The man whom Tavernake had left walking up and down the corridor lost no time in presenting himself once more at the apartments of Mrs. Wenham Gardner. He entered the suite without ceremony, carefully closing both doors behind him. It became obvious then that his deportment on the occasion of his previous appearance had been in the nature of a bluff. The air with which he looked across the room at the woman who watched him was furtive; the hand which laid his hat upon the table was shaking; there was a gleam almost of terror in his eyes. The woman remained impassive, inscrutable, simply watching him. After a moment or two, however, she spoke—a single monosyllable.
“Well?”
The man broke down.
“Elizabeth,” he exclaimed, “you are too—too ghastly! I can't stand it. You are unnatural.”
She stretched herself upon the couch and turned towards him.
“Unnatural, am I?” she remarked. “And what are you?”
He sank into a chair. He had become very flabby indeed.
“What you are always calling me, I suppose,” he muttered,—“a coward. You have so little consideration, Elizabeth. My health isn't what it was.”
His eyes had wandered longingly toward the cupboard at the further end of the apartment. The woman upon the couch smiled.
“You may help yourself,” she directed carelessly. “Perhaps then you will be able to tell me why you have come in such a state.”
He crossed the room in a few hasty steps, his head and shoulders disappeared inside the cupboard. There was the sound of the withdrawal of a cork, the fizz of a sodawater syphon. He returned to his place a different man.
“You must remember my age, Elizabeth dear,” he said, apologetically. “I haven't your nerve—it isn't likely that I should have. When I was twenty-five, there was nothing in the world of which I was afraid.”
She looked him over critically.
“Perhaps I am not so absolutely courageous as you think,” she remarked. “To tell you the truth, there are a good many things of which I am afraid when you come to me in such a state. I am afraid of you, of what you will do or say.”
“You need not be,” he assured her hastily. “When I am away from you, I am dumb. What I suffer no one knows. I keep it to myself.”
She nodded, a little contemptuously.
“I suppose you do your best,” she declared. “Tell me, now, what is this fresh thing which has disturbed you?”
Her visitor stared at her.
“Does there need to be any fresh thing?” he muttered.
“I suppose it is something about Wenham?” she asked.
The man shivered. He opened his lips and closed them again. The woman's tone, if possible, grew colder.
“I hope you are not going to tell me that you have disobeyed my orders,” she said.
“No,” he protested, “no! I was there yesterday. I came back by the mail from Penzance. I had to motor thirty miles to catch it.”
“Something has happened, of course,” she went on, “something which you are afraid to tell 'me. Sit up like a man, my dear father, and let me have the truth.”
“Nothing fresh has happened at all,” he assured her. “It is simply that the memory of the day I spent at that place and that the sight of him has got on my nerves till I can't sleep or think of anything else.”
“What rubbish!” she exclaimed.
“You have only seen the place in fine weather,” he continued, dropping his voice a little. “Elizabeth, you have no idea what it is really like. Yesterday morning I got out of the train at Bodmin and I motored through to the village of Clawes. After that there were five miles to walk. There's no road, only a sort of broken track, and for the whole of that five miles there isn't even a farm building to be seen and I didn't meet a human soul. There was a sort of pall of white-gray mists everywhere over the moor, sometimes so dense that I couldn't see my way, and you could stop and listen and there wasn't a thing to be heard, not even a sheep bell.”
She laughed softly..
“My dear, foolish father,” she murmured, “you don't understand what a rest cure is. This is quite all right, quite as it should be. Poor Wenham has been seeing too many people all his life—that is why we have to keep him quiet for a time. You can skip the scenery. I suppose you got to the house at last?”
“Yes, I got there,” continued her father. “You know what a bleak-looking place it is, right on the side of a bare hill—a square, gray stone place just the color of the hillside. Well, I got there and walked in. There was Ted Mathers, half dressed, no collar, with a bottle of whiskey on the table, playing some wretched game of cards by himself. Elizabeth, what a brute that man is!”
She shook her head.
“Go on,” she said. “What about Wenham?”
“He was there in a corner, gazing out of the window. When I came he sprang up, but when he saw who it was, he—he tried to hide. He was afraid of me.”
“Why?” she asked.
“He said that I—I reminded him of you.”
“Absurd!” she murmured. “Tell me, how did he look?”
“Ill, wretched, paler and thinner than ever, and wilder looking.”
“What did Mathers say about him?” she demanded.
“What could he? He told me that he cried all day and begged to be taken back to America.”
“No one goes near the place, I suppose?” she asked.
“Not a soul. A man comes from the village to sell things once a week. Mathers knows when to expect him and takes care that Wenham is not around. They are out of the world there—no road, no paths, nothing to bring even a tourist. I could have imagined such a spot in Arizona, Elizabeth, but in England—no!”
“Has he any amusements at all?” she inquired.
The man's hands were shaking; once more his eyes went longingly toward the cupboard.
“He has made—a doll,” he said, “carved it out of a piece of wood and dressed it in oddments from his ties. Mathers showed it to me as a joke. Elizabeth, it was wonderful—horrible!”
“Why?” she asked him.
“It is you,” he continued, moistening his lips with his tongue, “you, in a blue gown—your favorite shade. He has even made blue stockings and strange little shoes. He has got some hair from somewhere and parted it just like yours.”
“It sounds very touching,” she remarked.
The man was shivering again.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “I do not think that he means it kindly. Mathers took me up into his room. He has made something there which looks like a scaffold. The doll was hanging by a piece of string from the gallows. Elizabeth!—my God, but it was like you!” he cried, suddenly dropping his head upon his arms.
For a moment, a reflection of the terror which had seized him flashed in her own face. It passed quickly away. She laughed mockingly.
“My dear father,” she protested, “you are certainly not yourself this morning.”
“I saw you swinging,” he muttered, “swinging by that piece of cord! There was a great black pin through your heart. Elizabeth, if he should get away sometime! If some one should come over from America and discover where he was! If he should find us out! Oh, my God, if he should find us out!”
Elizabeth had risen to her feet. She was standing now before the fire, her left elbow resting upon the mantelpiece, a trifle of silver gleaming in her right hand.
“Father,” she said, “there is no danger in life for those who know no fear. Look at me.”
His eyes sought hers, fascinated.
“If he should find me out,” she continued, “it would be no such terrible thing, after all. It would be the end.”
Her fingers disclosed the little ornament she was carrying—a tiny pistol. She slipped it back into her pocket. The man was wondering how such a thing as this came to be his daughter.
“You have courage, Elizabeth,” he whispered.
“I have courage,” she assented, “because I have brains. I never allow myself to be in a position where I should be likely to get the worst of it. Ever since the day when he turned so suddenly against me, I have been careful.”
Her father leaned towards her.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “I never really understood. What was it that came over him so suddenly? One day he was your slave, the next I think he would have murdered you if he could.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Honestly,” she replied, “I felt it impossible to keep up the sham any longer. I married Wenham Gardner in New York because he was supposed to be a millionaire and because it seemed to be the best thing to do, but as to living with him, I never meant that. You know how ridiculous his behavior was on the boat. He never let me out of his sight, but swore that he was going to give up smoking and drinking and lead a new life for my sake. I really believe he meant it, too.”
“Wouldn't it have been better, dear,” her father suggested, timidly, “to have encouraged him?”
She shook her head.
“He was absolutely hopeless,” she declared. “You say that I have no nerves; that is because I do not allow myself to suffer. If I had gone on living with Wenham, it would have driven me mad. His habits, his manner of life, everything disgusted me. Until I came to see so much of him, I never understood what the term 'decadent' really can mean. The very touch of him grew to be hateful. No woman could live with such a man. By the way, he signed the draft, I suppose?”
Her father handed her a slip of paper, which she looked at and locked in her drawer.
“Did he make any trouble about it?” she asked.
The professor shivered.
“He refused to sign it,” he said, in a low tone, “swore he would never sign it. Mathers sent me out for a few minutes, made me go into another room. When I came back, he gave me the draft. I heard him calling out.”
“Mathers certainly earns his money,” she remarked, drily.
He gazed at her with grudging admiration. This was his daughter, his own flesh and blood. Back through the years, for a moment, he seemed to see her, a child with hair down her back, sitting on his knee, listening to his stories, wondering at the little arts and tricks by which he had wrested their pennies and sixpennies from a credulous public. Phrenologist, hypnotist, conjurer—all these things the great Professor Franklin had called himself. Often, from the rude stage where he had given his performance, he had terrified to death the women and children of his audience. It flashed upon him at that moment that never, even in the days of her childhood, had he seen fear in Elizabeth's face.
“You should have been a man, Elizabeth,” he muttered.
She shook her head, smiling as though not ill-pleased at the compliment.
“The power of a man is so limited,” she declared. “A woman has more weapons.”
“More weapons indeed,” the professor agreed, as his eyes traveled over the slim yet wonderful perfection of her form, lingered for a moment at the little knot of lace at her throat, wrestled with the delicate sweetness of her features, struggling hard to think from whom among his ancestors could have come a creature so physically attractive.
“More weapons, indeed,” he repeated. “Elizabeth, what a gift—what a gift!”
“You speak,” she replied, “as though it were an evil one.”
“I was only thinking,” he said, “that it seems a pity. You are so wonderful, we might have found an easier and a less dangerous way to fortune.”
She smiled.
“The Bohemian blood in me, I suppose,” she remarked. “The crooked ways attract, you know, when one has been brought up as I was.”
“Your poor mother had no love for them,” he reminded her.
“Beatrice has inherited everything that belonged to my mother. I am your own daughter, father. You ought to be proud of me. But there, I gave you another commission. Is it true that Jerry is really here?”
“He arrived in England on Wednesday on the Lusitania. He has been in town all the time since.”
A distinct frown darkened her face.
“He must have had my letter, then,” she murmured, half to herself.
“Without a doubt,” her father admitted. “Elizabeth, why do you take chances about seeing this man? He was fond of you in New York, I know, but then he was fond of his brother, too. He may not believe your story. It may be dangerous.”
She smiled.
“I think I can convince Jerry Gardner of anything I choose to tell him,” she said. “Besides, it is absolutely necessary that I have some information about Wenham's affairs. He must have a great deal more money somewhere and I must find out how we are to get at it.”
The professor shook his head.
“I don't like it,” he muttered. “Supposing he finds Beatrice!”
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders.
“Beatrice is made of silent stuff,” she declared. “I should never be afraid of her. All the same, I wish I could find out just where she is. It would look better if we were living together.”
The professor shook his head sadly.
“She left us of her own free will,” he said, “and I don't believe, Elizabeth, that she would ever come back again. She knew very well what she was doing. She knew that our views of life were not hers. She didn't know half but she knew enough. You were quite right in what you said just now; Beatrice was more like her mother, and her mother was a good woman.”
“Really!” Elizabeth remarked, insolently.
“Don't answer like that,” he blustered, striking the table. “She was your mother, too.”
The woman's face was inscrutable, hard, and flawless behind the little cloud of tobacco smoke. The man began to tremble once more. Every time he ventured to assert himself, a single look from her was sufficient to quell him.
“Elizabeth,” he muttered, “you haven't a heart, you haven't a soul, you haven't a conscience. I wonder—what sort of a woman you are!”
“I am your daughter,” she reminded him, pleasantly.
“I was never quite so bad as that,” he went on, taking a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing his forehead. “I had to live and times were hard. I have cheated the public, perhaps. I haven't been above playing at cards a little cleverly, or making something where I could out of the weaker men. But, Elizabeth, I am afraid of you.”
“Men are generally afraid of the big stakes,” she remarked, flicking the ash from her cigarette. “They will cheat and lie for halfpennies, but they are bad gamblers when life or death—the big things are in the balance. Bah!” she went on. “Father, I want Jerry Gardner to come and see me.”
“If you can't make him come, my dear,” the professor said, “I am sure it will be of no use my trying.”
“He has had my letter,” she continued, half to herself; “he has had my letter and he does not come.”
“There is nothing to be done but wait,” her father decided.
“And meanwhile,” she went on, “supposing he were to discover Beatrice, supposing they two were to come together; supposing he were to tell her what he knows and she were to tell him what she guessed!”
The professor buried his face in his hands. Elizabeth threw her cigarette away with an impatient gesture.
“What an idiot I am!” she declared. “What is the use of wasting time like this?”
There was a knock at the door. A trim-looking French maid presented herself. She addressed her mistress in voluble French. A coiffeur and a manicurist were waiting in the next apartment; it was time that Madame habited herself. The professor listened to these announcements with an air of half-admiring wonder.
“I suppose I must be going,” he said, rising to his feet. “There is just one thing I should like to ask you, Elizabeth, if I may, before I go.”
“Well?”
“Who was the young man whom I met here just now?”
“Why do you ask that?” she demanded.
“I really do not know,” her father replied, thoughtfully, “except that his appearance seemed a little singular. In some respects he appeared so commonplace. His clothes and bearing, in fact, were so ordinary that I was surprised to find him here with you. And, on the other hand, his face—you must remember, my dear, that this is entirely a professional instinct; I am still interested in faces—”
“Quite so,” she admitted. “Go on. The young man rather puzzles me myself. I should like to hear what you make of him. What did you think of his face?”
“There was something powerful about it,” he declared, “something dogged, splendid, narrow, impossible,—the sort of face which belongs to a man who achieves great things because he is too stupid to recognize failure, even when it has him in its arms and its fingers are upon his throat. That young man has qualities, my dear, I am sure. Mind you, at present they are dormant, but he has qualities.”
She led him to the door.
“My dear father,” she said, “sometimes I really respect you. If you should come across that young man again, keep your eye upon him. He knows one thing at least which I wish he would tell us—he knows where Beatrice is.”
Her father looked at her in amazement.
“He knows where Beatrice is and he has not told you?”
She nodded.
“You tried to have him tell you and he refused?” the professor persisted.
“Exactly,” she admitted.
Her father put on his hat.
“I knew that young man was something out of the common.”
They sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, in the topmost corner of the field. In the hedge, close at hand, was a commotion of birds. In the elm tree, a little further away, a thrush was singing. A soft west wind blew in their faces; the air immediately around them was filled with sunlight. Yet almost to their feet stretched one of those great arms of the city—a suburb, with its miles of villas, its clanging of electric cars, its waste plots, its rows of struggling shops. And only a little further away still, the body itself—the huge city, throbbing beneath its pall of smoke and cloud. The girl, who had been gazing steadily downwards for several moments, turned at last to her companion.
“Do you know,” she said, “that this makes me think of the first night you spoke to me? You remember it—up on the roof at Blenheim House?”
Tavernake did not answer for a moment. He was looking through a queerly-shaped instrument that he had brought with him at half-a-dozen stakes that he had laboriously driven into the ground some distance away. He was absolutely absorbed in his task.
“The main avenue,” he muttered softly to himself. “Yes, it must be a trifle more to the left. Then we get all the offshoots parallel and the better houses have their southern aspect. I beg your pardon, Beatrice, did you say anything?” he broke off suddenly.
She smiled.
“Nothing worth mentioning. I was just thinking that it reminded me a little up here of the first time you and I ever talked together.”
He glanced down at the panorama below, with its odd jumble of hideous buildings, softened here and there with wreaths of sunstained smoke, its great blots of ugliness irredeemable, insistent.
“It's different, of course,” she went on. “I remember, even now, the view from the house-top that night. In a sense, it was finer than this; everything was more lurid and yet more chaotic; one simply felt that underneath all those mysterious places was some great being, toiling and struggling—Life itself, groaning through space with human cogwheels. Up here one sees too much. Oh, my dear Leonard,” she continued, “to think that you, too, should be one of the devastators!”
He fitted his instrument into its case and replaced it in his pocket.
“Come,” he said, “you mustn't call me hard names. I shall remind you of the man whose works you are making me read. You know what he says—'The aesthete is, after all, only a dallier. The world lives and progresses by reason of its utilitarians.' This hill represents to me most of the things that are worth having in life.”
She laughed shortly.
“You will cut down those hedges and drive away the birds to find a fresh home; you will plough up the green grass, cut out a street and lay down granite stones. Then I see your ugly little houses coming up like mushrooms all over the place. You are a vandal, my dear Leonard.”
“I am simply obeying the law,” he answered. “After all, even from your own point of view, I do not think that it is so bad. Look closer, and you will find that the hedges are blackened here and there with smuts. The birds will find a better dwelling place further away. See how the smoke from those factory chimneys is sending its smuts across these fields. They are no longer country; they are better gathered in.”
She shivered.
“There is something about life,” she said, sadly, “which terrifies me. Every force that counts seems to be destructive.”
Up the steep hill behind them came the puffing and groaning of a small motor-car. They both turned their heads to watch it come into view. It was an insignificant affair of an almost extinct pattern, a single cylinder machine with a round tonneau back. The engine was knocking badly as the driver brought it to a standstill a few yards away from them. Involuntarily Tavernake stiffened as he saw the two men who descended from it, and who were already passing through the gate close to where they were. One was Mr. Dowling, the other the manager of the bank where they kept their account. Mr. Dowling recognized his manager with surprise but much cordiality.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “Dear me, this is most fortunate! You know Mr. Tavernake, of course, Belton? My manager, Mr. Tavernake—Mr. Belton, of the London & Westminster Bank. I have brought Mr. Belton up here, Tavernake, to have a look round, so that he may know what we mean to do with all the money we shall have to come and borrow, eh?”
The bank manager smiled.
“It is a very fine situation,” he remarked.
The eyes of the two men fell upon Beatrice, who had drawn a little to one side.
“May we have the pleasure, Tavernake?” Mr. Dowling said, graciously. “You are not married, I believe?”
“No, this is my sister,” Tavernake answered, slowly,—“Mr. Belton and Mr. Dowling.”
The two men acknowledged the salute with some slight surprise. Beatrice, although her clothes were simple, had always the air of belonging to a different world.
“Your brother, my dear Miss Tavernake,” Mr. Dowling declared, “is a perfect genius at discovering these desirable sites. This one I honestly consider to be the find of our lifetime. We have now,” he proceeded, turning to Mr. Belton, “certain information that the cars will run to whatever point we desire in this vicinity, and the Metropolitan Railway has also arranged for an extension of its system. To-morrow I propose,” Mr. Dowling continued, holding the sides of his coat and assuming a somewhat pompous manner, “to make an offer for the whole of this site. It will involve a very large sum of money indeed, but I am convinced that it will be a remunerative speculation.”
Tavernake remained grimly silent. This was scarcely the time or the place which he would have selected for an explanation with his employer. There were signs, however, that the thing was to be forced upon him.
“I am very pleased indeed to meet you here, Tavernake,” Mr. Dowling went on, “pleased both for personal reasons and because it shows, if I may be allowed to say so, the interest which you take in the firm's business, that you should devote your holiday to coming and—er—surveying the scene of our exploits, so to speak. Perhaps now that you are here you would be able to explain to Mr. Belton better than I should, just what it is that we propose.”
Tavernake hesitated for a moment. Finally, however, he proceeded to make clear a very elaborate and carefully thought out building scheme, to which both men listened with much attention. When he had finished, however, he turned round to Mr. Dowling, facing him squarely.
“You will understand, sir,” he concluded, “that a scheme such as I have pointed out could only be carried through if the whole of the property were in one person's hands. I may say that the information to which you referred a few days ago was perfectly correct. A considerable portion of the south side of the hill has already been purchased, besides certain other plots which would interfere considerably with any comprehensive scheme of building.”
Mr. Dowling's face fell at once; his tone was one of annoyance mingled with irritation.
“Come, come,” he declared, “this sounds very bad, Mr. Tavernake, very neglectful, very careless as to the interests of the firm. Why did we not keep our eye upon it? Why did we not forestall this other purchaser, eh? It appears to me that we have been slack, very slack indeed.”
Tavernake took a small book from his pocket.
“You will remember, sir,” he said, “that it was on the eleventh of May last year when I first spoke to you of this site.”
“Well, well,” Mr. Dowling exclaimed, sharply, “what of it?”
“You were starting out for a fortnight's golf somewhere,” Tavernake continued, “and you promised to look into the affair when you returned. I spoke to you again but you declared that you were far too busy to go into the matter at all for the present, you didn't care about this side of London, you considered that we had enough on hand—in fact, you threw cold water upon the idea.”
“I may not have been very enthusiastic at first,” Mr. Dowling admitted, grudgingly. “Latterly, however, I have come round to your views.”
“There have been several articles in various newspapers, and a good deal of talk,” Tavernake remarked, “which have been more effectual, I think, in bringing you round, than my advice. However, what I wish to say to you is this, sir, that when I found myself unable to interest you in this scheme, I went into it myself to some extent.”
“Went into it yourself?” Mr. Dowling repeated, incredulously. “What do you mean, Tavernake? What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean that I have invested my savings in the purchase of several plots of land upon this hillside,” Tavernake explained.
“On your own account?” Mr. Dowling demanded. “Your savings, indeed!”
“Certainly,” Tavernake answered. “Why not?”
“But it's the firm's business, sir—the firm's, not yours!”
“The firm had the opportunity,” Tavernake pointed out, “and were not inclined to avail themselves of it. If I had not bought the land when I did, some one else would have bought the whole of it long ago.”
Mr. Dowling was obviously in a furious temper.
“Do you mean to tell me, sir,” he exclaimed, “that you dared to enter into private speculations while still an employee of the firm? It is a most unheard-of thing, unwarranted, ridiculous. I shall require you, sir, to at once make over the plots of land to us—to the firm, you understand. We shall give you your price, of course, although I expect you paid much more for it than we should have done. Still, we must give you what you paid, and four per cent interest for your money.”
“I am sorry,” Tavernake replied, “but I am afraid that I should require better terms than that. In fact,” he continued, “I do not wish to sell. I have given a great deal of thought and time to this matter, and I intend to carry it out as a personal speculation.”
“Then you will carry it out, sir, from some other place than from within the walls of my office,” Mr. Dowling declared, furiously. “You understand that, Tavernake?”
“Perfectly,” Tavernake answered. “You wish me to leave you. It is very unwise of you to suggest it, but I am quite prepared to go.”
“You will either resell me those plots at cost price, or you shall not set foot within the office again,” Mr. Dowling insisted. “It is a gross breach of faith, this. I never heard of such a thing in all my life. Most unprofessional, impossible behavior!”
Tavernake showed no signs of anger—he simply turned a little away.
“I shall not sell you my land, Mr. Dowling,” he said, “and it will suit me very well to leave your employ. You appear,” he continued, “to expect some one else to do the whole of the work for you while you reap the entire profits. Those days have gone by. My business in the world is to make a fortune for myself, and not for you!”
“How dare you, sir!” Mr. Dowling cried. “I never heard such impertinence in my life.”
“You haven't done a stroke of work for five years,” Tavernake went on, unmoved, “and my efforts have supplied you with a fairly good income. In future, those efforts will be directed towards my own advancement.”
Mr. Dowling turned back toward the car.
“Young man,” he said, “you can brazen it out as much as you like, but you have been guilty of a gross breach of faith. I shall take care that the exact situation is made known in all responsible quarters. You'll get no situation with any firm with whom I am acquainted—I can promise you that. If you have anything more to say to Dowling, Spence & Company, let it be in writing.”
They parted company there and then. Tavernake and Beatrice went down the hill in silence.
“Does this bother you at all?” she inquired presently.
“Nothing to speak of,” Tavernake answered. “It had to come. I wasn't quite ready but that doesn't matter.”
“What shall you do now?” she asked.
“Borrow enough to buy the whole of the hill,” he replied.
She looked back.
“Won't that mean a great deal of money?”
He nodded.
“It will be a big thing, of course,” he admitted. “Never mind, I dare say I shall be able to interest some one in it. In any case, I never meant Mr. Dowling to make a fortune out of this.”
They walked on in silence a little further. Then she spoke again, with some hesitation.
“I suppose that what you have done is quite fair, Leonard?”
He answered her promptly, without any sign of offence at her question.
“As a matter of fact,” he confessed, “it is an unusual thing for any one in the employ of a firm of estate agents to make speculations on their own account in land. In this case, however, I consider that I was justified. I have opened up three building speculations for the firm, on each one of which they have made a great deal of money, and I have not even had my salary increased, or any recognition whatever offered me. There is a debt, of course, which an employee owes to his employer. There is also a debt, however, which the employer owes to his employee. In my case I have never been treated with the slightest consideration of any sort. What I have done I shall stick to. After all, I am more interested in making money for myself than for other people.”
They had reached the corner of the field now, and turning into the lane commenced the steep descent. It was Sunday evening, and from all the little conventicles and tin churches below, the bells began their unmusical summons. From further away in the distance came the more melodious chiming from the Cathedral and the city churches. The shriller and nearer note, however, prevailed. The whole medley of sound was a discord. As they descended, they could see the black-coated throngs slowly moving towards the different places of worship. There was something uninspiring about it all. She shuddered.
“Leonard,” she said, “I wonder why you are so anxious to get on in the world. Why do you want to be rich?”
He was glancing back toward the hill, the light of calculations in his eyes. Once more he was measuring out those plots of land, calculating rent, deducting interest.
“We all seek different things,” he replied tolerantly,—“some fame, some pleasure. Mr. Dowling, for instance, has no other ambition than to muddle round the golf links a few strokes better than his partner.”
“And you?” she asked.
“It is success I seek,” he answered. “Women, as a rule, do not understand. You, for instance, Beatrice, are too sentimental. I am very practical. It is money that I want. I want money because money means success.”
“And afterwards?” she whispered.
He was attending to her no longer. They were turning now into the broad thoroughfare at the bottom of the lane, at the end of which a tram-car was waiting. He scribbled a few, final notes into his pocket-book.
“To-morrow,” he exclaimed, with the joy of battle in his tone, “to-morrow the fight begins in earnest!”
Beatrice passed her hand through his arm.
“Not only for you, dear friend, but for me,” she said. “For you? What do you mean?” he asked quickly.
“I have been trying to tell you all day,” she continued, “but you have been too engrossed. Yesterday afternoon I went to see Mr. Grier at the Atlas Theatre. I had my voice tried, and to-morrow night I am going to take a small part in the new musical comedy.”
Tavernake stared at her in something like consternation. His ideas as to the stage and all that belonged to it were of a primitive order. Mrs. Fitzgerald was perhaps as near as possible to his idea of the type. He glanced incredulously at Beatrice—slim, quietly dressed, yet with the unmistakable, to him mysterious, distinction of breeding.
“You an actress!” he exclaimed.
She laughed softly.
“Dear Leonard,” she said, “this is going to be a part of your education. To-morrow night you shall come to the theatre and wait for me at the stage-door.”
Elizabeth stood with her hands behind her back, leaning slightly against the writing-table. The professor, with his broad-brimmed hat clinched in his fingers, walked restlessly up and down the little room. The discussion had not been altogether a pleasant one. Elizabeth was composed but serious, her father nervous and excited.
“You are mad, Elizabeth!” he declared. “Is it that you do not understand, or will not? I tell you that we must go.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Where would you drag me to?” she asked. “We certainly can't go back to New York.”
He turned fiercely upon her.
“Whose fault is it that we can't?” he demanded. “If it weren't for you and your confounded schemes, I could be walking down Broadway next week. God's own city it is, too!” he muttered. “I wish we'd never seen those two young men.”
“It was a pity, perhaps,” she admitted, “yet we had to do something. We were absolutely stonybroke, as they say over here.”
“Anyway, we've got to get out of this,” the professor declared.
“My dear father,” she replied, “I will agree that if a new city or a new world could arise from the bottom of the sea, where Professor Franklin was unknown, and his beautiful daughter Elizabeth had neyer been heard of, it might perhaps be advisable for us to go there. As it is--”
“There is Rome,” he exclaimed, “or some of the smaller places! We have money for a time. We could get another draft, perhaps, from Wenham.”
She shook her head. “We are just as safe here as anywhere on the Continent,” she remarked.
Once more he struck the table. Then he threw out his hands above his head with the melodramatic instinct which had always been strong in his blood.
“Do you think that I am a fool?” he cried. “Do you think I do not know that if there were not something moving in your brain you would think no more of that clerk, that bourgeois estate agent, than of the door-mat beneath your feet? It is what I always complain about. You make use of me as a tool. There are always things which I do not understand. He comes here, this young man, under a pretext, whether he knows it or not. You talk to him for an hour at a time. There should be nothing in your life which I do not know of, Elizabeth,” he continued, his voice suddenly hoarse as he leaned towards her. “Can't you see that there is danger in friendships for you and for me, there is danger in intimacies of any sort? I share the danger; I have a right to share the knowledge. This young man has no money of his own, I take it. Of what use is he to us?”
“You are too hasty, my dear father,” she replied. “Let me assure you that there is nothing at all mysterious about Mr. Tavernake. The simple truth is that the young man rather attracts me.”
The professor gazed at her incredulously.
“Attracts you! He!”
“You have never perfectly understood me, my dear parent,” she murmured. “You have never appreciated that trait in my character, that strange preference, if you like, for the absolutely original. Now in all my life I never met such a young man as this. He wears the clothes and he has the features and speech of just such a person as you have described, but there is a difference.”
“A difference, indeed!” the professor interrupted roughly. “What difference, I should like to know?”
She shrugged her shoulders lightly.
“He is stolid without being stupid,” she explained. “He is entirely self-centered. I smile at him, and he waits patiently until I have finished to get on with our business. I have said quite nice things to him and he has stared at me without change of expression, absolutely without pleasure or emotion of any sort.”
“You are too vain, Elizabeth,” her father declared. “You have been spoilt. There are a few people in the world whom even you might fail to charm. No doubt this young man is one of them.”
She sighed gently.
“It really does seem,” she admitted, “as though you were right, but we shall see. By-the-bye, hadn't you better go? The five minutes are nearly up.”
He came over to her side, his hat and gloves in his hand, prepared for departure.
“Will you tell me, upon your honor, Elizabeth,” he begged, “that there is no other reason for your interest? That you are not engaged in any fresh schemes of which I know nothing? Things are bad enough as they are. I cannot sleep, I cannot rest, for thinking of our position. If I thought that you had any fresh plans on hand—”
She flicked the ash from her cigarette and checked him with a little gesture.
“He knows where Beatrice is,” she remarked thoughtfully, “and I can't get him to tell me. There is nothing beyond—absolutely nothing.”...
When Tavernake was announced, Elizabeth was still smoking, sitting in an easy-chair and looking into the fire. Something in her attitude, the droop of her head as it rested upon her fingers, reminded him suddenly of Beatrice. He showed no other emotion than a sudden pause in his walk across the room. Even that, however, in a person whose machinelike attitude towards her provoked her resentment, was noticeable.
“Good morning, my friend!” she said pleasantly. “You have brought me the fresh list?”
“Unfortunately, no, madam,” Tavernake answered. “I have called simply to announce that I am not able to be of any further assistance to you in the matter.”
She looked at him for a moment without remark.
“Are you serious, Mr. Tavernake?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “The fact is I am not in a position to help you. I have left the employ of Messrs. Dowling, Spence & Company.”
“Of your own accord?” she inquired quietly.
“No, I was dismissed,” he confessed. “I should have been compelled to leave in a very short time, but Mr. Dowling forestalled me.”
“Won't you sit down and tell me about it?” she invited.
He looked her in the eyes, square and unflinching. He was still able to do that!
“It could not possibly interest you,” he said.
“And—my sister? You have seen her?”
“I have seen your sister,” Tavernake answered, without hesitation.
“You have a message for me?”
“None,” he declared.
“She refuses—to be reconciled, then?”
“I am afraid she has no friendly feelings towards you.”
“She gave you no reason?”
“No direct reason,” he admitted, “but her attitude is—quite uncompromising.”
She rose and swept across the floor towards him. With firm but gentle fingers she took his worn bowler hat and mended gloves from his hand. Her gesture guided him towards a sofa.
“Beatrice has prejudiced you against me,” she murmured. “It is not fair. Please come and sit down—for five minutes,” she pleaded. “I want you to tell me why you have quarrelled with that funny little man, Mr. Dowling.”
“But, madam,—” he protested.
“If you refuse, I shall think that my sister has been telling you stories about me,” she declared, watching him closely.
Tavernake drew a little away from her but seated himself on the sofa which she had indicated. He took up as much room as possible, and to his relief she did not persist in her first intention, which was obviously to seat herself beside him.
“Your sister has told me nothing about you whatsoever,” he said deliberately. “At the same time, she asked me not to give you her address.”
“We will talk about that presently,” she interrupted. “In the first place, tell me why you have left your place.”
“Mr. Dowling discovered,” he told her, in a matter-of-fact tone, “that I had been doing some business on my own account. He was quite right to disapprove. I have not been back to the office since he found it out.”
“What sort of business?” she asked.
“The business of the firm is to buy property in undeveloped districts and sell it for building estate,” he explained. “I have been very successful hitherto in finding sites for their operations. A short time ago, I discovered one so good that I invested all my own savings in buying certain lots, and have an option upon the whole. Mr. Dowling found it out and dismissed me.”
“But it seems most unfair,” she declared.
“Not at all,” he answered. “In Mr. Dowling's place I should have done the same thing. Every one with his way in life to make must look out for himself. Strictly speaking, what I did was wrong. I wish, however, that I had done it before. One must think of one's self first.”
“And now?” she inquired. “What are you going to do now?”
“I am going to find a capitalist or float a company to buy the rest of the site,” he announced. “After that, we must see about building. There is no hurry about that, though. The first thing is to secure the site.”
“How much money does it require?”
“About twelve thousand pounds,” he told her.
“It seems very little,” she murmured.
“The need for money comes afterwards,” he explained. “We want to drain and plan and build without mortgages. As soon as we are sure of the site, one can think of that. My option only extends for a week or so.”
“Do you really think that it is a good speculation?” she asked.
“I do not think about such matters,” he answered, drily. “I know.”
She leaned back in her chair, watching him for several seconds—admiring him, as a matter of fact. The profound conviction of his words was almost inspiring. In her presence, and she knew that she was a very beautiful woman, he appeared, notwithstanding his absence of any knowledge of her sex and his lack of social status, unmoved, wholly undisturbed. He sat there in perfect naturalness. It did not seem to him even unaccountable that she should be interested in his concerns. He was not conceited or aggressive in any way. His complete self-confidence lacked any militant impulse. He was—himself, impervious to surroundings, however unusual.
“Why should I not be your capitalist?” she inquired slowly.
“Have you as much as twelve thousand pounds that you want to invest?” he asked, incredulously.
She rose to her feet and moved across to her desk. He sat quite still, watching her without any apparent curiosity. She unlocked a drawer and returned to him with a bankbook in her hand.
“Add that up,” she directed, “and tell me how much I have.”
He drew a lead pencil from his pocket and quickly added up the total.
“If you have not given any cheques since this was made up,” he said calmly, “you have a credit balance of thirteen thousand, one hundred and eighteen pounds, nine shillings and fourpence. It is very foolish of you to keep so much money on current account. You are absolutely losing about eight pounds a week.”
She smiled.
“It is foolish of me, I suppose,” she admitted, “but I have no one to advise me just now. My father knows no more about money than a child, and I have just had quite a large amount paid to me in cash. I only wish we could get Beatrice to share some of this, Mr. Tavernake.”
He made no remark. To all appearance, he had never heard of her sister. She came and sat down by his side again.
“Will you have me for a partner, Mr. Tavernake?” she whispered.
Then, indeed, for a moment, the impassivity of his features relaxed. He was frankly amazed.
“You cannot mean this,” he declared. “You know nothing about the value of the property, nothing about the affair at all. It is quite impossible.”
“I know what you have told me,” she said. “Is not that enough? You are sure that it will make money and you have just told me how foolish I am to keep so much money in my bank. Very well, then, I give it to you to invest. You must pay me quite a good deal of interest.”
“But you know nothing about me,” he protested, “nothing about the property.”
“One must trust somebody,” she replied. “Why shouldn't I trust you?”
He was nonplussed. This woman seemed to have an answer for everything. Besides, when once he had got over the unexpectedness of the thing, it was, of course, a wonderful stroke of fortune for him. Then came a whole rush of thoughts, a glow which he thrust back sternly. It would mean seeing her often; it would mean coming here to her rooms; it would mean, perhaps, that she might come to look upon him as a friend. He set his teeth hard. This was folly!
“Have you any idea about terms?” he inquired.
She laughed softly.
“My dear friend,” she said, “why do you ask me such a question? You know quite well that I am not competent to discuss terms with you. Listen. You are engaged in a speculation to carry out which you want the loan of twelve thousand pounds. Draw up a paper in which you state what my share will be of the profits, what interest I shall get for my money, and give particulars of the property. Then I will take it to my solicitor, if you insist upon it, although I am willing to accept what you think is fair.”
“You must take it to a solicitor, of course,” he answered, thoughtfully. “I may as well tell you at once, however, that he will probably advise you against investing it in such a way.”
“That will make no difference at all,” she declared. “Solicitors hate all investments, I know, except their horrid mortgages. There are only two conditions that I shall make.”
“What are they?” he asked.
“The first is that you must not say a word of this to my sister.”
Tavernake frowned.
“That is a little difficult,” he remarked. “It happens that your sister knows something about the estate and my plans.”
“There is no need to tell her the name of your partner,” Elizabeth said. “I want this to be our secret entirely, yours and mine.”
Her hand fell upon his; he gripped the sides of his chair. Again he was conscious of this bewildering, incomprehensible sensation.
“And the other condition?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“That you come sometimes and tell me how things are going on.”
“Come here?” he repeated.
She nodded.
“Please! I am very lonely. I shall look forward to your visits.”
Tavernake rose slowly to his feet. He held out his hand—she knew better than to attempt to keep him. He made a speech which was for him gallant, but while he made it he looked into her eyes with a directness to which she was indeed unaccustomed.
“I shall come,” he said. “I should have wanted to come, anyhow.”
Then he turned abruptly away and left the room. It was the first speech of its sort which he had ever made in his life.