The Carstairs abode was a large, dull, ugly villa in a large, dull, ugly
suburb--one of those depressing suburbs that is neither town nor country
but has the disadvantages of both and the advantages of neither. But it
was cheerfulness itself compared with the locality through which
Melian's cab was now slowly jogging. The squalor of the greasy streets;
the dank, thick atmosphere; the hoarse, scarcely human yells and the
incessant rumble and clatter attendant on that sort of locality are too
well known to need any describing.
Leaning back in the mouldy vehicle, she set her mind to go over the
events of the last few hours. Had she been ill advised, hasty--she
asked herself? Their behaviour at the very last had seemed to show they
were not such ill-meaning people. Yet, as she looked back she knew that
relations between them had been getting more and more strained. For
some reason or other Mrs Carstairs had been growing more and more short
in her manner towards her, and now she knew that reason. The old woman
had had her suspicions all along, but the discovery of the climax
brought things to a head. But the whole thing was ludicrous, and all
about a little booby like that--Melian's lip curled as she thus rather
unjustly characterised the distant cause of all the bother.
The drive was long and the cab slow. She had time to let her thoughts
go further back from her present troubles--the future was not a welcome
subject, looked at sitting alone there in that mouldy box on wheels, and
in the dark at that. Her earlier life had been a sufficiently happy
one. She had seen a great deal of the world and developed her artistic
instincts. Then had come losses; and speculations, instead of mending
things, made them worse. Her father was lacking in the business
capacity, while her other parent was under the impression that one pound
sterling was endowed with the purchasing power of three, and acted
consistently upon that conviction. So means dwindled till there was
very little left.
Things had reached this point when one day her father started off on a
railway journey to a place some hours distant. He was mysterious as to
the object of it, but declared that they would none of them be the worse
if it failed, whereas if it succeeded, they would be considerably the
better. He seemed in a hopeful mood, and in fairly good spirits, and
when at the big, dingy terminus, where she was seeing him off, he handed
her a couple of accident insurance tickets, which he had just purchased;
he seemed fairly bubbling over with fun.
"See these?" he had said. "All right. They cost a shilling apiece, and
represent 1,000 pounds apiece if I'm--er--totally smashed up. So, you
see, I'm more valuable to you dead than alive. I used to think it was
the other way about. But take care of them, I've signed them, and all,
so it'd be quite safe. Put them away carefully. Two thousand pounds,
remember."
"I've a great mind to tear them across and throw them on to the line,"
the girl had answered, looking at him with filling eyes and quivering
lips. But he laughed gaily.
"Don't do that, little one. They cover minor injuries too, only those
mean less dibs. You know. So much a leg, so much an arm, so much a
finger--and so on. It's a rum world--and you never can tell. So stick
to those tickets till I come back. Now, good-bye, my darling little
one. Here, let go--the train's moving, by George!"
She was very nearly tightening her hold, so that it would be physically
impossible for him to free himself until the train had gone, but she did
not. With eyes blinded with tears she waved to him from the platform as
he leaned half out of the window watching to see the last of her, and he
was gone. Yet he would be back the day after to-morrow at the latest.
She had often seen him off on such journeys before.
"I _am_ a little fool," she said to herself as she walked away.
About two hours later, when in the middle of its longest non-stop run,
Marston Seward fell from the train.
There were headlines in the evening paper posters, but somehow or other
Melian did not notice these. It was not until the next day, when they
opened their morning paper, that the tragedy rose up and hit them
between the eyes--name, description, everything, for by this time
identification had been easily obtained. Melian hardly knew how she
lived through that stunning blow--perhaps because it was a stunning one.
But the shock was too much for her mother--the shock only, for there
was little if any affection between her and the dead man. Brain fever
supervened and she died.
Her illness made an alarming inroad into the scanty resources remaining
to them. Hard material necessities had to be met. Hitherto the girl
had shrunk with shuddering horror from turning to account those fatal
insurance tickets, the price of her father's blood. She could not claim
it. Oh God! the thought of it? But she might have spared herself any
qualms on this head. The railway company flatly and uncompromisingly
repudiated all liability. The insurance was against _accident_ not
suicide. They were in a position to prove, and to prove indisputably
that for any one to have fallen from the particular coach of which
Seward was an occupant, and that by accident, was a sheer impossibility.
The door handles were all in good order; if anything, rather stiff to
turn than otherwise. They could prove too, that the said door handles
were properly secured at the last station the train had passed through.
And worst of all, they were in a position to produce a platform
inspector who had passed the pair at the moment of the utterance of
those fatal words: "You see, I'm more valuable to you dead than alive.
I used to think it was the other way about." The official had heard the
words distinctly, and after the tragedy had himself voluntarily come
forward with the information. At the time they had struck him as
uttered jokingly, but in the light of the subsequent event they took on
a far different aspect. In short, Seward had bungled the whole
business. He died as he had lived, and his last act was one of
perfectly inexcusable bungle. "More valuable to you dead than alive,"
had been his words, and in the result his daughter was left alone in the
world, as nearly as possible penniless.
Alone! Yes--for she had no relations, except one, away in India, and
for certain reasons the last person on earth to whom she would apply
under any circumstances whatever. She had no real friends, only
acquaintances who could be of no great service to her, but eventually,
thanks to the inherent spirit and pluck which buoyed her up, she managed
to find means of supporting herself. And all this had befallen rather
more than two years previously to when we first see her, being, more or
less politely, shown the door at the Villa Carstairs.
Now, shut up in the mouldy darkness of the slow, Jolting vehicle, it all
came back to her again, and she had to hurriedly brush away the warm
tears which the recollection--always vivid--had evoked, as the cab drew
up with a jolt at her friend's lodgings. But she met with what she most
needed, a cordial welcome. Even the cabman, a rubicund old fellow with
a bulbous nose and a rumbling voice, forebore to claim so much as a
penny over his legal fare when he caught a full view of her face under
the street lamp, and a gratuity of threepence, smilingly tendered, was
met by a hearty "Thankee kindly, missie."
Cumnor Lodge, the Carstairs villa, though dull and heavy outside, within
was characterised by a considerable degree of solid comfort. But this
narrow hallway and the nondescript combination of smells of
sink-cum-cabbage, with a slatternly landlady and a still more slatternly
servant, waiting to give a hand upstairs with the luggage as well as to
satisfy a natural curiosity as to what the visitor would be like, struck
her with a very real chill. Would it be her lot to inhabit such a
place, was the thought that instinctively shot through her mind? But
the impression was partly neutralised when she found herself within her
friend's tiny but snug sitting-room, with its bright fire, and hissing
kettle, and tea and its appurtenances all so dear to the feminine eye.
Violet Clinock was a bright, pleasing type of girl, with dark hair, and
honest grey eyes, not exactly pretty, but rather near being so. But
with all her natural cheerfulness, there was intertwined an impression
of one who was perfectly well able to take care of herself. In fact she
rather prided herself upon this, and upon being an independent bachelor
girl who could always make her own way. She was a country parson's
daughter--one of many--under which circumstances she flattered herself
she had done the right thing in striking out on her own.
"This shop's rather dingy in the daytime, dear," she explained as the
two were seated comfortably in the really cosy little room, and the tea
and muffins and other things dear to the feminine appetite were in full
force. "But I'm not much here in the daytime, and at night, once I get
inside it doesn't matter. The main thing is it's cheap--very. Not
nasty either, for I do every mortal thing for myself. Heaven help me if
I left it to anybody else. Well, I've been saving up, with an eye to
running a typing shop on my own. It isn't my ambition to remain for
ever in a position to take orders from other people, I can tell you.
Well, and why did you leave your last crowd? Had a row?"
"Sort of. It takes two to make a row, and there wasn't much of that on
my side," answered Melian. "I just let the old woman talk, but she
didn't get what she wanted. I got the key of the street instead--so,
here I am. By the way," she added, waxing grave. "I don't know where
I'm going to be. That's a pair of shoes of another pattern."
"Oh, with all your high accomplishments," laughed the other. "Why any
one would jump at you."
"Would they? They're welcome to skip, then. But even `high
accomplishments' are no good without references."
"Without references? But you can get--Oh, I see. The old cat won't
give you any."
Melian nodded.
"The beastly old cat!" pronounced Violet. "She ought to be compelled
to."
"Well, she can't be, and that's all I've got to do with it. So there
you are."
"Let's see. You're no good at our job, are you, Melian?" said the
other, drumming the tips of her fingers together meditatively.
"Unfortunately I've never learned it."
"That's a pity." In her romantic little soul she was beginning to weave
a web of destiny for Melian, and the meshes thereof were glittering. A
secretarial post in some flourishing office, and if her beautiful friend
did not promptly enslave an opulent junior partner, why then it was her
own fault. But then, unfortunately, her said "beautiful friend" had
never learned typing.
They chatted on, about everything and nothing, and bedtime came.
"I turn in early," explained Violet, "because I have to turn out early,
and get to my job. You'll have to turn in with me, dear, to-night at
any rate. To-morrow, if you want a room to yourself, I dare say Mrs
Seals can fix you up. But they're all rather kennels I'm afraid. I've
got the pick of the basket."
"Don't you worry about me, Violet. It's something to have some one to
come to when you get the key of the street door given you, I can tell
you," answered Melian, seriously. And then they went to bed and talked
each other to sleep.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There followed then, sad, disappointing, heart weary days for poor
Melian. She answered advertisements in person, and by letter. She went
to all sorts of places, in and around London, in course of such answers.
Sometimes she was sympathetically received, twice she was insulted, but
that was where she found the dominant male had been advertiser under
cover of what looked like one of her own sex. But in the genuine cases
disappointment awaited--and but that she was free from vanity or
self-consciousness she might easily have read the real nature of the
verdict--"Far too pretty."
Oh, the weariness of those daily tramps, and bus and tram journeys,
through more or less hideous, drab, depressing streets in the dull,
deadly depressing winter murk invariably characteristic of London during
the young end of the year! Oh, the weight of it upon the mind, as she
realised, instinctively, that it was not a case of try again, but that
for some reason or other her case seemed utterly hopeless. She put it
to her friend. But the latter, though she shrewdly suspected the
reason, shrank from saying so.
Of her, Melian saw little or nothing during the daytime, Violet Clinock
was thorough, and stuck to her job, with an eye to material improvement.
But in the evening they would foregather, and the daily tale of worn
out disappointment would unfold itself, and after the wretched,
soul-wearying effort of the day Melian could not but realise the warmth
and comfort and companionship which it ended up with; and this in a
measure heartened her for the next.
She had taken a small bedroom at the top of the squalid house--a mere
attic, but the two girls "chummed" together for the rest of their
arrangements. But a fortnight went by, then three weeks, and still with
the same result. Melian Seward was just where she was at the time of
leaving Cumnor Lodge. There seemed to be no room in the world for her.
Her slender savings, in spite of every possible economy, were dwindling.
When they had done dwindling--what then?
And then the result of the cold, dank, and often wet, questings around
after a means of livelihood, combined with lowness of spirits, and a
sorely disturbed mind, came. She was laid low with a bad bout of
influenza. The hydra-headed fiend was hard on the ramp, seeking whom he
might devour, and finding it too in plenty. And among his countless
victims was Melian Mervyn Seward.
And she could not afford to be ill; for is not illness a luxury for the
rich?
But through it all her friend tended her with wholehearted and loyal
camaraderie. Of course she suggested a doctor.
"A doctor? Heavens, Violet! I can't afford such luxuries," Melian
burst forth fiercely. "The only thing I can afford is to die--and the
sooner the better." And then she became delirious, and imagined she was
standing on the platform of the gloomy, dingy terminus, amid its
vibration of hissing, shrieking engines, discussing those hateful,
fateful railway insurance tickets with her dead father. But whether she
would have a doctor or not, Violet was determined she should, and sent
for one accordingly.
He, on arrival, looked grave.
"Has she any relations, Miss Clinock?"
"Oh, good Heavens! You don't say it means that?" And the business girl
was startled for the moment out of her normal take-things-as-they-come
attitude.
"No, no, no. But--they ought to know. She's in a very low state, I'm
bound to inform you. There's something on her mind--something hard and
heavy on her mind--and that's all against her--all against everything."
"Lord! I wish I knew what to do. But she's very `close.' Between
ourselves, doctor--of course, strictly between ourselves--" The other
nodded. "I believe she has one or two. But she must have quarrelled
with them, or they with her, for if ever I got on to the subject she
takes me up mighty sharp, I can tell you. And I don't believe in
forcing people's confidences or prying into their affairs."
"No, no. Of--course not. Still, do all you can in that direction. You
may find opportunities, you know--or make them. Good-evening, I am very
busy just now, there's a record lot of `flu' about, as I dare say you
know. I'll look round in the morning."