CHAPTER IV
THE PRINCESS GOES TO DINNER
THAT absurd business of climbing the wall again had to be got over, and was safely accomplished; to do him justice, Mr. Simon Quarle refrained from watching Gilbert's departure, and so took away one pang at least. The last vision Gilbert had of him was as he dropped over into the other garden, and, looking back, saw the old man standing with his hands clasped behind his back, and his bent shoulders turned towards where Gilbert had disappeared, and his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall.
But whatever resolution Gilbert Byfield may have formed to help the girl, and to lift her out from the sordid life in which he had found her, for the present he did nothing. Indeed, for the moment he decided after a restless night to abandon Arcadia Street altogether, and to touch again that life to which he most properly belonged. He would go back into that artificial existence, and, looking on this picture and on that, would decide clearly which was the most worthy. Which is to say in other words that the old life still drew him, and that this quixotic thing about which he had concerned himself could be easily laid aside, for a time at least.
Thus it happened that Mr. Jordan Tant, in his extremely neat and trim chambers, was informed by his extremely neat and trim man-servant one morning that Mr. Byfield had arrived. At the same moment the man-servant was thrust aside, and Gilbert strode in.
"Now, I don't want a lot of fuss, or a lot of talk," said Gilbert, a little impatiently; "you've just got to accept me as I am, and not talk about what I have been, or what I have done. You should know by this time that I cut up my life into slices; and when one slice is done with I go on to the next with a new appetite. Arcadia Street is gone – lost somewhere in the wilds of Islington. I am back again in civilization. What's the news?"
"There's no news that I'm aware of," said Mr. Tant, a little sulkily. "What news should there be?"
"Something's upset you, Tant," said Gilbert, with a laugh. "Come, now – I'm sure to hear about it sooner or later; why not tell me now?"
Jordan Tant stood with his arms folded, and his head a little on one side, and with an aggressive shoulder turned towards the other man. When he began to speak he shook himself almost in the fashion of a spoilt child that resents an injury.
"It isn't fair," he said, in his thin voice; "it really isn't fair. You go away for an unlimited time, and in a sense you leave the field to me. I cultivate that field; I'm careful about it; I am attentive and anxious – in fact, I work very hard. Then suddenly you step in, and if I may use such a term in so delicate a matter – you gather the crop."
"My dear Tant, you are really more Tant-like than ever," said Gilbert. "Why won't you tell me what you really mean in half a dozen words?"
"One word will suffice," said Jordan, turning upon him, and speaking with a sort of mild fierceness. "And that one word is – 'Enid.' While you've been living in your blessed Arcadia Street, on bread and cheese and moonshine, I've been seeing much of Miss Ewart-Crane; and there has been a gradually increasing respect for me in the family. You have shamefully neglected the lady; I have given her companionship. Now you turn up again, and will doubtless be welcomed with open arms, as having returned to the fold. For you will the fatted calf be prepared; I shall be lucky if I'm invited to the feast at all."
"My dear Tant," said Gilbert, laughing, "you are jumping at conclusions. Because I walk out of Arcadia Street, and come back here, is it to be said that I am about to take up the old life again in the old way? Am I going to call on the fair Enid, and stay to lunch – or perhaps drop in, in immaculate garments, for afternoon tea; or dine with her and her esteemed mother in a state of hopeless boredom; and take them afterwards to a theatre where the play's something I don't want to see? Perish the thought! I'm going to leave all that sort of thing to you."
Mr. Jordan Tant shook his head sadly. "It's quite impossible," he said. "I'm a useful man when there's no one else about; there you have me in a nutshell. If you had persisted in your folly, and had remained in Arcadia Street, it might have happened that some fine morning, or some fine evening, when Enid was more bored than usual, she would have said that she would put up with me for the rest of her life; and we should have got on very well. But about you always," he went on petulantly, "is a species of storm-cloud – a very whirlwind of romantic excitement. Now there's no whirlwind about me – and it's really the whirlwind fellows that attract the girls. One never knows what you're going to do; while, on the other hand, everyone knows what I'm going to do every hour of the day. I'm a sort of damp squib, that just fizzles about on its bit of ground, and does no harm to anybody; you're a gorgeous sort of rocket, that might even set fire to a town if you felt that way inclined. At all events, while I'm fizzing about down below, you'll be illuminating your bit of sky."
"You're really most complimentary," said Gilbert Byfield. "But suppose I tell you that I've no intention of stepping into the place you have so laboriously made for yourself – what then?"
"It wouldn't make the least difference," said Tant, shaking his head. "Mrs. Ewart-Crane is all for you; she never ceases to speak of you. I think she knows that one of these days you'll go back and settle down comfortably with Enid. You see, the thing is really arranged."
"Oh – nonsense!" exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. "That was a boy and girl affair – a sort of arrangement made between our people, years and years ago. Besides, suppose I don't want to settle down – what then?"
"They'll make you; they'll persuade you," said Mr. Tant gloomily. "Mrs. Ewart-Crane is a mother, and has one thought in her mind, and one only – Enid's future. You'll simply be told that you've got to get married. After that, perhaps, they'll let you run about as much as you like – that is, within limits."
"We shall see about that," said his friend. "By the way, what are you doing to-night? We might dine together."
"I am taking Enid and her mother to dinner and to the theatre," said Mr. Tant with dignity. "Perhaps you'd like to suggest that you will go too?"
"Certainly," said Gilbert, with alacrity. "Most kind of you; I'll join you with pleasure."
"I knew it!" Mr. Jordan Tant threw up his hands in a sort of comical despair. "I can see myself escorting Mrs. Ewart-Crane all the evening, and compelled to be polite while inwardly boiling. It's a very unfair world."
Just as Gilbert was going Mr. Tant called him back, to deliver a word of warning. "Understand me clearly, Byfield," he said, "I will not have you springing in suddenly in any dramatic fashion. You shall be announced in a commonplace way – your return referred to as something quite of an ordinary kind. I will fetch the ladies this evening, but I shall tell them that you await us at the restaurant. There shall be no surprises."
"I don't want any surprises," said Gilbert, laughing.
Despite all his precautions, Mr. Tant found himself as usual very much in the background when it came to that moment of meeting between the gentleman from Arcadia Street and Mrs. Ewart-Crane and her daughter. Mr. Tant had made all arrangements for a very excellent dinner; and he endeavoured, with what dignity he might, to take the head of affairs. But Enid was anxious to know everything concerning a certain Arcadia Street that had been spoken of, and she leaned eagerly towards Gilbert, demanding to know what he had been doing, and if it was really true that he had lived among people who were a sort of savages – and what he had had to eat, and how he had managed to live at all.
"There's nothing remarkable about it at all," said Mr. Tant savagely. "Anyone would think that he had been exploring some wild region where the foot of man had never trod; instead of which, he's simply been living in a very thickly populated part of London, within a cab fare of his own home – and all for a whim! Besides, slumming's out of date."
"It wasn't exactly slumming – and besides, he really went to study the people – didn't you, Gilbert?" asked Enid, in her high voice. She was a tall, handsome girl, with a good carriage, and an abundance of good health and spirits; this evening she was particularly glad to see her old friend back again in his place among men.
"What I never can understand," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane, adjusting a bracelet on a very well-formed arm, "is why we need study men at all – or women, for the matter of that. I grant you that in your own sphere you are naturally interested in the people about you; but beyond that I decline to go."
"Exactly, my dear Mrs. Ewart-Crane," broke in Tant. "Just what I always say: let us remember always the dividing line, and stick to it. We should get jumbled up in the most horrible way if we didn't remember the dividing line always, and above all, if we didn't remember that the people who live in the Arcadia Streets of the world are very right and proper in their own places, and very wrong and improper elsewhere. The people of position in this world are those who have come by right to the top; it's fellows like Byfield that put wrong notions into their heads, by mixing with 'em, and coming down, in a sense, to their level. I assure you that when I discovered him he was living in a perfectly shocking place."
Mrs. Ewart-Crane closed her eyes, and shivered. "Then I'm very glad to think that he's left it," she said. "For my part, I wish to hear no more about it; let us regard it as something happily done with and forgotten."
"But I want to hear about it, mamma," persisted Enid, laughing good-humouredly. "I'm quite sure there was an attraction down there – wasn't there?" She turned to Gilbert with a smile.
"Many attractions," he replied evasively. "All sorts of poor people, toiling cheerfully, and having rather a good time in their own way, in spite of poverty."
"Don't let him put you off, Miss Enid," said Tant, a little maliciously. "There was an attraction – I saw her, and I heard about her. And I don't mind saying that she was very pretty."
"Gilbert!" The girl was looking at him quizzically. "I want to hear all about this. What was she like? Big and rather brazen – quite a child of nature, with what they call a heart of gold – eh? I know the sort."
"I beg again, Enid, that the subject may be dropped," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane icily. But no one took the least notice of her.
"I'm afraid you don't know the sort," said Gilbert. He was annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken – annoyed, too, at Jordan Tant for his breach of faith. He hated the thought of discussing the girl with these people; he knew that the more he tried to explain his feeling about the matter, the less they would be able to understand. But the rather haughty eyes of Enid were upon him, and he had to go on, against his will. "The girl Tant is talking about is a little hard-working thing, who lived in the next house to that in which I stayed; and she keeps a drunken father and a reprobate brother by the simple process of letting lodgings. Now you know all about it."
"How touching – and how romantic!" exclaimed the girl. "And the great man from the great world took a deep interest in her, and stayed perhaps a little longer in his slum on her account – eh?"
"For my part," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane stiffly, "since the subject must be discussed, I have never been able to understand what people let lodgings for. If they've got a house, why not live in it, and not give over bits of it to other people?"
Gilbert Byfield glanced at his watch. "We shall be late for the first act," he said.
"Which of course puts an end to the discussion," Enid said, as she rose from the table. "Of course, if you'd like me to send her anything that would be useful, I should be only too pleased. Mother likes me to be charitable."
The play proved to be dull (at least to Gilbert Byfield), and the evening seemed to stretch on interminably. For the man was haunted by the miserable feeling that this child, in her common back-yard – this girl he had understood, as he thought, so perfectly – could never by any chance be understood by those who had not intimately touched her life. He was puzzled to think what he could do to carry out that brave determination of his to help her – to lift her out of her surroundings. If he remained where he was, among his own people, and in his own sphere, he deserted the child; if he went back to her, he deserted them, and took up his life in surroundings uncongenial, except so far as she was concerned. And he saw that it was utterly impossible to go half-way about one matter or the other; Arcadia Street was not to be brought into the West End and dumped down there.
It happened that between the acts he went out to smoke a cigarette, and found himself, with a dozen other men, near the open doors of the theatre. A few people were strolling listlessly outside in the street – pausing now and then to stare in at the well-dressed men, and to whisper. And once a girl went past – a thin shabby girl in black; and he was reminded so forcibly of Bessie Meggison that, without knowing what he did, he hurried out of the place, and went after her. Fifty yards down the street she stopped to look in at a shop window; and it was not Bessie at all, but someone quite different. Yet the thought assailed him, as he went back to the theatre, that just in that fashion the girl might be wandering alone in this horrible London – poorly clad, and not too well fed. He hated the thought of his own prosperity; quite unnecessarily called himself a brute, because he had had a good dinner, and was supposed to be out in search of enjoyment.
Never for a moment, of course, did it occur to him that his point of view was wrong; never for a moment did he understand that properly his life could not touch the girl's, and could have nothing in common with it. He accused himself unnecessarily, when the only mistake that had been made in the whole matter was in going to Arcadia Street at all, and above all going there under false colours. That point of view he did not regard in the least.
But he walked home that night, after leaving his friends, feeling miserably that it would have been better if he had buried himself for ever in Arcadia Street; if in some impossible way, he could have forgotten this selfish purposeless life he had always lived, and could have flung himself into some real work that would have brought him nearer in thought and feeling to the girl. Not for the first time he cried out against artificiality; metaphorically speaking, he wanted to put on rough clothing and thick boots, and plunge into the real fierce work of the world.
Some sense of the injustice of the world in meting out such different lots to such different women urged him, after a lapse of days during which he had been at the beck and call of Enid, to go back to Arcadia Street. He told himself that it would be merely an experimental visit; he meant to see if something could not be done to shake old Meggison into an understanding of his responsibilities, and perhaps even to urge the derelict brother into an attempt to earn a living. That was what he told himself; in the end, of course, it amounted to his going with the prospect of seeing the girl, and of doing something, in a wholly indefinite way, for her personally.
He was a little shy about meeting her; so many ridiculous suggestions had been thrown to him by Jordan Tant, and by Enid and her mother, concerning this girl, that the old freedom between them, so far at least as he was concerned, seemed a thing of the past. Even when that summer evening arrived when, leaning over the wall, he saw her seated in her garden, and called to her, it was with a new constraint.
"I've come back, you see," he said.
She was genuinely very glad to see him; he found himself wondering if the eyes of Enid could by any chance ever light up at his coming as did the eyes of this child. Things were different in Arcadia Street, he knew; almost he wished that they were not – almost he wished that this happy familiarity might obtain in other places with which he was more naturally in touch.
"I thought – thought you were not coming back," said the girl. "And yet I hoped – "
"Hoped that I was – eh?" he supplemented. "Even now, I don't know how long I may be able to stop here; I may go away again at a moment's notice – and never come back at all. Don't look so grave about it; you can go on making-believe, you know, just as well as ever."
"It won't be quite the same," she said. "You see, in that you've helped me – because, as I told you, you understood."
"And how have you been getting on?" he asked. "I mean, of course – the house?"
She stood against the wall over which he leaned; she did not look up at him when she replied. "Oh, pretty well, thank you," she said in a low voice. "Nothing ever happens, you know, in Arcadia Street – except the thing you don't want to happen."
"Your father?"
"Father is quite established again at his club; they think a lot of him at his club," she said. "And Aubrey is positive he will hear of something to do very shortly."
"That's good news," said Gilbert. "By the way – that Mr. Quarle I met when I was here last – the night I came over into your garden – do you know him very well?"
"Oh, yes; he's been a great friend of mine for nearly two years. But for him I think we couldn't keep the house going; he is the only lodger I have ever had who pays money without being asked for it. He's simply wonderful. Not that he's well off; he's only retired from something, and I don't think the something was very much before he retired from it. But his payments – oh – they're beautifully regular!"
"He's a valuable man," said Gilbert, not without a curious little feeling of jealousy that anyone else should be good to the girl except himself. Then the thought of what he had meant to do – the remembrance of the girl, shabby and forlorn, who had walked past the theatre that night, and had been something like Bessie Meggison – urged him to say something else.
"Bessie – (you don't mind my calling you Bessie – do you?) – have you ever had a holiday? I mean, have you ever got away from this dull house for one long evening – and seen bright lights, and happy faces – and heard music? Have you ever done that?"
Still leaning against the wall, she shook her head slowly, without looking up. "There hasn't been time – or money," she said simply.
"If you found the time – and I found the money?" he suggested. "What then?"
She looked up at him wonderingly; did not seem for a moment to understand what he meant. At last she said slowly – "I'm afraid it wouldn't do, you know; it really wouldn't do at all. Someone would be wanting me – someone would be calling for me."
"I should let them call for once," said Gilbert. "Just suppose for once, little Make-Believe, that we went out of Arcadia Street – and far beyond Islington – just our two selves. There are certain places called theatres, you know."
She nodded, with a sigh. "I know," she said. "That is, of course, I don't know much about what they're like inside; the outsides are wonderful. But I expect they're very expensive."
"We might manage it – just for once," he urged. "I could save up, you know – go without something."
It needed a lot of persuasion before she would consent at all; but at last she named a night when it was probable that father would be more in requisition at his club even than usual, and when Aubrey would be engrossed in the mysteries of a billiard handicap. She would go then; and, the better to preserve the proprieties (for Arcadia Street was given to gossip), would meet him at a certain spot not a hundred yards from the Arcadia Arms.
He began to understand, almost at the last moment, that the expedition must be conducted in her own fashion; he had the delicacy to understand that he must be shabby to match her poor shabbiness. So that it is probable very few of his friends would have recognized Mr. Gilbert Byfield, had they seen him waiting about at the corner of a certain street in Islington, in a well-worn tweed suit and a billycock hat. At that time he did not like the idea at all; he would have liked to whirl her away in a hansom, and do the thing properly at a first-class restaurant, with stalls at a theatre to follow. He wondered a little how the evening was going to pass.
And yet, after all, it proved to be rather pleasant – viewed as a new experience. Pleasant, to begin with, to see that little thin figure coming towards him; to hold for a moment the little hand in the worn glove, and to notice with satisfaction how neat she was, and how tastefully dressed, despite the poor things she had on. He had the grace to forget that a swift hansom might be hailed with the raising of a hand; found an omnibus almost comfortable – quite delightful, in fact, with the girl seated beside him, wearing upon her face that extraordinary look of complete happiness. He forgot even to think what his friends would have said had they seen him riding in such a vehicle, dressed in such fashion, and with such a companion.
The choosing of a restaurant was a difficulty, because he scarcely knew the cheaper or more dingy ones. She drew back in alarm at the prospect of entering a place gay with electric light; became reconciled at last to a little place of few tables and fewer waiters; sat open-eyed and breathless at the glory of a fifth-rate place, with a decided smell of the kitchen about it every time a creaking door was opened near her. She did not talk much; only occasionally she glanced at him, and when she did she smiled that slow grave smile of gratitude and friendliness.
Afterwards he found himself, for the first time in his life, in the upper circle at a theatre; congratulated himself on the fact that a friend he saw in a box below would not be likely to raise his eyes to the third row of that particular part of the building. He contented himself, not with looking at a play he had already seen, but with watching the thin face of the girl beside him – the bright eyes and the half-parted lips. Once, at a moment that was thrilling, she gripped his arm; and for quite a long time kept her hand there, holding to him while she watched the stage.
Coming out of the theatre, in the whirl and rush of people homeward bound, he got her into the hansom almost before she knew what had happened; it was only after the horse had started for Arcadia Street that she looked up at him reproachfully – shocked and awed by this friend who could spend so much money in a single evening. She voiced that thought as they drove along.
"You'll have to go without quite a lot for this, Mr. Byfield – won't you?" she asked wistfully. "I mean – it has been a frightfully expensive evening."
"I don't mind – for once," said Gilbert. "The only question in my mind is – have you really had a good time?"
She heaved a big sigh. "I should like to do it all over again," she said softly – "but to do it much more slowly. It has been wonderful!"
This was the one man in all the world that had ever thought about her, or had ever done her a kindness. Small wonder then that her eyes spoke more than gratitude when she put that little hand into his again in Arcadia Street, before the shabby house swallowed her up, and the door closed upon her. No one saw her, because Arcadia Street, save on Saturday nights, goes early to bed.