"Hush!" the girl said, her face turned from me. "Hush, Mr. Herapath. You don't know me, indeed. You have seen so little of me. Please say nothing more about it. You are under a delusion."
"It is no delusion that I love you, Barbara!" I cried.
"It is!" she repeated, freeing her hand. "There, if you will not take an answer-come-come at three to-morrow. But mind, I promise you nothing-I promise nothing," she added feverishly. And she fled from the room, leaving me to talk to grandmamma as best, and escape as quickly, as I might.
I longed for a great fire that evening, and failing one, I tired myself by tramping unknown streets of the East End, striving to teach myself that any trouble to-morrow might bring was but a shadow, a sentiment, a thing not to be mentioned in the same breath with the want and toil of which I caught glimpses up each street and lane that opened to right and left. In the main, I failed; but the effort did me good, sending me home tired out, to sleep as soundly as if I were going to be hanged next day, and not-which is a very different thing-to be put upon my trial.
"I will tell Miss Guest you are here, sir," the man said. I looked at all the little things in the room which I had come to know well-her work-basket, the music upon the piano, the table-easel, her photograph. And I wondered if I were to see them no more, or if they were to become a part of my everyday life. Then I heard her come in, and turned quickly, feeling that I should learn my fate from her greeting.
"Bab!" The word was wrung from me perforce. And then we stood and looked at one another, she with a strange pride and defiance in her eyes, though her cheek was dark with blushes, and I with wonder and perplexity in mine. Wonder and perplexity that grew into a conviction, a certainty that the girl standing before me in the short-skirted brown dress with tangled hair and loose neck-ribbon was the Bab I had known in Norway; and yet that the eyes-I could not mistake them now, no matter what unaccustomed look they might wear-were Barbara Guest's!
"Miss Guest-Barbara," I stammered, grappling with the truth, "why have you played this trick upon me?"
"It is Miss Guest and Barbara now," she cried, with a mocking courtesy. "Do you remember, Mr. Herapath, when it was Bab? When you treated me as a toy, and a plaything, with which you might be as intimate as you liked; and hurt my feelings-yes, it is weak to confess it, I know-day by day, and hour by hour?"
"But surely, that is forgiven now?" I said, dazed by an attack so sudden and so bitter. "It is atonement enough that I am at your feet now!"
"You are not," she retorted. "Don't say you have offered love to me, who am the same with the child you teased at Breistolen. You have fallen in love with my fine clothes, and my pearls and my maid's work! not with me. You have fancied the girl you saw other men make much of. But you have not loved the woman who might have prized that which Miss Guest has never learned to value."
"How old are you?" I said, hoarsely.
"Nineteen!" she snapped out. And then for a moment we were both silent.
"I begin to understand now," I answered as soon as I could conquer something in my throat. "Long ago when I hardly knew you, I hurt your woman's pride; and since that you have plotted-"
"No, you have tricked yourself!"
"And schemed to bring me to your feet that you might have the pleasure of trampling on me. Miss Guest, your triumph is more complete than you are able to understand. I loved you this morning above all the world-as my own life-as every hope I had. See, I tell you this that you may have a moment's keener pleasure when I am gone."
"Don't! Don't!" she cried, throwing herself into a chair and covering her face.
"You have won a man's heart and cast it aside to gratify an old pique. You may rest content now, for there is nothing wanting to your vengeance. You have given me as much pain as a woman, the vainest and the most heartless, can give a man. Good-bye."
With that I was leaving her, fighting my own pain and passion, so that the little hands she raised as though they could ward off my words were nothing to me. I felt a savage delight in seeing that I could hurt her, which deadened my own grief. The victory was not all with her lying there sobbing. Only where was my hat? Let me get my hat and go. Let me escape from this room wherein every trifle upon which my eye rested awoke some memory that was a pang. Let me get away, and have done with it all.
Where was the hat? I had brought it up. I could not go without it. It must be under her chair by all that was unlucky, for it was nowhere else. I could not stand and wait, and so I had to go up to her, with cold words of apology upon my lips, and being close to her and seeing on her wrist, half hidden by fallen hair, the scar she had brought home from Norway, I don't know how it was that I fell on my knees by her and cried-
"Oh, Bab, I love you so! Let us part friends."
For a moment, silence. Then she whispered, her hand in mine, "Why did you not say Bab to begin? I told you only that Miss Guest had not learned to value your love."
"And Bab?" I murmured, my brain in a whirl.
"She learned long ago, poor girl!"
The fair, tear-stained face of my tyrant looked into mine for a moment, and then came quite naturally to its resting-place.
"Now," she said, when I was leaving, "you may have your hat, sir."
"I believe," I replied, "that you sat upon this chair on purpose."
And Bab blushed. I believe she did.
GERALD
I have friends who tell me that they seldom walk the streets of London without wondering what is passing behind the house-fronts; without picturing a comedy here, a love-scene there, and behind the dingy cane blinds a something ill-defined, a something odd and bizarre. They experience-if you believe them-a sense of loneliness out in the street, an impatience of the sameness of all these many houses, their dull bricks and discreet windows, and a longing that some one would step out and ask them to enter and see the play.
Well, I have never felt any of these things; but as I was passing through Fitzhardinge Square about half-past ten o'clock one evening in last July, after dining, if I remember rightly, in Baker Street, something happened to me which I fancy may be of interest to such people.
I was passing through the square from north to south, and to avoid a small crowd, which some reception had drawn together, I left the pavement and struck across the road to the path round the oval garden; which, by the way, contains a few of the finest trees in London. This part was in deep shadow, so that when I presently emerged from it and recrossed the road to the pavement near the top of Fitzhardinge Street, I had an advantage over persons on the pavement. They were under the lamps, while I, coming from the shadow under the trees, was invisible.
The door of the house immediately in front of me as I crossed was open, and standing at it was an elderly man-servant out of livery, who looked up and down the pavement by turns. It was his air of furtive anxiety that drew my attention to him. He was not like a man looking for a cab, or waiting for his sweetheart; and I had my eye upon him as I stepped upon the pavement beside him. My surprise was great when he uttered an exclamation of dismay at sight of me, and made as if he would retreat; while his face, in the full glare of the light, grew so pale and terror-stricken that he might before have been completely at his ease. I was astonished and instinctively stood, returning his gaze; for perhaps twenty seconds we remained so, he speechless, and his hands fallen by his side. Then, before I could move on, he cried, "Oh! Mr. George! Oh! Mr. George!" in a tone that rang in the stillness more like a wail than an ordinary cry.
My name, my surname I mean, is George. For a moment I took the address to myself, forgetting that the man was a stranger; and my heart began to beat more quickly with fear of what might have happened. "What is it?" I exclaimed. "What is it?" and I pulled from the lower part of my face the silk muffler I was wearing. The evening was close, but I had been suffering from a sore throat.
He came nearer and peered more closely at me and I dismissed my fear; for I could see the discovery of his mistake dawning upon him. His pallid face, on which the pallor was the more noticeable, seeing that his plump features were those of a man with whom the world went well, regained some of its lost colour, and a sigh of relief passed his lips. But this feeling was only momentary. The joy of escape from whatever blow he had thought imminent gave place to his previous state of expectancy of something.
"You took me for another person," I said, preparing to pass on. At that moment I could have sworn-I would have given one hundred to one twice over-that he was going to say yes. To my immense astonishment, he did not. With a visible effort he said "No!"
"Eh! What?" I exclaimed. I had taken a step or two.
"No, sir."
"Then what is it?" I said. "What do you want, my good fellow?"
Watching his shuffling indeterminate manner I wondered if he were sane. His next answer reassured me. There was an almost desperate deliberation in his manner. "My master wishes to see you, sir," was what he said, "if you will kindly walk in for five minutes."
I should have replied, "Who is your master?" if I had been wise; or cried, "Nonsense!" and gone my way. But often the mind when it is spurred by an emergency over-runs the more obvious course to adopt a worse. It was possible that one of my intimates had taken the house, and said in his butler's presence that he wished to see me. Thinking of that I answered, "Are you sure? Have you not made a mistake, my man?"
With a sullenness that was new in him, he said, No, he had not. Would I please to walk in? He stepped forward as he spoke, and induced me by a kind of urgency to enter the house, taking from me with the ease of a trained servant my hat, coat, and muffler. Finding himself in the course of his duties he gained composure; while I, being thus treated, lost my sense of the strangeness of the proceeding, and only awoke to a full consciousness of my position when he had shut the door behind us and was putting up the chain.
Then I confess I looked round, alarmed at my easiness. But I found the hall spacious, lofty, and dark-panelled, the ordinary hall of an old London house. The big fireplace was filled with plants in flower. There were rugs on the floor and a number of chairs with painted crests on the backs, and in a corner was an old sedan chair, its poles upright against the wall.
No other servants were visible. But apart from this all was in order, all was quiet, and the notion of violence was manifestly absurd.
At the same time the affair seemed of the strangest. Why should the butler in charge of a well-arranged and handsome house-the house of an ordinary wealthy gentleman-why should he hang about the open doorway as if anxious to feel the presence of his kind? Why should he show the excitement, even the terror, which I had witnessed? Why should he introduce a stranger?
I had reached this point when he led the way upstairs. The staircase was wide, the steps were low and broad. On either side at the head of the flight stood a Venus of white Parian marble. They were not common reproductions, and I paused. I could see beyond them a Hercules and a Meleager, and delicately tinted draperies and ottomans that under the light of a silver hanging-lamp-a gem from Malta-changed a mere lobby to a fairies' nook. The sight filled me with a certain suspicion; which was dispelled, however, when my hand rested for an instant upon the pedestal that supported one of the statues. The cold touch of the marble was enough. The pillars were not of composite; as they certainly would have been in a gaming-house, or worse.
Three steps carried me across the lobby to a curtained doorway by which the servant was waiting. I saw that the "shakes" were upon him again. His impatience was so ill-concealed that I was not surprised, though I was taken aback, when he dropped the mask. As I passed him-it being now too late for me to retreat undiscovered, if the room were occupied-he laid a trembling hand on my arm and thrust his face close to mine. "Ask how he is!" he whispered, trembling. "Say anything, no matter what, sir! Only, for the love of Heaven, stay five minutes!"
He gave me a gentle push as he spoke-pleasant all this! – and announced in a loud quavering voice, "Mr. George!" – which was true enough. I found myself walking round a screen at the same time that something in the room, a long dimly-lighted room, fell with a brisk rattling sound. This was followed by the scuffling noise of a person, still hidden from me by the screen, rising to his feet.
Next moment I was face to face with two men. One, a handsome elderly gentleman, who wore grey moustaches and would have seemed in place at a service club, was still seated. He regarded me with a perfectly unmoved face, as if my entrance at that hour were the commonest incident of his life. The other had risen and stood looking at me askance. He was five-and-twenty years younger than his companion and he was as good-looking in a different way. But his face was white and, unless I was mistaken, was distorted by the same terror-ay, and a darker terror than that which I had surprised in the servant's features; it was the face of one in a desperate strait. He looked as a man looks who has put all he has in the world upon an outsider-and done it twice. In that quiet drawing-room by the side of his placid companion, with nothing in their surroundings to account for his emotion, his panic-stricken face shocked me inexpressibly.
They were in evening dress; and between them was a chess-table, its men in disorder. Almost touching this was another small table bearing a tray of Apollinaris water and spirits. On this the young man was resting one hand as if but for its support he would have fallen.
To add one more fact; I had never seen either of them in my life.
Or wait; could that be true? If so, I must be dreaming. For the elder man broke the silence by addressing me in a quiet ordinary tone that matched his face. "Sit down, George," he said, "don't stand there. I did not expect you this evening." He held out his hand, without rising from his chair, and I advanced and shook it in silence. "I thought you were in Liverpool. How are you?" he continued.
"Very well, I thank you," I muttered mechanically.
"Not very well, I should say," he retorted. "You are as hoarse as a raven. You have a bad cold. It is nothing worse, my boy, is it?" with anxiety.
"No, a throat cough; nothing else," I murmured, resigning myself to this astonishing reception-this evident concern for my welfare on the part of a man whom I had never seen in my life.
"That is well!" he answered cheerily. Not only did my presence cause him no surprise. It gave him, without doubt, pleasure!
It was otherwise with his companion. He had made no advances to me, spoken no word, scarcely altered his position. His eyes he had never taken from me. Yet there was a change in him. He had discovered his mistake, as the butler had discovered his. The terror was gone from his face, and a malevolence not much more pleasant to witness had taken its place. Why this did not break out in an active form was part of the mystery given to me to solve. I could only surmise from glances which he cast from time to time towards the door, and from the occasional creaking of a board in that direction, that his self-restraint had to do with my friend the butler. The inconsequences of dreamland ran through it all. Why the elder man remained in error; why the younger with that passion on his face was tongue-tied; why the great house was so still; why the servant should have mixed me up with the business at all-these were questions as unanswerable, one as the other.
And the fog in my mind grew denser when the old gentleman turned from me as if my presence were a usual thing, and rapped the table before him. "Now, Gerald!" he cried in sharp tones, "have you put those pieces back? Good heavens! I am glad that I have not nerves like yours! Don't remember the squares, boy? Here, give them to me!" With a hasty gesture of his hand, something like a mesmeric pass over the board, he sat down the half-dozen pieces with a rapid tap! tap! tap! which made it abundantly clear that he, at any rate, had no doubt of their various positions.
"You will not mind sitting by until we have finished the game?" he continued, speaking to me, in a voice more genial than that which he had used to Gerald. "I suppose you are anxious to talk to me about your letter, George?" he went on when I did not answer. "The fact is that I have not read the enclosure. Barnes, as usual, read the outer letter, in which you said the matter was private and of grave importance; and I intended to go to Laura to-morrow, as you suggested, and get her to read the other to me. Now you have returned so soon, I am glad that I did not trouble her."
"Just so, sir," I said, listening with all my ears; and wondering.
"Well, I hope there is nothing very bad the matter, my boy?" he replied. "However-Gerald! it is your move! Ten minutes more of such play as your brother's, and I shall be at your service."
Gerald made a hurried move, the piece rattling upon the board as if he had been playing the castanets. His father made him take it back. I sat watching the two in wonder and silence. What did it all mean? Why should Barnes-now behind the screen listening-have read the outer letter? Why must Laura be employed to read the inner? Why could not this cultivated and refined gentleman before me read his-Ah! That much was disclosed. A mere turn of the hand did it. He had made another of those passes over the board, and I learned from it what an ordinary examination would not have detected. He, the old soldier with the placid face and light blue eyes, was blind! Quite blind!
I began to see more clearly now. And from this moment I took up, in my own mind, a different position. Possibly the servant who had impelled me into the middle of the scene had had good reasons for doing so, as I began to discern. But with a clue to the labyrinth in my hand I could no longer move passively. I must act for myself. For a while I sat still and made no sign. But my suspicions were presently confirmed. The elder man more than once scolded his opponent for playing slowly; in one of the intervals caused by his opponent's indecision he took from an inside pocket of his waistcoat a small packet.
"You had better take your letter, George," he said. "If there are originals in it, they will be more safe with you than with me. You can tell me all about it, now you are here. Gerald will leave us presently."
He held the papers towards me. To take them was to take an active part in the imposture, and I hesitated, my hand half outstretched. But my eyes fell at the critical instant upon Master Gerald's face, and my scruples took themselves off. He was eyeing the packet with an intense greed, with a trembling longing-a very itching of the fingers, to fall upon the prey-that put an end to my doubts. I took the papers. With a quiet, but I think a significant, look in his direction, I placed them in the breast-pocket of my coat. I had no safer receptacle about me, or into that they would have gone.
"Very well, sir," I said. "There is no particular hurry. I think the matter will keep, as things now are, until to-morrow."
"So much the better. You ought not to be out with such a cold, my boy," he continued. "You will find a decanter of the Scotch whisky you gave me last Christmas on the tray. Will you have some with hot water and a lemon? The servants are all at the theatre-Gerald begged a holiday for them-but Barnes will get you the things in a minute."
"Thank you; I won't trouble him. I will take some with cold water," I replied, thinking I should gain in this way what I wanted-time to think; five minutes to myself, while they played.
But I was out in my reckoning. "I will have mine also now," he said. "Will you mix it, Gerald?"
Gerald jumped up to do it with tolerable alacrity. I sat still, preferring to help myself, when he should have attended to his father-if his father it was. I felt more easy now that I had those papers in my pocket. The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that they were the object of whatever deviltry was on foot; and that possession of them gave me the whip-hand. My young gentleman might snarl and show his teeth, but the prize had escaped him.
Perhaps I was a little too confident; a little too contemptuous of my opponent; a little too proud of the firmness with which I had taken at one and the same time the responsibility and the whip-hand. A creak of the board behind the screen roused me from my thoughts. It fell upon my ear trumpet-tongued: it contained, I know not what note of warning. I glanced up with a conviction that I was napping, and looked instinctively towards the young man. He was busy at the tray, his back to me. Relieved of my fear of something-perhaps a desperate attack upon my pocket, I was removing my eyes, when I caught sight of his reflection in a small mirror beyond him.
What was he busy about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at the moment. He was standing motionless-I could fancy him breathless also-a listening expression on his face; which seemed to me to have faded to a greyish tinge. His left hand was clasping a half-filled tumbler; the other was at his waistcoat pocket. So he stood during perhaps a second, a small lamp upon the tray before him illumining his handsome figure; then his eyes, glancing up, met the reflection of mine in the mirror. Swiftly as thought could pass from brain to limb, the hand which had been resting in the pocket flashed with a clatter among the glasses; and turning as quickly, he brought one of the latter to the chess-table, and set it down unsteadily.
What had I seen! Actually nothing. Just what Gerald had been doing. Yet my heart was going as many strokes to the minute as a losing crew. I rose abruptly.
"Wait a moment, sir," I said, as the elder man laid his hand upon the glass, "I don't think that Gerald has mixed this quite as you like it."
He had already lifted it to his lips. I looked from him to Gerald. The young man's colour, though he faced me hardily, shifted, and he seemed to be swallowing a succession of oversized fives-balls. But his eyes met mine in a vicious kind of smile that was not without its gleam of triumph. I was persuaded that all was right before his father said so.
"Perhaps you have mixed for me?" I suggested pleasantly.
"No!" he answered in sullen defiance. He filled a glass with something-perhaps it was water-and drank it, his back towards me. He had not spoken so much as a single word to me before.
The blind man's ear recognized the tone. "I wish you boys would agree better," he said wearily. "Gerald, go to bed. I would as soon play chess with an idiot from Earlswood. Generally you can play the game if you are good for nothing else; but since your brother came in, you have not made a move which any one save an imbecile would make. Go to bed, boy! Go to bed!"
I had stepped to the table while he spoke. One of the glasses was full. I lifted it with seeming unconcern to my nose. There was whisky in it as well as water. Then had Gerald mixed for me? At any rate, I put the tumbler aside, and helped myself afresh. When I set the glass down-and empty, my mind was made up.
"Gerald does not seem inclined to move, sir," I said quietly, "so I will. I will call in the morning and discuss that matter, if it will suit you. To-night I feel inclined to get to bed early."
"Quite right, my boy. I would ask you to take a bed here instead of turning out, but I suppose that Laura will be expecting you. Come in to-morrow morning. Shall Barnes call a cab for you?"
"I think I will walk," I answered, shaking the proffered hand. "By the way, sir," I added, "have you heard who is the new Home Secretary?"
"Yes, Henry Matthews," he replied. "Gerald told me. He had heard it at the club."
"It is to be hoped that he will have no womanish scruples about capital punishment," I said as if I were incidentally considering the appointment. And with that last shot at Mr. Gerald-he turned green, I thought, a colour which does not go well with a black moustache-I walked out of the room, which looked so peaceful, so cosy, so softly lighted, I went downstairs. I hoped that I had paralysed the young fellow, and might leave the house without molestation.
But as I gained the foot of the stairs he tapped me on the shoulder. I saw then, looking at him, that I had mistaken my man. Every trace of the defiance which had marked his manner upstairs was gone. His face was still pale, but it wore a smile as we confronted one another under the hall lamp. "I have not the pleasure of knowing you, but let me thank you for your help," he said in a low voice, yet with a kind of frank spontaneity. "Barnes' idea of bringing you in was a splendid one, and I am greatly obliged to you."
"Don't mention it," I answered, proceeding with my preparations for going out, as if he were not there. Although I must confess that this complete change in him exercised my mind no little.
"I feel so sure that we may rely upon your discretion," he went on, ignoring my tone, "that I need say nothing about that. Of course, we owe you an explanation, but as the cold is yours and not my brother's, you will not mind if I read you the riddle to-morrow instead of keeping you from your bed to-night?"
"It will do equally well-indeed better," I said, putting on my overcoat, and buttoning it across my chest, while I affected to be looking with curiosity at the sedan chair.
He pointed to the place where the packet lay. "You are forgetting the papers," he reminded me. His tone almost compelled the answer, "To be sure!"
But I had made up my mind, and I answered instead, "Not at all. They are quite safe, thank you!"
"But you don't-I beg your pardon-" He opened his eyes very wide as he spoke, as if some new light were beginning to shine upon his mind and he could scarcely believe its revelations. "You don't mean that you are going to take those papers away with you?"
"Certainly."
"My dear sir!" he remonstrated earnestly. "This is preposterous. Pray forgive me the reminder, but those papers, as my father gave you to understand, are private papers, which he supposed himself to be handing to my brother George."
"Just so!" was all I said. And I took a step towards the door.
"You mean to take them?" he asked seriously.
"I do; unless you can explain the part I have played this evening. And also make it clear to me that you have a right to the possession of the papers."
"Confound it! If I must do so to-night, I must!" he said reluctantly. "I trust to your honour, sir, to keep the explanation secret." I bowed, and he went on: "My elder brother and I are in business together. Lately we have had losses which have crippled us so severely that a day or two ago we decided to disclose them to Sir Charles and ask his help. George did so yesterday by letter, giving certain notes of our liabilities. You ask why he did not make such a statement by word of mouth? Because he had to go to Liverpool at a moment's notice to make a last effort to arrange the matter. As for me," with a curious grimace, "my father would as soon discuss business with his dog! Sooner!"
"Well?" I said. He had paused, and was nicking the blossoms off the geraniums in the fireplace with his pocket-handkerchief, looking moodily at his work the while. I cannot remember noticing the handkerchief, yet I can see it now. It had a red border, and was heavily scented with white rose. "Well?"
"Well," he continued, with a visible effort, "my father has been ailing, and this morning his doctor made him see Bristowe. He is an authority on heart-disease, as you know; and his opinion is," he added in a lower voice and with some emotion, "that even a slight shock may prove fatal."
I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet was becoming as lead in my pocket.
"Of course," he resumed more briskly, "that threw our difficulties into the shade; and my first impulse was to get these papers from him. All day I have been trying in vain to effect it. I took Barnes, who is an old servant, into my confidence, but we could think of no plan. My father, like many people who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I was at my wits' end when Barnes brought you up. Your likeness," he added, looking at me reflectively, "to George put the idea into my head, I fancy. Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you announced-for a moment I thought that you were George."
"And you called up a look of the warmest welcome," I put in.
He coloured, but answered immediately, "I was afraid that he would assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out something. Good lord! if you knew the funk in which I have been all the evening lest my father should ask me to read the letter!" He gathered up his handkerchief with a sigh, and wiped his forehead.
"I could see it very plainly," I answered, going slowly over what he had told me. To tell the truth, I was in no slight quandary what I should do, or what I should believe. Was this really the key to it all? Dared I doubt it? or that that which I had constructed was a mare's nest-the mere framework of a mare's nest? For the life of me I could not tell!
"Well, sir?" he said, looking up with an offended air. "Is there anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return my property to me now?"
"There is one thing, about which I should like to ask a question," I said.
"Ask on," he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.
"Why do you carry" – I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on the word-"that little medicament-you know what I mean-in your waistcoat pocket?"