There was a bar at the front of the restaurant--a cheerful, domestic
bar of the Italian sort, with a bright-eyed, smiling, middle-aged woman
in charge. She knew Mosscrop, and flashed a kindly glance of southern
comradeship at him as he came forward, and stopped and drew his
cheque-book from his pocket. There were also two girls in the bar, and
they knew him too, and grinned gently at his salute. Vestalia watched
them narrowly, and fancied that one of them also winked.
“I had to stop and get some more money,” he explained, when they were
in the street together. “There isn’t another place in these parts where
they would change a cheque.”
“I noticed that they seemed to know you,” she replied, with reserve.
“Dear people that they are!” he cried. “The sight of them in the morning
is always delightful to me. Did you observe it--the extraordinary
cheerfulness of them all? You saw how the girls chaffed the ice-man, and
how the fellow who brought in the soda-water cases had his joke with the
waiters, and how madame clucked and chuckled like a good hen, as if they
were all her brood, and everybody seemed to like everybody else?”
“I didn’t get the notion that they were very keen about me,” remarked
Vestalia. “As a matter of sober fact, they scowled.”
“Nonsense! Of course they were deferential to you--you represented a
sort of dignified unaccustomedness to them, and they were afraid to
beam at you. But bless you, they’re as simple and as sweet-hearted
as children. They laugh and smile at people just out of pure native
amiability. The place is as good as a tonic to me of a morning when I am
feeling blue and out of sorts.”
“But you are not _this_ morning,” she reminded him.
For answer he drew her hand through his arm. They fell into step, and
moved along at a sauntering gait on their way toward Oxford Street.
It was mid-August, and there had been a shower overnight. The pavement
still showed damp in its crevices, and the air was clear and fresh.
A pale hazy sunshine began to mark out shadows in the narrow
thoroughfares. By-and-by it would be hot and malodorous here, but just
now the sense of summer’s charm found them out even in Soho.
She had asked him about himself. The question had risen naturally enough
to her lips, and she had propelled it without diffidence. But when the
words actually sounded in her own ears, they frightened her. The inquiry
seemed all at once personal to the point of rudeness. The possibility of
his resenting her curiosity rose in her mind, and on the instant flared
upward into painful certainty.
“Oh, forgive me; I had no business to ask you!” she hurriedly added.
He laughed, and patted her arm. “Why on earth shouldn’t you?”
“I spoke without thinking,” she faltered. “I suppose--that is, it occurs
to me--perhaps gentlemen don’t like to be questioned--what I mean is,
you didn’t answer, and I was afraid----”
“Afraid nothing!” he reassured her. “You mustn’t dream of being
stand-offish with me. I shall get vexed with you if you do. My dear
little lady, there isn’t anything in the world that you’re not as free
as air to say to me, or ask me. I only hesitated because”--he began,
smiling in a rueful, whimsical way down at her--“because it’s too
complicated and sinister a recital to rush lightly into. My name is
David Mosscrop, and I am an habitual criminal by profession. That will
do to start with.”
Vestalia looked earnestly into his face for some sign that he was
jesting. It was a clean-shaven face, cast by nature in a mould of
gravity. The eyes had seemed a pleasant grey to her first cursory
examination; but now, on closer scrutiny, there might be a hardness as
of steel in their colour. The lips and chin, too, had a sharpness of
line that could mean unamiable things. And yet, how could she credit
his words? It was true, she recalled, that by all accounts many superior
gamblers, burglars, and other evil characters were in private life
most kindly persons--of notoriously generous impulses. Pictures of the
outlaws of romance, from Robin Hood to Dick Ryder, crowded upon her
mental vision. The countenance into which she tremulously stared might
have belonged to any of them--a little blurred by the effects of recent
drink, a trifle stained in its lower parts by the need of a razor,
yet adventurous, subtle, courageous; above all, commanding. Her heart
fluttered at the thought of her own temerity in leaning on his arm, and
she shot a swift glance forward toward the big thoroughfare they were
nearing, where there would be crowds of people to see her. Then she
tightened her hold, and said to herself that she didn’t mind a bit.
“You said I might ask anything I liked,” she found herself saying. “What
is your special line of crime?”
“Well, specifically, I don’t know just how they would define me. I
am not quite a confidence-man, because nobody ever reposes an atom of
confidence in me. Mine is a peculiar sort of case. I cannot be said
to deceive any one by my game, and yet, undoubtedly, I come under the
general head of impostors. I make my living by obtaining money under
false pretences.”
The girl was frankly mystified. This sounded so poor and mean that her
instincts fluttered back to the original notion that he was joking.
Sure enough, she could see the laughter latent in his eyes, now that she
looked again.
“You’re just fooling!” she protested, and tugged admonishingly upon his
arm. “Tell me what it is you do, quick!”
“How do you know I do anything?” he demanded. He hugged her arm against
his side, to show what great fun it all was.
“Why shouldn’t I be a gentleman at large? There are such things, you
know.”
She shook her head. “Gentlemen at large don’t read hard at the Museum in
August. I never understood they were much given to reading at any time
of year, for that matter. No, I know you do something. You are in a
profession; I can see that. You are not a doctor; you are too polite and
kind-mannered for that. I thought at first that you were a journalist,
but they don’t have cheque-books. Oh, tell me, please!”
He laughed gaily. “Ten thousand guesses and you’d never hit it. My dear
lady, I profess Culdees.”
Vestalia pondered the information with gravity for a little, stealing
sidelong glances to learn if this was more of his fun. “You can see how
ignorant I am,” she remarked at last. “You will recognise presently that
you are wasting your time with me. What _are_ Culdees? Or is it a thing?
I assure you I haven’t the remotest notion.”
“It is a secret,” he assured her, in tones which strove to be serious,
but revealed a jocose note to her ear.
She shook his arm gleefully. “As if we could have secrets on our
birthday!” she cried. “Tell me instantly all about Culdees! I insist.”
“But I don’t know anything about them. That is the secret--nobody knows
anything about them. I draw a salary for devoting three weeks each
year to explaining to a class of young men who desire to know nothing
whatever about the Culdees, that if they did wish to learn about them
they couldn’t possibly do it.”
“Are there any more jobs like that, that you know of?” inquired the
girl. “It would just suit me.” Then she spoke less flippantly. “I’m
afraid you’ve already discovered how shallow and ill-informed I am. You
do not think it is worth while to talk seriously with me!”
He seemed much affected by her rebuke. “My dear lady----” he began, in
earnest disclaimer.
“No; what I mean is--” she interrupted him--pleased by his show of
contrition, but even more interested in the flow of her own ideas, and
the sound of her own voice, which had taken on musical intonations,
and delicately-measured cadences since breakfast that were novel to
her delighted hearing--“what I mean is, men do not have any real
intellectual respect for women; they do not think of them in their
deep-down thoughts as their mental equals; they still regard them, as
their ancestors did thousands of years ago, as mere toys, playthings,
creatures to pat on the cheek and talk pleasant nonsense to, when there
is nothing better to do. And the worst of it is that so many women--a
large majority--are contented with this, and aspire to nothing higher,
and they set the rules for the rest; and hence young women who _have_
ambitions, and do desire to make themselves the equals of men, and set
up high ideals of intellectual life, they--they find themselves--find
themselves----”
“Find themselves being regarded with much very genuine liking and
friendship by those to whom they are good enough to give their company,”
Mosscrop finished the sentence for her. He smiled to himself as he
pressed her arm still more closely. The girl was not accustomed to
drink, and the Capri and maraschino had gone to her tongue. He was
pleasantly conscious of their influences himself, and upon second
thought he liked his companion all the more for the innocent
fearlessness with which she had followed his example. The charm of the
whole experience strengthened its hold upon him. He looked down with
tenderness upon her. “Yes, very genuine friendship--and gratitude,” he
reiterated, with ardour in his low voice.
She did not conceal the enjoyment she had in both look and tone.
“The idea of _real_ companionship is so precious in my eyes,” she
murmured--“a true communion of minds. There is nothing else in life
worth living for. Do you think there can be any _real_ friendship
without genuine intellectual respect?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t lay too much stress on that myself,” he answered,
lightly. “I find that the fellows I really like the most--the men that
I take the most solid comfort in putting in time with--are tremendous
duffers from any intellectual point of view, but of course”--he found
himself hastily adding--“that is among _men_. I have never known
anything at all about women friends--that is, of what one may honestly
call friends. But I am learning fast. I have reached the point of
forming an ideal: she must be tall, with her hat just brushing above my
collar. She must have the most wonderful pale yellow hair in the world,
and the prettiest face, and new French boots--and----”
“You don’t care in the least what kind of a mind she has,” put in
Vestalia, dolefully.
“Ah, you didn’t let me finish. She will have a spirit brave and yet
tender, a mind broad and capable yet without arrogance, a temperament
attuning itself to each passing mood, sunny, shadowed, merry, pensive,
adventurous, timid--all as full of sweet little turns and twists and
unexpected things in general as an April day. I don’t want her learned:
I should hate her to be logical. I like her just as she is: I wouldn’t
have her changed for the world.”
In details the definition perhaps left something to be desired. But
its form of presentation brought a flush of satisfaction to Ves-talia’s
cheek. She nestled closer still against his shoulder for a dozen paces
or so, and when she drew away then, let him feel that it was because
they were at Oxford Street, and for no other reason.
“Oh, the beautiful day!” was all she said.
They turned to the right, and sauntered aimlessly along down the broad
pavement, pausing now and again to glance over some tradesman’s display,
then drifting onward again, close together. Before a bookseller’s window
at a corner they made a more considerable halt. Mosscrop scanned the
rows of titles minutely, talking as he did so. Thus between comments
on the volumes they looked at, and idle remarks on subjects which
these suggested, she picked up this further account of her new friend’s
affairs.
“I told you I was a Scotchman,” he said. “I was the son of a factor, a
sort of steward over a biggish estate, and I never did anything but go
to school from the earliest moment I can remember. It is as if I was
born in a class-room, and cradled on a blackboard. It is a terrible land
for that; tuition broods over it like a pestilence. Their idea is to
make of each child’s brain a sort of intellectual haggis; the more
different kinds of stuff there are in it, the greater the fame of the
teacher and the pride of the parents. I shudder now when I think how
much I knew at the age of twelve. As for my eighteenth year, when I took
the Strathbogie exhibition, Confucius, John Knox, and Lord Bacon rolled
in one would have been frightened of me. My information was appalling.
My mother died from sheer excess of astonishment at having given birth
to such a prodigy. My father took to drink. The magnificence of my
attainments not only threw him off his balance--it debauched the entire
district. It is the law of history, you know, that communities and
nations progress to a certain point, achieve some crowning deed in a
golden age of splendid productiveness, and then wither and go off to
seed. Well, my parish, having produced me, reached its climax. Industry
flagged, enterprise died down; the very land ceased to grow as much corn
to the acre as formerly. The people could do nothing but congregate at
the taverns and discuss with bated breath my meteoric progress across
the academic heavens. Oh, I was a most remarkable young man!
“It happened that there was also a remarkable old man in my
neighbourhood. He came from nobody in particular, and went away young.
People had long since forgotten that there had been such a lad, when one
day he returned to us, well along in years, and infamously rich. I don’t
mean that he had come wrongfully by his money. God knows how he got it;
the story ran that it had something to do with smoked fish. Whatever its
source, his wealth was wanton, preposterous, criminal in its dimensions.
He had no kith or kin remaining to him. Of course we knew he would build
and endow an educational establishment. All rich old Scotchmen do that,
as an ordinary matter. They have reared for us such myriads of brand-new
colleges and seminaries on every hillside that I marvel even the rabbits
and pheasants can escape learning to spell. There are logarithms in the
very atmosphere.
“But this old man was not to be put off with a mere academy. He piled up
a veritable castle of instruction, a first-class fortress of learning.
And he had an idea of something which should be unique among all the
schools of the world. It was all his own idea. Even in Scotland it
had not occurred to anyone else. You must know that in early Scotch
ecclesiastical history, say from the eighth to the twelfth centuries,
there are occasional mentions of some bounders called Culdees, who seem
to have run a little sacerdotal show of their own, something between
hermits and canons-regular--it is absolutely impossible now to make out
just what they were. But this extraordinary old man was quite clear in
his mind about them. He had reasoned it all out for himself. He said
that ‘Culdees’ was, of course, a mere popular corruption of ‘Chaldees.’
He loved to argue this with all comers, and he did so,--my word for
it, he did! How nobody in Scotland ever agrees with any view or opinion
advanced by any other person, but the art of disagreeing has been
reduced, by ages of use, to a delicately-modulated system. Everybody
disputed his ridiculous notion of the ‘Chaldees’--they would have fought
it just as stoutly if it had been a wise one--but he was a very rich
man, and he had benevolent intentions toward the district, and so
they ‘roared him gently as any sucking dove.’ They couldn’t admit his
contention, oh no, but they let him feel that they were thinking about
it, that it had made an impression on their minds, that in due time they
might see it differently.
“The upshot was that the old fool established a Culdee Chair in the
faculty of his new college, and made it worth more money than any other
professorship of the lot. The celebrity of my performances at school
was fresh then, and reached his ears. He gave the billet to me, and
confirmed it to me in his will when he died, a year later--and that is
all.”
“And you actually only work three weeks a year? And get paid a whole
year’s salary for that?”
Vestalia regarded him with astonishment, as she put the question.
They had strolled meanwhile down the great thoroughfare, crossed it, and
passed into a narrower lateral by-way.
“It is hardly even three full weeks’ work,” he replied. “There is
nothing to do in the way of fresh discovery. Reeves and Skene and other
fellows have gleaned the last spear of straw in the stubble. I do go
through the form of getting up some lectures each Autumn, but it is
really such dreadful humbug that I’m ashamed to look the students in the
face, let alone my fellow-professors. Fortunately, most of the latter
are clergymen, and that makes it a little easier. They know that they
are as big frauds as I am, in their own line of goods, and so we say
nothing about it.”
“What struck me,” she began, hesitatingly, “you spoke rather--what I
mean is, you don’t appear to be very grateful to the old gentleman who
arranged all this for you--and to me it seems the most wonderful thing I
ever heard of. I should thank his memory on my bended knees every day of
my life if _I_ were the Professor of Culdees. I couldn’t find it in my
heart to poke fun at him; I should think of him and revere him as my
benefactor, _always!_”
“Hm--m!” said Mosscrop. “I’m not sure I don’t wish he’d never been born,
or had choked on a bone of one of his own damned Finnan baddies, before
ever he came back to us!”
The ring in his voice, like a surly rattling of chains, brought back to
her vividly the scene of his despondency at the restaurant.
She made haste to lay her hand upon his arm.
“Oh, do you see where we are?” she cried, vivaciously, snatching at the
chance of diversion.
Sure enough, a section of the Museum’s stately front lay before them,
filling to topheaviness the perspective of the small street. They
had wandered instinctively toward this pre-natal rendezvous of their
friendship. Their eyes softened now as they looked at the grey, pillared
block of masonry stretching across the end of their by-way.
“It draws us like a magnet,” said Moss-crop. “Come, what do you say?
Shall we go in for an hour, and wander about as if we were nice rural
people come up to London to see the sights? I should like to myself.”
“The dear old place!” sighed Vestalia, with mellow tones.