CHAPTER I.

MIRIAM BYRNE.

It was nearly dusk on the eighth day after Peter Byrne and his daughter had got settled in their new rooms, when Gerald Warburton knocked at the door of Max Van Duren's house.

"Is my father at home?" asked Gerald of the middle-aged woman who answered his summons.

"If you are Mr. Byrne's son, I was told to send you upstairs when you called," answered the woman. "The first floor, please--door with the brass handle."

It was at Byrne's request that Gerald agreed to pass as his son on the occasion of any visits which he might have to make to Van Duren's house. Gerald could see no reason for the assumption of such a relationship, but in the belief that Byrne might have some special motive in the matter, he acceded without difficulty.

Up the stairs he now went, and knocked at the door indicated by the woman. "Come in," cried a voice, and in he went.

He paused for a moment or two just inside the room, and shut the door slowly after him while his eyes took in the various features of the scene.

The room in which Gerald found himself was of considerable size, and was lighted by three tall, narrow windows, curtained with heavy hangings of faded crimson velvet. The walls were painted a delicate green, and the floor was of polished wood. There was a large old-fashioned fire-place, and a heavy, overhanging marble chimney-piece, across the front of which was carved a wild procession of Baechic figures. A Turkey carpet covered the middle of the floor, but the sides of the room were left bare. Chairs, tables, and bureau were of dark oak, heavy, uncouth, uncompromising--and if not really antique, were very good Wardour Street imitations of the genuine article. On one side of the hearth, however, stood a capacious, modern easy-chair, for the special delectation of Mr. Peter Byrne, while in neighbourly proximity to it was the long-stemmed pipe with the china bowl. On the opposite side of the hearth stood another article, that seemed more out of keeping with the rest of the room, even, than the easy-chair. It was a couch or lounge of the most modern fashion, and upholstered with a gay flowery chintz. There could be no doubt as to the person for whose behoof this gay piece of furniture was intended. Stretched on the floor in front of it, and doing duty as a rug, was a magnificent tiger-skin. On this stood an embroidered footstool. At the back of the couch was a screen painted with Chinese figures and landscapes. Near it hung a guitar.

Gerald advanced slowly into the room, and for a moment or two he altogether failed to recognize the man who rose out of the easy-chair to greet him. It was Byrne and yet it was not Byrne. "It must be his father, or an older brother," said Gerald to himself. Even when the man held out his hand and whispered: "Is there anybody outside the door?" he was still in doubt.

"There is no one outside the door," said Gerald. "I came up the stairs alone."

"That's all right, then, and I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Warburton," said Byrne's familiar voice, after which there could no longer be any doubt. "Not a bad make up, eh?" he added, with a chuckle, as he noted Gerald's puzzled look.

"I certainly did not know you at first," replied the latter. "In fact, I took you for your own father."

"You could not pay me a higher compliment, sir," said Byrne, with a gleeful rubbing of the hands. "It is part of the scheme I have in view, that Van Duren should take me to be an old man, very feeble, very infirm, and nearly, if not quite, on my last legs."

"You look at the very least twenty years older than when I last saw you," remarked Gerald.

"And yet the transformation is a very simple matter," said Byrne. "It would not do to tell everybody how it's done, but from you I can have no secrets of that kind. In the first place, I had my own hair cropped as closely as it was possible for scissors to do it. Then I had this venerable wig made with its straggling silvery locks, and this black velvet skull cap. Two-thirds of my teeth being artificial ones, I have dispensed with that portion of them for the time being, and that of itself is sufficient to entirely alter the character of the lower part of my face. Then this dress--this gaberdine-like coat down to my knees, my collar of an antique fashion, my white, unstarched neckcloth, fastened with a little pearl brooch, this stoop of the shoulders, my enfeebled walk, and the stick that I am obliged to use to help me across the room: all simple matters, my dear sir, but, in the aggregate, decidedly effective."

Mr. Byrne omitted to mention that, as a conscientious artist bent on looking the character he meant to play, he had for the time being abandoned the hare's foot and rouge-pot. Although his use of those, articles had always been marked by the most extreme discretion, his discarding of them entirely did not add to the youthfulness of his appearance.

"And then you must please bear in mind that I am afflicted with deafness," added Byrne, with a smile, when Gerald had drawn a chair up to the fire. "It is not a very extreme form of deafness, but still it is necessary that I should be spoken to in a louder voice than ordinary; and it is sufficiently bad," he added, with a chuckle, "to prevent me, as I sit in my easy-chair by the fire, from overhearing any little private conversation that you and another person--my daughter, for instance--might choose to hold together as you sit by the sofa there, only a few yards away."

"I certainly can't understand," said Gerald to himself, "how all this scheming, and all these disguises, can in any way further the object which Ambrose Murray has so profoundly at heart."

Gerald felt mystified, and he probably looked it. As if in response to his unspoken thought, Byrne presently said: "All these things seem very strange to you, I do not doubt, Mr. Warburton; but you will believe me when I assure you that I have not for one moment lost sight of the particular end for which my services are retained. As soon as I begin to see my way a little more clearly--if I ever do--my plans and purposes shall all be told to you and Mr. Murray. I have built up a certain theory in my mind, and there seems only one way of ascertaining whether that theory has any foundation in fact. If it has, it may possibly lead us on to the clue we are in search of. If it has not--but I will not anticipate failure, however probable it may be. If I still possess the confidence of Mr. Murray and yourself, if you are still willing to let me have my own way in this thing for a little while longer, then I am perfectly satisfied."

"We have every confidence in you, Mr. Byrne," said Gerald, earnestly, "and we are both satisfied that the case could not have been entrusted into more capable hands than yours."

While Gerald was speaking, a door that led to an inner room was opened, and Miriam Byrne came in.

Byrne rose, laid one hand on the region of his heart, and waved the other gracefully.

"My daughter, Mr. Warburton--my only child," he said.

"I am glad that you have called to see us, Mr. Warburton," said Miriam, frankly, in her rich, full voice. "My father has talked so much about you that my curiosity was quite piqued to see for myself what his rara avis was like."

"You will find that I am a bird of very homely plumage," replied Gerald, with a smile. "Your father has been drawing on a too lively imagination. I am afraid that his rara avis will prove to be nothing more wonderful than our familiar friend--the goose."

"What a superb creature!" was Gerald's thought, as he sat down opposite Miriam; and that was the right phrase to apply to her.

Miss Byrne was at this time close upon her twenty-second birthday. Her beauty was of an altogether eastern type. Hardly anyone who met Miriam in the street took her to be an English girl; while to those who knew both her and her father, it was a constant source of wonder how "old Peter" could come to have for his daughter a girl so totally unlike him in every possible way. But Byrne's wife, who died when her daughter was quite an infant, had been a beautiful woman, and Miriam more than inherited her mother's good looks. People knowing the family averred that she was an exact counterpart of her grandmother: a lovely Roumanian Jewess, who had been brought over to England in the train of an Austrian lady of rank, and having found a husband here, had never gone back.

Eyes and hair of the black-set had Miriam Byrne. Large, liquid eyes, shaded with long, black lashes, and arched with delicate, well-defined brows; hair that fell in a thick, heavy mass to her very waist. Tints of the damask rose glowed through the dusky clearness of her cheeks. Her forehead was low and broad as that of some antique Venus. Her mouth was ripe and full, and might have looked somewhat coarse, had it not been relieved by her finely-cut nose with its delicate nostrils. She had on, this evening, a long, trailing dress of violet velvet, which harmonized admirably with her dusky loveliness--a rich, heavy-looking dress by gaslight, but one which daylight would have shown to be faded and frayed in many places. It had, in fact, at one time been a stage-dress, and as such, had been worn by Miss Kesteven of the Royal Westminster Theatre, when playing the heroine of one of Sardou's clever dramas.

The necklace of pearls, with earrings to match, which Miriam wore this evening, were also of stage parentage, but they looked so much like the real thing, that no one, save an expert, could have told without handling them that they were nothing better than clever shams. The one ring, too, which she wore--a hoop of diamonds--on her somewhat large, but well-shaped hand, was not more genuine than her pearl necklace. It had been bought for a few shillings in the Burlington Arcade; but it flashed famously in the gaslight; and as one cannot well take off a lady's ring in order to examine it, answered its purpose just as well as if it had cost a hundred guineas.

But we must not be too hard on Miriam. No doubt she was as fond of a little finery as most of her sisters are at two-and-twenty, but, in the present case, all these sham trinkets had been assumed by her at her father's wish, and "for a certain purpose," as the old man said. At the same time one need not imagine that the wearing of them, although they were counterfeit, was in any way distasteful to Miriam. As she herself would have been one of the first to say, go long as other people accepted her jewellery as real, the end for which it was worn was thoroughly gained.

"And how do you like your new home, Miss Byrne?" asked Gerald.

"I would much rather it had been at the West End than in the City," answered Miriam. "The rooms I like very much. They are large and old-fashioned, and have seen better days. To live in such rooms makes one feel as if one were somebody of importance--as if one had money in the Bank of England. But the look-out is dreadful. At the back, into that horrid churchyard; while in the front, there is nothing to be seen but a high, blank wall. I am always glad when it is time to draw the curtains and light the gas."

"You must get out for a little change and amusement now and then," said Gerald. "It will never do for you to get moped and melancholy through shutting yourself up in this gloomy old house. A visit once a week to a theatre, for instance, or----"

"Don't speak of it," interrupted Miriam. "I hope I shall not see the inside of a theatre for a couple of years, at the very least."

"Perhaps the opera would suit you better," suggested Gerald, altogether at a loss to know why the theatre should be so emphatically tabooed. "If you are fond of the opera, I think I can manage to get a couple of tickets for you now and then."

"Oh, that will be delightful!" exclaimed Miriam, clasping her hands with Oriental fervour. "I have never been to the opera but twice in my life, and I should dearly love to go again."

"Then you are fond of music?" asked Gerald.

"Passionately. I love it anywhere and everywhere; but I love it best on the stage. That is the glorification of music. It is to honour music as it ought to be honoured. When I listen to an opera, I seem to be lifted quite out of my ordinary self. I feel as if I were so much better and cleverer than I really am. And then I always have a longing to rush on to the stage and join in the choruses, and make one more figure in the splendid processions."

"I will send you tickets for Friday, if you will honour me by accepting them," said Gerald.

"You are very kind, Mr. Warburton; and to such an offer I cannot find in my heart to say No," answered Miriam, with a "Oh, how I wish I were clever!" she cried next moment; "clever enough to be a great singer on the stage, or to paint a great picture, or to write a book that everybody talked about. Don't you think, Mr. Warburton, that it must be a glorious thing to be clever?"

"Not being clever myself, I am hardly in a position to judge," answered Gerald, amused at the girl's earnestness. "But if we commonplace people only knew it, I have no doubt that cleverness has its disadvantages, like every other exceptional quality. Besides, it would not do for us all to be clever; in that case, the world would soon become intolerable. I think a moderate quantity of brains, and a large amount of contentment, are the best stock-in-trade to get through life with."

"Hear, hear!" cried Byrne, from his easy-chair. "My sentiments exactly."

Miriam pouted a little.

"Now you are making fun of me," she said.

"No, indeed," returned Gerald, earnestly.

"I don't know why the girl should always be raving about wanting to be clever," said Byrne, addressing himself, to Gerald. "She has plenty of good looks, and ought to be content. Five women out of six have neither brains nor good looks--though they will never believe that they haven't got the latter," added the old cynic, under his breath.

"Oh, yes, I know that I'm good-looking," said Miriam, naively, but not without a touch of bitterness. "People have told me that ever since I can remember anything. Besides, I can see it for myself in the glass," with an involuntary glance at the Venetian mirror hanging opposite.

"Then why are you always dissatisfied--always flying in the face of Providence?" growled Byrne. "What are your good looks given you for, but that some man with plenty of money may fall in love with you, and make you his wife?"

"Why not send me to the slave-market at Constantinople?" said Miriam, bitterly. "I dare say that I should fetch a tolerable price there."

Gerald thought it time to change the conversation.

"Do you come in contact at all with Van Duren?" he said to Byrne.

"We have seen more of him to-day than we saw yesterday, and more of him yesterday than previously. He is gradually learning to overcome the native bashfulness of his disposition," added Byrne, with a sneer.

"Then he has not shrouded himself altogether from view?" said Gerald.

"Not a bit of it. What he would have done had I been living here with a wife instead of a daughter, I can't say. But the fact is, he seems inclined to admire Miriam."

The old man sat staring at Gerald with a twinkle in his eye, as he finished speaking.

Gerald was at a loss to know in what way it was expected that he should greet such an item of news. So he merely fell back on a safe, though unmeaning, "Oh, indeed!"

Miriam, gazing into the fire, either had not heard, or did not heed, her father's words.

"For the sort of ursa major that he is," resumed Byrne, "he doesn't conduct himself so much amiss. Has not been much used to ladies' society, I should say. Does not talk much, but likes to look and listen."

"Then you have had him in here!" said Gerald, with surprise.

"Yes, twice. There's the magnet"--pointing to Miriam. "It isn't me, bless you, not me," added the old man, with a chuckle, as he proceeded to poke the fire vigorously.

To say that Gerald was mystified is to say no more than the truth. But it was evident that whatever Byrne might have to tell him with regard to his plans and purposes, he was not inclined to tell yet, and Gerald would not question him.

"Does Mr. Van Duren keep up a large establishment?" he said.

"No: a small one. Everything on a miserly scale. Every item of expenditure cut down to the lowest possible point."

"Perhaps he is poor."

"Poor! my dear sir. Tcha! When did you ever know a money-lender to be poor?"

"But I did not know that Van Duren was a money-lender."

"That's what he is: neither more nor less."

"Then, in that case, he must be a man of capital?"

"Certainly, to some extent. But you never know how the webs of such spiders as he interlace and cross each other. Perhaps he is only used as a decoy to catch foolish flies for bigger and older spiders than himself. But, in any case, you may be sure that he comes in for a good share of the plunder."

"From what you have said, I presume that he is unmarried?"

"There are no signs of a wife under this roof," said Byrne. "Besides himself, there is, in the office, first, his clerk, Pringle--a drunken, disreputable old vagabond enough, from what I have seen of him; and secondly, a youth of fifteen, to copy letters and run errands, and so on. Then, downstairs, in a dungeon below the level of the street, we have Bakewell and his wife, as custodians of the premises and personal attendants on Van Duren--a harmless, ignorant couple enough. These, with Miriam and myself, make up the sum total of the establishment. Pringle and the boy, I may add, do not sleep on the premises."

"Are you acquainted with Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, suddenly lifting her eyes from the fire.

"I have not that honour," said Gerald, drily.

"There is a great deal of power about him," said Miriam, "and I like power in a man. He seems to me to be a man who would stand at nothing in working out his own ends either for good or evil. For women--weak women--such characters generally have a peculiar fascination."

"That's because you never have a will of your own for an hour together," said Byrne. "Women always admire what they possess least of themselves."

"Papa always runs the ladies down," said Miriam, smilingly, to Gerald. "But if only one-half that I have heard whispered be true, no one could be fonder of their society than he was, so long as he was young and good-looking."

"And now that he is neither----?" said Byrne.

"No one delights to run them down more than he. The old story, Mr. Warburton. Olives have no longer any flavour for him, therefore only fools eat olives."

Gerald rose and made his adieux. It was arranged that he should call again on the following Tuesday or Wednesday.

"You won't forget the tickets for the opera, will you, Mr. Warburton?" were Miriam's whispered words as they stood for a moment at the street door, she having gone down stairs to let him out.

"Well, kitten, and what do you think of your new-found brother?" asked Byrne, as soon as Miriam got back into the room.

"I like him. It would be impossible to help liking him," said Miriam.

"Your reasons--if you have any?"

"Ladies are not supposed to give reasons. I like him because I like him. For one thing, he is not commonplace. There is an air of cleverness about him. You would not feel a bit surprised if at any moment he were to tell you that he was the author of the last celebrated poem, or the painter of the last great picture, or that he had been down the crater of Vesuvius, or had invented a new balloon that would take you half-way to the moon. By the time you have been in Mr. Warburton's society ten minutes, you say to yourself: 'Here's a man who has brains.'"

"Rather different from James Baron, Esq., eh?"

"Now, papa!" said Miriam, in a hurt tone. Then she turned from him and went to the window, and drew aside the curtain, and peered out into the darkness. "I thought it was understood between us that on this point there was no longer to be any contention. I thought you thoroughly understood, papa, that nothing could alter my determination."

"Oh, you have made me understand all that, plainly enough," said Byrne. "But when I think how mad and foolish you are--how determined you are to throw away your one great chance in life, I can't help----"

"Pray spare me, papa! Why cover ground that you and I have trodden so often already?"

"To think," said Byrne, indignantly, "of my daughter demeaning herself to marry a common, underpaid clerk!"

"Yes, a clerk whose father is a dean; and who was educated at college, and----"

"And who was expelled from college for----"

"Papa, for shame! Is his one fault to stick to him through life?"

"Even his own people discard him."

"Let them do so. He will make his way in spite of them. He is a gentleman bred and born."

"A gentleman, forsooth!"

"Yes--a gentleman who has bound himself to marry a ballet girl--for that's what I am. Neither more nor less than a ballet girl!"

"Had it not been for my misfortunes----"

"We need not speak of them, papa. But was it a wise thing on your part to expose me to all the temptations of a theatre?"

"I had every confidence in the strength of your principles."

"Had you known one tithe of the temptations to which I was exposed, you might well have trembled for me. Why, the very last night I was at the Royal Westminster there was a note left for me at the stage door and a splendid bouquet, and inside the bouquet was this."

As Miriam spoke, she extracted from her watch-pocket a ring set with five or six costly brilliants, and handed it to her father.

"You are not going to wear this!" he said, looking up at her with sudden suspicion.

"You ought to know me better, papa, than to ask such a question."

"Do you know from whom it came?"

"It would not be difficult to find out, I dare say."

"Then why have you not sent the ring back?"

"Because I mean the sender of it to pay for his folly. You remember my telling you how little Rose Montgomery broke her leg at the theatre the other week, through falling down a trap. She is little more than a child, and has not another friend than myself in all London. I am going to ask James to sell the ring for me. I shall give Rose the money. It will keep her when she comes out of the hospital till she is strong enough to begin dancing again."

"James! James! How I hate to hear the name!" said Byrne, as he got up and left the room.

"It is the name of the man I love--of the man whose wife I am going to be," replied Miriam.

Then she sat down and began to cry.