as the balcony was too small for another chair, and mr. skinner did not come to the window, his daughter led her guest into the sitting-room.
“papa,” she said, “you will recall the gentleman whom we met yesterday at the british museum.”
mr. skinner lifted to its place the pince-nez which depended on a gold thread from the lapel of his carefully-buttoned frock-coat, and scrutinised the person indicated in a painstaking manner.
“ah, yes, indeed,” he said, continuing his gaze, but with no salutation, and no offer of the hand.
“it’s so dark in here, i don’t believe you do,” she remarked, to cover the awkwardness of the moment. “the sun has gone now, any way,” and she moved back and put a hand upon the awning-cord.
“permit me,” said david, hurrying to her side, and pulling at the shade.
“he’s out of sorts about something,” the girl murmured furtively. “don’t mind it; just leave him to me.”
in the brightened light, mr. skinner’s demeanour seemed no more cordial. he regarded his visitor with a doubtful glance, and gave indications of a sense of embarrassment in his presence. the daughter, however, was in no respect dismayed by her responsibility.
“papa,” she said with brisk decision, “it was all a joke yesterday. our friend was so amused by your offer yesterday——”
“i beg your pardon, adele,” the father interposed ceremoniously, “but it becomes immediately incumbent upon me to express my dissent. to obviate any possible misconception, it should be explicitly stated that, although it is true that the task of formulating the proposal to which you allude did undoubtedly devolve upon me, the proposition itself, both in spirit and suggestion, originated in your own consciousness.”
“all right,” she hurriedly went on, “have it anyway you like. the point is that this gentleman thought it was funny, and so he capped it with his own little joke by pretending to be some one else. he made up that name he gave you on the spur of the moment, just for sport. he came here this morning, just to explain. he was nervous about the deception, innocent though it was. papa, let me introduce to you mr. linkhaw’s relation, of whom he spoke so often, you know—the earl of drumpipes.”
mr. skinner took in this intelligence with respectful deliberation. he bowed meanwhile, and, after a moment’s deferential hesitation, shook hands in a formal way with david, and motioned him to a seat.
“sir,” he began, picking his phrases with even greater care, “you will excuse me if i do not address you as ‘my lord,’ since it is a form of words which i cannot bring myself to regard as seemly when employed by one human being toward another; but i gather from my daughter’s explanation that your statements yesterday concerning your identity were conceived in a spirit of pleasantry. under ordinary circumstances, sir, the revelation that an entirely serious and decorous suggestion of mine had been received with hilarity might not convey to my mind an exclusively flattering impression. but i do not, sir, close my eyes to the fact that a wide gulf of usage and custom, and, i might say, of principles, separates a simple jeffersonian democrat like myself from the professor of an hereditary european dignity. i am therefore able, sir, to accept, with comparatively few reservations, the explanation which you have tendered to my daughter, and vicariously, as i understand it, to me.”
david repressed a groan, and hastily cast about in his mind for a decent pretext for flight. “i assure you that it greatly relieves me to find you so courteously magnanimous,” he said. “i merely yielded to the playful impulse of the moment; and as your daughter has so kindly told you, i made haste thereafter to repair my error, when its possible misinterpretation occurred to me.” he bowed again, in response to the other’s solemn genuflection, and looked toward the door.
“i should be pleased, sir,” mr. skinner said, “if you would honour us by remaining to luncheon.”
“ah, i should have liked that so much,” answered david, with fervour, “but unhappily i have an engagement at marlborough house. it will be no end of a bore, but it can’t be helped. an invitation there, you know, is equivalent to a command. that is one of the drawbacks of a monarchy—but of course every system has its weak points.”
“that is a generalisation,” returned mr. skinner, “to which i am not prepared to give unmeasured adhesion. i will explain to you, sir, briefly, the reasons which dictate my hesitation to entirely——”
“i’m afraid, mr. skinner, that i must tear myself away,” put in david, anxiously consulting his watch. “the prince never forgives a fellow being late. he has to live so much on a time-table himself, you know, forever catching trains, and changing his uniforms, and turning up at the exact minute all over the place, laying corner-stones, and opening docks and unveiling statues, and so on, that it makes him intolerant of other people’s lapses. and he’s got a fearful memory for that sort of thing.”
“i assume that you speak of the heir apparent,” commented the other. “am i to understand that you live in a state of personal subjection—that a nobleman in your position, for example, contemplates with apprehension the contingency of causing even the most trivial and transitory displeasure to the personage alluded to?”
“apprehension, my dear sir? positive horror! ah, you little know the reality! thoughtless people see us from the outside, and they lightly imagine that our lives are one ceaseless round of luxurious gaiety and gilded pleasure. they fancy that to have titles, to bear hereditary distinctions, to fill high places at court, must be the sum of human happiness. of course, i suppose we do have a better time than the average, but we pay a price for it. we smile, it is true, but there is always a shudder beneath the smile. a mere breath, a suspicion, the veriest paltry whim of royal disfavour, and we might better never have been born! and so,” he finished with an uneasy graciousness, “you will understand my abrupt leavetaking now.”
“i promise myself on another occasion, sir,” said mr. skinner, with more warmth, “the privilege of discussing these topics with you at length. i do not deny that i am myself, to-day, somewhat preoccupied, and lacking in the power of intellectual concentration. another occasion, i trust, will find me better fitted to bestow upon these subjects the alertness of comprehension and clarity of judgment which their importance demands. at the moment, i confess my mind is burdened with another matter.”
“o, papa—you haven’t gone and lost your letter of credit!” the girl intervened with accents of alarm.
the old gentleman shook his head, and smiled in a dubious fashion. “no,” he replied, hesitatingly, “it is merely that i—i have been enjoined to secrecy about a very curious and interesting revelation which has been made to me, and concealment is profoundly alien to my nature. the necessity for maintaining a mysterious reserve weighs upon me, sir, with unaccustomed oppression.”
“it is something that you have learned this morning?” demanded the daughter. “i’ll make you tell me as soon as we’re alone.”
“ah, that cannot be,” the father answered. “my faith has been honourably pledged, and must be scrupulously observed.”
“but surely it couldn’t have been stipulated that i was not to know,” she urged. “that would be absurd. and besides, who knows of even my existence over here?”
“incomprehensible as it may appear to your perceptions,” responded mr. skinner, “it happens that you were particularly alluded to in the terms of the confidential compact imposed upon me.”
“then you had no business to enter into it at all,” she replied, vigorously. “papa, i am surprised at you!”
there was something in his thoughts which lit the old gentleman’s dry countenance with a transient gleam of enjoyment. “i hazard the humble opinion that your surprise will be appreciably augmented when, at the proper time, the truth shall have been revealed to you.” he turned, with the flicker-ings of a whimsical smile in his eye, to their guest. “it is an extraordinary coincidence, sir; but you are also in a manner associated with the occult event to which i may not at present more pointedly refer.”
david musingly looked the old gentleman in the eye. “yes, i know,” he answered; “but i agree with you that it should not be divulged to your daughter. as you have said, we men of the world are in duty bound to keep a decent veil drawn over certain phases of life. i am quite with you in that, sir; we cannot sufficiently respect and guard the sweet-minded innocence of our young ladies.”
mr. skinner looked hard at the nobleman, and drew up his slender figure. “my memory, sir,” he announced stiffly, “fails to recall any observation resembling in the slightest degree, either in form or sentiments, that which you have ascribed to me. forgive me, sir, if i venture to further remind you that i have no desire to regard myself, or to be regarded, as a man of the world, in the sense in which i understand that term to be used by the aristocratic class in great britain.”
the young lady seemed to share her father’s feelings in the matter. “you must remember, lord drumpipes,” she put in, coldly, “that our standards in such things are not yours. i daresay it seems natural enough to one in your position, and with your antecedents and associations, that a venerable, white-haired old gentleman should have disgraceful secrets which he ought to conceal from his family; but we take a different view of the meaning of the word ‘gentleman,’ and of the obligations which it involves.”
“ah, now i have offended you!” cried david, with a show of remorse. “i assure you that my only thought was to help your good father out of a fix. if i have done wrong, i beg you will put it down to my overeagerness to be of assistance. and now,” he stole a dismayed glance at his watch, “now i really must run. good-bye! good-bye, mr. skinner. remember that i count upon that famous discussion with you. and you may rely entirely upon my discretion—in the matter of your secret, you know.”
father and daughter stood for a moment, gazing at the door behind which their noble guest had disappeared. then the girl turned her eyes with decision upon the author of her being.
“papa,” she said, with calm resolution, “what did he intend to convey by his remarks about this secret of yours?”
“why, adele,” the other protested, faltering a little under her look, “you yourself repudiated, in the most eloquent and unanswerable words, the bare suggestion that i could possibly be animated by the desire to cloak any unworthy deed or incident from your observation.”
“that was for his benefit,” she replied, tranquilly. “i was determined that he should know what we thought of his code of morals. but that does not at all affect the question of what you have been doing. do i understand that you are going to insist on refusing to tell me where you have been, whom you have seen, what your so-called secret is about?”
“adele!” he urged, “i really must preserve a reticence as to the essential details of the matter in question—perhaps only for a few days—at least until the obligation of secrecy is removed. you would not have me recreant to my plighted faith, would you?”
“but what business had you going and making her any such promise?”
“her!” mr. skinner said, feebly smiling; “you jest, my dear adele. how can you conceivably imagine it was a ‘her’?”
“i don’t imagine; i know,” responded the daughter, with a hard, dry smile. “you have been seeing that yellow-haired girl that lord drumpipes had with him at the museum yesterday. the letter which summoned you forth this morning was from her. you made some paltering excuses to me, and went out to meet her—and you won’t look me in the eye and deny it.”
in truth he did not take up her challenge. he hung his head, looked away, and shuffled with his feet. “all i am at liberty to say,” he remarked at last, with visible emotion, “is that my grief at being compelled to rest temporarily under the unwelcome shadow of your suspicion is, to some slight extent, mitigated by the consciousness that when you know all you will do ample justice to the probity of my motives and the honourable character of my actions. i might even go further, and express the conviction that the outcome will be of a nature to afford you unalloyed personal satisfaction.”
“that may all be,” returned adele; “but, in the meantime, you don’t go out in london any more by yourself!”
mosscrop laughed to himself as he ran down the stairs of the hotel. the spirit of mirth remained with him while he more slowly ascended the flight of steps, and the dingy passage and covered by-way leading up to the strand. it was the most comical thing he had ever heard of, and he chuckled again and again during the climb. but upon the bustling crowded thoroughfare it somehow ceased to seem so funny, or at least its value as a source of entertainment began to diminish rapidly. he found his mind reverting irresistibly to the disappointment of the early morning. the image of vestalia rose upon his mental vision, and would not go away. he brooded over it as he walked, and recognised that intervening incidents and personalities had in no sense dimmed his interest in it. he pictured her wonderful hair again, her bright-faced smile, her dear little airs and graces, with a yearning emptiness of heart.
the luncheon obtainable at the barbary club was even more unpalatable than usual, which was saying much. the familiar fact that the waiters were germans struck him afresh, and took on the proportions of an international grievance. there were some fellows upstairs playing at what they supposed was whist. he stood for a while over the shoulders of a couple of the gamesters, and noted, with a cynical eye, the progress of their hot rivalry as to which should contribute the larger incapacity and the finer stupidity to the losing of the rubber. when they asked him if he wanted to cut in, he turned away with a snort of derisive scorn.
over in the billiard-room there were only the marker and the member who played far worse than anybody else in the club. david sourly consented to occupy himself with this egregious outsider, and was beaten by him. the result was so clearly due to accident that he laid some money on the next game. again the duffer fluked like mad, and won, and in a third game his luck was of such a glaring character, that mosscrop could not refrain from loud comment. this his antagonist resented. they parted with harsh words, and mosscrop, cursing the hour when it first occurred to him to identify himself with such a squalid pot-house, hastened angrily to shake its dust from his feet.
he made his way, by devious streets whose old book-stalls for once beckoned him in vain, to bloomsbury and the museum. a kind of idea had grown up unobtrusively in the background of his thoughts, that possibly he might find vestalia there. it assumed the definite outlines of an expectation as soon as he entered the building. when he stood in the reading-room itself, and began a systematic scrutiny of its radiating rows of readers, it was with as much confidence as if he had come by appointment. the failure to discover her disturbed and annoyed him. he made a slow tour of the inner circle, then another of the broader outer ring, and suffered no one of the professed students to escape his examining eye.
what a crew they were! he had never realised it before. his hostile inspection laid bare the puerile devices of the young fools who came by concerted arrangement, took down books at random, and, sitting close together, carried on clandestine flirtations under the sightless mask of literature. he glowered with a newly-informed vision at the extraordinary females whom no one had planned to meet—the lone women with eccentric coiffures and startling costumes, who emerge from heaven knows where, and mysteriously gather here in quest of something which it seems incredible that even heaven should be able to define. observing now the vacuous egotism of their flutterings and posturings in other people’s way, the despairing clutch at public attention made by their outlandish vestiture and general get-up, david’s thoughts settled grimly upon the fact that there were lands, the seats of ancient civilizations, where superfluous female children were drowned at birth. here, he reflected, with sullen irony, we teach them to read and write, and build and stock a vast reading-room for them instead. his mood preferred the ganges to the thames.
there was more pathos in the spectacle of another class of habitual attendants—the poor, shabby, hungry serfs of the quotation merchant. mosscrop knew the genus by sight, and in other times had had amusement from their contemplation. how a sombre rage possessed him as he beheld them toiling unintelligently, hopelessly, under the lash of starvation. he watched one of the slave-drivers for a while, a short, red man, of swollen spiderish aspect, who moved about keeping these sweated wretches at their toil, now doling out a few pence to one who could remain erect unnourished not a minute longer, and who slunk out forthwith with a wolfish haste, now withering some other with whispered reproaches of threats. mosscrop longed to go and break this creature’s neck, or at the very least to kick him, with loud curses and utmost contumely, from the room.
he went out himself, instead, animated by a freshening spirit of resentment at the futility of existence. from sheer force of habit, he dawdled in front of shop-windows, turned over hooks and prints in one after another of his accustomed resorts for second-hand merchandise, and otherwise killed time till the dinner hour. but he did it all without any inner pretence that the process afforded him consolation. even when he met some fellows from the temple, in chancery lane, and joined them in a series of visits to ancient bars in the vicinity, where they all stood at wearisome length, and argued with intolerable inconsequence about wholly irrelevant matters over their drinks, his thoughts maintained a moody concentration upon the theme of his personal unhappiness. the stray contributions which he offered to the general conversation were all of an acrid, not to say truculent, character. he had a sort of dour satisfaction in the utterance of offensive gibes and bitter jokes. twice the threat of an altercation arose, in consequence of these ill-natured comments of his, and david sullenly welcomed the imminent quarrel; but the intervention of the others, without any help from him, cleared the atmosphere again. even the peacemakers, however, evinced the opinion that he was behaving badly, and nodded cheerful adieus when at last he declared that they were a parcel of uninspired loons, with whom he marvelled to find himself consuming valuable time. they lifted their glasses at him mockingly as he strode away, with the gleam of an unexpressed “good riddance!” in their eyes.
the consciousness that he had made himself disagreeable to these fellows had its uses as a counter-irritant to his inner self-disgust. it rendered solitude at least a trifle more supportable. he bought a novel, and read it beside his plate at simpson’s, where the heavy joints and weighty old ale just fitted his mood. the book was one which the papers were talking of for the moment. david reflected grimly as he skimmed the opening chapters that vestalia had asked him why he didn’t write a scotch novel. they were all the vogue, she said, and while the fashion lasted, it was nonsense for any scotchman to pretend that he could not profitably occupy his leisure time. he had replied, with some flippancy, that his imaginative powers might compass the construction of a tale, hut were unequal to the task of inventing also a whole dialect to tell it in. how, as the whim returned to him, his fancy parodied a title for this unborn work. how would “a goddess, some merely ordinary fools and lord drumpipes” do?
ah! that drumpipes! david paid his bill, lit a cigar, and sallied forth, suddenly informed with the notion of going to the inn, and having it out with the earl. he doubled up his fists as he hurried along.
the top floor at dunstan’s was wrapped in darkness. mosscrop knocked and kicked first at “mr. linkhaw’s” door to make sure that no one was in, then opened his own, and struck a light. the apartment wore still in his eyes the chill desolation of aspect which he remembered from the morning. there had been a change in the weather, and the suggestion of a fire was in the damp air. he put on his loose jacket and slippers, recalling sadly as he did so the vision he had beheld only twenty-four hours before, of that pretty little ermined footgear on the fender beside his, in front of the glowing grate. he brought out the decanter and a glass, and sighed deeply.
then all at once he caught sight of something white in the letter box. in the same instant he was tearing open a stamped envelope, addressed in a large, strange hand which yet he knew so well, and excitedly striving to gulp in the meaning of the whole written page before him, without troubling to read the lines in their sequence. yes, it was from her, and—yes, it contained words of kindness and even of tenderness which shone brilliantly forth here and there from the context. he pulled himself together, and walking over to the light, began resolutely at the beginning.
“dear mr. mosscrop,—i hope you were not very much disappointed at finding me gone this morning, or rather, i hope you were a little disappointed, but will not be so any longer when you get this explanation. i don’t know either that it can be called an explanation, for it doesn’t seem to me that i am at all able to explain even to myself, much less to you.
“the fact is that you were so kind and so sweet to me, that i simply had to do what i have done. i saw it all, after we had parted. under the circumstances, and especially considering the delicate and noble manner in which you had treated me, it was the only thing i could do!
“i should have left a message for you in your letter-box, but there was not a scrap of paper, not even a book out of which i could tear a fly-leaf, in mr. linkhaw’s room, nor writing materials of any sort. i have bought this paper at the stationer’s, and am writing this note in an hotel writing-room.
“the dear dressing-bag, and the other beautiful things which i owe to you, i took away with me because it would have broken my heart to leave them, and i felt sure you would be glad to have me take them. every time i look at them, and all other times too, i shall think of the best man i ever knew or dreamed of. something very important has occurred, which may turn out to be of the greatest possible advantage to me. it is very uncertain as yet, and i cannot tell you about it at present, but soon i hope to be able to do so.
“in the meantime, please believe in my undying gratitude. vestalia.”
david drew a long breath, poured a drink for himself, lit his pipe, and sat down to read the letter all over again. he arrived slowly at the conclusion that he was glad she had written it—but beyond that his sensations remained obstinately undefined. the girl had disappeared behind a thick high wall which his imagination was unequal to the task of surmounting. a few stray facts assumed a certain distinctness in his mind: she had evidently gone off quite of her own accord, and she had appreciated the spirit of his attitude towards her the previous day, and she had encountered on this, the following day, something or somebody which might bring her good luck. what kind of good luck? he wondered.
there was an implied promise in her words that he should be informed when this mysterious beneficence assumed shape. this had very little comfort in it for him. in fact, he found he rather hated the idea of her enjoying good luck in which he had no share.
suppose instead that it didn’t come off. would she return to him then, or at least let him know, so that he might hasten forward again as her special providence?
ah, that is what he had wanted to be—her providence. the notion of doing everything for her, of being the source of all she had, of foreseeing her wants, inventing her pleasures, ministering joyfully to the least of her sweet little caprices—the charm of this r?le fascinated him more than ever. he recalled in detail the emotions of delight he had experienced in buying things for her. by some law which he recognised without analysing, the greatest pleasure had arisen from the purchase of the articles which she needed most. there had been only a moderate and tempered ecstasy in paying for champagne, but oh, the bliss of buying her boots, and those curling-irons, and the comb! he thrilled again with it, in retrospect. what would it have been to see her clad entirely in garments of his providing?
but the cage was empty—the bird had flown. would she come back again? was there really the remotest hint of such a possibility in her letter?
no. he read it still again, and shook his head at the fender with a despairing groan. the gloom of his reverie benumbed his senses. he let his pipe go out, and suffered the glass at his elbow to remain untouched, as he sat with his sad thoughts for company, and did not even hear the footsteps which presently ascended the stairs.
a soft little knock at the door startled him from his meditations. he stood up, with his heart fluttering, and lifted his hand in wonderment to his brow. had he been asleep and dreaming?
the dainty tapping on the panel renewed itself. david moved as in a trance toward the door.
