"That was really a remarkable adventure of yours--very remarkable!
Where did you say the girl lived?"
"In Ellerdale Road, Hampstead. She lives with an aunt named Popejoy."
"Ah!" he exclaimed, then lapsed into a sullen silence, his brow clouded
by a heavy, thoughtful look, as though he were reflecting upon some
strange circumstance of the past.
I remained about an hour, when suddenly the division-bell rang and we
parted: he entering the House to record his vote, I to stroll along to
my own club to write letters.
Whether Roddy was acquainted with my pretty companion I was unable to
determine. It seemed very much as if he were, for I could not fail to
notice his paleness and agitation when I had pronounced her name. Still
I resolved to act with discretion, for I felt myself on the verge of
some interesting discovery, the nature of which, however, I knew not.
Next evening, in response to a telegram, Muriel Moore met me, and we
dined together on the balcony of Frascati's Restaurant, in Oxford
Street.
First let me confess that our attachment was something of a secret, for
there was considerable difference in our social positions; I had known
her for years, indeed ever since her hoydenish days when she had worn
short frocks. Her father, a respectable tradesman in Stamford, a few
miles from Tixover, had failed, and within a year had died, with the
result that at nineteen she had drifted into that channel wherein so
many girls drift who are compelled to seek their own living, and had
become an assistant at a well-known milliner's in Oxford Street. In the
shop world milliners' assistants and show-room hands rank higher than
the ordinary girl who serves her wealthier sisters with tapes, ribbons,
or underclothing, therefore Muriel had been decidedly fortunate in
obtaining, this berth. It was, no doubt, on account of her beauty that
the shrewd manageress of the establishment had engaged her, for her
chief duty seemed to be to try on hats and bonnets for customers to
witness the effect, and as nearly everything suited her she was enabled
to effect many advantageous sales. Dozens of women, ugly and a trifle
_passe_, were cajoled into believing that a certain hat suited them when
they saw it upon her handsome, well-poised head.
She was dark, with refined, well-cut, intelligent features; not the
doll-like, dimpled face of the average shop-girl, but a countenance open
and handsome, even though her hair was arranged a trifle coquettishly, a
fact which she explained was due to the wishes of the manageress. Her
mouth was small, and had the true arch of Cupid, her teeth even and
well-matched, her chin pointed and showing considerable determination,
and her eyes black as those of any woman of the South. Many men who
went with their wives and sisters to choose hats glanced at her in
admiration, for she was tall, with a figure well-rounded, a small waist
and an easy, graceful carriage, enhanced perhaps by the well-fitting
costume of black satin supplied her by the management.
My family had bought their smaller drapery goods of her father for
years, and it was in my college days that I had first seen and admired
her in the little old-fashioned shop in St Martin's, in Stamford. Old
Mr Moore, a steady-going man of antiquated ideas, had been overtaken
and left behind in the race of life, for cheap "cash drapers" had of
recent years sprung up all around him, his trade had dwindled down,
until it left him unable to meet the invoices from Cook's, Pawson's, and
other firms of whom he purchased goods, and he was compelled to file his
petition.
I knew nothing of this, for I was abroad at the time. It must, however,
have been a terrible blow to poor Muriel when she and her father were
compelled to leave the old shop and take furnished rooms in a back
street at the further end of the town, and a still more serious
misfortune fell upon her when a few months later her father died,
leaving her practically alone in the world. Through the influence of
one of the commercial travellers from London, who had been in the habit
of calling upon her father, she had obtained the berth at Madame
Gabrielle's, and for the past year had proved herself invaluable at that
establishment, one of the most noted in London as selling copies of "the
latest models."
We did not very often meet, for she well understood that a union was
entirely out of the question. We were excellent friends, purely
Platonic, and it gave her pleasure and variety to dine sometimes with me
at a restaurant. There was nothing loud about her; no taint of the
London shop-girl, whose tastes invariably lie in the direction of the
lower music-halls, Cinderella dances, and Sunday up-river excursions.
She was a thoroughly honest, upright, and modest girl, who, compelled to
earn her own living, had set out bravely to do so.
From where we sat dining we could listen to the music and look down upon
the restaurant below. The tables were filled with diners and the light
laughter and merry chatter general.
We had not met for nearly a month, as I had been down to Tixover, where
we had had a house-party with its usual round of gaiety, shooting and
cycling. Indeed, since June I had been very little in London, having
spent the whole summer at Zermatt.
"It seems so long since we were last here," she exclaimed suddenly,
casting her eyes around the well-lit restaurant. "I suppose you had
quite a merry time at home?"
"Yes," I answered, and then began to tell her of all our doings, and
relating little bits of gossip from her home--that quiet, old-fashioned
market town with its many churches, its broad, brimming Welland winding
through the meadows, and picturesque, old-world streets where the grass
springs from between the pebbles, and where each Friday the farmers
congregate at market. I told her of the new shops which had sprung up
in the High Street, of the death of poor old Goltmann who kept the fancy
shop where in my youth I had purchased mechanical toys, and of the
latest alterations at Burleigh consequent upon the old Marquis's death.
All this interested her, for like many a girl compelled to seek her
living in London, the little town where she was born was always dearly
cherished in her memory.
"And you?" I said at last. "How have you been going along?"
She placed both her elbows on the table and looked straight into my
eyes.
"Fairly well," she answered, with a half-suppressed sigh. "When you are
away I miss our meetings so much, and am often dull and miserable."
"Without me, eh?" I laughed.
"Life in London is terribly monotonous," she said as I pushed the
dessert-plate aside, and lit a cigarette. "I often wish I were back in
Stamford again. Here one can never make any friends."
"That's quite true," I replied, for only those who have come from the
country to earn their bread know the utter loneliness of the great
metropolis with its busy, hurrying millions. In London one may be a
householder for ten years without knowing the name of one's next-door
neighbour, and may live and work all one's life without making scarce a
single friend. Thus the average shop-girl is usually friendless outside
her own establishment unless she cares to mix with that crowd of clerks
and others who are fond of "taking out" good-looking shop-assistants.
I often felt sorry for Muriel, knowing how dull and monotonous was her
life, but while I sat chatting to her that evening a vision of another
face rose before me--the pale face with the strange blue eyes, the
beautiful countenance of the mysterious Aline.
It seemed very much as if Roddy knew my mysterious friend. If so, it
also seemed more than likely that I had been deceived in her; because
was not Roddy a well-known man about town, and what more likely than
that he had met her in London? To me, however, she had declared that
she had only arrived in London a week before, and had never been out.
Whatever was the explanation, Roddy's concern at hearing her name was
certainly extraordinary.