There was a bar at the front of the restaurant—a cheerful, domestic bar of the Italian sort, with a bright-eyed, smiling, middle-aged woman in charge. She knew Mosscrop, and flashed a kindly glance of southern comradeship at him as he came forward, and stopped and drew his cheque-book from his pocket. There were also two girls in the bar, and they knew him too, and grinned gently at his salute. Vestalia watched them narrowly, and fancied that one of them also winked.
“I had to stop and get some more money,” he explained, when they were in the street together. “There isn’t another place in these parts where they would change a cheque.”
“I noticed that they seemed to know you,” she replied, with reserve.
“Dear people that they are!” he cried. “The sight of them in the morning is always delightful to me. Did you observe it—the extraordinary cheerfulness of them all? You saw how the girls chaffed the ice-man, and how the fellow who brought in the soda-water cases had his joke with the waiters, and how madame clucked and chuckled like a good hen, as if they were all her brood, and everybody seemed to like everybody else?”
“I didn’t get the notion that they were very keen about me,” remarked Vestalia. “As a matter of sober fact, they scowled.”
“Nonsense! Of course they were deferential to you—you represented a sort of dignified unaccustomedness to them, and they were afraid to beam at you. But bless you, they’re as simple and as sweet-hearted as children. They laugh and smile at people just out of pure native amiability. The place is as good as a tonic to me of a morning when I am feeling blue and out of sorts.”
“But you are notthismorning,” she reminded him.
For answer he drew her hand through his arm. They fell into step, and moved along at a sauntering gait on their way toward Oxford Street.
It was mid-August, and there had been a shower overnight. The pavement still showed damp in its crevices, and the air was clear and fresh. A pale hazy sunshine began to mark out shadows in the narrow thoroughfares. By-and-by it would be hot and malodorous here, but just now the sense of summer’s charm found them out even in Soho.
She had asked him about himself. The question had risen naturally enough to her lips, and she had propelled it without diffidence. But when the words actually sounded in her own ears, they frightened her. The inquiry seemed all at once personal to the point of rudeness. The possibility of his resenting her curiosity rose in her mind, and on the instant flared upward into painful certainty.
“Oh, forgive me; I had no business to ask you!” she hurriedly added.
He laughed, and patted her arm. “Why on earth shouldn’t you?”
“I spoke without thinking,” she faltered. “I suppose—that is, it occurs to me—perhaps gentlemen don’t like to be questioned—what I mean is, you didn’t answer, and I was afraid——”
“Afraid nothing!” he reassured her. “You mustn’t dream of being stand-offish with me. I shall get vexed with you if you do. My dear little lady, there isn’t anything in the world that you’re not as free as air to say to me, or ask me. I only hesitated because”—he began, smiling in a rueful, whimsical way down at her—“because it’s too complicated and sinister a recital to rush lightly into. My name is David Mosscrop, and I am an habitual criminal by profession. That will do to start with.”
Vestalia looked earnestly into his face for some sign that he was jesting. It was a clean-shaven face, cast by nature in a mould of gravity. The eyes had seemed a pleasant grey to her first cursory examination; but now, on closer scrutiny, there might be a hardness as of steel in their colour. The lips and chin, too, had a sharpness of line that could mean unamiable things. And yet, how could she credit his words? It was true, she recalled, that by all accounts many superior gamblers, burglars, and other evil characters were in private life most kindly persons—of notoriously generous impulses. Pictures of the outlaws of romance, from Robin Hood to Dick Ryder, crowded upon her mental vision. The countenance into which she tremulously stared might have belonged to any of them—a little blurred by the effects of recent drink, a trifle stained in its lower parts by the need of a razor, yet adventurous, subtle, courageous; above all, commanding. Her heart fluttered at the thought of her own temerity in leaning on his arm, and she shot a swift glance forward toward the big thoroughfare they were nearing, where there would be crowds of people to see her. Then she tightened her hold, and said to herself that she didn’t mind a bit.
“You said I might ask anything I liked,” she found herself saying. “What is your special line of crime?”
“Well, specifically, I don’t know just how they would define me. I am not quite a confidence-man, because nobody ever reposes an atom of confidence in me. Mine is a peculiar sort of case. I cannot be said to deceive any one by my game, and yet, undoubtedly, I come under the general head of impostors. I make my living by obtaining money under false pretences.”
The girl was frankly mystified. This sounded so poor and mean that her instincts fluttered back to the original notion that he was joking. Sure enough, she could see the laughter latent in his eyes, now that she looked again.
“You’re just fooling!” she protested, and tugged admonishingly upon his arm. “Tell me what it is you do, quick!”
“How do you know I do anything?” he demanded. He hugged her arm against his side, to show what great fun it all was.
“Why shouldn’t I be a gentleman at large? There are such things, you know.”
She shook her head. “Gentlemen at large don’t read hard at the Museum in August. I never understood they were much given to reading at any time of year, for that matter. No, I know you do something. You are in a profession; I can see that. You are not a doctor; you are too polite and kind-mannered for that. I thought at first that you were a journalist, but they don’t have cheque-books. Oh, tell me, please!”
He laughed gaily. “Ten thousand guesses and you’d never hit it. My dear lady, I profess Culdees.”
Vestalia pondered the information with gravity for a little, stealing sidelong glances to learn if this was more of his fun. “You can see how ignorant I am,” she remarked at last. “You will recognise presently that you are wasting your time with me. WhatareCuldees? Or is it a thing? I assure you I haven’t the remotest notion.”
“It is a secret,” he assured her, in tones which strove to be serious, but revealed a jocose note to her ear.
She shook his arm gleefully. “As if we could have secrets on our birthday!” she cried. “Tell me instantly all about Culdees! I insist.”
“But I don’t know anything about them. That is the secret—nobody knows anything about them. I draw a salary for devoting three weeks each year to explaining to a class of young men who desire to know nothing whatever about the Culdees, that if they did wish to learn about them they couldn’t possibly do it.”
“Are there any more jobs like that, that you know of?” inquired the girl. “It would just suit me.” Then she spoke less flippantly. “I’m afraid you’ve already discovered how shallow and ill-informed I am. You do not think it is worth while to talk seriously with me!”
He seemed much affected by her rebuke. “My dear lady——” he began, in earnest disclaimer.
“No; what I mean is—” she interrupted him—pleased by his show of contrition, but even more interested in the flow of her own ideas, and the sound of her own voice, which had taken on musical intonations, and delicately-measured cadences since breakfast that were novel to her delighted hearing—“what I mean is, men do not have any real intellectual respect for women; they do not think of them in their deep-down thoughts as their mental equals; they still regard them, as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, as mere toys, playthings, creatures to pat on the cheek and talk pleasant nonsense to, when there is nothing better to do. And the worst of it is that so many women—a large majority—are contented with this, and aspire to nothing higher, and they set the rules for the rest; and hence young women whohaveambitions, and do desire to make themselves the equals of men, and set up high ideals of intellectual life, they—they find themselves—find themselves——”
“Find themselves being regarded with much very genuine liking and friendship by those to whom they are good enough to give their company,” Mosscrop finished the sentence for her. He smiled to himself as he pressed her arm still more closely. The girl was not accustomed to drink, and the Capri and maraschino had gone to her tongue. He was pleasantly conscious of their influences himself, and upon second thought he liked his companion all the more for the innocent fearlessness with which she had followed his example. The charm of the whole experience strengthened its hold upon him. He looked down with tenderness upon her. “Yes, very genuine friendship—and gratitude,” he reiterated, with ardour in his low voice.
She did not conceal the enjoyment she had in both look and tone. “The idea ofrealcompanionship is so precious in my eyes,” she murmured—“a true communion of minds. There is nothing else in life worth living for. Do you think there can be anyrealfriendship without genuine intellectual respect?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t lay too much stress on that myself,” he answered, lightly. “I find that the fellows I really like the most—the men that I take the most solid comfort in putting in time with—are tremendous duffers from any intellectual point of view, but of course”—he found himself hastily adding—“that is amongmen. I have never known anything at all about women friends—that is, of what one may honestly call friends. But I am learning fast. I have reached the point of forming an ideal: she must be tall, with her hat just brushing above my collar. She must have the most wonderful pale yellow hair in the world, and the prettiest face, and new French boots—and——”
“You don’t care in the least what kind of a mind she has,” put in Vestalia, dolefully.
“Ah, you didn’t let me finish. She will have a spirit brave and yet tender, a mind broad and capable yet without arrogance, a temperament attuning itself to each passing mood, sunny, shadowed, merry, pensive, adventurous, timid—all as full of sweet little turns and twists and unexpected things in general as an April day. I don’t want her learned: I should hate her to be logical. I like her just as she is: I wouldn’t have her changed for the world.”
In details the definition perhaps left something to be desired. But its form of presentation brought a flush of satisfaction to Ves-talia’s cheek. She nestled closer still against his shoulder for a dozen paces or so, and when she drew away then, let him feel that it was because they were at Oxford Street, and for no other reason.
“Oh, the beautiful day!” was all she said.
They turned to the right, and sauntered aimlessly along down the broad pavement, pausing now and again to glance over some tradesman’s display, then drifting onward again, close together. Before a bookseller’s window at a corner they made a more considerable halt. Mosscrop scanned the rows of titles minutely, talking as he did so. Thus between comments on the volumes they looked at, and idle remarks on subjects which these suggested, she picked up this further account of her new friend’s affairs.
“I told you I was a Scotchman,” he said. “I was the son of a factor, a sort of steward over a biggish estate, and I never did anything but go to school from the earliest moment I can remember. It is as if I was born in a class-room, and cradled on a blackboard. It is a terrible land for that; tuition broods over it like a pestilence. Their idea is to make of each child’s brain a sort of intellectual haggis; the more different kinds of stuff there are in it, the greater the fame of the teacher and the pride of the parents. I shudder now when I think how much I knew at the age of twelve. As for my eighteenth year, when I took the Strathbogie exhibition, Confucius, John Knox, and Lord Bacon rolled in one would have been frightened of me. My information was appalling. My mother died from sheer excess of astonishment at having given birth to such a prodigy. My father took to drink. The magnificence of my attainments not only threw him off his balance—it debauched the entire district. It is the law of history, you know, that communities and nations progress to a certain point, achieve some crowning deed in a golden age of splendid productiveness, and then wither and go off to seed. Well, my parish, having produced me, reached its climax. Industry flagged, enterprise died down; the very land ceased to grow as much corn to the acre as formerly. The people could do nothing but congregate at the taverns and discuss with bated breath my meteoric progress across the academic heavens. Oh, I was a most remarkable young man!
“It happened that there was also a remarkable old man in my neighbourhood. He came from nobody in particular, and went away young. People had long since forgotten that there had been such a lad, when one day he returned to us, well along in years, and infamously rich. I don’t mean that he had come wrongfully by his money. God knows how he got it; the story ran that it had something to do with smoked fish. Whatever its source, his wealth was wanton, preposterous, criminal in its dimensions. He had no kith or kin remaining to him. Of course we knew he would build and endow an educational establishment. All rich old Scotchmen do that, as an ordinary matter. They have reared for us such myriads of brand-new colleges and seminaries on every hillside that I marvel even the rabbits and pheasants can escape learning to spell. There are logarithms in the very atmosphere.
“But this old man was not to be put off with a mere academy. He piled up a veritable castle of instruction, a first-class fortress of learning. And he had an idea of something which should be unique among all the schools of the world. It was all his own idea. Even in Scotland it had not occurred to anyone else. You must know that in early Scotch ecclesiastical history, say from the eighth to the twelfth centuries, there are occasional mentions of some bounders called Culdees, who seem to have run a little sacerdotal show of their own, something between hermits and canons-regular—it is absolutely impossible now to make out just what they were. But this extraordinary old man was quite clear in his mind about them. He had reasoned it all out for himself. He said that ‘Culdees’ was, of course, a mere popular corruption of ‘Chaldees.’ He loved to argue this with all comers, and he did so,—my word for it, he did! How nobody in Scotland ever agrees with any view or opinion advanced by any other person, but the art of disagreeing has been reduced, by ages of use, to a delicately-modulated system. Everybody disputed his ridiculous notion of the ‘Chaldees’—they would have fought it just as stoutly if it had been a wise one—but he was a very rich man, and he had benevolent intentions toward the district, and so they ‘roared him gently as any sucking dove.’ They couldn’t admit his contention, oh no, but they let him feel that they were thinking about it, that it had made an impression on their minds, that in due time they might see it differently.
“The upshot was that the old fool established a Culdee Chair in the faculty of his new college, and made it worth more money than any other professorship of the lot. The celebrity of my performances at school was fresh then, and reached his ears. He gave the billet to me, and confirmed it to me in his will when he died, a year later—and that is all.”
“And you actually only work three weeks a year? And get paid a whole year’s salary for that?”
Vestalia regarded him with astonishment, as she put the question.
They had strolled meanwhile down the great thoroughfare, crossed it, and passed into a narrower lateral by-way.
“It is hardly even three full weeks’ work,” he replied. “There is nothing to do in the way of fresh discovery. Reeves and Skene and other fellows have gleaned the last spear of straw in the stubble. I do go through the form of getting up some lectures each Autumn, but it is really such dreadful humbug that I’m ashamed to look the students in the face, let alone my fellow-professors. Fortunately, most of the latter are clergymen, and that makes it a little easier. They know that they are as big frauds as I am, in their own line of goods, and so we say nothing about it.”
“What struck me,” she began, hesitatingly, “you spoke rather—what I mean is, you don’t appear to be very grateful to the old gentleman who arranged all this for you—and to me it seems the most wonderful thing I ever heard of. I should thank his memory on my bended knees every day of my life ifIwere the Professor of Culdees. I couldn’t find it in my heart to poke fun at him; I should think of him and revere him as my benefactor,always!”
“Hm—m!” said Mosscrop. “I’m not sure I don’t wish he’d never been born, or had choked on a bone of one of his own damned Finnan baddies, before ever he came back to us!”
The ring in his voice, like a surly rattling of chains, brought back to her vividly the scene of his despondency at the restaurant.
She made haste to lay her hand upon his arm.
“Oh, do you see where we are?” she cried, vivaciously, snatching at the chance of diversion.
Sure enough, a section of the Museum’s stately front lay before them, filling to topheaviness the perspective of the small street. They had wandered instinctively toward this pre-natal rendezvous of their friendship. Their eyes softened now as they looked at the grey, pillared block of masonry stretching across the end of their by-way.
“It draws us like a magnet,” said Moss-crop. “Come, what do you say? Shall we go in for an hour, and wander about as if we were nice rural people come up to London to see the sights? I should like to myself.”
“The dear old place!” sighed Vestalia, with mellow tones.
It was a long hour that the Museum claimed from them.
“This is what always attracts me most of all,” said Mosscrop upon entering. He turned to the left, and led the way into the little gallery of the Roman portrait-busts. “Very often I never go any farther than this. The modernness of these fellows is a perpetual marvel to me. It is as if we met them every day. Look at Caracalla and Septimius Severus; they are exactly like Irish members. And see Pertinax, here; I know at least ten old farmers about Elgin who might be his own brothers. Observe this man Hadrian. He is the absolute image of Francis the First. You know the portraits of him at Hampton Court—what? never been there? Ah, that’s a place we will go to together. There is one picture of Francis there—he is very drunk, apparently, and has got hold of the hand of the Duchess of Some-thing-or-other, and she is in her cups, too, and the inane, leering, almost simian happiness of the two—oh, it is worth a long journey just to see that one picture.”
“It doesn’t sound very inviting,” commented Vestalia. “Tipsy women are repulsive, whether they are duchesses or not.”
Mosscrop chuckled. “Oh, but you must make allowances for the period. It was the Renaissance, the joyful, exuberant, devil-may-care Renaissance. If once you catch the inner spirit of it, you will feel that it was the most glorious of periods. And Francis the First was the living, breathing type of it. There was a man for you! He celebratedhisbirthday all the year round. And in this particular instance, why, I daresay it was the Duchess’s birthday too. I should have thought you would take a more lenient view of such a pleasing double anniversary.”
Vestalia looked doubtfully at him. “I hope you don’t mean thatIam in my cups, as you call it,” she said.
He laughed her suspicion down. “No, I won’t let you hint at such an absurd thing. My dear friend, I must cultivate your sense of humour. The roots exist, but the growth is choked by the weeds of Lambeth—or was it Kennington? We must have them up.”
“But I don’t knowwhenyou are joking,” she protested. “Besides, I always understood that the Scotch were not a joking people.”
“Ah, you confuse two things. It is said of us, with some justice, that we are slow to comprehend the jokes of others. But of the making of jokes by ourselves there is no end. And—ah, here is Nero. I love Nero!”
“Is that a joke, too?”
“Ah, no,” he answered, more seriously. “It is in my nature to love all the people whom history has picked out to condemn. If you knew the sort of creatures who wrote the histories—the old chronicles and records and so on—you would understand my point of view. They were full of all meannesses and narrow bigotries; they calumniated everybody they couldn’t blackmail. Take the case of Richard Lionheart and his brother John, in your own English history. The former was a ferocious and turbulent blackguard, who neglected all his duties of kingship without shame, plundered his own subjects by torture and rapine, and was altogether a curse to his own people and everybody else. The mere trick of his having a taste for songs and music saved him. He buttered up the bards, and they fastened him in history as a hero. It is precisely the same thing that is done now by politicians who take pains to make friends with the newspapers. On the other hand, John was a model monarch, diligent, hardworking, extraordinarily attentive to his duties, travelling for ever up and down the country to hold courts of justice, and right the wrongs poor people suffered at the hands of the barons and the abbots and other powerful ruffians. It is plain enough that the poor people loved him; after all these centuries his name continues to be the most popular baptismal name among them. But the bards and monkish chroniclers were in the pay of the barons and abbots, and they paint John for us as the most evil scoundrel in English history. That’s the way it has always been done. I should like to have Nero’s side of his story. I know he must have been a splendid fellow, to have got the historians so violently against him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was really almost as fine as Richard the Third.”
“How amusing!” said Vestalia at this point, and Mosscrop was swift to take the hint. They moved on through the Greek rooms, where the girl had more of a chance. She had known a few of the students who are accustomed on giving days to offer up sacrifices of time and crayons and good white paper in front of the more fashionable statues, and this had provided her with what seemed to her companion an exhaustive familiarity with Hellenic art. This advantage followed and remained with her amid the sombre and lofty fragments of the Mausoleum, and shone about her when they confronted the frieze of the Parthenon.
“It is not my subject,” he remarked, delightedly. “This is a Hermes, you say, and that a Winged Goddess of Victory. Ah, and this is a River God. I don’t think I’ve ever been here before. It is charming—to come with you. We supplement each other. Sure enough, I ought to have foreseen that you would know about Greek art. It is just the field that would attract a beautiful young woman. It fits you—it belongs to you.”
“How—now!” she admonished him, holding up a finger in playful protest.
“Oh,” he urged, “if I’m not to say that you are beautiful, we might as well not have any birthday at all. That is its most elementary fact—lying at the very foundation of everything. To ignore it would be like trying to celebrate the Fifth of November without a guy.”
Again she shot a glance of dubiety at him. “I don’t know in the least how to take that,” she confessed, with a quiver on her lip.
He laughed outright at this, and gaily patted her on the shoulder. “This unnatural Attic levity of mine is all the fault of the frieze. I’m a cat in a strange garret here. Hasten with me to the Assyrian rooms, if you want to see the utmost height of solemnity it is given to mortals to attain.”
He was not quite as good as his word, when they began loitering along before the carved tablets from Nineveh and Khorsabad. Instruction he could not help piling upon his companion, for this washissubject, but he found himself seasoning it with all sorts of sprightly commentaries on the serious text. Of grave and sportive alike he had so much to say that Vestalia took his arm, and leant upon it as they made their slow progress through the long corridors. The contact was exhilarating to him. He could not be sure that she was assimilating any large proportion of his discourse, but her pretence of interest at least was very pretty, and the touch of her arm in his was full of inspiration to his tongue.
Down in the basement, or crypt, he stood before the lions of Assur-Banipal, and talked at length. She said she had read Byron’s “Sardanapalus,” and he told her how those detestable linguists, the Greeks, had altered the name, and how the Assyrian legends of a great warrior and sovereign had become twisted in the Hellenic after-version to depict a sublimation of debauched effeminacy and luxury run mad. She listened with her shoulder against his—but now he had other auditors as well.
“Excuse me, sir,” the urgent and anxious voice of a stranger said close behind him, “but you seem to be extraordinarily well posted indeed on these sculptures here. I hope you will not object to my daughter and me standing where we can hear your remarks.”
Mosscrop turned, and saw before him an elderly man, with a mild expression, and hair and beard of extreme whiteness. He was soberly attired, and carried in his hand a broad-brimmed hat of woven white straw. He bowed courteously, and indicated by a gentle gesture the young lady standing at his side.
“I should delight, sir, to have my daughter be privileged to profit by your remarks,” he repeated, and bowed again.
The daughter was a dark, well-rounded girl, dressed with much elegance. Her face was strikingly Oriental in type, with coal-black tresses drawn low over the temples, and a skin of a uniform ivory hue. She said nothing, but looked at Vestalia’s hair.
Mosscrop spoke somewhat abruptly. “You are certainly welcome, but it happens that I have finished my remarks, as you call them.”
“That is too bad,” replied the stranger, with a sigh of resignation. “I overheard enough to convince me that they were first-rate. It is our misfortune, sir, mine and my daughter’s, to have arrived too late. I presume, sir, that you have given special attention to this branch of study?”
The Professor of Culdees nodded briefly.
“And may I take the liberty of inquiring, sir,” the old man persisted, “whether you are professionally engaged in transmitting to others the knowledge which you have thus acquired?”
A stormy grin began twitching at the corners of Mosscrop’s mouth. He nodded again.
“My purpose in putting the question is not one of idle curiosity, sir,” the other went on. “My life-long desire to visit Europe, and behold its venerable ruins and its remarkable accumulations of objects of historical and artistic interest, has attained fulfilment at a period, unfortunately, when the burden of my years, while not incapacitating me from the enjoyments of the mind, renders me less capable of searching out new information than I should once have been. It also, I see only too clearly, unfits me to act as a guide and interpreter, amid these treasures of the storied past, to a young mind so much fresher and more eager than my own. I recognise this, sir, frankly, and I should be glad to discuss some possible arrangement, with the proper persons, by which my deficiencies might be supplied in this connection.”
The elaborate and deferential courtesy with which the old gentleman spoke made a curt answer impossible. Mosscrop looked from father to daughter with a puzzled smile.
“You are Americans, I take it?”
“We are from Paris, sir.” He made haste to add, “From Paris, Kentucky. I obtrude the explanation, because I find that among foreigners there is frequently a tendency to confuse our city with the celebrated metropolis on the Continent, which bears the same name, but is a place of an entirely different character. To a scholar like yourself, however, I might have realised that such an error would be impossible. I ask your pardon, sir.”
“Oh, don’t mention it,” replied Mosscrop, lightly. He could not recall ever having heard of such a place before, and for a moment was tempted to say so. But there was an effect of sweet simplicity in the old man’s face and manner which restrained his tongue. “Well,” he said instead, “what is it that you wish? I am not sure that I have entirely caught your idea. Do you want some one to go round with you and show you things?”
“Not in the ordinary meaning which would attach to that description,” the other answered. “We do not require to have things shown to us in the literal sense of the word, but I had thought that if we were attended in our inspection of the various objects of interest for which Europe is justly famous, by some person of erudition and also of an exceptional style of delivery, the experience would be of much greater practical value to my daughter. Of course, sir, I am aware that professional assistance of this high character is not to be obtained without commensurate compensation, but that is a consideration which presents no obstacles to my mind.”
David felt Vestalia’s hand trembling upon his arm.
“I can see,” he said, more amiably, “that such a relation might be extremely welcome to many deserving and very capable men. But at the moment I regret to say I can think of none to recommend to you. Besides, you don’t know me from Adam; so how could I give a character to any one else?”
“I beg your pardon sir,” rejoined the old gentleman, “but we took the liberty of following close behind you all through the last two long hallways. You were apparently so engrossed with your subject that our proximity escaped your attention, but we have listened with the deepest interest, and I may say improvement as well, to everything which has fallen from your lips. I have thus, sir, been able to form an estimate of your individual characteristics not less than of your acquirements. I may add, sir, that I am especially impressed by the fact that my daughter, from first to last, displayed an exceptional eagerness to miss nothing of your discourse. As the principal object of my visit to Europe, as, indeed, of my whole existence, is to provide the highest forms of intellectual pleasure and edification for my daughter, I cannot close my eyes to the discovery that your remarks upon Assyrian history produced a much more profound impression upon her young mind than anything which it has been within the scope of my own diminishing powers to produce for her consideration. I have rarely seen her so absorbed, even at our best lectures.”
David stifled a yawn, and made a little bow in which, as he turned, he strove to include the young American lady whoso culture was the object of so much solicitude. His movement surprised upon her countenance an expression of scornful weariness, which seemed to render the whole face alert and luminous with feeling. At sight of his eyes, her sultana-like features composed themselves again to an almost stolid tranquillity. She regarded him with indolence for an instant, then looked calmly away at things in general. There was to be read in that transient glance a challenge which stirred his blood.
“Well, what you say is, beyond doubt, flattering,” he remarked to the father, in a slightly altered voice. “It might be that—that I could find some one for you.”
The old gentleman bowed ceremoniously. “Permit me to say, sir, that I have found the some one—a person possessing unique qualifications for the position which I have outlined. I need nothing now but the power to influence his decision in a manner favourable to my aspirations.” He turned to Vestalia. “I am emboldened, madame, to crave your assistance in reconciling your husband to my project.”
Vestalia’s hand fluttered sharply on David’s arm, and she parted her lips to speak. At the moment, there was audible a derisive sniff from the daughter.
“It is my rule never to interfere,” Vestalia answered with sudden decision, and in a coldly distinct voice. “He is quite capable of settling such matters for himself.” She looked from father to daughter and back with an impressive eye.
Mosscrop laughed uneasily. “Well—I’m afraid you must take it that this is settled—I scarcely see my way to avail myself of your very complimentary offer.”
The American caught the note of hesitation in his voice. “Perhaps you will turn it over in your mind,” he said, fumbling with a hand in his inner breast-pocket. “Allow me, sir, to hand you my card. Adele, you have a pencil? Thank you. I will inscribe upon it the name of the hotel at which we are residing.”
Mosscrop took the card, glanced at it, and nodded. “In the extremely improbable event of my changing my mind, I will let you know,” he said. “Good day.”
As they were parting, the father seemed to read in the daughter’s eye that he was forgetting something. He hesitated for a brief space; then his kindly face brightened. “Excuse me, sir,” he observed, “but I have neglected to inform myself as to your identity—if I may presume to that extent.”
David felt vainly in his pocket. “I haven’t a card with me. My name is David Mosscrop. The Barbary Club will find me. I will write it for you.”
The old man scrutinized the scrawl in his note-book, and then, after more bows, led his daughter away. She walked after him in a proudly indifferent fashion, with her head in the air, and something almost like a swagger in the movements of her form.
Mosscrop watched them with a ruminating eye till they had left the room. Then he glanced at the card, and gave a little laugh. “Mr. Laban Skinner, Paris, Kentucky.—Savoy Hotel,” he read aloud.
“Skinner? Is their name Skinner?” demanded Vestalia with eagerness.
“None other. Why? It’s a good name for them, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes—good enough,” the girl replied, speaking now with exaggerated nonchalance.
“Quaint people these Americans are!” commented Mosscrop. “If I were to put that old chap’s speeches down literally in a book nobody would credit them. Fancy the fate of a young woman condemned to be dragged around the globe chained to a preposterous old phonograph like that! It really wrings one’s heart to think of it. Mighty good-looking girl too.”
Vestalia withdrew her arm. “Perhaps,” she said, icily, “if you were to make haste you might overtake them. I must insist on your not allowing me to detain you, if you are so interested. I shall do quite well by myself.” Mosscrop gathered her meaning slowly, after a grave scrutiny of her flushed and perturbed face. When it came to him, he shouted his merriment. A glance around the chamber showed him that they were alone with the lions and carved effigies of Sardanapalus.
He thrust an arm about Vestalia’s waist, and gave it a boisterous though fleeting squeeze.
“Why, you dear little canary-bird of a creature, do you suppose I’ve been forgetting you?” he cried. “Haven’t I been thinking every minute of the touch of your arm in mine? Haven’t I been cursing that old windbag ceaselessly because he was interrupting our birthday? Look up at me! Truly now, aren’t you ashamed?”
She suffered him to raise her face, his finger under her chin, and she made a brave effort to smile hack at the glance he bent upon her. “If it is truly—oh, ever so truly—still our birthday—the same as it was before,” she made wistful answer.
“It is a hundred times more our birthday than ever!” he protested stoutly.
An elderly keeper in uniform shuffled his way into the room.
“Well then,” whispered Vestalia, “let’s go somewhere else to celebrate the rest of it. All these stone animals and images and mummies—I don’t feel as if they brought me luck on my birthday.”
So they wandered forth into the sunshine again, and Mosscrop confessed himself glad of the change. Where should they go? He found himself empty of suggestion. Responsibility for the decorous entertainment of a young lady in the daytime was a novel experience, and he said so.
“Oh, let us just stroll about,” she urged. “I love these old Bloomsbury Squares. They are so stupid.”
Luncheon hour came, and presented itself to Mosscrop as a welcome pretext to take a hansom. A certain formless apprehension of meeting some one he knew—though why this should be dreaded he could not for the life of him have told—had alloyed the pleasure of his ramble. They drove to another restaurant, this time a larger place in a more pretentious quarter—and though they had a little table to themselves, the room was full of others.
David knew about luncheons as well as breakfasts. He gave the waiter very minute instructions about having a grouse split and grilled, and he ran his eye over the list of champagnes with the confident discrimination of an expert. “I will give that number 34a one more trial,” he said to the butler. “Cool it to 48, and we will see what it is like then.”
Vestalia noted that he spoke to waiters in a soft, grave tone, with shades of gentle melancholy and of affectionate authority subtly blended in it, which he used to no one else. He produced the impression upon her of being at his very best at a table. She particularly liked him when he took the cork from the butler, and tenderly pinched with thumb and finger as he scrutinised it, and then smiled courteous approbation to the servant. This person wore a chain round his neck, and the bottle he brought was swathed in starched napery—and the girl observed both with the interest that attaches to novelty. But it was even more interesting to see how perfectly her companion presided over everything.
She herself was much less at ease. David noticed that she kept her hands in her lap under the table as much as possible during the meal, and that there was an air of constraint in her general deportment which had been lacking at breakfast. He put it down to her shyness among so many busy people in the thronged apartment, and talked briskly at intervals to re-assure her. Especially he charged himself with the duty of keeping her glass filled, and he was almost peremptory in his tone with her about the grouse. She ate her piece to the end with meek resolution after that.
When they were again in the open, he rallied her upon the diffidence she had displayed. “You mustn’t mind a lot of fellows being about,” he said in a paternal way. “They go where there is the best kitchen, and it’s the part of wisdom to go there too; besides, they’re only too pleased to see a pretty face among them. Didn’t you feel how proud I was of you, all the while?”
Outside she had quite regained her spirits and assurance. She smiled with frank gaiety at him. “I’ll tell you how to be prouder still,” she said. “I know you won’t mind my saying so—but I ought really to have some gloves.”
“I’m a brute not to have thought of it,” Mosscrop reproached himself. “Here’s a place, just at hand. I can come in, this time, I suppose, without question.”
She held up a finger at him, in mock monition. Then, as they turned to enter the shop, she whispered: “I saw that American girl looking with all her eyes at my bare hands.”
“Oh, pshaw—lots of women don’t wear gloves. You mustn’t be so suspicious of everybody that looks your way. A hundred to one they’re thinking about themselves all the time.”
“Ah, but you don’t know women,” she halted midway in the entrance to murmur. “I could read it in her eyes that she’d noticed I had no ring.”
“Well, and there too,” protested Mosscrop, “you exaggerate the importance of the thing. Lots of women don’t wear rings, either—that is, on ordinary occasions.”
She danced her eyes at him in merriment. “Perhaps you didn’t notice that I was supposed to be a married lady,” she said, and then turned abruptly to the counter.