WhenMadame Querterot left the cool, airy house, which reminded her so unpleasantly of one which was associated principally in her inmost consciousness with the sensation of corporal punishment applied in no niggardly spirit, she turned her steps towards her own home, which was situated in the remotest part of Pimlico.
By the time she got off her bus and set out on foot into the dreary labyrinth of dingy streets, in one of which she lived, the shadows were lengthening fast and the pavement was losing some of the blistering heat accumulated during the day. Madame Querterot climbed rather wearily the flight of steps before her door. When she entered the little shop where Julie sat sewing behind the counter, she passed through it without a word to her daughter, and going into the tiny room, which served as a sitting-room, threw herself into the one arm-chair with something like a groan.
Julie, whose smile of welcome had faded on her lips when she saw the expression on her mother’s face, bent again over her work, and for a little while all was still in the tiny, two-storied house.
There was not room for many customers in the shop. Julie often wondered what she would do if more than two came in at the same time, but such an embarrassing contingency had not so far occurred. Quite half the space was taken up by the counter, on which stood a tray containing hair-pins and hair-nets. In one cornera space was curtained off for such clients as should wish to have their hair dressed or washed. No one had as yet requested this last service. In the window Madame Querterot displayed a few superior articles which had survived the wreck of the Bond Street establishment.
There was a waxen lady, with fair hair wonderfully curled and twisted, who obscured the light a good deal as she stood with her shoulders disdainfully turned to the interior of the room and her snow white nose close against the plate glass, which separated her from the street. Plainly she felt it a come-down to look out on to this gloomy Pimlico roadway. Around her were strewn combs and brushes, bottles of brillantine and china pots containing creams for the complexion, curls and tails of false hair—in some cases attached to gruesome scalps of pink wax—and half a dozen elaborately carved tortoise-shell combs, which the luckless Eugène had invested in in a fit of mistaken enthusiasm shortly after his arrival in England, but which had never received so much as a comment or an inquiry as to price from any of those who had since looked on them.
They had remained, however, a source of pride to Madame Querterot, who would often remark to Julie what an air they bestowed.
Presently, after a glance at the clock, Julie put down her work and came to the door between the two rooms.
“You are back, mother,” she said, looking at her gravely.
“So it appears,” snapped her mother without raising her eyes.
“I am afraid you must be tired,” went on Julie calmly. “The day has been so hot. Will you not take a glass of lemonade before supper?”
“Have you got a lemon?” asked Madame Querterot somewhat less crossly.
“Yes,” said Julie.
She opened the cupboard and taking out a lemon, a tumbler, and a lemon squeezer, went about the business of preparing a cool drink for her heated parent.
“Has anyone bought anything to-day?” Madame Querterot asked when after a few minutes the beverage was handed to her. “Put a little more sugar in the glass.”
“A boy came in for a bottle of hair-oil,” replied Julie, “and a few women have bought hair-pins and hair-curlers. It has been a dull day.”
“We shall soon be in the street at this rate,” said Madame Querterot despairingly. “One cannot live on a few packets of hair-pins and a bottle of hair-oil. No. If only we could move to a fashionable locality. Here no one ever comes and we have but to die of hunger.”
“We haven’t been here very long. We may do better presently. It is the customers whom you massage that keep us from starvation.” Julie propped open the door into the shop and taking up her work sat down by the table in the parlour.
“Bah! Who knows how long they will continue? They have the skin of crocodiles, all of them. What can I do with it? Nothing. And in time they will find that out, and I shall be put to the door. What will happen then? You, I suppose, think you will be safe in your religious house. And your poor mother, you will be able to mock yourself of her then,hein!”
“Mother, you know I shall not leave you while you want me. I have not spoken of becoming a nun since father died, have I?”
“Your father!” exclaimed Madame Querterot with emotion. “Your father was a poltroon. No sooner did I need his assistance than he deserted me!”
“Mother!” cried Julie, and there was that in hertone which made Madame Querterot’s lamentations die away into inaudible mumblings.
The girl did not say any more, but went on quietly with her sewing, till after a while her mother rose to go upstairs.
At the door she paused.
“Bert is coming to supper,” she said over her shoulder. “You have not forgotten that it is to-night we go with him to the theatre? He will be here soon, I should think,” and she went on up the narrow stairs without waiting for an answer.
Half an hour later, when they sat down to a cold meal, which Julie had carefully prepared—for Madame Querterot was particularly fond of eating and had seen that her daughter early acquired the principles of good cookery—they had been joined by the guest to whom she had alluded.
This was a young man of anæmic aspect, with fair hair that lay rather untidily across a high, narrow forehead. His face, which was pale and thin, was not at first sight particularly prepossessing. The contour of it was unusually pointed, though the chin receded so much that it could hardly be said to exhibit a point. The mouth was weak and large and always half open, so that the teeth, stained brown by the smoking of continuous cigarettes, were not completely hidden when he talked under the straggling little moustache, the end of which he had an unpleasant habit of chewing. The nose was prominent and looked too large for the rest of his face, the eyes, dark and deep-set, seemed to flash with unsuspected fires when talk turned on a subject that interested him. It was they that redeemed the whole man from total insignificance. They were the eyes of an enthusiast, almost of a fanatic. He did not talk much, but seemed content to devour the food set before him and to gaze untiringlyat Julie who sat opposite him at the small square table.
Julie was a very good-looking girl in her way, which was not at all an English way, although the English language came more naturally to her lips than her mother tongue. To tell the truth, she was not very proficient in that, her mother and father having both found it easier, after she began to go to school, to talk to her in broken English. Indeed, after twenty years or so of residence in London that language became as natural to them as their own tongue, and Madame Querterot’s French had by now grown quite as anglicised as that of many linguists in her adopted country. She found, however, that many of her customers preferred her to talk in broken English; they liked to feel that here was some one come straight from the gay city to do their pleasure.
Her daughter inherited her mother’s oval face and arched eyebrows, but there the likeness ceased. Julie was tall while Madame Querterot was short; she was dark, while her mother was fair, and of a fairness that owed nothing to art. Julie had a straight, short nose and a little rosebud of a mouth, her skin was dark but glowing with health, and the brown eyes, set far apart under the low brow, had a wide-open look of sorrowful surprise as if she found herself in a world that failed continually to come up to her expectations. Bert, it was plain to see, found all this very much to his liking, and was so taken up with the contemplation of it that a great deal of Madame Querterot’s conversation fell unheeded on his ears, and his answers, when he made any, were for the most part quite irrelevant.
Madame Querterot had by this time completely recovered her good temper, or at all events displayed the amiability habitual to her in intercourse with strangers. She prattled away about the weather, theletter she had that day received from her relations in Paris, asked about Bert’s work, and showed, and possibly felt, great interest in his meagre replies. Presently she began to talk about the occupation of her own day.
“There is an old lady whom I visit for the massage,” she said, “who would make you laugh to see. She is ugly, she is fat, she has the complexion of a turkey! Yet there is no one so anxious as she to become young again. Was she ever beautiful? I do not know; but it is certain that she will not be so again. Every day I find her with a mirror in her hand and every day as I leave her she takes it up again to see if there is any improvement. For all I know she sits like that, gazing at her unsympathetic reflection till the next day when I come once more.”
Madame Querterot paused and took a draught of her lemonade.
“A little more sugar, Julie, my cherished, and it would be better still,” she said. “In this country sugar is less dear and you are unnecessarily careful of it. If we were in France I would not say so; there, there areimpôts. But this, one must admit it, is the cheapest place one can live in. That is why one finds here so many Jews. Bah! the Jews! Why does one suffer them? In England as in France one sees nothing else; but even more in England since l’affaire Dreyfus. There is one lady to whom I go daily who would gladly live in France, I think, if it had not become less disagreeable for her race here since that business. But perhaps it is not only on that account that she stays here, now that I reflect. She is not one of those who amuse themselves well in a republic.”
“How is that, mother?” asked Julie without much interest, while their guest, for his part, merely grunted indifferently.
“She is more than a Royalist,” said Madame Querterot; “she loves to see a head which knows how it feels to wear a crown. She goes every day to watch the Queen drive through the park. Mon Dieu! I think she lives only for that. To-day a Prince passed below her window, and as chance had it he looked up at her as he went. She was mad with joy; one would have said it was the happiest hour of her existence. She said nothing, but I have my eyes! And it is a woman who has everything to make her enjoy life. She is not bad-looking, not at all bad-looking; for a Jewess, even handsome; she is still young, and rich. Oh, but rich!”
Madame Querterot put down her knife and fork and raised both hands in the air to convey the extent of the wealth enjoyed by the lucky Jewess.
For the first time Bert displayed some interest in the conversation, or monologue, as one might more properly call it.
“It’s disgraceful,” he said, “it ought to be put a stop to. These people! They suck the blood of the poor!”
“The Jews, yes; it is theirmétier,” agreed Madame Querterot.
“I don’t refer to the Jew especially. What I’m alluding to at the present moment is all these useless rich folk. The drones of the hive, as you may say. These bloated capitalists who occupy the land that ought by rights to jolly well belong to the people. They’d better look out for themselves, I can tell them. There’s a day coming when society won’t stand it any longer. In other words, we’re going to drive them out. Tax them out of their very existence. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
Bert glared triumphantly round as he brought his hand down on the table with a conclusive emphasis which made the glasses on the table jump nervously.
“This Mrs. Vanderstein of whom I speak,” resumed Madame Querterot composedly, “has no land so far as I know. She has only a house in London. But she is rich all the same. One sees it at each step. In the house, what luxury! Such pictures! such furniture! such flowers! And automobiles, and boxes at the opera! Such dresses! And above all, such jewels! Oh, she is very rich, that one.”
“It’s all the same,” declared Bert, “whether she spends her money on land, or on clothes, or what not. The point I want to impress on you is that she does spend it, and that while she’s living on the fat of the land the rest of us may starve!”
He helped himself as he spoke to another plateful ofœufs à la neige.
Julie watched him, the shadow of a smile playing about her mouth.
“Have you seen this lady’s jewels, mother?” she asked. “I adore precious stones.”
“I have seen some of them,” said her mother. “To-night her maid brought to her a necklace and bracelets of diamonds, besides a coiffure and rings of great beauty, no doubt without price. But she sent them away again, saying that she would wear others. Those I did not see, but it is certain that she has many, and all wonderful. Every day she wears different ones and, constantly, a string of enormous pearls. Without those last I have never seen her. They are as large as marbles and, to tell the truth, not much more pretty, for my taste. When I tell you that she employs a night watchman, whose sole duty is to patrol the house every night, you will understand that the value of what it contains must be large.”
“That’s just what these capitalists do,” cried Bert excitedly. “They lock away thousands of pounds like that when the money ought to be out in the worldpaying just and equal wages. I should like to see it made a criminal offence to wear jewellery.”
“But what would happen to the people who make it?” asked Julie. “They would all lose their means of earning a livelihood, is it not so? What would the pearl fisher do, or those who dig precious stones out of the earth? And the polishers and setters? Every industry has a host depending on it for a demand for its labour.”
“There would be less need for labour,” said Bert more gently, as was always the case when he spoke to her, “if the money was taken from the capitalists and divided among the people.”
“Still——” objected Julie again.
Madame Querterot, however, did not propose to listen to an argument on the benefits to be expected from Socialism; she had frequently heard all that Bert had to say on the subject, and it had bored her very considerably. She pushed back her chair and stood up.
“It is half-past seven,” she said, “we must put on our hats for the theatre. It begins at nine, but we shall take twenty minutes getting there, and I want to have good places. Come and get ready, Julie.”
Thetwo women went upstairs; Bert lit a cigarette, and retired to smoke in the tiny yard behind the house. Soon he heard footsteps descending, and hastily throwing away his cigarette he entered the little room again just as Julie came into it. She had been quicker than her mother.
Bert did not waste time in preambles. He knew he only had a few minutes at the best.
“Joolie,” he began hurriedly, “why do you never let me see you alone? Will you never be any nicer to me?”
“Aren’t I nice to you, Bertie? I don’t mean not to be.”
“You know quite well what I mean. I want you to like me better. Oh, Joolie, you haven’t a notion how fond I am of you. It seemed to come over me all of a sudden that day we walked in the Park, when your mother for once didn’t come with us. And since then I haven’t had a moment’s peace. Not a single solitary moment. Wherever I look, whether it’s going to the office, or at my work, or after it’s done, I seem to see nothing but you, Joolie, and I don’t want to see anything else either.”
He moved closer to her and she retreated instinctively.
“Don’t be afraid! I won’t touch you,” he said with a certain bitterness. “I know you can’t bear the sight of me, but I’d give my life to make you happy.”
“Oh, Bert,” she said, and her tone was full of contrition. “It isn’t true that I can’t bear the sight of you. I like you very much, I do indeed. We are such old friends. And it is so nice of you to like me so much, but why can’t we go on just being friends?”
“Joolie, Joolie,” cried the young man. “You don’t understand. I love you, Joolie. I love you so much, dear! Don’t you think you could marry me some day? There, I didn’t mean to ask you now,” he went on quickly, seeing the look on the girl’s face, “don’t answer me now. I know what you’re going to say and I can’t bear to hear it. Wait a while and perhaps I shall be able to get you to care for me in time.”
Before she could reply Madame Querterot’s foot was on the stair, and in another moment she came in smiling and arrayed in her best.
They set out without further delay and proceeded by a succession of buses to the Strand. Descending there, they made their way into one of the neighbouring streets and took their places in a queue of people who were already waiting for the doors of the theatre to open.
Though not by any means the first to enter, they secured good places in the pit and settled down in them to await the beginning of the performance, each of them, in his or her different way, prepared to enjoy the evening to the utmost.
When at length the curtain rose they followed the fortunes of the characters with a breathless intensity of interest, and the play itself formed the subject of a heated discussion afterwards, which lasted all the way home, Julie maintaining that an honest course was always desirable whatever excuses might be adduced for other conduct.
Bert and Madame Querterot held, it appeared, more elastic opinions, Bert declaring that there were peopleit was a sin to leave in possession of their ill-gotten gains, and Madame Querterot inclining to the view that if anyone was so stupid as not to be able to keep what they had, small blame need attach to those who were clever enough to take it from them.
She upheld this contention by pointing out that no one did blame the gentleman burglar who formed the central figure of the play; the heroine herself, who was assuredly in a high degree the pattern of all the virtues, had easily forgiven his little lapses, slips which had been made entirely for her sake.
“For my part,” she asserted, “I admire a man of that sort. Not that it is common to find one like him. Most men have too high a regard for the safety of their own skins. But one must admit that the young girl, for whom this brave man took all those risks, was of no ordinary beauty. It is possible that if there were more like her there would also be more lovers, young and ardent, ready to chance prison and the gallows to win the wealth that should make her theirs. Ah, there is no chivalry nowadays,” and Madame Querterot heaved a heavy sigh. Possibly she was thinking of the base way in which Eugène had deserted her in the hour of need.
“Wealth is not always enough,” said Bert disconsolately, “and, anyhow, wealth is an abomination and a snare. In the ideal socialistic state there won’t be any such thing. All riches will be equally divided and every one will have enough to live on, but no more. Anyone who wants luxuries will just have to work for them.”
“You look too far ahead, my young friend,” returned Madame Querterot philosophically. They were walking up the dark streets that led to her house, Bert having insisted on seeing them home in spite of protests as to the lateness of the hour and the necessity for his getting up early next morning.
“You have brains,” she continued, “and you use them, which is not too general. But in this world it is a mistake to show that one is clever. The stupid only dislike one for differing from them in a way that they cannot understand, and clever people actually hate others who dare in this manner to resemble them. If you wish to be loved it is best to appear foolish. No one desires a lover too intelligent to care for their opinions. If you wish to obtain respect do not show yourself unusually brilliant. You will only be thought eccentric or even mad. And finally if you want to make money never allow anyone to suspect that you are not perfectly an idiot. People will be on their guard if they think they have to do with a clever man, but if they think you a fool precautions will seem unnecessary and it will be very easy for you to deal with them to your own advantage.”
Bert listened to these remarks with more attention than he usually displayed.
“Do you really think a man has more chance with a girl if he is foolish and rich?” he asked in a low tone. They were walking behind Julie, the pavement having narrowed so as to make it impossible to continue three abreast.
Madame Querterot slackened her pace and fell back a little.
“Run on, Julie, my angel,” she called out, “and prepare me a cup of coffee. I feel a kind of faintness and will walk more slowly if Bertie will give me his arm.”
Bert made a gesture of annoyance, and would have left her in pursuit of Julie, who hurried on as she was told, but Madame Querterot clutched at his arm and held him back.
“Stay with me, I wish to speak to you,” she said, clinging so tightly to him that without roughness he could not have shaken her off.
“What is it? I want to speak to Joolie,” he said crossly.
“You can speak to her any time; listen to me now. You asked me a minute ago if I thought one had more chance with a girl if one was rich.”
“Yes.” He spoke with returning interest. “You do think so, I suppose?”
“Bert, let me speak. I must tell you that for some time I have seen clearly that you have a tenderness for my daughter. You wish to marry her, is it not so?”
“It is the only wish of my life.”
“It is easy to see. You show it in each word, in your whole manner towards her. But let me tell you, my friend, that in my country it is not only the consent of a young girl that is sought by a would-be husband. It would have been moreconvenableif you had approached me, her mother, in this matter.”
“Madame Querterot, will you help me? Joolie doesn’t seem to care about me. Is there any other man?”
“There is no other man. Julie has an absurd idea of entering into a religious house, but she is a dutiful daughter and will not go against my wishes in that or any other matter. As regards this question of marriage she will, I am convinced, be guided by me. Ah, how she loves me, that child! There is nothing she would not do to please me. I say to you that Julie is not a girl. She is an angel!”
“I know that,” grunted Bert; “if you’ll help me with her, Madame Querterot, and there’s ever anything I can do to show my gratitude, why, you can take it that I’ll do it, that’s all.”
“Ah, Bert, now is the time to prove that. Words, words, words! But if it came to the point what would you do, not to show gratitude, but to win the hand of Julie? That is what I ask myself.”
“I’d do anything. By Jove, I believe there’s nothing I would stick at.”
“Very well. Now, with me as your friend and ally I think you might make certain that my daughter will consent to the marriage. But I, Bert, will never agree to her marrying a poor man. I have other ideas for her, I assure you.”
“You know I am poor,” said Bert. “I despise riches, but for Joolie I wouldn’t raise an objection to them if they were in my reach. But you know very well I shall always be poor as long as this beastly capitalist government has its own way. Some day perhaps things will change.”
“Bert,” said Madame Querterot, dropping her voice, “it is yourself who have suggested to me a way by which one might become rich. Supposing I were to tell you that I had a plan; that I knew a way by which in a flash you might gain both riches and Julie, and at the same time show your faith in the truth of your own gospel? What then, Bert? Have you a little courage, my boy? Girls do not understand your modern ideas, that every one should be of an equal poverty; they like to have money, they like what money can give them. Did you not hear Julie say this evening that she adored jewels?”
They had reached the door of the shop and Bert turned towards it without answering. But Madame Querterot made as if to continue their walk, and after a moment’s hesitation he turned and paced beside her.
“I would give her all the diamonds in the world,” he said, “if she wanted them and I could get them for her. What do you suppose I care for my ideas, as you call them? Nothing! Oh, nothing matters beside Joolie! Still, I’m hanged,” said Bert, “if I can see what you’re driving at.”
“I see a way,” replied his companion, “of doing alittle good business. For it I need the assistance that a young man like yourself can give. Some one with courage, with determination, and who will not be discouraged by a few apparent difficulties. But to succeed the affair must be kept secret. It is indeed of the most private character. Before I say more, swear to me by your love for Julie that you will die before you repeat a word of what I am going to tell you.”
“I swear it,” said Bert solemnly.
Madame Querterot gave one more quick, penetrating glance at his pale face and, apparently reassured by the light that burned in the dark eyes, began to talk again in low, persuasive tones as they paced up and down before the little house.
Julie came to the door and cried to them that the coffee was ready; then despairing of an answer she retired to her bedroom, where a light burned for a little while; presently it was extinguished, and Julie in a few minutes was peacefully asleep.
But still her mother and her lover walked and turned on the pavement beneath her window.
Thenext day, Mrs. Vanderstein, busy with a watering-can among the pots of roses that during the season adorned her balcony, and keeping a sharp look-out on the entrance to Fianti’s opposite, was disappointed not to catch another glimpse of Prince Felipe of Targona whom she thought every minute to see issue from beneath the portico.
“What can keep him indoors on so fine a day?” she asked herself repeatedly, for again the sun smote down on the city out of a cloudless azure.
Having spent the hour immediately after luncheon in this vain expectancy, at the imminent risk of both sunstroke and indigestion, she began to despair of her hopes ever being fulfilled, and went back into the drawing-room, where she threw herself dejectedly into a chair.
“If this weather goes on,” she said to Barbara, “we might run over to Dieppe for a few days.”
Mrs. Vanderstein was very much in the habit of making sudden excursions to the other side of the Channel; whenever she was bored at home she would dash off at a moment’s notice to Dieppe or Ostend.
Barbara enjoyed these trips, but sometimes wished Mrs. Vanderstein would not make up her mind to depart quite at the last minute, as she nearly always did. It was awkward occasionally to have only half an hour given one in which to pack.
“Will you go to-day?” she asked, with a shade of anxiety in her voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Vanderstein answered wearily. “I daresay I may.”
Barbara walked over to the open window.
“There’s Madame Justine coming out of Fianti’s,” she remarked presently.
“Really?” said Mrs. Vanderstein, getting up and going to Barbara’s side. “I wonder what she can have been doing there?”
Madame Querterot was hurrying along the pavement, bag in hand. She looked up at the balcony and made a little smiling bow in response to Mrs. Vanderstein’s friendly nod. Then she rounded a corner and was out of sight.
“What a good kind face she has,” Mrs. Vanderstein said as she turned back into the house. “It would cheer up anyone, that delightful smile. It always does me good to see Madame Justine.”
“I can’t think why you like her so much,” said Barbara, as she also came back into the room. “I don’t think she looks particularly nice.”
“Ah, Barbara,” said Mrs. Vanderstein, “at your age you are no judge of character. Now I know a good woman when I see one, and I do admire that one. Look at the way she works day and night to support her idle, ungrateful daughter.”
“I don’t suppose she’s so ungrateful as her mother makes out,” said Barbara. She seemed determined to see no good in poor Madame Querterot.
In the cool of the afternoon the two ladies drove in the Park and visited one or two of the houses of their friends. It was past six when they returned home, and for once the masseuse was waiting for them. She came forward as Mrs. Vanderstein entered, and her manner showed some excitement. In the backgroundhovered Amélie, who would have died sooner than allow Madame Querterot to remain alone in her mistress’ room, hinting darkly, if vaguely, to the other servants that mysterious and terrible results would have to be expected if such a liberty were accidentally permitted.
“Oh, madame,” cried Madame Querterot, “I have such amusing news. At all events I hope that you will laugh and not be offended if I repeat it to you.”
“What is it, Madame Justine?”
“Figure to yourself, madame, that this morning I received a summons—but, madame,” said Madame Querterot, checking herself on a sudden and casting a look of scarcely veiled malice towards the other occupants of the bedroom, “what I have to tell you is of a nature somewhat private. Is it possible that you permit that I speak with you alone?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vanderstein; “why not, if you wish. Amélie, I will ring when I want you, please. Barbara, do you mind going away till I call you? Thanks so much. I must hear this amusing story of Madame Justine’s.”
Barbara and the maid lost no time in obeying, and left the room; but while the one did so with alacrity, her pride preventing her from showing any curiosity, even for a moment, as to what Madame Querterot might have to relate, Amélie was at no pains to conceal the dislike, almost amounting to hatred, which shone in her eyes as she fixed them in an angry stare on her compatriot before she slowly moved towards the door. Some day she hoped to be revenged on this woman, this odious, talkative bourgeoise, for the way in which she had wormed herself, if not into her mistress’ confidence, at all events into such familiar impertinent terms with her; when, if Mrs. Vanderstein could but be brought to feel about her, in her bones, as Amélie felt, she wouldrecognise her for a person to whom an honest woman, let alone a lady at allcomme il faut, would scorn to address herself.
Her rage and indignation continued to augment as the minutes passed and no bell summoned her back to her duties. Though no fonder of work than her fellows, Amélie’s whole soul rose in revolt against the idea that she could be dispensed with. And when at last, after an hour’s waiting, both she and Miss Turner were recalled to the bedroom, one of them at least re-entered it with murderous feelings in her heart, which she vented by making faces at the masseuse behind the ladies’ backs and vowing to herself that the day of vengeance could not be much longer delayed.
As for Barbara, she was struck immediately she returned to her friend by a suppressed excitement, a restlessness of manner, which seemed to betray that there had been something of personal interest in Madame Querterot’s confidences. She did not like, however, to ask what the Frenchwoman had had to tell in private, and as Mrs. Vanderstein did not volunteer any information, but was very silent all the evening, fully occupied apparently with her own thoughts, Barbara was not sorry when bedtime came.
“Do you still think of running over to Dieppe?” she asked, as she said good night.
“To Dieppe!” cried her friend, “good gracious, no! I have all kinds of engagements, and you have forgotten that my box is taken for the gala performance of the opera on Monday. I shall certainly stay in London for the present!”
Clearly Mrs. Vanderstein had forgotten the half-formed intention of the afternoon.
Well, that would not prevent her changing her mind again, thought Barbara, and they might be off acrossthe Channel in a day or two in spite of to-night’s decision.
But days elapsed and no more was said on the subject. Every evening saw Madame Querterot arrive as usual; but now there was always a private interview between her and Mrs. Vanderstein, which left that lady flushed and smiling.
Barbara could not imagine what was happening to cause all these changes. She disliked Madame Querterot and vaguely resented the secret that she felt was being kept from her. Why should Mrs. Vanderstein have secrets with this horrid little Frenchwoman and leave her out in the cold? How could she allow the woman’s familiarity? Barbara was both piqued and disgusted at the whole trend of the matter.
On Sunday they walked in the Park with a certain Mrs. Britterwerth, a friend of Mrs. Vanderstein.
After a day or two of clouds and rain, during which people shivered and said it was like winter, the weather had cleared again to the radiant brightness which distinguished that summer from those preceding and following it. The Park was gay with light dresses and brilliant coloured parasols. The flowers, too, were at their best—the rain had come at the right moment for them and the beds were a vision of beauty—but they received scanty attention, as usual, people flocking to the other side of the road, where, to tell the truth, it was very pleasant on the green lawns beneath the trees.
The three ladies strolled up and down in the shade. Mrs. Vanderstein called it taking exercise, and did it once a week for the sake of her figure. Mrs. Britterwerth was really stout and would gladly have sat down after a turn or two, but was not allowed to by her more energetic friend.
“Consider, my dear, what a lot of good it does us,” said Mrs. Vanderstein.
Here, presently, they were joined by Joseph Sidney, and soon Barbara found herself walking on ahead with him, while the two others followed them at a little distance.
She had not seen him since the night at Covent Garden, and she noticed with concern that he looked worn and worried.
“I saw that Averstone did no good,” she said, as soon as they were out of earshot.
“No,” said Sidney shortly.
“Did you back him?” she asked, and knew the answer before he spoke.
“Oh yes,” he said, “I backed him all right. He’d have won, I daresay, if I hadn’t spoilt his chance with my rotten luck.”
Barbara walked on in silence for a minute.
“I’m sorry,” she said at length. “It was my fault. I gave you the tip.”
“Nonsense,” he answered almost roughly. “Your money’s gone too.”
“Did you lose much last week?” she asked abruptly.
“So much,” he replied, “that it’s no good trying to hide it from you. It’s bound to come out in a few days. The truth is that I’ve lost every penny my uncle left me and every sixpence I had before. Worse than that! I’ve lost money I can’t pay, and I shall not only have to leave the regiment, but——” he broke off bitterly and slashed with his stick at the grass. “Well, you know what it means,” he finished lamely.
“Oh, it can’t be as bad as that!” cried Barbara. “Tell Mrs. Vanderstein. She will help you. How I wish I had some money!”
“Do you think she would help me?” asked Sidney. “She would let me blow my brains out first. You don’t realise, perhaps, what a violent prejudice she has against betting. Look at this letter. I got it the dayafter I saw you at the opera.” He pulled from his pocket a large sheet of blue writing paper on which Barbara at once recognised Mrs. Vanderstein’s unmistakable handwriting.
“My dear Joseph,” it ran,“I hope there is no truth in what I hear about your betting on race-horses. It is a practice I deplore with all my heart and I should be very sorry to see you descend to such unprincipled depths. Without entering upon a long dissertation, I must tell you that, unless you henceforward sever all connection with bookmakers and their kind, I shall think it my duty to depart from your uncle’s wishes and leave my money away from you altogether. It pains me to write like this and I trust it is unnecessary, but it is best to have things understood.“Your affectionate aunt,“Ruth Vanderstein.”
“My dear Joseph,” it ran,
“I hope there is no truth in what I hear about your betting on race-horses. It is a practice I deplore with all my heart and I should be very sorry to see you descend to such unprincipled depths. Without entering upon a long dissertation, I must tell you that, unless you henceforward sever all connection with bookmakers and their kind, I shall think it my duty to depart from your uncle’s wishes and leave my money away from you altogether. It pains me to write like this and I trust it is unnecessary, but it is best to have things understood.
“Your affectionate aunt,“Ruth Vanderstein.”
Barbara read the letter in horror-struck silence.
“That’s the sort of help I should get from her,” said Sidney, as she gave it back to him.
“Something must be done,” she repeated dully; “can’t you borrow from some one?”
“I’ve been losing steadily for three years,” replied the young man, “and I had to go to the money-lenders long ago. I can’t get another penny from them. It’s rather funny if you think of how my uncle made his money, isn’t it? But perhaps you don’t know,” he went on hastily, seeing the blank look on Barbara’s face. “So that’s how it is,” he started afresh. “It’s all up with me, you see. I’m absolutely done for unless I can get £10,000 by next week. I’m pretty desperate, I can tell you. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get the money.”
He spoke in emphatic tones, and several of the passing crowd turned their heads to see who it was who so loudly published the unfortunate state of his financial affairs. Sidney was quick to realise the attention he was attracting, and lowered his voice to a more confidential pitch. Neither he nor his companion specially remarked one among those who glanced up at them on hearing the outspoken words, a small spare man with a clean-shaven face and brown hair fading to a premature greyness. Nor if they had done so would either of them have recognised in this correctly dressed, spick and span Londoner, whose well-fitting morning coat and patent leather boots so exactly resembled those worn by Sidney himself and nearly every smart young man to be met with in the Park that day, the well-known private detective, Mr. Gimblet, the man most dreaded by the criminal class of the entire kingdom.
Walking at a more rapid pace than they, he was in the act of overtaking the couple as they strolled along, when something in Sidney’s voice, a note of despairing recklessness more than the words themselves that he uttered, aroused his interest and wakened his ever ready curiosity. He continued to walk on without slackening his speed, and did not look back until he had advanced some fifty yards. Then he hesitated, loitered a moment, and finally sat down on one of the green chairs, which stood conveniently unoccupied, just before Sidney and Barbara strolled unconcernedly by.
Before they had passed, Gimblet had made a quick survey of the young man’s face, on which signs of worry and anxiety were very plainly to be noted.
“I wonder who it is,” he thought; and continued, when they had gone on, to gaze meditatively after the young people.
In his turn he failed to observe two ladies who came up in the opposite direction to that in which his head was turned. Mrs. Vanderstein observed his intent expression as she approached, and following the direction of his eyes murmured to her friend:
“Do you see that man staring at Barbara? He looks quite moonstruck. She attracts a great deal of attention. Such a dear girl, I don’t know what I should do without her.”
“You are so good to her,” murmured her companion. “The question is rather, what would she do without you? But she is certainly an attractive young person, especially to men. I wonder that you are not afraid to let that delightful nephew of yours see so much of her.”
To Barbara, walking mechanically by Sidney’s side, it seemed suddenly as if some strange darkness hung over the face of nature. The lightness of heart with which she had gone forth out of the house, the high spirits natural to her that constituted the only legacy of any value which she had inherited from her father, deserted her now to make place for distress on the young man’s account. Nor was it only at the thought of the trouble that had fallen on him that she recoiled horror-struck and that the sunlight took on a quality of gloom, which made the present hour such a dismal one and those of the future to appear encircled in a dusk that deepened, as it receded, till it merged into that utter obscurity over whose boundaries Joe seemed already to be slipping and vanishing. It was the effect of his disaster on her own life that chiefly terrified and shocked her. What would she do without the only man friend of anything like her own age whom she knew in London and whose tastes so much resembled her own? She would hear no more sporting gossip, be cut off from her one remaining link with the racingworld. What would she do without him if he disappeared as he threatened? What would she do without the only person in the world she cared to see? The only person in the world she cared for.... The knowledge came to her suddenly like a revelation and she stumbled for a moment in her walk as she realised with a flash of self-comprehension the full meaning of her dread.
In that instant she saw and realised that to lose Joe Sidney would be, for her, to lose all.
He, occupied in a recital of his troubles, noticed nothing beyond his own almost unconscious relief in speaking at length of the worries he had for so long kept to himself. It was a comfort to have so sympathetic a listener.
Still, not much comfort could be extracted even from that, with the crisis in his life so real and so near at hand, and he was soon repeating his earlier assertions that it was no use talking, and that there was no hope for him of anything but absolute ruin.
“Your aunt. She must, oh, she must help you!” Barbara heard herself saying again.
Again Sidney shook his head.
“You don’t understand her. She will act in accordance with her ideas. We Jews——”
“You are not a Jew!” Her voice was indignant.
“My mother was a Jewess. You don’t suppose I am ashamed of it? We Jews have stronger convictions—opinions—principles—call them what you like—than Christians are in the habit of hampering themselves with. We are more apt, I should say, to live up to our theories. My aunt looks on gambling as the most deadly of sins. Where you or I perceive a green track and a few bookies, she sees, I do believe, a personage with horns and a tail, brandishing a pitchfork. I’m not at all sure she isn’t right. I am at least quite surethat if I could get out of this mess I’d never go near a race-course or have so much as a look at the odds again as long as I lived. It’s not much use saying that now, is it? But believe me, help from Aunt Ruth is out of the question. You may scratch it. This is the end of all for me. I shall just have to go. Drop out, as many better men have had to do before me.”
“Oh don’t talk like that,” cried Barbara. She had pulled herself together, and was thinking clearly and rapidly. “Listen to me. If you can’t go to Mrs. Vanderstein with the truth, can’t you go to her with”—she hesitated—“something else?”
“A lie,” said Joe bluntly. “I don’t wonder you think I’d not be above a lie if it could save me. But can you suggest one with which I could go to her and ask for £10,000? If you can, let’s hear it, for goodness’ sake. But of course you can’t. She’s not an absolute fool!” He laughed again, a short, hard laugh.
“You don’t know Mrs. Vanderstein as well as I do, though you are a relation,” said Barbara. “She has weak points, you know. At least she has one weakness. I wonder if you know what it is?”
They had come to the Corner and paused by the rails. Instinctively Barbara turned about, looking to see if Mrs. Vanderstein were within earshot.
“Why, look at her now,” she cried.
Sidney, too, turned, and followed the direction of her gaze.
His aunt and her friend had reached a point some fifty yards behind them. Mrs. Vanderstein’s face was radiant. A rosy colour dyed her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled, when for a moment she lifted them and glanced in the direction of the roadway. But for the most part they seemed to be modestly cast down and Mrs. Vanderstein appeared interested solely in the toesof her shoes; these, though of the most pleasing aspect, did not entirely justify the delight the lady seemed to feel in them. She may, perhaps, have been wondering whether or no they touched the ground, for so lightly did she tread that a mere spectator might have felt very grave doubts on the subject. She looked, indeed, to be walking upon air. Even Sidney, unobservant as he commonly was of the expressions of people to whom he was not at the moment talking, could not help noticing her unusual demeanour. Indeed she looked the incarnation of happiness.
“What’s the matter with her?” he asked, turning again to the girl beside him.
For answer she made a movement of her hand towards the road.
“Do you see that?” she inquired.
There was very little traffic in the Park on that Sunday evening. A motor or two rolled through, but they were few and far between. Joe saw nothing remarkable or that could, to his thinking, in any way account for his aunt’s strange looks. One carriage only was driving by, a barouche occupied by an elderly lady and three foreign-looking men. There was nothing about them to attract attention.
“What in the world is there to see?” he said, in bewilderment.
“In that carriage are Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother,” said Barbara, “and Mrs. Vanderstein gets as excited as that whenever she sees any kind of a Royal personage. I don’t think,” she added truthfully, “that I ever saw her show it quite so plainly, but you can see the effect they have on her. Royalty is what really interests her most in life. You wouldn’t believe how much she is thrilled by it. It is an infatuation, almost a craze.”
“I had no notion she was like that,” said Joe, withan air of some disgust. “I should never have thought she was such a frightful snob.”
“I don’t think it is snobbishness with Mrs. Vanderstein,” said Barbara. “It’s more a sort of romanticness. But I don’t suppose you understand. The point is that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to meet any kind of a little princeling. And if she once met him, there’s nothing he could ask she wouldn’t give. After all,” she went on in an argumentative tone, “she ought not to let you be ruined. I am sure Mr. Vanderstein never would have. And £10,000 is really so little to her. Why, her pearls alone are worth far more. What does a sum like that matter? It’s only four or five hundred a year. She wouldn’t miss it a bit.”
“I daresay,” said Sidney, “but I don’t see what good that does me.”
“Have you got a friend you can trust who would stretch a point to help you?”
“Not a decimal point as far as cash is concerned. In other ways, I daresay I have got one or two. They’d help me all right, poor chaps, if they’d got any money themselves.”
“It’s not money. I mean some one who would take a little trouble.”
“Oh yes, I think I can raise one of that sort. For that matter,” said Sidney, “if you don’t mind my calling you a friend, I think no one could want a better one. It’s no end good of you to be so sympathetic and let me bore you with my rotten affairs.”
The girl turned away her face.
“Of course I am a friend,” she said, “but you will want a man, if my idea is any good. Now listen, I have got a plan.”
Barbara hesitated. She was very conscious that the idea which had come to her was not one which would commend itself to Joe. A few hours before she wouldhave scornfully rejected the suggestion that she herself could ever be brought to tolerate such an expedient, but now everything was changed and all her convictions of right and wrong were shaken and tottering, if not entirely swept aside by the fear of the imminent danger to the man she loved. Her one feeling now was that at any cost the peril must be averted, and the question of the moment was how to represent her design in such terms as would prevail on him to see in it a path that a man might conceivably follow and yet retain some remnant of self-esteem.
Very carefully, choosing her words with deliberation, she disclosed to Sidney the plan that to her seemed to offer the only chance of setting his affairs in order. As she expected, he refused at first to entertain the idea at all; undismayed, she returned to the attack and persisted, with Jesuitical reasonings and syllogisms, in showing him that in the method she proposed lay his only hope of obtaining the necessary money. Very slowly and reluctantly he allowed himself to be persuaded. No one could have listened for half an hour to Barbara’s cajolements without giving way.
At the first sign of his weakening she redoubled her efforts, and as she talked, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged by Joe’s objections and the difficulties he pointed out, he gradually succumbed to her wheedling, and once he had thrust his scruples into the background became nearly as enthusiastic as she was herself.
Before they parted the plan was worked out in every point. It remained but to take the faithful necessary friend of Joe’s into their confidence. This, Joe told her, had better be a subaltern in his regiment, by name Baines, luckily in London at the present moment.
“As long,” he said with a return to former doubts,“as old Baines is equal to the job. There’s not much he’d stick at, though.”
“Yes,” said Barbara, and was silent a minute during which the difficulties of carrying out her plan successfully seemed to swarm around her with quite a new vigour. “If anything should turn up,” she faltered, “to make this idea impossible, you will try telling Mrs. Vanderstein the truth, won’t you? It is a chance, after all.”
“Well, it can’t make things worse, I suppose,” he agreed. “I hope it won’t come to that. I don’t think it will now; but if it does, I promise, if it pleases you, that I will make a clean breast of it to her.”
“Thank you,” she murmured; and then as they turned, “there she is now, making signs that we should go back.”
Whenthey had driven away Sidney wandered off beyond the outskirts of the crowd to a lonely spot among the trees, where he walked up and down, whistling softly to himself and pausing from time to time to aim a blow at the head of an unoffending daisy with his stick.
“What an ass I am,” he exclaimed presently in heartfelt tones, but a listener who had fancied he was alluding to his foolish gambling on the turf would have been mistaken. His thoughts were engaged on quite a different and much pleasanter subject.
How lovely she had looked! How sorry she had seemed! What sympathy had shone in her eyes as she listened to his discreditable troubles. How determined she had been to find a way out; surely she could not show such interest in the concerns of all her acquaintances.
The way out, by the by, now that he thought of it dispassionately, was hardly, perhaps, quite one that a man could take after all and keep the little self-respect left to him; but it was overwhelmingly sweet that she should have lost sight so completely of all considerations except the one of retrieving his fortunes.
He had always liked and admired her, of course, but never till to-day had he realised what a loyal, brave spirit dwelt behind those sea-blue, childish eyes. There was no girl in the world like her, and was it unduly conceited of him to think she must like him alittle to show such agitation at the tale of his misfortunes? And here he frowned and pulled himself up short. What business had he, a ruined gambler, a man whose career was, to all intents and purposes, at an end, to think twice about any girl, much less to feel so absurdly happy? He determined heroically to banish Barbara from his thoughts, and in pursuance of that excellent resolution walked off across the Park at such a tearing speed that little boys whom he passed asked derisively where the other competitors in the race had got to.
. . . . .
It was on the following morning that Mrs. Vanderstein made certain confidences to Barbara, thereby dashing to earth the high hopes she had built of rescuing Sidney from the ruinous meshes in which he had entangled himself.
To that which Mrs. Vanderstein told her the girl listened at first with incredulity, but a scoffing comment was received with such extreme disfavour that she dared not venture another; and finally, as she heard more and fuller accounts and Mrs. Vanderstein, chafing under a sense of her friend’s disbelief, went so far as to produce written evidence of the truth of the story, Barbara was no longer able to deny to herself that the astounding tale was undoubtedly not the joke she had taken it for, but represented the plain facts of the case.
With increasing dismay she heard all that Mrs. Vanderstein had to tell her, seeing her hopes for Joe vanish more completely at each new piece of information; and when at the end of the tale her friend reproached her for her lack of sympathy she had much ado to prevent herself from bursting into unavailing tears.
She was able, however, to summon enough self-controlto find some words of affection, which seemed to fill the requirements of the situation; at all events they seemed to satisfy Mrs. Vanderstein. The girl only made one stipulation, and on this point remained obstinate till the elder lady, failing to shake her determination, was at last obliged to yield a reluctant consent.
As soon as she could escape, Barbara, making the first excuse that occurred to her, ran to her room, where she pinned on a hat without so much as waiting to glance in the looking-glass. Then, snatching up a latch key, she let herself out of the hall door and hurried to the nearest post office.
Several telegraph forms were filled in, only to be torn up and discarded before she worded the message to her satisfaction; and even when she handed it in under the barrier—which protects young ladies of the post office from too close contact with a public who might, were it not for these precautions, be exasperated into showing signs of violence—she was still regarding it doubtfully, and her fingers lingered on the paper as if reluctant to let it go.
It was addressed to Joseph Sidney, and covered more than one form.