AN OUTCAST.
The dark man’s knowledge of the restaurant was evidently as accurate
as his acquaintance with the locality of the switch which would plunge
it in darkness. How he piloted them Magdalen could not tell, but in a
breathless instant she found herself in a back street. Behind them she
saw the lights flash up in Krug’s windows.
“Call a hansom,” she said, for to walk might be to come straight on the
man, who by this time was sure to have been put out. “Oh, I haven’t
thanked you! I can’t. What made you do it?”
The man whistled for a cab before he answered her, and then
lied--scrupulously.
“I’ve seen rows here before,” with a shrug. “I fancy you haven’t.” He
could not tell the girl that what he had done was simply for what he
had seen in her great eyes--for the pride and shame and anger in them.
“We never were here before!” she cried sharply. “We were lonely,
we’d”--with truth--“no cook, so we came out to dinner. My sister was
tired, and we thought Krug’s would do. How dare they let in men like
that?” Even in the dim street he could see the dark fire in her glance.
“He was coming straight for us, and I never saw him in my life.”
“He was ‘running amuck,’” he coolly remarked. “Suppose we walk on to
meet a cab!”
He had no desire to be discovered on the back steps by an outraged
proprietor. Half-a-dozen people must have seen who put out the lights.
Dolly, hanging heavily on Magdalen’s arms, had never opened her mouth.
The girl gave her an impatient shake.
“Come,” she said, “and do thank the man, Doll! If it hadn’t been for
him we should have been in the papers; say something civil.”
But Dolly was past speaking. Limp and lifeless, she slipped through
Magdalen’s arm to the pavement. The girl stooped and lifted her like a
child.
“She’s fainted,” she said. “She was frightened to death. Where’s that
hansom?”
“Here,” as one drew up beside the curb. “Please let me take her. You
can’t manage it,” taking her words for gospel.
Dolly had had her back to him in the restaurant; he had no idea it
was her name the man was bawling, though he might have put two and
two together if he had seen her face. But Magdalen turned an abrupt
shoulder as he would have taken Dolly from her.
“I can carry her,” she said with a queer feeling that she had been
carrying Dolly all the time they had been together, and would have to
carry her as long as they lived. The man stepped back quietly as she
lifted the other woman into the hansom. He knew it was all she could
do, yet she managed to look as if it were effortless. He had never
thought a girl could be so strong. But, for all her strength she was
panting as she turned to him and held out a slim bare hand.
“Good-night,” she said; “it’s no use trying to thank you, for I can’t.
But if it hadn’t been for you there would have been--oh, I can’t think
of it! But I want you to believe something. I didn’t know that man.
I don’t see why he should have been coming straight for--me!” with a
hesitation so short he did not see it.
“He imagined he knew you. They often do,” almost roughly. “Don’t thank
me; I saw you didn’t want a row, that was all. But if you’ll forgive
me, I’d keep out of restaurants you know nothing about. Worse things
might happen than a man calling across the room to you.”
The girl gave him a sudden glance. If it was full of uneasiness it was
also somewhat threatening.
“It was not my name he called,” she said slowly, as if she were
thinking between each word. “My name is Magdalen.”
Before he could answer she had slipped into the hansom, said to the
driver something he did not catch and was gone. Her benefactor was left
on the curbstone, with the vanishing cab the only object in view.
“Magdalen!” he thought, remembering the wonderful white and blackness
of the girl, her strange, rusty hair. “Well, it’s no concern of mine,
for I’ll never lay my eyes on her again, but I wish to Heaven she’d
been called something else. For all the faces ever made for tragedy and
passion that’s one of the most striking I have ever seen!”
But the girl was none of his business, of all men’s on earth. For which
reason probably he turned and went back to the restaurant, in spite
of his conviction that all the breakages during the evening would be
put down to the person who had dared to take the law in his own hands
and turn off Harry Krug’s electric light. Of money he had little
enough, or he would never have entered the half-caste place, but it
had suddenly come over him that the black-browed girl who could lift
another woman like a feather and make a man who never acted on impulse
play the fool to get her out of a tight place could also forget her
unpaid-for-dinner. Really forget, or he would never have stirred a peg
for her in spite of Krug’s long arm.
And so it happened that a tall man, with a cool and guiltless
countenance, appeared to the head-waiter in the now calm dining-room
and paid “Magdalen’s” bill; also to his own surprise was caught and
thanked by the proprietor for his evil action.
“In the dark he was removed,” said Krug gaily. “Next minute lights
and--as you see! All compose themselves. You save me, sir, much noise,
also police. Have at least a Benedictine?”
His benefactor was almost too surprised to decline, but he did and got
out; to stand on the pavement outside with a grim hand in his pocket.
He had one penny.
Yesterday his prospects had been gorgeous, even from his point of view;
to-night----
“By George, I’d forgotten!” he said with a blank face enough. “Well,
my dinner’s paid for, and I’ve often despised breakfast. I suppose the
governor”--but his eyes hardened.
After to-day he had no desire to apply to his father for breakfast or
anything else. With a whistle that was not gay this new pauper pursued
his way past his club. That his subscription was unpaid had been quite
unimportant yesterday; to-night he had no desire to go into a place
where next week he would be posted. Besides, for all he knew, the thing
might be common gossip, and a pitying look would make him wish to kick
his best friend.
It was the melodrama of the thing that annoyed him; next week all the
papers would have “Curious Case in High Life. Great Sensation.” And the
papers, thank God! would not begin to know how curious the case might
have been if it were known. In a black humor he made his way to the
uncomfortable rooms he had called home since yesterday, when he had
dashed out of his father’s house for the last time. And there he sat
down and reviewed the situation.
Assets--one penny and a large wardrobe. Occupation--none. Former
employment--waiting for dead men’s shoes. Prospects--_nil_.
His glance fell on a book lying open on the table, as it had fallen
from a hastily unpacked portmanteau. And his excellent eyesight was no
pleasure to him as it marked a sentence in his brain.
“Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to
mock your own grinning! Quite chopfallen!”
Where indeed? The man shut the book quietly.
“Chopfallen I won’t be,” he said to himself. “After all, I believe I’m
glad: I never liked my father. What does knowing him a little better
matter? And if things turn out as I think they will, I’m done with the
whole brood. To-morrow I’ll set about making my living!”
The last sentence sounded so ludicrous that he laughed alone in the
chilly, untidy bedroom. He who had never been taught to do anything but
spend an allowance, to talk of earning.
With a real yawn he cast his troubles behind him and went to bed. And
the curious thing was that instead of dreaming of his own probable
starvation he only saw in his sleep a strange face, with black eyes and
rusty-iron hair, a face that cried to him for help.
In his dream he thought he turned away laughing.
“The girl’s name,” he said, “is Magdalen!”