THE QUEST OF THE VEILED WOMAN
_To the benevolent and pitiful. Fifty pounds will save a wretched wife
and mother from ruin and disgrace. Help implored: by letter or
personal interview. Address, Suppliant_, 050271, _Daily Post._
No one instituting a philanthropic mission could have been less
adequately equipped for it in one way than Gilead himself. Beginning
by presuming in all others an integrity as pure as his own, he had
from the first to put force upon his nature to cultivate that
suspicion of motive, that moral self-guardedness, which are the first
essentials of practical benevolence. He had, in short, in recognizing
the eternal human duplicities, to learn to distinguish finely between
cant and sincerity; and he was not always successful. Practice and
experience did much for him; yet there were occasions still when guile
found the opportunity to encounter him triumphantly on his emotional
side.
Such was the case in the affair which we have entitled as above--a
quest which he could never recall without humiliation, and the memory
of which made him feel sore for years afterwards. But it is true that
he was hit, in its connection, on quite another than the humanitarian
side; and it was that wound, no doubt, which most rankled.
He himself saw and interviewed ‘Suppliant’ during the temporary, and
unfortunate, absence of Miss Halifax, who, by his desire, had
undertaken the case. He entrusted many such to her now, especially
where feminine appeals were concerned. It seems slanderous to apply so
shrewd a term to those soft and seductive orbs, but indeed the
amanuensis had a ‘lynx eye’ for the shams and hypocrisies of her own
sex. Without doubt her native perspicacity had saved her employer from
the clutches of many a plausible impostor miscalled of the weaker
vessel.
‘Suppliant’--she introduced herself hurriedly, diffidently by the
name--entered upon Gilead in one of the unguarded moments. He was
impressed by her appearance at once; it was all that it should have
been under the circumstances--quiet and unaffected, though with a
suggestion of strong repressed emotion in the thickly-veiled face. She
seemed a young woman, she was certainly a graceful and slender, as her
sober frock betrayed. It was of black, and just sufficiently faded to
confess long usage. There was a heavy trimming of beads at the skirt
hem, which weighed down its folds prettily about the tips of a couple
of little shoes, worn but shapely. The long motor veil which embraced
her hat and neck was of a heliotrope colour, not so diaphanous as to
reveal, yet enough to suggest the entreaty of two large plaintive
eyes.
But the attractive, the moving thing about her was her voice--so soft,
so musical, that, before she had half uttered her prayer, it was
granted.
Gilead, as he placed a chair for the visitor, apologized in his
courteous way.
“I am so sorry. The lady, Miss Halifax, who has made your case her
interest, is unhappily engaged elsewhere for the moment. If you would
prefer to await her return--”
The visitor made a little distressed movement.
“I did not know,” she said, hesitating--there was that low huskiness
in her voice which seems to caress--“I did not know. Since receiving
your letter--I heard, I have been told--are you not Mr Balm?”
“Yes, I am Mr Balm.”
“O, I don’t know what to do!” she whispered. “It is so urgent, and
they say about you--”
“Nothing unflattering, I trust,” said Gilead smiling, seeing that she
paused for an expression.
“O, no, no!” answered the visitor. “But only that one appealing to
you--to you above all--may expect--”
Again she stopped. “Reason, I hope,” said Gilead gently. “I try to
practise it. Sympathy and help, unless given in reason, are likely to
defeat their own objects, are they not?”
“Yes,” said the visitor forlornly; and she seemed to droop a little.
“Does that discourage you?” asked the young man.
She raised her head.
“Is it in reason,” she said, “to expect one, however merciful, however
pitiful, to save another from the just consequences of his own
misdeeds?”
“That depends,” said Gilead, “whether or not mercy to the sinner
entails a wrong to the sinned against.”
She sighed, and whispered: “I do not know--I do not know. If you will
only tell me?”
“You have been informed of us, it seems,” said Gilead. “You will have
learnt, in that case, of the inviolately confidential nature of our
mission, and of the necessity it is under of demanding truth for its
first desideratum. You will answer my questions or not as you please;
but you must not be offended when I tell you that it is impossible for
us to move in any matter unless in the clear light of understanding.
Am I to ask, then?”
“O, if you will!” she murmured.
“Very well,” said Gilead--“your name?”
“It is--Nightingale; Mrs Nightingale.”
He bowed his head gravely. “I have your advertisement in mind. I
recall also your allusion to someone’s misdeeds. Was your choice of
the male pronoun accidental or intentional?”
“It was intentional.”
“Am I to know to whom it referred?”
“It referred to my husband.”
He was very concerned for her. She appeared to feel acutely the shame
of her admission.
“I am sorry,” he said, “sincerely sorry to have to cause you this
pain. But the surgical knife, relentless as it seems, is often the
shortest cut to convalescence.”
To his distress she uttered a little wincing cry, as if the very edge
of his metaphor had touched her.
“O! it was that,” she said--“the knife, the necessity, that was the
cause of all.”
He looked at her, pitifully, remorsefully. “I perceive,” he said,
“that I have blundered somehow. Will you not say something that will
put me right with myself?”
“How could you know!” she answered, pressing an agitated hand to her
bosom. “Our Gracie--our one darling! It was to save her, sir--they had
to operate at once; and afterwards--the nursing, the change of air--”
She broke off with a little gasp.
“I understand,” said Gilead. “She was your only child, and her dear
life was at stake. You incurred expenses--am I right?”
She controlled herself with an effort, sitting erect, clasping and
wreathing her hands before her.
“Overwhelming to people in our position,” she answered. “But _he_ said
yes--it was to be--he would find the means, though to secure them he
must sell his soul to destruction. O! I little guessed what fatal
significance lay behind his words. I trusted him; I was in despair;
not until three days ago had I ever dared to question--to face, the
possible truth. And then he himself struck me dumb with it. To save
the little life so dear to us, he had robbed his employer.”
She rose to her feet, seemed to shiver, and dropped back again.
Gilead, in the deepest commiseration, had also risen.
“Command yourself,” he said. “Tell me all. You will not find me an
unsympathetic confidant.”
She appeared to cast a look at him of the most pathetic gratitude.
“I will,” she said--“O, I will! We had been so happy and so
contented--and then the blow--the horror! His position was one of
trust; but indeed, indeed, the temptation was overwhelming. He had
intended, the emergency once past, to move heaven and earth to restore
what he had borrowed--only that. But Fate was always against him. And
now, at last--” she rose again, in uncontrollable
agitation--“to-morrow morning,” she said, “the accountants are to
begin their annual examination of the books, and if before then he has
failed to make good the deficit, we are disgraced and ruined for
ever.”
A brief silence succeeded her agonized cry, during which Gilead
battled with his emotions. It was not so much the anguish, perhaps, as
the heart-moving tone of its utterance which stirred the very bowels,
so to speak, of his official circumspection. He made but a feeble
attempt to assert his independence. This story, on the face of it,
seemed to him one of the most pitifully tragic to which he had ever
listened. That a man should be so cast down and trampled on in the
name of fond humanity appeared to him monstrous. There were some
temptations which it was even irreligious to resist. Was not Nature
one with God?
“Mrs Nightingale,” he said, “I need affect no hesitation in assuring
you that you have my sincerest sympathy in your trouble, and that your
case comes directly within our province. If you will kindly leave me
your address--”
Something in her attitude--some suggestion of hope but half fulfilled,
of resignation setting itself to endure long hours of doubt and fear,
overcame him finally. He turned to his desk, sat down, produced a
cheque-book, and prepared to write.
“No,” he said. “I will not condemn you to it. The sum was fifty
pounds, you say. I will trust you, or never myself again.”
He wrote, rose, and handed a draft to the visitor.
“Take it,” he said--“I have made it payable at the counter--and peace
go with you.”
He thought she was about to fall on her knees to him, and he prevented
her.
“I am sure this confidence will be as sacred to you as it is to me,”
he said. “There is no need to say more, unless it is now to give me
your address.”
She murmured it, sobbing, and he took it down from her lips: “Myrtle
Villa, Garden Lane, Gospel Oak.” And then, with many passionate, half
coherent expressions of gratitude, she left him.
He sat pondering for some little while after she was gone, the glow of
his impulsive action slowly cooling. He would not regret it; yet for
some reason he felt a nervousness in confessing, as would come to be
necessary, its nature to Miss Halifax. He felt quite sure that _she_,
however moved, would have kept the balance of her judgment at the
discriminating poise.
During the afternoon he paid a visit to some famous Auction rooms in
Wellington Street. A notable sale of Japanese colour prints was
advertised, and the precious lots were on show. Gilead’s love for
these things was either a weakness or a fine enthusiasm, according to
the point of view. He was enraptured with the art, and was a ruinous
competitor where he coveted rare examples of it. Still, as yet he was
not so bitten but that he could resist--occasionally--temptation at
what he considered absurdly inflated prices. The final stage of the
disease had not hopelessly overtaken him. This day, very possibly, was
to mark the turning point.
It was certainly a demoralizing display. A St Anthony of a virtuosic
cast would have had a desperate struggle not to succumb to its
seductions. The walls of the big room were bedizened, tapestried with
a very profusion of covetable things, all representing the better or
best periods of the leading schools. Such a sale, such a chance for
the collector, had not yet occurred in London. It was to extend over
five days, and included examples of all the notable artists from
Kiyonobu to Kuniyoshi.
Gilead spent an absorbed hour or so in the room before leaving
instructions as to which delectable _nishiki-ye_ he wished to acquire,
if possible. In this matter he desired to temper cupidity with reason;
and he put force upon himself--or imagined that he did--in deciding
the limits to which he would go. It was no parsimony, of course, which
moved him to this caution. It was a reluctance merely to associate
himself with that form of plutocracy which, in its greediness to
possess at any figure, sets that standard of artificial values which
is the despair of the poor but honest collector. An admirable
principle in itself, though perhaps, from the seller’s point of view,
an admirably one-sided. Nevertheless, a humorist might have observed
that the young gentleman was careful, in the case of those prints
which he particularly wanted for himself, to leave bids morally
calculated to beat any possible competitor out of the field. It seemed
the more perverse of him therefore to exhibit an obstinately inelastic
spirit before perhaps the finest example of a Haronobu in the room.
It was an exquisite thing, harmonious in tone and composition, perfect
in registration, as flawless a specimen of artistic and technical work
as was ever produced by this incomparable artist. It represented a
young girl being carried on the shoulder of a man to a temple for the
meyamairi or naming ceremony, attendants following; and in condition
and treatment and the soft intricacies of its colour scheme it fairly
baffled criticism.
“There, sir! What do you think of that?”
It was Mr Desmund who spoke, art expert and valuer to a well-known
firm of print and book sellers. He had accompanied Gilead round the
room, booking his bids--an unwearying resourceful man, with a drooping
light moustache, a bright complexion, and pale blue eyes, tired but
interested. He wore a loose blue serge suit with a bright tie; his
shoulders were bent a trifle beneath their load of specialised
knowledge; he was a busy soul, but never too busy for enthusiasm in
the right directions or to the right people. What Mr Desmund did not
know about Japanese art was not, in the vernacular, worth the knowing.
“There, sir!” he said, confident of the exclamation of delight that
was to follow.
It came, but in tempered form.
“Good,” said Gilead. “It is a fine example.”
He was more gratified with the print than he thought it politic to
confess.
“Good!” said Mr Desmund. “There’s not another to better, or equal it,
in Europe. Look at that background; look at that gauffrage. You should
secure it, Mr Balm. You won’t get such an opportunity again.”
“When does it occur for sale?”
“On the first day, sir.”
“That’s to-morrow?”
“Yes, to-morrow.”
“What will it fetch--give me an idea?”
“Fifty pounds--not a penny less.”
“O! that’s absurd.”
The expert tapped his note-book.
“I’ve a commission myself, sir, for forty.”
Gilead hummed and ha’d a little.
“I think it’s preposterous; it’s against all my principles; but--well,
I’ll go to forty-five.”
“You’d better leave me a margin--take my advice.”
“No.”
“A pound or two.”
“Not a copper farthing.”
“You’ll lose it.”
“Very well; but I don’t believe I shall.”
“Not a shilling over forty-five pounds, then, Mr Balm?”
“Not a shilling.”
He fancied the thing was a bluff; and in that he wronged both the
expert and himself. He really coveted the print grievously; but he
hardly doubted that he was safe to secure it. Nevertheless, as time
went on, fears began to assail him. Supposing after all, that Desmund
were right in his surmise, and that he should come to be outbidden? It
would be ridiculous--an insane exaggeration of values, but--
No one who has not lusted after a particular print, book, carving, or
any rare and costly work of art, nor felt in himself the processes of
that mania which, beginning in a studiously qualified desire for the
object, mounts swiftly through growing apprehensions of rival desires
to an unqualified and reckless passion to secure it, can possibly
enter into his feelings. Those grew acute with the hours; and, as the
following morning wore on, neighboured on hysteria. Still he fought
for sanity, held himself tight, and when the time came, obliged
himself to face the dreary ordeal of lunch. In the midst, the Haronobu
suddenly rose before him, stupendous, irresistible, and blocked all
his field of moral vision. He must have it, he decided, at any price.
He glanced at the clock, rose, snatched his hat, and, palpitating all
through, rushed for the Auction room. It was packed, and he could
barely gain the door. As he did so, he heard the voice of the
auctioneer proclaiming Lot 40--but one step, and that the wrong way,
removed from the object of his desire. The immortal print was that
moment sold. Whether for rapture or despair his fate was cast.
With that recognition of the inevitable, reason, if only temporary,
returned to him, and he to his office. He thought his brief dementia
over, and contented himself with despatching a telegram to the expert,
asking if he had been so fortunate as to acquire for him the print in
question. The answer--it only arrived after an unconscionable
interval--completely prostrated him.
“_Regret sold at fifty._”
The world was darkened; heaven eclipsed; for the moment life itself
seemed hardly worth living. The virtuoso will understand better than
I can explain.
Gilead, in a state of profound depression, sought out Mr Desmund the
next morning.
“You were right,” he said, “and I was a fool.” (I think he emphasised
it)
It comforted him only partially to find that every other one of his
bids had been successful. He received the parcel in a gloomy silence.
His collection, minus the Haronobu, seemed little better than trash
and vanity.
“Who got it--do you know?” he asked drearily.
Mr Desmund shook his head. “It was bought a broker, sir. I daresay I
can find out.”
“No,” said Gilead. “No. After all it would only aggravate the sore.”
The sore, however, healed, or nearly, in the process of time. Japanese
prints were really only the recreation of a mind devoted to the
interests of humanity.
One day, weeks later, Gilead had occasion to motor with a friend to
the city. It was a dusty morning, and the two wore goggles. At the
Bank of England the car drew up by the kerb while the friend entered
the building. He was gone so long that Gilead had ample time to study
the endless types of humanity that drifted beside him. They were all
intent on business and money-making, and he wondered if there was one
in all the confused throng capable of properly appreciating his
feelings over his lost Haronobu.
While he gazed, speculative, philosophic and lazy, a figure, two
figures, standing by the end of Bartholomew-lane caught and fixed his
attention. They were so close by that he fancied they must have that
moment emerged, or he would have noticed them sooner. One was of a
woman, slender, graceful, dressed in faded black and closely veiled,
the other of a little girl, poorly but neatly clad and of a fairy
prettiness.
He stirred, oddly smitten with some memory; and in the same instant
the woman thrust out a white hand, dumbly proffering to a passer-by a
little basketful of matches, and he perceived, with a certain
consciousness of shock, that she was begging.
Presently he lay back again and watched the two. They stood all the
time he was there at the street-corner, and during that brief space he
observed that they reaped quite a small harvest in silver and copper.
Mostly people gave, and demanded nothing in return. Now and then one
would wisely insist on goods for his money. Men, young glossy cits and
sober fathers of families, were moved obviously by the charm of the
little face raised to them--and also, it seemed, by something else.
Gilead was not long in discovering what that something was. The veiled
woman, in addition to the mystery encompassing her, had, whether
pleading or returning thanks, the softest, the most musical voice it
was possible to imagine.
He looked down at her feet; the black skirt, weighted with a heavy
bead trimming, dropped prettily about them. Only the veil was
different. Yet he could not doubt for a moment that he saw before him
Mrs Nightingale, the pitiful suppliant of Gospel Oak.
Had it, then, for all his timely help, come to this, and was she
driven to beg upon the streets, her little Gracie the lure to public
charity? He was perplexed, vaguely dissatisfied, at a loss how to act,
when he suddenly perceived a friend of his coming round the corner
from Throgmorton Street. The young fellow paused a moment to slip a
sixpence into the child’s hand before he came on. As he approached,
Gilead accosted him, and, after greetings and a commonplace or two,
remarked pleasantly:--
“That was mistaken charity, you know, Robson. You should have insisted
on your matchbox in exchange.”
The other stared a moment, gathered, and laughed.
“O, that!” he said. “It’s one’s instinctive homage, I suppose, to a
lovely face and a soft voice--the two best things in nature.”
“I daresay. And doesn’t she know and trade on it, too.”
“Well, if you put it that way, to quite a respectable tune, I should
say. The two are familiar figures at that corner--have been for some
time. They catch the drift there, you see, from a dozen golden ways.
It’s a good pitch.”
“So I should think. Is anything known about them?”
“Not that I’m aware. It’s the mystery does the business, you see.
They’re there as regular as clockwork from ten to four, and then they
go. I’ve noticed them a dozen times, and they always move off on the
stroke.”
Gilead, after parting with the young gentleman, grew so restless over
the non-reappearance of his other friend, that in the end he left a
message for him with the chauffeur, and, stopping a taxicab, drove
back to the office. Arrived there, he instantly despatched in the same
vehicle a member of his staff to Gospel Oak, with directions to the
man to make exhaustive enquiries. He was already quite prepared for
the result, and expressed no surprise when informed that there was no
such place in Gospel Oak as Garden Lane, and consequently no Myrtle
Villa, and, by inference, no Mrs Nightingale. Her ‘complaint,’ it was
evident, dated from other and less righteous groves. He prepared, very
stern and quietly wrathful, to act upon that assumption.
Fortunately for his purpose the weather, though it did not yet rain,
was sufficiently threatening to justify a waterproof. He selected one
with a very high turn-up collar, in which he muffled the lower part of
his face. A cap pulled low down over his eyes completed a sort of
disguise which he had no doubt would prove efficient. A quarter to
four that same afternoon saw him posted in Threadneedle Street at a
point whence, from amidst the hurrying throng, he could easily watch
the movements of the woman and child, who were still stationary in
their place at the street corner.
At the first stroke of the hour, punctual to his information, the
woman took the child’s hand in hers and, moving away, became on the
instant one of the unconsidered crowd. Gilead followed, instant but
wary, in pursuit. She led him to the Mansion House Station, where,
standing behind her, he heard her take tickets for Victoria, whither
he journeyed in a neighbouring carriage. Thence, ‘shadowing’ his
quarry, he ran her into an omnibus, to the roof of which he himself
mounted. It took them by the Queen’s Road and Cheyne Walk to the
Albert Bridge and across. He had paid his fare, for security, for the
entire route, and was prepared therefore to descend at once when, at
the corner of Park Road, the woman and child got out. It was raining
by then, and his umbrella afforded him useful cover. The child, as if
by established custom, ran away towards the adjacent slums; the woman
herself walked southward down the Albert Road. At a block of handsome
flats bordering on Battersea Park she turned, and, passing without
stopping through the swing doors, mounted the stairs to the second
floor. Following at her heels as close as he might venture, he came
upon her letting herself in at a certain door with a latchkey; and,
even as he reached the place, the door closed and he was alone.
He let some moments pass while he considered the situation. Wrathful
suspicion still claimed him hotly, yet he was conscious that at
present it amounted to no more, and that it was above all things
necessary for him to behave with circumspection. After a minute of
deliberation, he tapped resolutely with the brass knocker that hung
upon the door. The connoisseur in him observed, as he did so, that the
knocker was good and an antique.
After some little delay the door was opened, or half opened, as if the
person behind it questioned the character of the visitor, and a woman
looked out. She was neat, formal, severe in aspect, suggesting the
housekeeper to a greater mansion. She wore an apron, but no cap. Her
face was narrow, the lips compressed, her bosom flat, and the hair
drawn plainly down her temples.
“Yes?” she said, in a thin harsh voice.
“I wish to see Mrs Nightingale,” said Gilead.
“Who?”
“Mrs Nightingale.”
“She doesn’t live here,” said the woman, and prepared to shut the
door. Gilead, quietly but effectively, prevented her.
“Pardon me. I saw her this moment go in,” he said.
“You are mistaken, sir.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Will you take your foot away, sir, or must I call for some one?”
“You may call,” said Gilead. “I don’t think it would be wise. She may
not be Mrs Nightingale--nothing more likely--and yet fear exposure.”
To his surprise, the woman opened the door wide, beckoned him in and
closed it upon them.
“What are you saying?” she whispered fiercely. Her eyes sparkled in
their gloomy rings. “Why do you speak like that on the public stair?”
“Why do you force me to?” said Gilead.
She stared at him a moment. Then, “Come,” she said, and led the way
into a pretty room beyond.
Its windows faced upon the park; the polished floor was spread with
Eastern rugs; chairs, little tables, what-nots, a bookcase, a dainty
bureau, a daintier corner-cupboard, all of rare old Chippendale and
loaded where they might be with bijoutry, silver, and exquisite scraps
of china, made up the furniture. And on the walls, all framed in
slender white, hung many beautiful specimens of Japanese colour
prints, _among them, in a place of honour, the very Haronobu which
Gilead had coveted_. Looking round and round in amazement, his eyes
suddenly fixed themselves on the prize; and there they remained
riveted, while he endeavoured to take in the stupendous situation.
The truth dawned, grew plain, grew monstrous to him as he gazed. She
had played that trick upon him, had invented that lying story with the
sole purpose of acquiring its possession; and out of his humanity,
his--yes, his damned credulity--he had come to be defrauded and
desolated. He could not doubt it. He pointed at the print speechless.
“Yes,” said the woman; “these things are a fancy--a craze--of my
sister’s--I don’t hold by them myself--and that is her latest. She
values it above everything.”
He turned upon her, goaded to frenzy.
“Your sister!” he cried--“she is your sister? And she values it, does
she? Will you, I wonder, when I tell you that she procured from me by
fraud the money with which to pay for it?”
“I told you,” said the woman, cold and passionless, “that personally I
didn’t hold by them. This one, I know, was beyond our means.”
“Do you know what story she invented to augment those means?”
“No, sir, I don’t; nor do I intend to ask. I take it that you were her
victim in some way. She is a woman of the most resourceful
imagination.”
“You look upon it in that light? Then I presume, of course, that you
are her partner and abettor in the other fraud?”
“What fraud?”
“Why, this,” said Gilead, with a comprehensive, disdainful
gesture--“all the fruits, I am to conclude, of begging at street
corners?”
“Why is that a fraud?” said the woman. “Not merit but natural
qualifications are the key to all success. It is the taking, not the
good person, who gets on in the world. If the public likes to pay toll
to a lovely face, a sweet voice, why should we disappoint it and
starve? We have no other alternative, believe me?”
“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly--“is that hers?”
“No,” answered the woman; “she hires it. We have neither of us been
married, and children as children are hateful to us. I do not think
any man could be got to marry my sister Emile. The face behind her
veil is ravaged--unsightly. She owes no debt of gratitude to man or
God; we neither of us do; they are our enemies. Is that a fraud--the
mystery of her veil? Let him answer for it who wove its meshes. She
had been beautiful once. Only her voice lives and pleads in a dead
land; and with it and through it she obtains these means to the
amelioration of her bitter lot--these little toys and graces which her
soul loves, and to surround herself with which she suffers and wearies
through each livelong day. Call it a fraud if you will. In this
inhuman world our souls have ceased to count with us.”
Sick at heart, Gilead turned to the door.
“Are you going to expose her,” said the woman--“to tear her veil
away?”
“No,” he answered. “I want fresh air, that’s all.”