Part 4

"You _are_ kind--but--Well, then--it's like this. My father brought me to England from the States a month ago: he's 'made his pile': it was in pork, and I always wish he'd made it of something else, even canned fruit would be better, but that doesn't matter--We didn't know anyone here, of course, and directly we got here, he was wired for--business--and he had to go home again."

"But surely he didn't leave you without money."

Her little foot tapped the gravel impatiently.

"I'm coming to that," she said. "Of course he didn't. He told me to stay on at the hotel, and I did--and then one night when I was at the theatre my maid--a horrid French thing we got in Paris--packed up all my trunks and took all my money, and paid the bill, and went. The hotel folks let her go--I can't think how people can be so silly. But they wouldn't let me stay, and I wired to papa--and there was no answer, and I don't know whatever's the matter with him. I know it all sounds as if I was making it up as I go along--"

She stopped short, and looked at him through the dusk. He did not speak, but whatever she saw in his face it satisfied her. She said again: "You _are_ kind."

"Go on," he said, "tell me all about it."

"Well, then, I went into lodgings; that wicked woman had left me one street suit--and to-day they turned me out because my money was all gone. I had a little money in my purse--and this dress had been ordered for a fancy ball--it _is_ smart, isn't it?--and it came after that wretch had gone--and the guitar, too--and I thought I could make a little money. I really _can_ sing, though you mightn't think it. And I've been at it since five o'clock--and I've only got one shilling and seven pence. And no one but you has ever even thought of thinking whether I was tired or hungry or anything--and papa always took such care of me. I feel as if I had been beaten."

"Let me think," he said. "Oh--how glad I am that you happened to come this way."

He reflected a moment. Then he said--

"I shall lock up all the doors and windows in the house--and then I shall give you my latch-key, and you can let yourself in and stay the night here--there is no one in the house. I will catch the night train, and bring my mother up to-morrow. Then we will see what can be done."

The only excuse for this rash young man is to be found in the fact that while he was feeding his strange guest with cake and wine she was feeding, with her beauty, the first fire of his first love. Love at first sight is all nonsense, we know--we who have come to forty year--but at twenty-one one does not somehow recognise it for the nonsense it is.

"But don't you know anyone in London?" he asked in a sensible postscript.

It was not yet so dark but that he could see the crimson flush on her face.

"Not _know_," she said. "Papa wouldn't like me to spoil my chances of knowing the right people with any foolishness like this. There's no one I could _let_ know. You see, papa's so very rich, and at home they expect me to--to get acquainted with dukes and things--and--"

She stopped.

"American heiresses are expected to marry English dukes," he said, with a distinct physical pain at his heart.

"It wasn't I who said that," said the girl, smiling; "but that's so, anyhow." And then she sighed.

"So it's your destiny to marry a duke, is it?" the young man spoke slowly. "All the same," he added irrelevantly, "you shall have the latch-key."

"You _are_ kind," she said for the third time, and reached her hand out to him. He did not kiss it then, only took it in his, and felt how small and cold it was. Then it was taken away.

He says that he only talked to her for half an hour--but the neighbours, from whose eyes suburban hawthorns and laburnums are powerless to conceal the least of our actions, declare that he sat with the guitar player on the iron seat till well after midnight; further, that when they parted he kissed her hand, and that she then put her hands on his shoulders--"quite shamelessly, you know"--and kissed him lightly on both cheeks. It is known that he passed the night prowling in our suburban lanes, and caught the 6.25 train in the morning to the place where his people were staying.

The lady and the guitar certainly passed the night at Hill View Villa, but when his mother, very angry and very frightened, came up with him at about noon, the house looked just as usual, and no one was there but the charwoman.

"An adventuress! I told you so!" said his mother at once--and the young man sat down at his study table and looked at the title of his article on "The Decadence of Criticism." It was surely a very long time ago that he had written that. And he sat there thinking, till his mother's voice roused him.

"The silver is all right, thank goodness," she said, "but your banjo girl has taken a pair of your sister's silk stockings, and those new shoes of hers with the silver buckles--and she's left _these_."

She held out a pair of little patent leather shoes, very worn and dusty--the slender silken web of a black stocking, brown with dust, hung from her hand. He answered nothing. She spent the rest of that day in searching the house for further losses, but all things were in their place, except the silver-handled button-hook--and that, as even his sister owned, had been missing for months.

Yet his family would never leave him to keep house alone again: they said he is not to be trusted. And perhaps they are right. The half dozen pairs of embroidered silk stockings and the dainty French silver-buckled shoes, which arrived a month later addressed to Miss ----, Hill View Villa, only confirmed their distrust. _He_ must have had them sent--that tambourine girl could never have afforded these--why, they were pure silk--and the quality! It was plain that his castanet girl--his mother and sister took a pleasure in crediting her daily with some fresh and unpleasing instrument--could have had neither taste, money, nor honesty to such a point as this.

As for the young man, he bore it all very meekly, only he was glad when his essays on the decadence of things in general led to a berth on the staff of a big daily, and made it possible for him to take rooms in town--because he had grown weary of living with his family, and of hearing so constantly that She played the bones and the big drum and the concertina, and that She was a twopenny adventuress who stole his sister's shoes and stockings. He prefers to sit in his quiet room in the Temple, and to remember that she played the guitar and sang sweetly--that she had a mouth like a tired child's mouth, that her eyes were like stars, and that she kissed him--on both cheeks--and that he kissed--her hand only--as the scandalised suburb knows.

THE MAN WITH THE BOOTS

A YOUNG man with a little genius, a gift of literary expression, and a distaste not only for dissipation, but for the high-toned social functions of his suburban acquaintances, may go far--once he has chosen journalism for a profession, and has realised that to success in any profession a heart-whole service is necessary. A certain young man, having been kissed in his own garden by a girl with a guitar, ceased to care for evening parties, and devoted himself steadily to work. His relaxations were rowing down the Thames among the shipping, and thinking of the girl. In two years he was sent to Paris by the Thunderer--to ferret out information about a certain financial naughtiness which threatened a trusting public in general, and, in particular, a little band of blameless English shareholders.

The details of the scheme are impertinent to the present narrative.

The young man went to Paris and began to enjoy himself.

He had good introductions. He had once done a similar piece of business before--but then luck aided him. As I said, he enjoyed himself, but he did not see his way to accomplishing his mission. But his luck stood by him, as you will see, in a very remarkable manner. At a masked ball he met a very charming Corsican lady. She was dressed as a nun, but the eyes that sparkled through her mask might have taxed the resources of the most competent abbess. She spoke very agreeable English, and she was very kind to the young man, indicated the celebrities--she seemed to know everyone--whom she recognised quite easily in their carnival disguises, and at last she did him the kindness to point out a stout cardinal, and named the name of the very Jew who was pulling the strings of the very business which had brought the young man to Paris.

The young man's lucky star shone full on him, and dazzled him to a seeming indiscretion.

"He looks rather a beast," he said.

The nun clapped her hands.

"Oh--he _is_!" she said. "If you knew all that I could tell you about him!"

It was with the distinct idea of knowing all that the lady could tell about the Jew that our hero devoted himself to her throughout that evening, and promised to call on her the next day. He made himself very amiable indeed, and if you think that he should not have done this, I can only say that I am sorry, but facts are facts.

When he put her into her carriage--a very pretty little brougham--he kissed her hand. He did not do this because he desired to do it, as in the case of the Girl with the Guitar, but purely as a matter of business. If you blame him here I can only say "à la guerre comme à la guerre--"

Next day he called on her. She received him in a charming yellow silk boudoir and gave him tea and sweets. Unmasked, the lady was seen to be of uncommon beauty. He did not make love to her--but he was very nice, and she asked him to come again.

It was at their third interview that his star shone again, and again dazzled him to indiscreetness. He told the beautiful lady exactly why he wanted to know all that she could tell him about the Jew financier. The beautiful lady clapped her hands till all her gold bangles rattled musically, and said--

"But I will tell you all--everything! I felt that you wished to know--but I thought ... however ... are you sure it will all be in your paper?"

"But yes, Madame!" said he.

Then she folded her hands on the greeny satin lap of her tea-gown, and told him many things. And as she spoke he pieced things together, and was aware that she spoke the truth.

When she had finished speaking, his mission was almost accomplished. His luck had done all this for him. The lady promised even documents and evidence. Then he thanked her, and she said--

"No thanks, please. I suppose this will ruin him?"

"I'm afraid it will," said he.

She gave a little sigh of contentment.

"But why--?" he asked.

"I don't mind, somehow, telling _you_ anything," she said, and indeed as it seemed with some truth. "He--he did me the honour to admire me--and now he has behaved like the pig he is."

"And so you have betrayed him--told me the things he told you when he loved you?"

She snapped her fingers, and the opals and rubies of her rings shone like fire.

"Love!" she said scornfully.

Then he began to be a little ashamed and sorry for his part in this adventure, and he said so.

"Ah--don't be sorry," she said softly. "I _wanted_ to betray him. I was simply longing to do it--only I couldn't think of the right person to betray him to! But you are the right person, Monsieur. I am indeed fortunate!"

A little shiver ran through him. But he had gone too far to retreat.

"And the documents, Madame?"

"I will give you them to-morrow. There is a ball at the American Embassy. I can get you a card."

"I have one." He had indeed made it his first business to get one--was not the Girl with the Guitar an American, and could he dare to waste the least light chance of seeing her again?

"Well--be there at twelve, and you shall have everything. But," she looked sidelong at him, "will Monsieur be very kind--very attentive--in short, devote himself to me--for this one evening? _He_ will be there."

He murmured something banal about the devotion of a lifetime, and went away to his lodging in a remote suburb, which he had chosen because he loved boating.

The next night at twelve saw him lounging, a gloomy figure, on a seat in an ante-room at the Embassy. He knew that the Lady was within, yet he could not go to her. He sat there despairingly, trying to hope that even now something might happen to save him. Yet, as it seemed, nothing short of a miracle could. But his star shone, and the miracle happened. For, as he sat, a radiant vision, all white lace and diamonds, detached itself from the arm of a grey-bearded gentleman, and floated towards him.

"It _is_ you!" said the darling vision, and the next moment his hands--both hands--were warmly clasped by little white-gloved ones, and he was standing looking into the eyes of the Girl.

"I knew I should see you somewhere--this continent _is_ so tiny," she said. "Come right along and be introduced to Papa--that's him over there."

"I--I can't," he answered, in an agony. "I--my pocket's been picked--"

"Do tell!" said the Girl, laughing; "but Papa doesn't want tipping--he's got all he wants--come right along."

"I can't," he said, hoarse with the misery of the degrading confession; "it wasn't my money--it was my _shoes_. I came up in boots, brown boots; distant suburb; train; my shoes were in my overcoat pocket--I meant to change in the cab. I must have dropped them or they were taken out. And here I am in these things." He looked down at his bright brown boots. "And all the shops are shut--and my whole future depends on my getting into that room within the next half-hour. But never mind! Why should _you_ bother?--Besides, what does it matter? I've seen you again. You'll speak to me as you come back? I'll wait all night for a word."

"Don't be so silly," said the Girl; but she smiled very prettily, and her dear eyes sparkled. "If it's _really_ important, I'll fix it for you! But why does your future depend on it, and all that?"

"I have to meet a lady," said the wretched young man.

"The one you were with at the masked ball? The nun? Yes--I made Papa take me. _Is_ it that one?" Her tone was imperious, but it was anxious too.

He looked imploringly at her. "Yes, but--"

"You shall have the shoes, all the same," she interrupted, and turned away before he could add a word.

A moment later the grey-bearded gentleman was bowing to him.

"My girl tells me you're in a corner for want of shoes, Sir. Mine are at your service--we seem about of a size--we can change behind that pillar."

"But," stammered the young man, "it's too much--I can't--"

"It's nothing at all, Sir," said the man with the grey beard warmly; "nothing compared to the way you stood by my girl! Shake! John B. Warner don't forget."

"I can't thank you," said the other, when they had shaken hands. "If you will--just for a short time! I'll be back in half an hour--"

He was back in two minutes. The first face he saw when he had made his duty bows was the face of the Beautiful Lady. She was radiant: and beside her stood her Jew, also radiant. _They had made it up._ And what is more--though he never knew it--they had made it up in that half-hour of delay caused by the Boots. The Lady passed our hero without a word or even a glance to acknowledge acquaintanceship, and he saw that the game was absolutely up. He swore under his breath. But the next moment he laughed to himself with a free heart. After all--for any documents, any evidence, for any success in any walk of life, how could he have borne to devote himself, as he had promised to do, to that Corsican lady, while the Girl, _the_ Girl, was in the room? And he perceived now that he should not even use the information he already had. It did not seem fitting that one to whom the Girl stooped to speak, for ever so brief a moment, should play the part of a spy--in however good a cause.

"Back already?" said the old gentleman.

"Thank you--my business is completed."

The young man resumed his brown boots.

"Now, Papa," said the Girl, "just go right along and do your devoirs in there--and I'll stay and talk to _him_--"

The father went obediently.

"Have you quarrelled with her, then?" asked the Girl, her eyes on the diamond buckles of her satin shoes.

He told her everything--or nearly.

"Well," she said decisively, "I'm glad you're out of it, anyway. Don't worry about it. It's a nasty trade. Papa'll find you a berth. Come out to the States and edit one of his papers!"

"You told me he was a millionaire! I suppose everything went all right? He didn't lose his money or anything?" His tone was wistful.

"Not he! You don't know Papa!" said the Girl; "but, say, you're not going to be too proud to be acquainted with a self-made man?"

He didn't answer.

"Say," said she again, "I don't take so much stock in dukes as I used to." She laid a hand on his arm.

"Don't make a fool of me," said the young man, speaking very low.

"I won't,"--her voice was a caress,--"but Papa shall make Something of you. You don't know Papa! He can make men's fortunes as easily as other folks make men's shoes. And he always does what I tell him. Aren't you glad to see me again? And don't you remember--?" said she, looking at him so kindly that he lost his head and--

"Ah! haven't you forgotten?" said he.

* * * * *

That is about all there is of the story. He is now a Something--and he has married the Girl. If you think that a young man of comparatively small income should not marry the girl he loves because her father happens to have made money in pork, I can only remind you that your opinion is not shared by the bulk of our English aristocracy. And they don't even bother about the love, as often as not.

THE SECOND BEST

THE letter was brief and abrupt.

"I am in London. I have just come back from Jamaica. Will you come and see me? I can be in at any time you appoint."

There was no signature, but he knew the handwriting well enough. The letter came to him by the morning post, sandwiched between his tailor's bill and a catalogue of Rare and Choice Editions.

He read it twice. Then he got up from the breakfast-table, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of letters and a photograph.

"I ought to have burned them long ago," he said; "I'll burn them now." He did burn them but first he read them through, and as he read them he sighed, more than once. They were passionate, pretty letters,--the phrases simply turned, the endearments delicately chosen. They breathed of love and constancy and faith, a faith that should move mountains, a love that should shine like gold in the furnace of adversity, a constancy that death itself should be powerless to shake. And he sighed. No later love had come to draw with soft lips the poison from this old wound. She had married Benoliel, the West Indian Jew. It is a far cry from Jamaica to London, but some whispers had reached her jilted lover. The kindest of them said that Benoliel neglected his wife, the harshest, that he beat her.

He looked at the photograph. It was two years since he had seen the living woman. Yet still, when he shut his eyes, he could see the delicate tints, the coral, and rose, and pearl, and gold that went to the making up of her. He could always see these. And now he should see the reality. Would the two years have dulled that bright hair, withered at all that flower-face? For he never doubted that he must go to her.

He was a lawyer; perhaps she wanted that sort of help from him, wanted to know how to rid herself of the bitter bad bargain that she had made in marrying the Jew. Whatever he could do he would, of course, but--

He went out at once and sent a telegram to her.

"Four to-day."

And at four o'clock he found himself on the doorstep of a house in Eaton Square. He hated the wealthy look of the house, the footman who opened the door, and the thick carpets of the stairs up which he was led. He hated the soft luxury of the room in which he was left to wait for her. Everything spoke, decorously and without shouting, but with unmistakable distinctness, of money, Benoliel's money: money that had been able to buy all these beautiful things, and, as one of them, to buy her.

She came in quietly. Long simple folds of grey trailed after her: she wore no ornament of any kind. Her fingers were ringless, every one. He saw all this, but before he saw anything else he saw that the two years had taken nothing from her charm, had indeed but added a wistful patient look that made her seem more a child than when he had last seen her.

The meaningless contact of their hands was over, and still neither had spoken. She was looking at him questioningly. The silence appeared silly; there was, and there could be, no emotion to justify, to transfigure it. He spoke.

"How do you do?" he said.

She drew a deep breath, and lifted her eyebrows slightly.

"Won't you sit down?" she said; "you are looking just like you used to." She had the tiniest lisp; once it had used to charm him.

"You, too, are quite your old self," he said. Then there was a pause.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she said.

"It was you who sent for me," said he.

"Yes."

"Why did you?"

"I wanted to see you." She opened her pretty child-eyes at him, and he noted, only to bitterly resent, the appeal in them. He remembered that old appealing look too well.

"No, Madam," he said inwardly, "not again! You can't whistle the dog to heel at your will and pleasure. I was a fool once, but I'm not fool enough to play the fool with Benoliel's wife."

Aloud he said, smiling--

"I suppose you did, or you would not have written. And now what can I do for you?"

She leaned forward to look at him.

"Then you really have forgotten? You didn't grieve for me long! You used to say you would never leave off loving me as long as you lived."

"My dear Mrs. Benoliel," he said, "if I ever said anything so thoughtless as that, I certainly _have_ forgotten it."

"Very well," she said; "then go!"

This straight hitting embarrassed him mortally.

"But," he said, "I've not forgotten that you and I were once friends for a little while, and I do beg you to consider me as a friend. Let me help you. You must have some need of a friend's services, or you would not have sent for me. I assure you I am entirely at your commands. Come, tell me how I can help you--"

"You can't help me at all," she said hopelessly, "nobody can now."

"I've heard--I hope you'll forgive me for saying so--I've heard that your married life has been--hasn't been--"

"My married life has been hell," she said; "but I don't want to talk about that. I deserved it all."

"But, my dear lady, why not get a divorce or, at least, a separation? My services--anything I can do to advise or--"

She sprang from her chair and knelt beside him.

"Oh, how _could_ you think that of me? How could you? He's dead--Benoliel's dead. I thought you'd understand that by my sending to you. Do you think I'd ever have seen you again as long as _he_ was alive? I'm not a wicked woman, dear, I'm only a fool."

She had caught the hand that lay on the arm of his chair, her face was pressed on it, and on it he could feel her tears and her kisses.

"Don't," he said harshly, "don't." But he could not bring himself to draw his hand away otherwise than very gently, and after a decent pause. He stood up and held out his hand. She put hers in it, he raised her to her feet and put her back in her chair, and artfully entrenching himself behind a little table, sat down in a very stiff chair with a high seat and gilt legs.

She laughed. "Oh, don't trouble! You needn't barricade yourself like a besieged castle. Don't be afraid of me. You're really quite safe. I'm not so mad as you think. Only, you know, all this time I've never been able to get the idea out of my head--"

He was afraid to ask what idea.

"I always believed you meant it; that you always would love me, just as you said. I was wrong, that's all. Now go! Do go!"

He was afraid to go.