They walked in silence, their steps ringing sharp on the bitter-chill
air. The night in the sky was pale at the white disdain of the moon. It
was Mr. Maturin who spoke at last, saying: “There’s too much talk of
murder to-night. A man cannot go to bed on such crude talk. You know me,
kid. Shall we go to _The Garden of My Grandmother_?”
At that moment a taxicab crawled across the moonlight; and the driver, a
man in a Homburg hat of green plush, did not attempt to hide his
pleasure at being able to satisfy the gentlemen’s request to take them
to _The Garden of My Grandmother_.
Mr. Trevor says that he has rarely chanced upon a more unsatisfactory
taxicab than that driven by the man in the Homburg hat of green plush.
By closing one’s eyes one might perhaps have created an illusion of
movement by reason of certain internal shrieks and commotions, but when
one saw the slow procession of shops by the windows and the lamp-posts
loitering by the curb, one was, as Beau Maturin pointed out, justified
in believing that the hackney-cab in question was not going fast enough
to outstrip a retired Czecho-Slovakian admiral in an egg-and-spoon
race. Nor were they altogether surprised when the taxicab died on them
in Conduit Street. The man in the Homburg hat of green plush jumped out
and tried to restart the engine. He failed. The gentlemen within awaited
the issue in silence. The silence, says Mr. Trevor, grew terrible. But
the taxicab moved not, and the man in the Homburg hat of green plush
began, in his agitation, thumping the carburetor with his clenched fist.
“No petrol,” he pleaded. “No petrol.”
Said Mr. Trevor to Mr. Maturin: “Let us go. Let us leave this man.”
“’Ere, my fare!” said the fellow.
“Your fare?” said Mr. Maturin with contracted brows. “What do you mean,
‘your fare’?”
“Bob on the meter,” said the wretch.
“My friend will pay,” said Mr. Maturin, and stalked away. Mr. Trevor
says that, while retaining throughout the course of that miserable night
his undoubted _flair_ for generosity, he could not but hold Beau
Maturin’s high-handed disavowal of his responsibilities against him; and
he was hurrying after him up Conduit Street, turning over such phrases
as might best point the occasion and make Mr. Maturin ashamed of
himself, when that pretty gentleman swung round sharply and said: “Ssh!”
But Mr. Trevor was disinclined to Ssh, maintaining that Mr. Maturin owed
him ninepence.
“Ssh, you fool!” snapped Mr. Maturin; and Mr. Trevor had not obliged him
for long before he discerned in the quietness of Conduit Street a small
discordant noise, or rather, says Mr. Trevor, a series of small
discordant noises.
“She’s crying, let’s face it,” whispered Mr. Maturin.
“She! Who?”
“Ssh!” snapped Mr. Maturin.
They were at that point in Conduit Street where a turn to the right will
bring one into a fat little street which looks blind but isn’t, insomuch
as close by the entrance to the Alpine Club Galleries there is a narrow
passage or alley leading into Savile Row. Mr. Trevor says that the
repugnance with which he at that moment looked towards the darkness of
that passage or alley had less than nothing to do with the blood-thirsty
policeman’s last words but was due merely to an antipathy he had
entertained towards all passages or alleys ever since George Tarlyon had
seen a ghost in one. Mr. Maturin and he stood for some minutes in the
full light of the moon while, as though from the very heart of the
opposite darkness, the lacerating tremors of weeping echoed about their
ears.
“I can’t bear it!” said Beau Maturin. “Come along.” And he advanced
towards the darkness, but Mr. Trevor said he would not, pleading foot
trouble.
“Come,” said Beau Maturin, but Mr. Trevor said: “To-morrow, yes. But not
to-night.”
Then did Beau Maturin advance alone into the darkness towards the
passage or alley, and with one pounce the darkness stole his top-hat
from the moon. Beau Maturin was invisible. The noise of weeping abated.
“Oi!” called Mr. Trevor. “Come back, you fool!”
“Ssh!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin.
Mr. Trevor said bitterly: “You’re swanking, that’s all!”
“It’s a girl!” whispered the voice of Mr. Maturin, whereupon Mr. Trevor,
who yielded to no man in the chivalry of his address towards women, at
once advanced, caught up Mr. Maturin and, without a thought for his own
safety, was about to pass ahead of him when Beau Maturin had the bad
taste to whisper “’Ware razors!” and thus again held the lead.
She who wept, now almost inaudibly, was a dark shape just within the
passage. Her face, says Mr. Trevor, was not visible, yet her shadow had
not those rather surprising contours which one generally associates with
women who weep in the night.
“Madam,” began Mr. Maturin.
“Oh!” sobbed the gentle voice. “He is insulting me!”
Mr. Trevor lays some emphasis on the fact that throughout the course of
that miserable night his manners were a pattern of courtliness.
Thinking, however, that a young lady in a situation so lachrymose would
react more favourably to a fatherly tone, he said:
“My child, we hope----”
“Ah!” sobbed the gentle voice. “Please go away, please! I am _not_ that
sort!”
“Come, come!” said Mr. Maturin. “It is us whom you insult with a
suspicion so disagreeable. My friend and I are not of the sort to
commit ourselves to so low a process as that which is called, I
believe, ‘picking up.’”
“We have, as a matter of fact, friends of our own,” said Mr. Trevor
haughtily.
“Speaking generally,” said Mr. Maturin, “women like us. Time over again
I have had to sacrifice my friendship with a man in order to retain his
wife’s respect.”
“Ah, you are a man of honour!” sobbed the young lady.
“We are two men of honour,” said Mr. Trevor.
“And far,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “from intending you any mischief, we
merely thought, on hearing you weeping----”
“You _heard_ me, sir!”
“From Conduit Street,” said Mr. Trevor severely, whereupon Mr. Maturin
lifted up his voice and sang:
“_From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_
_The street of ties and tailors:_
_From Conduit Street, from Conduit Street,_
_A shocking street for trousers_----”
“Oh!” sobbed the young lady. “Is this chivalry?”
“Trousers,” said Mr. Maturin, “are closely connected with chivalry,
insomuch as he who commits chivalry without them is to be considered a
rude fellow. But, child,” Mr. Maturin protested sincerely, “we addressed
you only in the hope that we might be of some service in the extremity
of your grief. I assure you that you can trust us, for since we are no
longer soldiers rape and crime have ceased to attract us. However, you
do not need us. We were wrong. We will go.”
“It was I who was wrong!” came the low voice; and Mr. Trevor says that
only then did the young lady raise her face, when it was instantly as
though the beauty of that small face sent the surrounding darkness
scurrying away. Not, however, that Mr. Trevor was impressed altogether
in the young lady’s favour. Her eyes, which were large, dark and
charming, appeared to rest on handsome Beau Maturin with an intentness
which Mr. Trevor can only describe as bold; while her disregard of his
own presence might have hurt him had he, says Mr. Trevor, cared two pins
for that kind of thing.
“You see, I have not eaten to-day,” the young lady told Beau Maturin,
who cried: “But, then, we _can_ help you!”
“Ah, how do I know! Please,” the young lady began weeping again, and Mr.
Trevor says that had he not hardened his heart he could not say what he
might not have done. “Please, sirs, I simply do not know what to do! I
am so unhappy, so alone--oh, but you cannot imagine! You are gentlemen?”
“Speaking for my friend,” said Mr. Maturin warmly, “he has been asked to
resign from Buck’s Club only after repeated bankruptcies.”
“Mr. Maturin,” said Mr. Trevor, “has in his time been cashiered from no
less a regiment than the Coldstream Guards.”
The young lady did not, however, favour Mr. Trevor with so much as a
glance, never once taking her beautiful eyes from the handsome face of
Beau Maturin. Indeed, throughout the course of that miserable night she
admirably controlled any interest Mr. Trevor might have aroused in her,
which Mr. Trevor can only account for by the supposition that she must
have been warned against him. Beau Maturin, meanwhile, had taken the
young lady’s arm, a familiarity with which Mr. Trevor cannot too
strongly dissociate himself, and was saying:
“Child, you may come with us, if not with honour, at least with safety.
And while you refresh yourself with food and drink you can tell us, if
you please, the tale of your troubles. Can’t she, Ralph?”
“I don’t see,” said Mr. Trevor, “what good we can do.”
“Your friend,” said the young lady sadly to Beau Maturin, “does not like
me. Perhaps you had better leave me alone to my misery.”
“My friend,” said Beau Maturin, guiding her steps down the fat little
street towards Conduit Street, “likes you only too well, but is
restraining himself for fear of your displeasure. Moreover, he cannot
quickly adapt himself to the company of ingenuous young ladies, for he
goes a good deal into society, where somewhat cruder methods obtain.”
“But, oh, where are you taking me to?” suddenly cried the young lady.
“To _The Garden of My Grandmother_,” said Mr. Trevor bitterly, and
presently they found a taxicab on Regent Street which quickly delivered
them at the place in Leicester Square. Mr. Trevor cannot help priding
himself on the agility with which he leapt out of that taxicab, saying
to the driver: “My friend will pay.”
But Mr. Maturin, engrossed in paying those little attentions to the
young lady which really attractive men, says Mr. Trevor, can afford to
neglect, told the driver to wait, and when the driver said he did not
want to wait, to go and boil his head.