by her dressing-table, frowning, her head bent, her fingers plucking at a wisp of lace. Her hair, still undressed, hung down deep over her shoulders, mantling them with heavy gold, like a priest’s chasuble.
“Did you seek my acquaintance, sir,” she said imperatively, “with the sole purpose to insult me?”
“Nay, madam,” he answered, as cool as tempered steel; “but because you was described to me as the one woman in London that I might not marry, if I had the will to.”
“Why not?” was on the tip of her tongue; he saw it there. But she caught at herself, and answered, “So, sir, like sour reynard, I suppose, you would spite what you found it useless to covet.”
“Icovet, madam!” he said, in a tone of astonishment. “Iaspire to wrest this wealth and beauty from a hundred worthier candidates! Believe me, my ambition halted far short of such attainment.”
Her lips smiled, despite herself. What were the value, she suddenly thought, in a world of suitors that did not include this shagg’d and rugged Jeremiah? Her speech fell as caressing as the sound of water in a wood.
“Yet you confess to some ambition?” she murmured.
“True,” he answered; “the virtuoso’s.”
She lifted her beautiful brows.
“I will be candid, madam,” he said. “I have the collector’s itch. Whithersoever I visit, I lay my toll on the most characteristic productions of the tribes—robes, carvings, implements of war—even scalps. Madam, madam, you must surely be of the sun children! Your hair is the most lovely thing! I would give my soul—more, I would give a thousand pounds to possess it.”
“I see, sir,” she said; “to carry your conquest at your belt.”
“Nay,” he answered, with feigned eagerness. “Not a soul need know. The thing is done constantly. You have but to subscribe to the fashion of powder, and you gain a novel beauty, and I a secret I swear to hold inviolate.”
“O!” she said softly “This is Samson come with the shears to turn the tables on poor Delilah!”
And on the instant she flashed out, breaking upon him in a storm of passion. That he dared, that he dared, on no warrant but his reputation for inhumanity, so to outrage and insult her.
“Go, sir!” she cried. “Return to your Nubians and Dacoits—to countries where head-hunting is considered an honourable proof of manliness!”
He stood, as outwardly insensate as a bull.
“Then you decline to deal?”
Her only answer was to throw herself into a chair, and to abandon herself to incomprehensible weeping. But even her sobs seemed to make no soft impression on him. He took a step nearer to her, and spoke in the same civil and measured tone he had maintained throughout.
“Take care, madam. I never yet set my will upon a capture that in the long run escaped me.”
She checked her tears, to look up at him with a little furious laugh.
“Poor boaster!” she said. “I think, perhaps, that recounting of your Tigrétier hath infected you with it.”
“By my beard, madam,” said he, “I will make that hair my own!”
“See,” she cried jeeringly, “how a boaster swears by what he has not!”
Sir Richard felt to his chin.
“That is soon remedied,” said he. “And so, till my oath is redeemed, to consign my razors to rust!” And with these words, bowing profoundly, he turned and left the room.
Shortly after this he sailed to rejoin his expedition, and was not again in England during a period of eighteen months.
At the end of that time, being once more in London, he devoted himself—his affairs having now been ordered with the view to his permanent residence in the country—to some guarded inquiries about the Fair with Golden Hair. For some days, the season of the town being inauspicious, he was unable to discover anything definite about her. And then, suddenly, the news which he sought and desired came in a clap.
He was walking, one day, down a street of poor and genteel houses, when he saw her before him. He stood transfixed. There was no doubting his own eyesight. It was she: tall, slender, crowned with her accustomed glory, the flower of her beauty a little wan, as if seen by moonlight. But what confounded him was her condition. Her dress was mean, her gloves mended; every tag of cheap ribbon which hung upon her seemed the label to a separate tragedy. Thus he saw her again, the Fair with Golden Hair; but how deposed and fallen from her insolent estate!
She mounted a step to a shabby door. While she stood there, waiting to be admitted, an old jaunty cavalier came ruffling it down the street, accosted her, and accompanied her within. She might have glanced at Avenant without recognizing him. The rough dark beard he wore was his sufficient disguise.
Sir Richard made up his mind on the spot, and acted promptly. Having no intention to procure himself a notoriety in this business, he rigidly eschewed personal inquiry, and employed an official informer, at a safe figure, to ferret out the truth for him. This, epitomized, discovered itself as follows:—
Cytherea—Venus Calva—Madonna of the magic girdle, who had once reigned supreme between wealth and loveliness, who had once eaten hearts raw for breakfast, feeding her roses as vampires do, was desolate and impoverished—and even, perhaps, hungry. A scoundrelly guardian had eloped with trust funds: the crash had followed at a blow. Robbed of her recommendation to respect; deposed, at once, from the world’s idolatry to its vicious solicitation, she had fled, with her hair and her poor derided virtue, into squalid oblivion; that, at least, she hoped. But, alas for the fateful recoils on Vanity! She drives with a tight rein; and woe to her if the rein snap! A certain libidinous and crafty nobleman, of threescore or so years, had secured, in the days of the Fair’s prosperity, some little bills of paper bearing that beauty’s signature. These he had politicly withheld himself from negotiating, on the mere chance that they might serve him some day for a means to humiliate one who, in the arrogance of her power, had scoffed at his amatory, and perfectly honourable, addresses. That precaution had justified itself. The peer was now come to woo again, and less scrupulously, with his hand on a paper weapon, one stroke from which alone was needed to give the Fair’s poor drabbled fortune its quietus. She was at bay, between ruin and dishonour.
Sir Richard came immediately to a resolve, and lost no time in giving it effect. He wrote a formal note to the Fair, recalling himself courteously to her remembrance, reminding her of his original offer, and renewing it in so many words. He would do himself the honour, he said, to wait upon her for her answer on such and such a day.
To this he received no reply; nor, perhaps, expected one. He went, nevertheless, to his self-made appointment with the imperturbable confidence of a strong man.
Passing, on his way, by a perruquier’s, he checked himself, and stood for some moments at gaze in a motionless reverie. Then he entered the shop, made a purchase, and, going to a barber’s, caused himself to be shorn, shaved, and restored to the conventional aspect. Thus conditioned, he knocked at the Fair’s door, and was ushered up—bawled up, rather, by a slattern landlady—into her presence.
She rose to face him as he entered. She had his letter in her hand. Her beautiful hair, jealous, it seemed, to withdraw itself from the curioso’s very appraisement, was gathered into and concealed under a cap. Her features, thus robbed of their dazzling frame, looked curiously, sadly childish and forlorn. There were dark marks round her eyes—the scarce dissipated clouds of recent tears. Who can tell what emotions, at sight of this piteous, hard-driven loveliness, stirred the heart of the man opposite, and were repressed by his iron will?
“This letter, sir,” said the Fair, holding out the paper in a hand which shook a little. “I have tacitly permitted you to presume a right to a personal answer to that which it proposes, because such a course appeared to me the least compromising. I cannot write my name, sir, nowdays—as scandal doubtless hath informed you—but Fortune will be using it to my discredit.”
Sir Richard bowed.
“There is this difference only, madam:myword is the bond of a gentleman. I vowed you secrecy.”
“That is to assume, on your part,” she said quietly, “a confidentialness which, in its insult to misfortune, is at least not theactof a gentleman. Moreover, a gentleman, surely, had not taken advantage of circumstances to propose to destitution what affluence had once refused him.”
“Beware, madam!” said Avenant. “Pride must make some sacrifices to virtue. If, in renewing a pure business offer, I, a simple instrument in the hands of Providence, give you an opportunity to maintain that priceless possession unimpaired, would it not be the truer self-respect to secure your honour at whatever cost to your sentiments?”
“I thank you, sir,” she said. “I have not forgotten, nor forgotten to resent, my self-constituted Mentor. I will assure him that, for the matter of my virtue, it is safe in my hands, though I have to arm those against myself.”
“Good heavens, madam!” cried Avenant. “You are not at that resource?”
“Give yourself no concern, sir,” she answered coldly. “The moral I learned of your insult, was to save myself in its despite.”
His deep eyes glowed upon her.
“You have sold your hair?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered; “to pay my debts. ’Twas your letter decided me.”
“At a thousand pounds?”
“At a hundred.”
Then she added, as if irresistibly, because she was still little more than a child, “And now, sir, how is the boaster vindicated? But your oath, I perceive, still goes beardless.”
“Within the hour only,” said he; and, thrusting his hand into his breast, he drew out the long tresses of the Fair With Golden Hair.
She stared, amazed a moment; then threw herself upon her knees by a chair, weeping and crying out—
“O, I hate you, I hate you!”
He strode, and stood over her.
“I saw them through a window as I came. How could I mistake them? There is not their like in the world. But now, my oath redeemed, it is for you to say if I am to destroy them.”
“O, my hair!” she wept; “my one beauty!”
“I have staked all on this,” he cried. “If your hair was your one beauty, my beard alone redeemed me from appalling ugliness by so much as it hid of me. Well, I have lost on both counts, if the net result is your hatred.”
She looked up, with drowned bewildered eyes, and held out her hand blindly.
“Give me back my hair,” she said, “and you shall have the hundred pounds.”
“Nay, sweet Delilah,” quoth he; “for that would be to return you your strength, and I want you weak.”
Her arm dropped to her side.
“That you may insult me with impunity!” she said bitterly.
“Ah, Delilah!” he cried; “is it so bad, that the offer of my hand and heart is an insult to a woman?”
She sank back, sitting on her heels. From under her cap, fallen awry, curled shavings of gold hung out—the residue of a squandered wealth. Her eyes were wide with amazement.
“So bad?” she whispered. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
He was not a conformable wooer. The love-wise sex shall say if he was a diplomatic one. He threw himself on his knees beside the Fair, seized her in his bear-like grip, and kissed her lips.
“Now,” he said, “it is neck or nothing. None but a parson can wipe out the stain. Hate me now, and put Love to bed for by and by.”
She smiled suddenly—like the rainbow; like an angel.
“Yes,” she said, “if you insist. But the poor thing has slept so long in my heart, that it would fain wake up at last, and confess itself.”
The peer took his settlement with a very bad grace; but he had to take it, and there was an end of him.
“Avenant,” whispered the Fair, on the evening of their wedding day, “I have been vain, spoiled, perhaps untruthful. But I wished to tell you—you can put me to sleep on the middle shelf of your cupboard.”
“It has been converted into a closet for skeletons,” he said. “I was a bachelor then.”
Thefaculty of music is generally, I believe, inimical to the development of all the other faculties. Sufficient to itself is the composing gift. There was scarcely ever yet a born musician, I do declare, who, outside his birthright, was not a born ass. I say it with the less irreverence, because my uncle was patently one of the rare exceptions which prove the rule. He knew his Shakespeare as well as his musical-glasses—better than, in fact; for he was a staunch Baconian. This was all the odder because—as was both early and late impressed upon me—he had a strong sense of humour. Perhaps an eternal study of the hieroglyphics of the leger lines was responsible for his craze; for craze I still insist it was, in spite of the way he took to convince me of the value of cryptograms. I was an obstinate pupil, I confess, and withstood to the end the fire of all the big guns which he—together with my friend, Chaunt, who was in the same line—brought to bear upon me.
Well, I was honest, at least; for I was my uncle’s sole provisional legatee, and heir presumptive to whatever small fortune he had amassed during his career. And day by day, as the breach between us widened, I saw my prospect of the succession attenuating, and would not budge from my position. No, Shakespeare was Shakespeare, I said, and Bacon, Bacon; and not all the cyphers in the world should convince me that any profit was to be gained by either imagining or unravelling a single one of them.
“What, no profit!” roared my uncle. “But I will persuade you, young man, of your mistake before I’m done with you. Hum-ti-diddledidee! No profit, hey? H’m—well!”
Then I saw that the end was come. And, indeed, it was an open quarrel between us, and I was forbidden to call upon him again.
I was sorry for this, because, in his more frolicsome and uncontroversial moments, he was a genial companion, unless or until one inadvertently touched onthetheme, when at once he exploded. Professionally, hecouldbe quite a rollicking blade, and his settings of plantation songs were owned to be nothing less than lyric inspirations. Pantomime, too, in the light of his incidental music, had acquired something more than a classical complexion; and, in the domain of knockabout extravaganza, not only did the score of “The Girl who Knew a Thing or Two” owe to him its most refined numbers, but also the libretto, it was whispered, its best Atticbonnes-bouches.
However, all that good company I must now forgo—though Chaunt tried vainly to heal the breach between us—and in the end the old man died, without any visible relenting towards me.
I felt his loss pretty keenly, though it is no callousness in me to admit that our long separation had somewhat dulled the edge of my attachment. I expected, of course, no testamentary consideration from him, and was only more surprised than uplifted to receive one morning a request from his lawyers to visit them at my convenience. So I went, soberly enough, and introduced myself.
“No,” said the partner to whom I was admitted, in answer to a question of mine: “I am not in a position to inform you who is the principal beneficiary under our friend’s will. I can only tell you—what a few days before his death he confided to us, and what, I think, under the circumstances, you are entitled to learn—that he had quite recently, feeling his end approaching, realized on the bulk of his capital, converted the net result into a certain number—five, I think he mentioned—of Bank of England notes, and… burned ’em, for all we know to the contrary.”
“Burned them!” I murmured aghast.
“I don’t say so,” corrected the lawyer drily. “I only say, you know, that we are not instructed to the contrary. Your uncle” (he coughed slightly) “had his eccentricities. Perhaps he swallowed ’em; perhaps gave ’em away at the gate. Our dealings are, beyond yourself, solely with the residuary legatee, who is, or was, his housekeeper. For her benefit, moreover, the furniture and effects of our late client are to be sold, always excepting a few more personal articles, which, together with a sealed enclosure, we are desired to hand over to you.”
He signified, indeed, my bequest as he spoke. It lay on a table behind him: A bound volume of minutes of the Baconian Society; a volume of Ignatius Donnelly’s Great Cryptogram; a Chippendale tea-caddy (which, I was softened to think, the old man had often known me to admire); a large piece of foolscap paper twisted into a cone, and a penny with which to furnish myself with a mourning ring out of a cracker.
I blushed to my ears, regarding the show; and then, to convince this person of my good-humoured sanity, giggled like an idiot. He did not even smile in reply, the self-important ass, but, with a manner of starchy condescension, as to a wastrel who was getting all his deserts, rose from his chair, unlocked a safe, took an ordinary sealed envelope from it, handed it to me, and informed me that, upon giving him a receipt, I was at liberty to remove the lot.
“Thanks,” I said, grinding my astral teeth. “Am I to open this in your presence?”
“Quite inessential,” he answered; and, upon ascertaining that I should like a cab called, sent for one.
“Good morning,” he said, when at last it was announced (he had not spoken a word in the interval): “I wish you good morning,” in the morally patronizing tone of a governor discharging a prisoner.
I responded coldly; tried, for no reason at all, to look threatening; failed utterly, and went out giggling again. Quite savagely I threw my goods upon the seat, snapped out my address, closed the apron upon my abasement, and sat slunk into the cavity behind, like a salted and malignant snail.
Presently I thumped the books malevolently. The dear old man was grotesque beyond reason. Really he needn’t have left life cutting a somersault, as it were.
But, as I cooled outwardly, a warmer thought would intrude. It drew, somehow, from the heart of that little enclosure lying at the moment in my pocket. It was ridiculous, of course, to expect anything of it but some further development of a rather unkind jest. My uncle’s professional connexion with burlesque had rather warped, it would appear, his sense of humour. Still, I could not but recall that story of the conversion of his capital into notes: and an envelope——!
Bah! (I wriggled savagely). It was idiotic beyond measure so to flatter myself. Our recent relations had precluded for ever any such possibility. The holocaust, rather! The gift to a chance passer-by, as suggested by that fool of a lawyer! I stared out of the window, humming viciously, and telling myself it was only what I ought to expect; that such a vagary was distinctly in accordance with the traditions of low comedy. It will be observed that I was very contemptuous of buffoonery as a profession. Paradoxically, a joke is never played so low as when it is played on our lofty selves.
Nevertheless, I was justified, it appeared. It may be asked, Why did I not at once settle the matter by opening the envelope in the cab? Well, I just temporized with my gluttony, till, like the greedy boy, I could examine my box in private—only to find that the rats had devoured all my cake. It was not till I was shut into my sitting-room that I dared at length to break the seal, and to withdraw——
Even as it came out, with no suggestion of a reassuring crackle, I realized my fate. And this was it: please to examine it carefully—