May 24th.
Something has happened. Something fantastic, inconceivable. I am in a
condition to be surprised at nothing. If a witch on a broomstick rode in
through my open window and lectured me on quaternions, I should accept
her visit as a normal occurrence.
I have spent hours walking up and down this book-lined room, wondering
whether the universe or I were mad. Sometimes I laughed, for the thing
is sheerly ridiculous. Sometimes I cursed at the impertinence of the
thing in happening at all. Once I stumbled over a volume of Muratori
lying on the floor, and I kicked it across the room. Then I took it up,
and wept over the loosened binding.
The question is: What on earth am I to do? Why has Judith chosen this
particular time to shut up her flat and sequester herself in Paris?
Why did my lawyers appoint this particular morning for me to sign their
silly documents? Why did I turn up three hours late? Why did I walk down
the Thames Embankment? And why, oh, why, did I seat myself on a bench in
the gardens below the terrace of the National Liberal Club?
Yesterday was one of the most peaceful and happy days of my existence. I
worked contentedly at my history; I gossiped with Antoinette who came to
demand permission to keep a cat.
“What kind of a cat?” I asked.
“Perhaps Monsieur does not like cats?” she inquired, anxiously.
“The cat was worshipped as a god by the ancient Egyptians,” I remarked.
“But this one, Monsieur,” she said in breathless reassurance, “has only
one eye.”
I would sooner talk to Antoinette than the tutorial staff of Girton. If
she woke up one morning and found she had a mind she would think it a
disease.
In the afternoon I strolled into Regent’s Park and meeting the
McMurray’s nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around whom
seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat, I took him
off to the Zoological Gardens. On the way he told me, with great glee,
that his German governess was in bed with an awful sore throat; that he
wasn’t doing any lessons; that the sheepish hoverer was Milly’s young
man, and that the silly way they went on was enough to make one sick.
When he had fed everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I
drove him to the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents. I
love a couple of hours with a child when it is thoroughly happy and
on its best behaviour. And the enjoyment is enhanced by the feeling of
utter thankfulness that he is not my child, but somebody else’s.
In the evening I read and meditated on the happiness of my lot.
The years of school drudgery have already lost their sharp edge of
remembered definition, and sometimes I wonder whether it is I who lived
through them. I had not a care in the world, not a want that I could not
gratify. I thought of Judith. I thought of Sebastian Pasquale. I
amused myself by seeking a Renaissance type of which he must be the
reincarnation. I fixed upon young Olgiati, one of the assassins of
Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Of the many hundreds of British youths who passed
before my eyes during my slavery, he is the only one who has sought
me out in his manhood. And strange to say we had only a few months
together, during my first year’s apprenticeship to the dismal craft, he
being in the sixth form, and but three or four years younger than I. He
was the maddest, oddest, most diabolical and most unpopular boy in the
school. The staff, to whom the conventional must of necessity be always
the Divine, loathed him. I alone took to the creature. I think now that
my quaint passion for the cinquecento Italian must have had something
to do with my attraction. In externals he is as English as I am, having
been brought up in England by an English mother, but there are thousands
of Hindoos who are more British than he. The McMurrays were telling me
dreadful stories about him this afternoon. Sighing after an obdurate
Viennese dancer, he had lured her coachman into helpless intoxication,
had invested himself in the domestic’s livery, and had driven off with
the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the
town. What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was
the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine did the
following before my own eyes. We were walking down Piccadilly together
one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost,
agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out matches for sale. His
hideous red toes protruded through his boots. “My God, my God!” cried
Pasquale, “I can’t stand this!” He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore
off his own boots, flung them to the petrified beggar and drove home
in his stocking-feet. I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings,
watched the recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the
small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck the boots
under his arm and march away with them to the nearest pawnbroker. If
Pasquale had been an equally compassionate Briton, he would have stopped
to think, and have tossed the man a sovereign. _But he didn’t stop to
think._ That was my cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved him for it.
I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented
of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle on my
consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The sun shone. A
thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my bedroom windows. The
tree, laughed and shook out its finery at me like a woman, saying: “See
how green I am, after Sunday’s rain.” Antoinette’s one eyed black cat
(a hideous beast) met me in the hall and arching its back welcomed me
affably to its new residence. And on my breakfast-table I found a
copy of the first edition of Cristoforo da Costa’s “_Elogi delle
Donne Illustri_,” a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord
Carnforth, a perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting
in his library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar’s splendid
courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.
Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a personification
of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers. I
reached them at three o’clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls
and lunched on the road. I signed their unintelligible document, and
wandered through the Temple Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had
passed under Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little
leg-weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation
to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the National
Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable bench. The only other
occupant was a female in black. As I take no interest in females
in black, I disregarded her presence, and gave myself up to the
contemplation, of the trim lawns and flower-beds, the green trees
masking the unsightly Surrey side of the river, and the back of the
statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A continued survey of the last not making
for edification (a statue that turns its back on you being one of
the dullest objects made by man), I took from my pocket a brown
leather-covered volume which I had fished out of a penny box: “_Suite de
l’Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise ou L’Histoire des Uscoques, par le
Sieur Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV._” A whole complete scholarly history
of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally
Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the most
pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth century
Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured their acrid musty
smell. How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart’s-blood, how
many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind
nowadays but as an odour, an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and
there a casual student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many
times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna. As men, their
achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but their
name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance may be found
in the penny scent fountains of to-day. I was smiling over this quaint
olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at
that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie’s book, when a tug at my
arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to
the workaday world. I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown,
piteous, imploring dog’s eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to the
disregarded female in black.
“Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do.”
I stared. She was not in the least like what my half-conscious glance at
the female in black had taken her to be. She was quite young, remarkably
good looking. Even at the first instant I was struck by her eyes and the
mass of bronze hair and the twitching of a childish mouth. But she
had an untidy, touzled, raffish appearance, due to I knew not what
investiture of disrepute. Her hands--for she wore no gloves--wanted
washing.
“What a young girl like yourself must not do,” said I, “is to enter into
conversation with men in public places.”
“Then I shall have to die,” she said, forlornly, edging away from my
side.
She had the oddest little foreign accent. I looked at her again
more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so
disreputable. She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for
her. Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so
that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration--black velvet
and bugles--on the bodice. Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged,
fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago
for synagogue wear. On the girlish figure it looked preposterous.
Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed in
black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.
Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again. Then she
shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. My mother had a housemaid once
who always sniffed like that before beginning to cry. My position was
untenable. I could not remain stonily on the seat while this grotesquely
attired damsel wept; and for the life of me I could not get up and leave
her. She looked at me again. Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely
human. I capitulated.
“Don’t cry. Tell me what I can do for you,” I said.
She moved a few inches nearer.
“I want to find Harry,” she said; “I have lost him.”
“Who’s Harry?” I naturally inquired.
“He is to be my husband.”
“What’s his other name?”
“I have forgotten,” she said, spreading out her hands.
“Don’t you know any one else in London?” I asked.
She shook her head mournfully. “And I am getting so hungry.”
I suggested that there were restaurants in London.
“But I have no money,” she objected. “No money and nothing at all but
this.” She designated her dress. “Isn’t it ugly?”
“It is decidedly not becoming,” I admitted.
“Well, what must I do? You tell me and I do it. If you don’t tell me, I
must die.”
She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the
responsibility of her existence. I did not know which to admire
more, her cool assurance or the stoic fortitude with which she faced
dissolution.
“I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two,” said I,
“but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name--”
“After all I don’t want so very much to find him,” said this amazing
young person. “He made me stay in my cabin all the time I was in the
steamer. At first I was glad, for it went up and down, side to side, and
I thought I would die, for I was so sick; but afterwards I got better--”
“But where did you come from?” I asked.
“From Alexandretta.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I used to sit in a tree and look over the wall--”
“What wall?”
“The wall of my house-my father’s house. He was not my father, but he
married my mother. I am English.” She announced the fact with a little
air of finality.
“Indeed?” said I.
“Yes. Father, mother--both English. He was Vice-Consul. He died before I
was born. Then his friend Hamdi Effendi took my mother and married her.
You see?”
I confessed I did not. “Where does Harry come in?” I inquired.
She looked puzzled. “Come in?” she echoed.
I perceived her knowledge of the English vernacular was limited. I
turned my question differently.
“Oh,” she said with more animation. “He used to pass by the wall, and I
talked to him when there was no one looking. He was so pretty--prettier
than you,” she paused.
“Is it possible?” I said, ironically.
“Oh, yes,” she replied with profound gravity. “He had a moustache, but
he was not so long.”
“Well? You talked to Harry. What then?”
In her artless way she told me. A refreshing story, as old as the
crusades, with the accessories of orthodox tradition; a European
disguise, purchased at a slop dealer’s by the precious Harry, a rope, a
midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an English ship; the
anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main. A
most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a
question at her like a bullet.
“Are you making all this up, young woman?”
She started-looked quite scared.
“You mean I tell lies? But no. It is all true. Why shouldn’t it be true?
How else could I have come here?”
The question was unanswerable. Her story was as preposterous as her
garments. But her garments were real enough. I looked long into her
great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth. She babbled
on for a little. I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a
Turkish official. She had spent all her life in the harem from which she
had eloped with this pretty young Englishman.
“And what must I do?” she reiterated.
I told her to give me time. One is not in the habit of meeting abducted
Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National
Liberal Club. It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence. I looked around
me. Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes. A pale
young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was
reading a dirty pink newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about
unconcernedly. On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the
foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. Sir Bartle Frere
stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert
a Becket story. I always thought something was wrong with that man’s
character.
What on earth could I tell her to do? The best course was to find the
infernal Harry. I asked her how she came to lose him. It appears he
escorted her ashore at Southampton, after having scarcely set eyes
on her during the voyage, put her into a railway carriage with strict
injunctions not to stir until he claimed her, and then disappeared into
space.
“Did he give you your ticket?”
“No.”
“What a young blackguard!” I exclaimed.
“I don’t like him at all,” she said.
How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could not
exactly discover. Apparently she told him, in her confiding manner, that
Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the train and came back to
say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes on him and the sentimental
varlet melted. At Waterloo a man had told her she must get out of the
carriage--she had travelled alone in it--and she had meekly obeyed. She
had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually
found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to
find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket’s Saracen
mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the
resemblance was that she did not know the creature’s surname.
“By the way,” said I, “what is your name?”
“Carlotta.”
“Carlotta what?” I asked.
“I have no other name.”
“Your father--the Vice-Consul--had one.”
She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.
“Ramsbotham,” she said at last, triumphantly.
“Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham--no,” I broke off. “Such an appellation
is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd. I can’t use it. I
must take the liberty of addressing you as Carlotta.”
“But I’ve told you that Carlotta is my name,” she said, in
uncomprehending innocence.
“And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne. People call me ‘Sir Marcus.’”
“Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta.
She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was talking to
a member of the baronetage.
“Quite so,” said I. “Now, Carlotta,” I resumed, “our first plan is
to set out in search of Harry. He may have missed his train, and have
followed by a later one, and be even now rampaging about Waterloo
station. If we hear nothing of him, I will drive you to the Turkish
Consulate, give you in charge there, and they will see you safely home
to Alexandretta. The good Hamdi Effendi is doubtless distracted, and
will welcome you back with open arms.”
I meant to be urbane and friendly.
She rose to her feet, grew as white as paper, opened her great eyes,
opened her baby mouth, and in the middle of the Embankment Gardens
plumped on her knees before me and clasped her hands above her head.
“For God’s sake get up!” I shrieked, wrenching her back acrobatically to
the bench beside me. “You mustn’t do things like that. You’ll have the
whole of London running to look at us.”
Indeed the sight had so far roused the pale young man from his
lethargy that he laid his dirty pink paper on his knees. I kept hold of
Carlotta’s wrists. She began to moan incoherently.
“You mustn’t send me back--Hamdi will kill me--oh please don’t send me
back--he will make me marry his friend Mustapha--Mustapha has only two
teeth--and he is seventy years old--and he has a wife already--I only
went with Harry to avoid Mustapha. Hamdi would kill me, he would beat
me, he would make me marry Mustapha.”
That is what I gathered from her utterances. She was frightened out of
her wits, even into anticlimax.
“But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector,” said I.
“You wouldn’t be so cruel,” she sobbed. The guttural sonority with which
she rolled the “r” in “cruel” made the epithet appear one of revolting
barbarity. She fixed those confounded eyes upon me.
I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.
I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish consulate.
I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and drove her
to Waterloo. On the way she reminded me that she was hungry. I gave her
food at the buffet. It appears she has a passion for hard-boiled eggs
and lemonade. She did not seem very much concerned about finding Harry,
but chattered to me about the appointments of the bar. The beer-pulls
amused her particularly. She made me order a glass of bitter (a beverage
which I loathe) in order to see again how it was done, and broke into
gleeful laughter. The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in
bewilderment. The two or three bar-loafers also stared. I was glad to
escape to the platform.
There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in a ring
round us when we stopped to interview a railway official. The beautiful,
bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her disreputable attire--I have
never seen a broken black feather waggle more shamelessly--was a sight
indeed to strike wonderment into the cockney mind. And perhaps her
association with myself added to the incongruity. I am long and lean and
unlovely, I know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably
respectable. Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by the
public attention. “Calm and unembarrassed as a fate” she returned the
popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my efforts to find Harry.
In the midst of an earnest discussion with the station-master she begged
me for a penny to put into an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had
seen a small boy work successfully. I refused, curtly, and turned to the
station-master. A roar of laughter interrupted me again. Carlotta, with
outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an organ-grinder’s monkey, had
induced the boy to part with the sticky bit of toffee, and was in the
act of conveying it to her mouth.
“I’ll call to-morrow morning,” said I hurriedly to the station-master.
“If the gentleman should come meanwhile, tell him to leave his name and
address.”
Then I took Carlotta by the arm and, accompanied by my train of
satellites, I thrust her into the first hansom-cab I could see.
There was no sign or token of Harry. No pretty young man was hanging
dejectedly about the station. None had torn his hair before the
officials asking for news of a lost female in frowsy black. There was no
Harry. There was no further need therefore to afford the British public
a gratuitous entertainment.
“Drive,” said I to the cabman. “Drive like the devil.”
“Where to, sir?”
I gasped. Where should I drive? I lost my head.
“Go on driving round and round till I tell you to stop.” The philosophic
cabman did not regard me as eccentric, for he whipped up his horse
cheerfully. When we had slid down the steep incline and got free of the
precincts of that hateful station, I breathed more freely and collected
my wits. Carlotta sucked her sticky thumbs and wiped them on her dress.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Across Waterloo Bridge,” said I.
“What to do?”
“To dispose of you somehow,” I replied, grimly. “But how, I haven’t a
notion. There’s a Home for Lost Dogs and a Home for Stray Cats, and a
Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard, but as you are neither a dog nor
a cat nor an umbrella, these refuges are unavailable.”
The cab reached the Strand.
“East or west, sir?” inquired the driver.
“West,” said I, at random.
We drove down the Strand at a leisurely pace. I passed through a phase
of agonised thought. By my side was a helpless, homeless, friendless,
penniless young woman, as beautiful as a goddess and as empty-minded
as a baby. What in the world could I do with her? I looked at her in
despair. She met my glance with a contented smile; just as if we were
old acquaintances and I were taking her out to dinner. The unfamiliar
roar and bustle of London impressed her no more than it would have
impressed a little dog who had found a kind master.
“Suppose I gave you some money and put you down here and left you?” I
inquired.
“I should die,” she answered, fatalistically. “Or, perhaps, I should
find another kind gentleman.”
“I wonder if you have such a thing as a soul,” said I.
She plucked at her gown. “I have only this--and it is very ugly,” she
remarked again. “I should like a pink dress.”
We crossed Trafalgar Square, and I saw by Big Ben that it was a quarter
to six. I could not drive through London with her for an indefinite
period. Besides, my half past seven dinner awaited me.
Why, oh, why has Judith gone to Paris? Had she been in town I could have
shot Carlotta into Tottenham Mansions, and gone home to my dinner and
Cristoforo da Costa with a light heart. Judith would have found Carlotta
vastly entertaining. She would have washed her body and analysed her
temperament. But Judith was in retreat with Delphine Carrere, and has
left me alone to bear the responsibilities of life--and Carlotta.
The cab slowly mounted Waterloo Place. I had thought of my aunts as
possible helpers, and rejected the idea. I had thought of a police
station, a hotel, my lawyers (too late), a furnished lodging, a
hospital. My mind was an aching blank.
“Where do you live?” asked Carlotta.
I looked at her and groaned. It was the only solution. “Up Regent’s Park
way,” I replied, aware that she was none the wiser for the information.
I gave the address to the cabman through the trap-door in the roof.
“I’m going to take you home with me for to-night,” I said, severely. “I
have an excellent French housekeeper who will look after your comfort.
And to-morrow if that infernal young scoundrel of a lover of yours
is not found, it will not be the fault of the police force of Great
Britain.”
She laid her grubby little hand on mine. It was very soft and cool.
“You are cross with me. Why?”
I removed her hand.
“You mustn’t do that again,” said I. “No; I am not in the least
cross with you. But I hope you are aware that this event is of an
unprecedented character.”
“What is an unprecedented character?” she asked, stumbling over the long
words.
“A thing that has never happened before and I devoutly hope will not
happen again.”
Her face was turned to me. The lower lip trembled a little. The dog-look
came into those wonderful eyes.
“You will be kind to me?” she said, in her childish monosyllables, each
word carefully articulated with a long pause between.
I felt I had behaved like a heartless brute, ever since I thrust her
into the cab at Waterloo. I relented and laughed.
“If you are a good girl and do as I tell you,” said I.
“Seer Marcous is my lord and I am his slave,” was her astounding reply.
Then I realised that she had been brought up by Hamdi Effendi. There is
something salutary, after all, in the training of the harem.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” I said.
She closed her eyes. I saw now she was very tired. I thought she had
gone to sleep and I looked in front of me puzzling out the problem.
Presently the cab-doors were thrust violently open, and if I had net
held her back, she would have jumped out of the vehicle.
“Look!” she cried, in great excitement. “There! There’s Harry’s name!”
She pointed to a butcher’s cart immediately in front of us, bearing, in
large letters, the name of “E. Robinson.”
“We must stop,” she went on. “He will tell us about Harry.”
It took me from Oxford Circus to Portman Square to convince her
that there were many thousands of Robinsons in London and that the
probability of the butcher’s cart being a clue to Harry’s whereabouts
was exceedingly remote.
At Baker Street station she asked, wearily: “Is it still far to your
house?”
“No,” said I, encouragingly. “Not very far.”
“But one can drive for many days through streets in London, and there
will be still streets, still houses? So they tell me in Alexandretta.
London is as big as the moon, not so?”
I felt absurdly pleased. She was capable of an idea. I had begun to
wonder whether she were not merely half-witted. The fact of her being
able to read had already cheered me.
“Many hours, yes,” I corrected, “not many days. London seems big to
you?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, passing her hand over her eyes. “It makes all go
round in my head. One day you will take me for a drive through these
wonderful streets. Now I am too tired. They make my head ache.”
Then she shut her eyes again and did not open them until we stopped
at Lingfield Terrace. I modified my first impression of her animal
unimpressionability. She is quite sane. If Boadicea were to be
brought back to life and be set down suddenly at Charing Cross, her
psychological condition would not be far removed from that of an idiot.
Yet in her own environment Boadicea was quite a sane and capable lady.
My admirable man Stenson opened the door and admitted us without moving
a muscle. He would betray no incorrect astonishment if I brought home a
hippogriff to dinner. I have an admiration for the trained serving-man’s
imperturbability. It is the guardian angel of his self-respect. I
ordered him to send Antoinette to me in the drawing-room.
“Antoinette,” said I, “this young lady has travelled all the way from
Asia Minor, where the good St. Paul had so many adventures, without
changing her things.”
“_C’est y Dieu possible_!” said Antoinette.
“Give her a nice hot bath, and perhaps you will have the kindness to
lend her the underlinen that your sex is in the habit of wearing. You
will put her into the spare bedroom, as she is going to pass the night
here, and you will look generally after her comfort.”
“_Bien, M’sieu_,” said Antoinette, regarding Carlotta in stupefaction.
“And put that hat and dress into the dust-bin.”
“_Bien, M’sieu._”
“And as Mademoiselle is broken with fatigue, having come without
stopping from Asia Minor, she will go to bed as soon as possible.”
“The poor angel,” said Antoinette. “But will she not join Monsieur at
dinner?”
“I think not,” said I, dryly.
“But the young ducklings that are roasting for the dinner of Monsieur?”
“If they were not roasting they might be growing up into ducks,” said I.
“Oh, la, la!” murmured Antoinette, below her breath.
“Carlotta,” said I, turning to the girl who had seated herself humbly
on a straight-backed chair, “you will go with Antoinette and do as she
tells you. She doesn’t talk English, but she is used to making people
understand her.”
“_Mais, moi parley Francais un peu_,” said Carlotta.
“Then you will win Antoinette’s heart, and she will lend you her finest.
Good-night,” said I, abruptly. “I hope you will have a pleasant rest.”
She took my outstretched hand, and, to my great embarrassment, raised
it to her lips. Antoinette looked on, with a sentimental moisture in her
eyes.
“The poor angel,” she repeated.
Later, I gave Stenson a succinct account of what had occurred. I owed
it to my reputation. Then I went upstairs and dressed for dinner. I
consider I owe that to Stenson. It was eight o’clock before I sat down,
but Antoinette’s ducklings were delicious and brought consolation for
the upheaval of the day. I was unfolding the latest edition of _The
Westminster Gazette_ with which I always soothe the digestive half-hour
after dinner, when Antoinette entered to report progress.
She was sound asleep, the poor little one. Oh, but she was tired. She
had eaten some _consomme_, a bit of fish and an omelette. But she was
beautiful, gentle as a lamb; and she had a skin _on dirait du satin_.
Had not Monsieur noticed it?
I replied, with some over-emphasis, that I had not.
“Monsieur rather regards the inside of his books,” said Antoinette.
“They are generally more worth regarding,” said I.
Antoinette said nothing; but there was a feminine quiver at the corners
of her fat lips.
She was comfortably disposed of for the night. I drew a breath of
relief. To-morrow Great Scotland Yard should set out on the track of
the absconding Harry. Carlotta’s happy recollection of his surname
facilitated the search. I lit a cigarette and opened _The Westminster
Gazette_.
A few moments later I was staring at the paper in blank horror and
dismay.
Harry was found. There was no mistake. Harry Robinson, junior partner of
the firm of Robinson & Co., of Mincing Lane. Vain, indeed, would it be
to seek the help of Great Scotland Yard. Harry had blown out his brains
in the South Western Hotel at Southampton.
I have read the newspaper paragraph over and over again to-night. There
is no possible room for doubt that it is the same Harry.
The ways of man are past interpretation. Here is an individual who
lures a girl from an oriental harem, attires her in disgusting garments,
smuggles her on board a steamer, where he claps her, so to speak, under
hatches, and has little if anything to do with her, sets her penniless
and ticketless in a London train, and then goes off and blows his brains
out. Where is the sense of it?
I have not a spark of sympathy for Harry--a callow, egotistical dealer
in currants. He ought to have blown out his brains a year ago. He has
behaved in a most unconscionable manner. How does he expect me to break
the news to Carlotta? His selfishness is appalling. There he lies,
comfortably dead in the South Western Hotel, while Carlotta has
literally not a rag to her back, her horrific belongings having been
dropped into the dust-bin. Who does he think is going to provide
Carlotta with food and shelter and a pink dress? What does he imagine is
to become of the poor waif? In all my life I have never heard of a more
cynical suicide.
I have walked about for hours, laughing and cursing and kicking the
binding loose of my precious Muratori. I have wondered whether the
universe or I were mad. For there is one thing that is clear to
me--Carlotta is here, and here Carlotta must remain.
Devastating though it be to the well-ordered quietude of my life, I must
adopt Carlotta.
There is no way out of it.