PART II

ABROAD

* * * * *

THE HUNGARIAN RHAPSODY

I

After a honeymoon of five weeks in the shining cities of the

Mediterranean and in Paris, they re-entered the British Empire by the

august portals of the Chatham and Dover Railway. They stood impatiently

waiting, part of a well-dressed, querulous crowd, while a few officials

performed their daily task of improvising a Custom-house for registered

luggage on a narrow platform of Victoria Station. John, Mr. Norris's

man, who had met them, attended behind. Suddenly, with a characteristic

movement, the husband lifted his head, and then looked down at his wife.

'I say, May!'

'Well?'

She knew that he was about to propose some swift alteration of their

plans, but she smiled upwards out of her furs at his grave face, and

the tone of her voice granted all requests in advance.

'I think I'd better go to the office,' he said.

'Now?'

She smiled again, inviting him to do exactly what he chose. She was

already familiar with his restiveness under enforced delays and

inaction, and his unfortunate capacity for being actively bored by

trifles which did not interest him aroused in her a sort of maternal

sympathy.

'Yes,' he answered. 'I can be there and back in an hour or less. You

titivate yourself, and we'll dine at the Savoy, or anywhere you please.

We'll keep the ball rolling to-night. Yes,' he repeated, as if to

convince himself that he was not a deserter, 'I really must call in at

the office. You and John can see to the luggage, can't you?'

'Of course,' she replied, with calm good-nature, and also with perfect

self-confidence. 'But give me the keys of the trunks, and don't be late,

Ted.'

'Oh, I shan't be late,' he said.

Their fingers touched as she took the keys. He went away enraptured

anew by her delightful acquiescences, her unique smile, her

common-sense, her mature charm, and the astonishing elegance of her

person. The honeymoon was over--and with what finished discretion,

combining the innocent girl with the woman of the world, she had lived

through the honeymoon!--another life, more delicious, was commencing.

'What a wife!' he thought triumphantly. 'She does understand a man! And

fancy leaving any ordinary bride to look after luggage!'

Nevertheless, once in his offices at Winchester House, he managed to

forget her, and to forget time, for nearly an hour and a half. When at

last he came to himself from the enchantment of affairs, he jumped into

a hansom, and told the driver to drive fast to Knightsbridge. He was

ardent to see her again. In the dark seclusion of the cab he speculated

upon her toilette, the colour of her shoes. He thought of the last five

weeks, of the next five years. Dwelling on their mutual love and esteem,

their health, their self-knowledge and experience and cheerfulness, her

sense and grace, his talent for getting money first and keeping it

afterwards, he foresaw nothing but happiness for them. Children? H'm!

Possibly....

At Piccadilly Circus it began to rain--cold, heavy March rain.

'Window down, sir?' asked the voice of the cabman.

'Yes,' he ordered sardonically. 'Better be suffocated than drowned.'

'You're right, sir,' said the voice.

Soon, through the streaming glass, which made every gas-jet into a

shooting pillar of flame, Norris discerned vaguely the vast bulk of Hyde

Park Mansions. 'Good!' he muttered, and at that very moment he was shot

through the window into the thin, light-reflecting mire of the street.

Enormous and strange beasts menaced him with pitiless hoofs. Millions of

people crowded about him. In response to a question that seemed to float

slowly towards him, he tried to give his address. He realized, by a

considerable feat of intellect, that the horse must have fallen down;

and then, with a dim notion that nothing mattered, he went to sleep.

II

In the boudoir of the magnificent flat on the first floor, shielded from

the noise and the inclemency of the world by four silk-hung walls and a

double window, and surrounded by all the multitudinous and costly luxury

that a stockbroker with brains and taste can obtain for the wife of his

love, May was leisurely finishing her toilette. And every detail in the

long, elaborate process was accomplished with a passionate intention to

bewitch the man at Winchester House.

These two had first met seven years before, when May, the daughter of a

successful wholesale draper at Hanbridge, in the Five Towns district of

Staffordshire, was aged twenty-two. Mr. Scarratt went to Manchester each

Tuesday to buy, and about once a month he took May with him. One day,

when they were lunching at the Exchange Restaurant, a young man came up

whom her father introduced as Mr. Edward Norris, his stockbroker. Mr.

Norris, whose years were thirty, glanced keenly at May, and accepted Mr.

Scarratt's invitation to join them. Ever afterwards May vividly

remembered the wonderful sensation, joyous yet disconcerting, which she

then experienced--the sensation of having captivated her father's

handsome and correct stockbroker. The three talked horses with a certain

freedom, and since May was accustomed to drive the Scarratt dogcart, so

famous in the Five Towns, she could bring her due share to the

conversation. The meal over, Mr. Norris discussed business matters with

his client, and then sedately departed, but not without the obviously

sincere expression of a desire to meet Miss Scarratt again. The

wholesale draper praised Edward's financial qualities behind his back,

and wondered that a man of such aptitude should remain in Manchester

while London existed. As for May, she decided that she would have a new

frock before she came to Manchester in the following month.

She had a new frock, but not of the colour intended. By the following

month her father was enclosed in a coffin, and it happened to his

estate, as to the estates of many successful men who employ

stockbrokers, that the liabilities far more than covered the assets. May

and her mother were left without a penny. The mother did the right

thing, and died--it was best. May went direct to Brunt's, the largest

draper in the Five Towns, and asked for a place under 'Madame' in the

dress-making department. Brunt's daughter, who was about to be married,

gave her the place instantly. Three years later, when 'Madame' returned

to Paris, May stepped into the French-woman's shoes.

On Sundays and on Thursday afternoons, and sometimes (but not too often)

at the theatre, May was the finest walking advertisement that Brunt's

ever had. Old Brunt would have proposed to her, it was rumoured, had he

not been scared by her elegance. Sundry sons of prosperous

manufacturers, unabashed by this elegance, did in fact secretly propose,

but with what result was known only to themselves.

Later, as May waxed in importance at Brunt's, she was sent to Manchester

to buy. She lunched at the Exchange Restaurant. The world and Manchester

are very small. The first man she set eyes on was Edward Norris. Another

week, Norris said to her with a thrill, and he would have been gone for

ever to London. Chance is not to be flouted. The sequel was inevitable.

They loved. And all the select private bars in Hanbridge tinkled to the

news that May Scarratt had been and hooked a stockbroker!

When the toilette was done, and the maid gone, she wound a thin black

scarf round her olive neck and shoulders, and sat down negligently on a

Chippendale settee in the attitude of a portrait by Boldini; her little

feet were tucked up sideways on the settee; the perforated lace ends of

the scarf fell over her low corsage to the level of the seat. And she

waited, still the bride. He was late, but she knew he would be late.

Sure in the conviction that he was a strong man, a man of imagination

and of deeds, she could easily excuse this failing in him, as she did

that other habit of impulsive action in trifles. Nay, more, she found

keen pleasure in excusing it. 'Dear thing!' she reflected, 'he forgets

so.' Therefore she waited, content in enjoying the image in the glass of

her dark face, her small plump person, and her Paris gown--that dream!

She thought with assuaged grief of her father's tragedy; she would have

liked him to see her now, the jewel in the case--her father and she had

understood each other.

All around, and above and below, she felt, without hearing it, the

activity of the opulent, complex life of the mansions. Her mind dwelt

with satisfaction on long carpeted corridors noiselessly paraded by

flunkeys, mahogany lifts continually ascending and descending like the

angels of the ladder, the great entrance hall with its fire always

burning and its doors always swinging, the _salle à manger_ sown with

rose-shaded candles, and all the splendid privacies rising stage upon

stage to the attics, where the flunkeys philosophized together. She

confessed the beauty and distinction achieved by this extravagant

organization for gratifying earthly desires. Often, in the pinching days

of her servitude, she had murmured against the injustice of things, and

had called wealth a crime while poverty starved. But now she perceived

that society was what it was inevitably, and could not be altered. She

accepted it in profound peace of mind, gaily fraternal towards the

fortunate, compassionate towards those in adversity.

In the next flat someone began to play very brilliantly a Hungarian

Rhapsody of Liszt's. And even the faint sound of that riotous torrent of

melody, so arrogantly gorgeous, intoxicated her soul. She shivered under

the sudden vision of the splendid joy of being alive. And how she envied

the player! French she had learned from 'Madame,' but she had no skill

on the piano; it was her one regret.

She touched the bell.

'Has your master come in yet?' she inquired of the maid.

'No, madam, not yet.'

She knew he had not come in, but she could not resist the impulse to

ask.

Ten minutes later, when the piano had ceased, she jumped up, and,

creeping to the front-door of the flat, gazed foolishly across the

corridor at the grille of the lift. She heard the lift in travail. It

appeared and passed out of sight above. No, he had not come! Glancing

aside, she saw the tall slender figure of a girl in a green tea-gown--a

mere girl: it was the player of the Hungarian Rhapsody. And this girl,

too, she thought, was expectant and disappointed! They shut their doors

simultaneously, she and May, who also had her girlish moments. Then the

rhapsody recommenced.

'Oh, madam!' screamed the maid, almost tumbling into the boudoir.

'What is it?' May demanded with false calm.

The maid lifted the corner of her black apron to her eyes, as though she

had been a stage soubrette in trouble.

'The master, madam! He's fell out of his cab--just in front of the

mansions--and they're bringing him in--such blood I never did see!'

The maid finished with hysterics.

III

'And them just off their honeymoon!'

The inconsolable tones of the lady's-maid came from the kitchen to the

open door of the bedroom, where May was giving instructions to the

elderly cook.

'Send that girl out of the flat this moment!' May said.

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Make the beef-tea in case it's wanted, and let me have some more warm

water. There's John and the doctor!'

She started at a knock.

'No, it's only the postman, ma'am.'

Some letters danced on the hall floor and on her nerves.

'Oh dear!' May whispered. 'I thought it was the doctor at last.'

'John's bound to be back with one in a minute, ma'am. Do bear up,' urged

the cook, hurrying to the kitchen.

She could have destroyed the woman for those last words.

With the proud certainty of being equal to the dreadful crisis, she

turned abruptly into the bedroom, where her husband lay insensible on

one of the new beds. Assisted by the policemen and the cook, she had

done everything that could be done: cut away the coats and the

waistcoat, removed the boots, straightened the limbs, washed the face

and neck--especially the neck--which had to be sponged continually, and

scattered messengers, including John, over the vicinity in search of

medical aid. And now the policemen had gone, the general emotion on the

staircase had subsided, the front-door of the flat was shut. The great

ocean of the life of the mansions had closed smoothly upon her little

episode. She was alone with the shattered organism.

She bent fondly over the bed, and her Paris frock, and the black scarf

which she had not removed, touched its ruinous burden. Her right hand

directed the sponge with ineffable tenderness, and then the long thin

fingers tightened to a frenzied clutch to squeeze it over the basin. The

whole of her being was absorbed in a deep passion of pity and an

intolerable hunger for the doctor.

Through the wall came once more the faint sound of the Hungarian

Rhapsody, astonishingly rapid and brilliant. She set her teeth to endure

its unconscious message of the vast indifference of life to death.

The organism stirred, and May watched the deathly face for a sign. The

eyes opened and stared at her in agonized bewilderment. The lips tried

to speak, and failed.

'It's all right, darling,' she said softly. 'You're in your own bed. The

doctor will be here directly. Drink this.'

She gave him some brandy-and-water, and they looked at each other. He

was no longer Edward Norris, the finely regulated intelligence, the

masterful volition, the conqueror of the world and of a woman; but

merely the embodiment of a frightened, despairing, flickering,

hysterical will-to-live, which glanced in terror at the corners of the

room as though it saw fate there. And beneath her intense solicitude was

the instinctive feeling, which hurt her, but which she could not

dismiss, of her measureless, dominating superiority. With what glad

relief would she have changed places with him!

'I'm dying, May,' he murmured at length, with a sigh. 'Why doesn't the

doctor come?'

'He is coming,' she replied soothingly. 'You'll be better soon.'

But his effort in speaking obliged her to use the sponge again, and he

saw it, and drew another sigh, more mortal than the first.

'Oh! I'm dying,' he repeated.

'Not you, Ted!' And her smile cost her an awful pang.

'I am. I know it.' This time he spoke with sad resignation. 'You must

face it. And--listen.'

'What, dear?'

A physical sensation of sickness came over her. She could not disguise

from herself the fact that he was dying. The warped and pallid face, the

panic-struck eyes, the sweat, the wound in the neck, the damp hands

nervously pulling the hem of the sheet--these indications were not to be

gainsaid. The truth was too horrible to grasp; she wanted to put it away

from her. 'This calamity cannot happen to me!' she thought urgently, and

all the while she knew that it was happening to her.

He collected the feeble remnant of his powers by an immense effort, and

began to speak, slowly and fragmentarily, and with such weakness that

she could only catch his words by putting her ear to his mouth. The

restless hands dropped the sheet and took the end of the black scarf.

'You'll be comfortable--for money,' he said. 'Will made.... It's not

that. It's ... I must tell you. It's----'

'Yes?' she encouraged him. 'Tell me. I can hear.'

'It's about your father. I didn't treat him quite right ... once....

Week after I first met you, May.... No, not quite right. He was holding

Hull and Barnsley shares ... you know, railway ... great gambling stock,

then, Hull and Barn--Barnsley. Holding them on cover; for the rise....

They dropped too much--dropped to 23.... He couldn't hold any longer ...

wired to me to sell and cut the loss. Understand?'

'Yes,' she said, trembling. 'I quite understand.'

'Well ... I wired back, "Sold at 23." ... But some mistake. Shares not

sold. Clerk's mistake.... Clerk didn't sell.... Next day rise began....

I didn't wire him shares not sold. Somehow, I couldn't.... Put it

off.... Rise went on.... I took over shares myself ... you

see--myself.... Made nearly five thousand clear.... I wanted money

then.... I think I would have told him, perhaps, later ... made it

right ... but he died ... sudden ... I wasn't going to let his creditors

have that five thou.... No, he'd meant to sell ... and, look here, May,

if those shares had dropped lower ... 'stead of rising ... I should have

had to stand the racket ... with your father, for my clerk's

mistake.... See?... He'd meant to sell.... Hard lines on him, but he'd

meant to sell.... He'd meant----'

'Don't say any more, dear.'

'Must explain this, May. Why didn't I give the money to you ... when he

was dead?... Because I knew you'd only ... give it ... to creditors....

I knew you.... That's straight.... I've told you now.'

He lost consciousness again, but for an instant May did not notice it.

She was crying, and her tears fell on his face.

Then came a doctor, a little dark man, who explained with calm

politeness that he had been out when the messenger first arrived. He

took off his coat, hung it up, opened his bag, and proceeded to a minute

examination of the patient. His movements were so methodical, and he

gave orders to May in a tone so quiet, casual, and ordinary, that she

almost lost her sense of the reality of the scene.

'Yes, yes,' he said, from time to time, as if to himself; nothing else;

not a single enlightening word to May.

'I'm dying,' moaned Edward, opening his eyes.

The doctor glanced round at May and winked. That wink, deliberate and

humorous, was like an electric shock to her. She could actually feel her

heart leap in her breast. If she had not been afraid of the doctor, she

would have fainted.

'You all think you're dying,' the doctor remarked in a low, amused tone

to the ceiling, as he wiped a pair of scissors, 'when you've been

knocked silly, especially if there's a lot of blood about.'

The door opened.

'Here's John, ma'am,' said the cook, 'with two more doctors. What am I

to do?'

May involuntarily turned towards the door.

'Don't you go, Mrs. Norris,' the little dark man commanded. 'I want

you.' Then he carelessly scrutinized the elderly servant. 'Tell 'em

they're too late,' he said. 'It's generally like that when there's an

accident,' he continued after the housekeeper had gone. 'First you can't

get a doctor anywhere, and then in half an hour or so we come in crowds.

I've known seven doctors turn up one after another. But in that affair

the man happened to have been killed outright.'

He smiled grimly. In a little while he was snapping his bag.

'I'll come in the morning, of course,' he said, as he wrote on a piece

of paper. 'Have this made up, and give it him in the night if he is

wakeful. Keep him warm. You might put a couple of hot-water bags, one on

either side of him. You've got beef-tea made, you say? That's right. Let

him have as much as he wants. Mr. Norris, you'll sleep like a top.'

'But, doctor,' May inquired the next morning in the hall, after Edward

had smiled at a joke, and been informed that he must run down to

Bournemouth in a week, 'have we nothing to fear?'

'I think not,' was the measured answer. 'These affairs nearly always

seem much worse than they are. Of course, the immediate upset is

tremendous--the disorganization, and all that sort of thing. But

Nature's pretty wonderful. You'll find your husband will soon get over

it. I should say he had a good constitution.'

'And there will be no permanent effects?'

'Yes,' said the doctor, with genial cynicism. 'There'll be one

permanent effect. Nobody will ever persuade him to ride in a hansom

again. If he can't find a four-wheeler, he'll walk in future.'

She returned to the bedroom. The man on the bed was Edward Norris once

more, in control of himself, risen out of his humiliation. A feeling of

thankfulness overwhelmed her for a moment, and she sat down.

'Well, May?' he murmured.

'Well, dear.'

They both realized that what they had been through was a common, daily

street accident. The smile of each was self-conscious, apprehensive,

insincere.

'Quite a concert going on next door,' he said with an affectation of

lightness.

It was the Hungarian Rhapsody, impetuous and brilliant as ever. How she

hated it now--this symbol of the hurried, unheeding, relentless, hollow

gaiety of the world! Yet she longed for the magic fingers of the player,

that she, too, might smother grief in such glittering veils!

IV

The marriage which had begun so dramatically fell into placid routine.

Edward fulfilled the prophecy of the doctor. In a week they were able to

go to Bournemouth for a few days, and in less than a fortnight he was at

the office--the strong man again, confident and ambitious.

After days devoted to finance, he came home in the evenings

high-spirited and determined to enjoy himself. His voice was firm and

his eye steady when he spoke to his wife; there was no trace of

self-consciousness in his demeanour. She admired the masculinity of the

brain that could forget by an effort of will. She felt that he trusted

her to forget also; that he relied on her common-sense, her

characteristic sagacity, to extinguish for ever the memory of an awkward

incident. He loved her. He was intensely proud of her. He treated her

with every sort of generosity. And in return he expected her to behave

like a man.

She loved him. She esteemed him as a wife should. She made a profession

of wifehood. He gave his days to finance and his nights to diversion;

but her vocation was always with her--she was never off duty. She aimed

to please him to the uttermost in everything, to be in all respects the

ideal helpmate of a husband who was at once strenuous, fastidious, and

wealthy. Elegance and suavity were a religion with her. She was the

delight of the eye and of the ear, the soother of groans, the refuge of

distress, the uplifter of the heart.

She made new acquaintances for him, and cemented old friendships. Her

manner towards his old friends enchanted him; but when they were gone

she had a way of making him feel that she was only his. She thought that

she was succeeding in her aim. She thought that all these sweet, endless

labours--of traffic with dressmakers, milliners, coiffeurs, maids,

cooks, and furnishers; of paying and receiving calls; of delicious

surprise journeys to the City to bring home the breadwinner; of giving

and accepting dinners; of sitting alert and appreciative in theatres and

music-halls; of supping in golden restaurants; of being serious,

cautionary, submissive, and seductive; of smiles, laughter, and kisses;

and of continuous sympathetic responsiveness--she thought that all these

labours had attained their object: Edward's complete serenity and

satisfaction. She imagined that love and duty had combined successfully

to deceive him on one solitary point. She was sure that he was deceived.

But she was wrong.

One evening they were at the theatre alone together. It was a musical

comedy, and they had a large stage-box. May sat a little behind. After

having been darkened for a scenic conjuring trick, the stage was very

suddenly thrown into brilliant light. Edward turned with equal

suddenness to share his appreciation of the effect with his wife, and

the light and his eye caught her unawares. She smiled instantly, but too

late; he had seen the expression of her features. For a second she felt

as if the whole fabric which she had been building for the last six

months had crumbled; but this disturbing idea passed as she recovered

herself.

'Let's go home, eh?' he said, at the end of the first act.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'It would be nice to be in early, wouldn't it?'

In the brougham they exchanged the amiable banalities of people who are

thoroughly intimate. When they reached the flat, she poured out his

whisky-and-potass, and sat on the arm of his particular arm-chair while

he sipped it; then she whispered that she was going to bed.

'Wait a bit,' he said; 'I want to talk to you seriously.'

'Dear thing!' she murmured, stroking his coat.

She had not the slightest notion of his purpose.

'You've tried your best, May,' he said bluntly, 'but you've failed. I've

suspected it for a long time.'

She flushed, and retired to a sofa, away from the orange electric lamp.

'What do you mean, Edward?' she asked.

'You know very well what I mean, my dear,' he replied. 'What I told

you--that night! You've tried to forget it. You've tried to look at me

as though you had forgotten it. But you can't do it. It's on your mind.

I've noticed it again and again. I noticed it at the theatre to-night.

So I said to myself, "I'll have it out with her." And I'm having it

out.'

'My dear Ted, I assure you----'

'No, you don't,' he stopped her. 'I wish you did. Now you must just

listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as

you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I

thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that.

You thought I was dying, too, didn't you?'

'Yes,' she said quietly, 'for a minute or two.'

'Ah! It was that minute or two that did it. Well, I let it out, the

rotten little secret. I admit it wasn't on the square, that bit of

business. But, on the other hand, it wasn't anything really bad--like

cruelty to animals or ruining a girl. Of course, the chap was your

father, but, but----. Look here, May, you ought to be able to see that I

was exactly the same man after I told you as I was before. You ought to

be able to see that. My character wasn't wrecked because I happened to

split on myself, like an ass, about that affair. Mind you, I don't blame

you. You can't help your feelings. But do you suppose there's a single

man on this blessed earth without a secret? I'm not going to grovel

before gods or men. I'm not going to pretend I'm so frightfully sorry.

I'm sorry in a way. But can't you see----'

'Don't say any more, Ted,' she begged him, fingering her sash. 'I know

all that. I know it all, and everything else you can say. Oh, my darling

boy! do you think I would look down on you ever so little because

of--what you told me? Who am I? I wouldn't care twopence even if----'

'But it's between us all the same,' he broke in. 'You can't get over

it.'

'Get over it!' she repeated lamely.

'Can you? Have you?' He pinned her to a direct answer.

She did not flinch.

'No,' she said.

'I thought you would have done,' he remarked, half to himself. 'I

thought you would. I thought you were enough a woman of the world for

that, May. It isn't as if the confounded thing had made any real

difference to your father. The old man died, and----'

'Ted!' she exclaimed, 'I shall have to tell you, after all. It killed

him.'

'What killed him? He died of gastritis.'

'He was ill with gastritis, but he died of suicide. It's easy for a

gastritis patient to commit suicide. And father did.'

'Why?'

'Oh, ruin, despair! He'd been in difficulties for a long time. He said

that selling those shares just one day too soon was the end of it. When

he saw them going up day after day, it got on his mind. He said he knew

he would never, never have any luck. And then ...'

'You kept it quiet.' He was walking about the room.

'Yes, that was pretty easy.'

'And did your mother know?'

He turned and looked at her.

'Yes, mother knew. It finished her. Oh, Ted!' she burst out, 'if you'd

only telegraphed to him the next morning that the shares weren't sold,

things might have been quite different.'

'You mean I killed your father--and your mother.'

'No, I don't,' she cried passionately. 'I tell you I don't. You didn't

know. But I think of it all, sometimes. And that's why--that's why----'

She sat down again.

'By God, May,' he swore, 'I'm frightfully sorry!'

'I never meant to tell you,' she said, composing herself. 'But, there!

things slip out. Good-night.'

She was gone, but in passing him she had timidly caressed his shoulder.

'It's all up,' he said to himself. 'This will always be between us. No

one could expect her to forget it.'

V

Gradually her characteristic habits deserted her; she seemed to lose

energy and a part of her interest in those things which had occupied her

most. She changed her dress less frequently, ignoring dressmakers, and

she showed no longer the ravishing elegance of the bride. She often lay

in bed till noon, she who had always entered the dining-room at nine

o'clock precisely to dispense his coffee and listen to his remarks on

the contents of the newspaper. She said 'As you please' to the cook, and

the meals began to lose their piquancy. She paid no calls, but some of

her women friends continued, nevertheless, to visit her. Lastly, she

took to sewing. The little dark doctor, who had become an acquaintance,

smiled at her and told her to do no more than she felt disposed to do.

She reclined on sofas in shaded rooms, and appeared to meditate. She was

not depressed, but thoughtful. It was as though she had much to settle

in her own mind. At intervals the faint sound of the Hungarian Rhapsody

mingled with her reveries.

As for Edward, his behaviour was immaculate. During the day he made

money furiously. In the evening he sat with his wife. They did not talk

much, and he never questioned her. She developed a certain curious

whimsicality now and then; but for him she could do no wrong.

The past was not mentioned. They both looked apprehensively towards the

future, towards a crisis which they knew was inexorably approaching.

They were afraid, while pretending to have no fear.

And one afternoon, precipitately, surprisingly, the crisis came.

'You are the father of a son--a very noisy son,' said the doctor, coming

into the drawing-room where Edward had sat in torture for three hours.

'And May?'

'Oh, never fear: she's doing excellently.'

'Can I go and see her?' he asked, like a humble petitioner.

'Well--yes,' said the doctor, 'for one minute; not more.'

So he went into the bedroom as into a church, feeling a fool. The nurse,

miraculously white and starched, stood like a sentinel at the foot of

the bed of mystery.

'All serene, May?' he questioned. If he had attempted to say another

word he would have cried.

The pale mother nodded with a fatigued smile, and by a scarcely

perceptible gesture drew his attention to a bundle. From the next flat

came a faint, familiar sound, insolently joyous.

'Yes,' he thought, 'but if they had both been lying dead here that tune

would have been the same.'

Two months later he left the office early, telling his secretary that he

had a headache. It was a mere fibbing excuse. He suffered from sudden

fits of anxiety about his wife and child. When he reached the flat, he

found no one at home but the cook.

'Where's your mistress?' he demanded.

'She's out in the park with baby and nurse, sir.'

'But it's going to rain,' he cried angrily. 'It is raining. They'll get

wet through.'

He rushed into the corridor, and met the procession--May, the

perambulator, and the nursemaid.

'Only fancy, Ted!' May exclaimed, 'the perambulator will go into the

lift, after all. Aren't you glad?'

'Yes,' he said. 'But you're wet, surely?'

'Not a drop. We just got in in time.'

'Sure?'

'Quite.'

The tableau of May, elegant as ever, but her eyes brighter and her body

more leniently curved, of the hooded perambulator, and of the

fluffy-white nursemaid behind--it was too much for him. Touching

clumsily the apron of the perambulator, the stockbroker turned into his

doorway. Just then the girl from the next flat came out into the

corridor, dressed for social rites of the afternoon. The perambulator

was her excuse for stopping.

'What a pretty boy!' she exclaimed in ecstasy, trying to squeeze her

picture hat under the hood of the perambulator.

'Do you really think so?' said the mother, enchanted.

'Of course! The darling! How I envy you!'

May wanted to reciprocate this politeness.

'I can't tell you,' she said, 'how I envy you your piano-playing.

There's one piece----'

'Envy me! Why! It's only a pianola we've got!'

'Isn't he the picture of his granddad?' said May to Edward when they

bent over the cot that night before retiring.

And as she said it there was such candour in her voice, such content in

her smiling and courageous eyes, that Edward could not fail to

comprehend her message to him. Down in some very secret part of his soul

he felt for the first time the real force of the great explanatory truth

that one generation succeeds another.

* * * * *

THE SISTERS QITA

The manuscript ran thus:

* * * * *

When I had finished my daily personal examination of the ropes

and trapezes, I hesitated a moment, and then climbed up again, to the

roof, where the red and the blue long ropes were fastened. I took my

sharp scissors from my chatelaine, and gently fretted the blue rope with

one blade of the scissors until only a single strand was left intact. I

gazed down at the vast floor a hundred feet below. The afternoon

varieties were over, and a phrenologist was talking to a small crowd of

gapers in a corner. The rest of the floor was pretty empty save for the

chairs and the fancy stalls, and the fatigued stall-girls in their black

dresses. I too, had once almost been a stall-girl at the Aquarium! I

descended. Few observed me in my severe street dress. Our secretary,

Charles, attended me on the stage.

'Everything right, Miss Paquita?' he said, handing me my hat and gloves,

which I had given him, to hold.

I nodded. I could see that he thought I was in one of my stern, far-away

moods.

'Miss Mariquita is waiting for you in the carriage,' he said.

We drove away in silence--I with my inborn melancholy too sad, Sally

(Mariquita) too happy to speak. This daily afternoon drive was really

part of our 'turn'! A team of four mules driven by a negro will make a

sensation even in Regent Street. All London looked at us, and contrasted

our impassive beauty--mine mature (too mature!) and dark, Sally's so

blonde and youthful, our simple costumes, and the fact that we stayed at

an exclusive Mayfair hotel, with the stupendous flourish of our turnout.

The renowned Sisters Qita--Paquita and Mariquita Qita--and the renowned

mules of the Sisters Qita! Two hundred pounds a week at the Aquarium!

Twenty-five thousand francs for one month at the Casino de Paris! Twelve

thousand five hundred dollars for a tour of fifty performances in the

States! Fifteen hundred pesos a night and a special train _de luxe_ in

Argentina and Brazil! I could see the loungers and the drivers talking

and pointing as usual. The gilded loungers in Verrey's café got up and

watched us through the windows as we passed. This was fame. For nearly

twenty years I had been intimate with fame, and with the envy of women

and the foolish homage of men.

We saw dozens of omnibuses bearing the legend 'Qita.' Then we met one

which said: 'Empire Theatre. Valdès, the matchless juggler,' and Sally

smiled with pleasure.

'He's coming to see our turn to-night, after his,' she remarked,

blushing.

'Valdès? Why?' I asked, without turning my head.

'He wants us to sup with him, to celebrate our engagement.'

'When do you mean to get married?' I asked her shortly. I felt quite

calm.

'I guess you're a Tartar to-day,' said the pretty thing, with a touch of

her American sauciness. 'We haven't studied it out yet. It was only

yesterday afternoon he kissed me for the first time.' Then she bent

towards me with her characteristic plaintive, wistful appeal. 'Say! You

aren't vexed, Selina, are you, because of this? Of course, he wants me

to tour with him after we're married, and do a double act. He's got lots

of dandy ideas for a double act. But I won't, I won't, Selina, unless

you say the word. Now, don't you go and be cross, Selina.'

I let myself expand generously.

'My darling girl!' I said, glancing at her kindly. 'You ought to know me

better. Of course I'm not cross. And of course you must tour with

Valdès. I shall be all right. How do you suppose I managed before I

invented you?' I smiled like an indulgent mother.

'Oh! I didn't mean that,' she said. 'I know you're frightfully clever.

I'm nothing----'

'I hope you'll be awfully happy,' I whispered, squeezing her hand. 'And

don't forget that I introduced him to you--I knew him years before you

did. I'm the cause of this bliss----Do you remember that cold morning in

Berlin?'

'Oh! well, I should say!' she exclaimed in ecstasy.

When we reached our rooms in the hotel I kissed her warmly. Women do

that sort of thing.

Then a card was brought to me. 'George Capey,' it said; and in pencil,

'Of the Five Towns.'

I shrugged my shoulders. Sally had gone to scribble a note to her

Valdès. 'Show Mr. Capey in,' I said, and a natty young man entered, half

nervousness, half audacity.

'How did you know I come from the Five Towns?' I questioned him.

'I am on the _Evening Mail_,' he said, 'where they know everything,

madam.'

I was annoyed. 'Then they know, on the _Evening Mail_ that Paquita Qita

has never been interviewed, and never will be,' I said.

'Besides,' he went on, 'I come from the Five Towns myself.'

'Bursley?' I asked mechanically.

'Bursley,' he ejaculated; then added, 'you haven't been near old Bosley

since----'

It was true.

'No,' I said hastily. 'It is many years since I have been in England,

even. Do they know down there who Qita is?'

'Not they!' he replied.

I grew reflective. Stars such as I have no place of origin. We shoot up

out of a void, and sink back into a void. I had forgotten Bursley and

Bursley folk. Recollections rushed in upon me.... I felt beautifully

sad. I drew off my gloves, and flung my hat on a chair with a movement

that would have bewitched a man of the world, but Mr. George Capey was

unimpressed. I laughed.

'What's the joke?' he inquired. I adored him for his Bursliness.

'I was just thinking, of fat Mrs. Cartledge, who used to keep that

fishmonger's shop in Oldcastle Street, opposite Bates's. I wonder if

she's still there?'

'She is,' he said. 'And fatter than ever! She's getting on in years

now.'

I broke the rule of a lifetime, and let him interview me.

'Tell them I'm thirty-seven,' I said. 'Yes, I mean it. Tell them.'

And then for another tit-bit I explained to him how I had discovered

Sally at Koster and Bial's, in New York, five years ago, and made her my

sister for stage purposes because I was lonely, and liked her American

simplicity and twang. He departed full of tea and satisfaction.

* * * * *

It was our last night at the Aquarium. The place was crammed. The houses

where I performed were always crammed. Our turn was in three parts, and

lasted half an hour. The first part was a skirt dance in full afternoon

dress (_danse de modernité_, I called it); the second was a double

horizontal bar act; the third was the famous act of the red and the blue

ropes, in full evening dress. It was 10.45 when we climbed the silk

ladders for the third part. High up in the roof, separated from each

other by nearly the length of the great hall, Sally and I stood on two

little platforms. I held the ends of the red and the blue ropes. I had

to let the blue rope swing across the hall to her. She would seize it,

and, clutching it, swoop like the ball of an enormous pendulum from her

platform to mine. (But would she?) I should then swing on the red rope

to the platform she had left.

Then the band would stop for the thrilling moment, and the lights would

be lowered. Each lighting and holding a powerful electric

hand-light--one red, one blue--we should signal the drummer and plunge

simultaneously into space, flash past each other in mid-flight,

exchanging lights as we passed (this was the trick), and soar to

opposite platforms again, amid frenzied applause. There were no nets.

That was what ought to occur.

I stood bowing to the floor of tiny upturned heads, and jerking the

ropes a little. Then I let Sally's rope go with a push, and it dropped

away from me, and in a few seconds she had it safe in her strong hand.

She was taller than me, with a fuller figure, yet she looked quite small

on her distant platform. All the evening I had been thinking of fat old

Mrs. Cartledge messing and slopping among cod and halibut on white

tiles. I could not get Bursley and my silly infancy out of my head. I

followed my feverish career from the age of fifteen, when that strange

Something in me, which makes an artist, had first driven me forth to

conquer two continents. I thought of all the golden loves I had scorned,

and my own love, which had been ignored, unnoticed, but which still

obstinately burned. I glanced downwards and descried Valdès precisely

where Sally had said he would be. Valdès, what a fool you were! And I

hated a fool. I am one of those who can love and hate, who can love and

despise, who can love and loathe the same object in the same moment.

Then I signalled to Sally to plunge, and my eyes filled with tears. For,

you see, somehow, in some senseless sentimental way, the thought of fat

Mrs. Cartledge and my silly infancy had forced me to send Sally the red

rope, not the blue one. We exchanged ropes on alternate nights, but this

was her night for the blue one.

She swung over, alighting accurately at my side with that exquisite

outward curve of the spine which had originally attracted me to her.

'You sent me the red one,' she said to me, after she had acknowledged

the applause.

'Yes,' I said. 'Never mind; stick to it now you've got it. Here's the

red light. Have you seen Valdès?'

She nodded.

I took the blue light and clutched the blue rope. Instead of

murder--suicide, since it must be one or the other. And why not? Indeed,

I censured myself in that second for having meant to kill Sally. Not

because I was ashamed of the sin, but because the revenge would have

been so pitiful and weak. If Valdès the matchless was capable of passing

me over and kneeling to the pretty thing----

I stood ready. The world was to lose that fineness, that distinction,

that originality, that disturbing subtlety, which constituted Paquita

Qita. I plunged.

... I was on the other platform. The rope had held, then: I remembered

nothing of the flight except that I had passed near the upturned,

pleasant face of Valdès.

The band stopped. The lights of the hall were lowered. All was dark. I

switched on my dazzling blue light; Sally switched on her red one. I

stood ready. The rope could not possibly endure a second strain. I waved

to Sally and signalled to the conductor. The world was to lose Paquita.

The drum began its formidable roll. Whirrr! I plunged, and saw the red

star rushing towards me. I snatched it and soared upwards. The blue rope

seemed to tremble. As I came near the platform at decreasing speed, it

seemed to stretch like elastic. It broke! The platform jumped up

suddenly over my head, but I caught at the silk ladder. I was saved!

There was a fearful silence, and then the appalling shock of hysterical

applause from seven thousand throats. I slid down the ladder, ran across

the stage into my dressing-room for a cloak, out again into the street.

In two days I was in Buda-Pesth.

* * * * *

NOCTURNE AT THE MAJESTIC

I

In the daily strenuous life of a great hotel there are periods during

which its bewildering activities slacken, and the vast organism seems to

be under the influence of an opiate. Such a period recurs after dinner

when the guests are preoccupied by the mysterious processes of digestion

in the drawing-rooms or smoking-rooms or in the stalls of a theatre. On

the evening of this nocturne the well-known circular entrance-hall of

the Majestic, with its tessellated pavement, its malachite pillars, its

Persian rugs, its lounges, and its renowned stuffed bears at the foot of

the grand stairway, was for the moment deserted, save by the head

hall-porter and the head night-porter and the girl in the bureau. It was

a quarter to nine, and the head hall-porter was abdicating his pagoda

to the head night-porter, and telling him the necessary secrets of the

day. These two lords, before whom the motley panorama of human existence

was continually being enrolled, held a portentous confabulation night

and morning. They had no illusions; they knew life. Shakespeare himself

might have listened to them with advantage.

The girl in the bureau, like a beautiful and languishing animal in its

cage, leaned against her window, and looked between two pillars at the

magnificent lords. She was too far off to catch their talk, and, indeed,

she watched them absently in a reverie induced by the sweet melancholy

of the summer twilight, by the torpidity of the hour, and by the

prospect of the next day, which was her day off. The liveried

functionaries ignored her, probably scorned her as a mere pretty little

morsel. Nevertheless, she was the centre of energy, not they. If money

were payable, she was the person to receive it; if a customer wanted a

room, she would choose it; and the lords had to call her 'miss.' The

immense and splendid hotel pulsed round this simple heart hidden under a

white blouse. Especially in summer, her presence and the presence of

her companions in the bureau (but to-night she was alone) ministered to

the satisfaction of male guests, whose cruel but profoundly human

instincts found pleasure in the fact that, no matter when they came in

from their wanderings, the pretty captives were always there in the

bureau, smiling welcome, puzzling stupid little brains and puckering

pale brows over enormous ledgers, twittering borrowed facetiousness from

rosy mouths, and smoothing out seductive toilettes with long thin hands

that were made for ring and bracelet and rudder-lines, and not a bit for

the pen and the ruler.

The pretty little thing despised of the functionaries corresponded

almost exactly in appearance to the typical bureau girl. She was

moderately tall; she had a good slim figure, all pleasant curves, flaxen

hair and plenty of it, and a dainty, rather expressionless face; the

ears and mouth were very small, the eyes large and blue, the nose so-so,

the cheeks and forehead of an equal ivory pallor, the chin trifling,

with a crease under the lower lip and a rich convexity springing out

from below the crease. The extremities of the full lips were nearly

always drawn up in a smile, mechanical, but infallibly attractive. The

hair was of an orthodox frizziness. You would have said she was a nice,

kind, good-natured girl, flirtatious but correct, well adapted to adorn

a dogcart on Sundays.

This was Nina, foolish Nina, aged twenty-one. In her reverie the entire

Hôtel Majestic weighed on her; she had a more than adequate sense of her

own solitary importance in the bureau, and stirring obscurely beneath

that consciousness were the deep ineradicable longings of a poor pretty

girl for heaps of money, endless luxury of finery and chocolates, and

sentimental silken dalliance.

Suddenly a stranger entered the hall. His advent seemed to wake the

place out of the trance into which it had fallen. The nocturne had

begun. Nina straightened herself and intensified her eternal smile. The

two porters became military, and smiled with a special and peculiar

urbanity. Several lesser but still lordly functionaries appeared among

the pillars; a page-boy emerged by magic from the region of the

chimney-piece like Mephistopheles in Faust's study; and some guests of

both sexes strolled chattering across the tessellated pavement as they

passed from one wing of the hotel to the other.

'How do, Tom?' said the stranger, grasping the hand of the head

hall-porter, and nodding to the head night-porter.

His voice showed that he was an American, and his demeanour that he was

one of those experienced, wealthy, and kindly travellers who know the

Christian names of all the hall-porters in the world, and have the trick

of securing their intimacy and fealty. He wore a blue suit and a light

gray wideawake, and his fine moustache was grizzled. In his left hand he

carried a brown bag.

'Nicely, thank you, sir,' Tom replied. 'How are you, sir?'

'Oh, about six and six.'

Whereupon both porters laughed heartily.

Tom escorted him to the bureau, and tried to relieve him of his bag.

Inferior lords escorted Tom.

'I guess I'll keep the grip,' said the stranger. 'Mr. Pank will be

around with some more baggage pretty soon. We've expressed the rest on

to the steamer. Well, my dear,' he went on, turning to Nina, 'you're a

fresh face here.'

He looked her steadily in the eyes.

'Yes, I am,' she said, conquered instantly.

Radiant and triumphant, the man brought good-humour into every face,

like some wonderful combination of the sun and the sea-breeze.

'Give me two bedrooms and a parlour, please,' he commanded.

'First floor?' asked Nina prettily.

'First floor! Well--I should say! _And_ on the Strand, my dear.'

She bent over her ledgers, blushing.

'Send someone to the 'phone, Tom, and let 'em put me on to the Regency,

will you?' said the stranger.

'Yes, sir. Samuels, go and ring up the Regency Theatre--quick!'

Swift departure of a lord.

'And ask Alphonse to come up to my bedroom in ten minutes from now,' the

stranger proceeded to Tom. 'I shall want a dandy supper for fourteen at

a quarter after eleven.'

'Yes, sir. No dinner, sir?'

'No; we dined on the Pullman. Well, my dear, figured it out yet?'

'Numbers 102, 120, and 107,' said Nina.

'Keys 102, 120, and 107,' said Tom.

Swift departure of another lord to the pagoda.

'How much?' demanded the stranger.

'The bedrooms are twenty-five shillings, and the sitting-room two

guineas.'

'I guess Mr. Pank won't mind that. Hullo, Pank, you're here! I'm

through. Your number's 102 or 120, which you fancy. Just going to the

'phone a minute, and then I'll join you upstairs.'

Mr. Pank was a younger man, possessing a thin, astute, intellectual

face. He walked into the hall with noticeable deliberation. His

travelling costume was faultless, but from beneath his straw hat his

black hair sprouted in a somewhat peculiar fashion over his broad

forehead. He smiled lazily and shrewdly, and without a word disappeared

into a lift. Two large portmanteaus accompanied him.

Presently the elder stranger could be heard battling with the obstinate

idiosyncrasies of a London telephone.

'You haven't registered,' Nina called to him in her tremulous,

delicate, captivating voice, as he came out of the telephone-box.

He advanced to sign, and, taking a pen and leaning on the front of the

bureau, wrote in the visitor's book, in a careful, legible hand: 'Lionel

Belmont, New York.' Having thus written, and still resting on the right

elbow, he raised his right hand a little and waved the pen like a

delicious menace at Nina.

'Mr. Pank hasn't registered, either,' he said slowly, with a charming

affectation of solemnity, as though accusing Mr. Pank of some appalling

crime.

Nina laughed timidly as she pushed his room-ticket across the page of

the big book. She thought that Mr. Lionel Belmont was perfectly

delightful.

'No,' he hasn't,' she said, trying also to be arch; 'but he must.'

At that moment she happened to glance at the right hand of Mr. Belmont.

In the brilliance of the electric light she could see the fair skin of

the wrist and forearm within the whiteness of his shirt-sleeve. She

stared at what she saw, every muscle tense.

'I guess you can round up Mr. Pank yourself, my dear, later on,' said

Lionel Belmont, and turned quickly away, intent on the next thing.

He did not notice that her large eyes had grown larger and her pale face

paler. In another moment the hall was deserted again. Mr. Belmont had

ascended in the lift, Tom had gone to his rest, and the head

night-porter was concealed in the pagoda. Nina sank down limply on her

stool, her nostrils twitching; she feared she was about to faint, but

this final calamity did not occur. She had, nevertheless, experienced

the greatest shock of her brief life, and the way of it was thus.

II

Nina Malpas was born amid the embers of one of those fiery conjugal

dramas which occur with romantic frequency in the provincial towns of

the northern Midlands, where industrial conditions are such as to foster

an independent spirit among women of the lower class generally, and

where by long tradition 'character' is allowed to exploit itself more

freely than in the southern parts of our island. Lemuel Malpas was a

dashing young commercial traveller, with what is known as 'an agreeable

address,' in Bursley, one of the Five Towns, Staffordshire. On the

strength of his dash he wooed and married the daughter of an

hotel-keeper in the neighbouring town of Hanbridge. Six months after the

wedding--in other words, at the most dangerous period of the connubial

career--Mrs. Malpas's father died, and Mrs. Malpas became the absolute

mistress of eight thousand pounds. Lemuel[1] had carefully foreseen this

windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware

trade. Mrs. Malpas, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened

by the adulation of saloon-bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her

motto was, 'What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own.' The

difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by

reconciliations, which grew more and more transitory, and at length both

recognised that the union, not founded on genuine affection, had been a

mistake.

[1] This name is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable in

the Five Towns.

'Keep your d----d brass!' Lemuel exclaimed one morning, and he went off

on a journey and forgot to come back. A curious letter dated from

Liverpool wished his wife happiness, and informed her that, since she

was well provided for, he had no scruples about leaving her. Mrs. Malpas

was startled at first, but she soon perceived that what Lemuel had done

was exactly what the brilliant and enterprising Lemuel might have been

expected to do. She jerked up her doll's head, and ejaculated, 'So much

the better!'

A few weeks later she sold the furniture and took rooms in Scarborough,

where, amid pleasurable surroundings, she determined to lead the joyous

life of a grass-widow, free of all cares. Then, to her astonishment and

disgust, Nina was born. She had not bargained for Nina. She found

herself in the tiresome position of a mother whose explanations of her

child lack plausibility. One lodging-housekeeper to whom she hazarded

the statement that Lemuel was in Australia had saucily replied: 'I

thought maybe it was the North Pole he was gone to!'

This decided Mrs. Malpas. She returned suddenly to the Five Towns,

where at least her reputation was secure. Only a week previously Lemuel

had learnt indirectly that she had left their native district. He

determined thenceforward to forget her completely. Mrs. Malpas's

prettiness was of the fleeting sort. After Nina's birth she began to get

stout and coarse, and the nostalgia of the saloon-bar, the coffee-room,

and the sanded portico overtook her. The Tiger at Bursley was for sale,

a respectable commercial hotel, the best in the town. She purchased it,

wines, omnibus connection, and all, and developed into the typical

landlady in black silk and gold rings.

In the Tiger Nina was brought up. She was a pretty child from her

earliest years, and received the caresses of all as a matter of course.

She went to a good school, studied the piano, and learnt dancing, and at

sixteen did her hair up. She did as she was told without fuss, being

apparently of a lethargic temperament; she had all the money and all the

clothes that her heart could desire; she was happy, and in a quiet way

she deemed herself a rather considerable item in the world. When she was

eighteen her mother died miserably of cancer, and it was discovered

that the liabilities of Mrs. Malpas's estate exceeded its assets--and

the Tiger mortgaged up to its value! The creditors were not angry; they

attributed the state of affairs to illness and the absence of male

control, and good-humouredly accepted what they could get. None the

less, Nina, the child of luxury and sloth, had to start life with

several hundreds of pounds less than nothing. Of her father all trace

had been long since lost. A place was found for her, and for over two

years she saw the world from the office of a famous hotel in Doncaster.

Her lethargy, and an invaluable gift of adapting herself to

circumstances, saved her from any acute unhappiness in the Yorkshire

town. Instinctively she ceased to remember the Tiger and past

splendours. (Equally, if she had married a Duke instead of becoming a

book-keeper, she would have ceased to remember the Tiger and past

humility.) Then by good or ill fortune she had the offer of a situation

at the Hôtel Majestic, Strand, London. The Majestic and the sights

thereof woke up the sleeping soul.

Before her death Mrs. Malpas had told Nina many things about the

vanished Lemuel; among others, the curious detail that he had two small

moles--one hairless, the other hirsute--close together on the under side

of his right wrist. Nina had seen precisely such marks of identification

on the right wrist of Mr. Lionel Belmont.

She was convinced that Lionel Belmont was her father. There could not be

two men in the world so stamped by nature. She perceived that in

changing his name he had chosen Lionel because of its similarity to

Lemuel. She felt certain, too, that she had noticed vestiges of the Five

Towns accent beneath his Americanisms. But apart from these reasons, she

knew by a superrational instinct that Lionel Belmont was her father; it

was not the call of blood, but the positiveness of a woman asserting

that a thing is so because she is sure it is so.

III

Nina was not of an imaginative disposition. The romance of this

extraordinary encounter made no appeal to her. She was the sort of girl

that constantly reads novelettes, and yet always, with fatigued scorn,

refers to them as 'silly.' Stupid little Nina was intensely practical

at heart, and it was the practical side of her father's reappearance

that engaged her birdlike mind. She did not stop to reflect that truth

is stranger than fiction. Her tiny heart was not agitated by any

ecstatic ponderings upon the wonder and mystery of fate. She did not

feel strangely drawn towards Lionel Belmont, nor did she feel that he

supplied a something which had always been wanting to her.

On the other hand, her pride--and Nina was very proud--found much

satisfaction in the fact that her father, having turned up, was so fine,

handsome, dashing, good-humoured, and wealthy. It was well, and

excellently well, and delicious, to have a father like that. The

possession of such a father opened up vistas of a future so enticing and

glorious that her present career became instantly loathsome to her.

It suddenly seemed impossible that she could have tolerated the

existence of a hotel clerk for a single week. Her eyes were opened, and

she saw, as many women have seen, that luxury was an absolute necessity

to her. All her ideas soared with the magic swiftness of the

bean-stalk. And at the same time she was terribly afraid, unaccountably

afraid, to confront Mr. Belmont and tell him that she was his Nina; he

was entirely unaware that he had a Nina.

'I'm your daughter! I know by your moles!'

She whispered the words in her tiny heart, and felt sure that she could

never find courage to say them aloud to that great and important man.

The announcement would be too monstrous, incredible, and absurd. People

would laugh. He would laugh. And Nina could stand anything better than

being laughed at. Even supposing she proved to him his paternity--she

thought of the horridness of going to lawyers' offices--he might decline

to recognise her. Or he might throw her fifty pounds a year, as one

throws sixpence to an importunate crossing-sweeper, to be rid of her.

The United States existed in her mind chiefly as a country of

highly-remarkable divorce laws, and she thought that Mr. Belmont might

have married again. A fashionable and arrogant Mrs. Belmont, and a

dazzling Miss Belmont, aged possibly eighteen, might arrive, both of

them steeped in all conceivable luxury, at any moment. Where would Nina

be then, with her two-and-eleven-pence-halfpenny blouse from Glave's?...

Mr. Belmont, accompanied by Alphonse, the head-waiter in the _salle à

manger_, descended in the lift and crossed the hall to the portico,

where he stood talking for a few seconds. Mr. Belmont turned, and, as he

conversed with Alphonse, gazed absently in the direction of the bureau.

He looked straight through the pretty captive. After all, despite his

superficial heartiness, she could be nothing to him--so rich, assertive,

and truly important. A hansom was called for him, and he departed; she

observed that he was in evening dress now.

No! Her cause was just; but it was too startling--that was what was the

matter with it.

Then she told herself she would write to Lionel Belmont. She would write

a letter that night.

At nine-thirty she was off duty. She went upstairs to her perch in the

roof, and sat on her bed for over two hours. Then she came down again

to the bureau with some bluish note-paper and envelopes in her hand,

and, in response to the surprised question of the pink-frocked colleague

who had taken her place, she explained that she wanted to write a

letter.

'You do look that bad, Miss Malpas,' said the other girl, who made a

speciality of compassion.

'Do I?' said Nina.

'Yes, you do. What have you got _on_, _now_, my poor dear?'

'What's that to you? I'll thank you to mind your own business, Miss

Bella Perkins.'

Usually Nina was not soon ruffled; but that night all her nerves were

exasperated and exceedingly sensitive.

'Oh!' said the girl. 'What price the Duchess of Doncaster? And I was

just going to wish you a nice day to-morrow for your holiday, too.'

Nina seated herself at the table to write the letter. An electric light

burned directly over her frizzy head. She wrote a weak but legible and

regular back-hand. She hated writing letters, partly because she was

dubious about her spelling, and partly because of an obscure but

irrepressible suspicion that her letters were of necessity silly. She

pondered for a long time, and then wrote: 'Dear Mr. Belmont,--I

venture----' She made a new start: 'Dear Sir,--I hope you will not think

me----' And a third attempt: 'My dear Father----' No! it was

preposterous. It could no more be written than it could be said.

The situation was too much for simple Nina.

Suddenly the grand circular hall of the Majestic was filled with a

clamour at once charming and fantastic. There was chattering of musical,

gay American voices, pattering of elegant feet on the tessellated

pavement, the unique incomparable sound of the _frou-frou_ of many

frocks; and above all this the rich tones of Mr. Lionel Belmont. Nina

looked up and saw her radiant father the centre of a group of girls all

young, all beautiful, all stylish, all with picture hats, all

self-possessed, all sparkling, doubtless the recipients of the dandy

supper.

Oh, how insignificant and homicidal Nina felt!

'Thirteen of you!' exclaimed Lionel Belmont, pulling his superb

moustache. 'Two to a hansom. I guess I'll want six and a half hansoms,

boy.'

There was an explosion of delicious laughter, and the page-boy grinned,

ran off, and began whistling in the portico like a vexed locomotive. The

thirteen fair, shepherded by Lionel Belmont, passed out into the

murmurous summer night of the Strand. Cab after cab drove up, and Nina

saw that her father, after filling each cab, paid each cabman. In three

minutes the dream-like scene was over. Mr. Belmont re-entered the hotel,

winked humorously at the occupant of the pagoda, ignored the bureau, and

departed to his rooms.

Nina ripped her inchoate letters into small pieces, and, with a tart

good-night to Miss Bella Perkins, who was closing her ledgers, the hour

being close upon twelve-thirty, she passed sedately, stiffly, as though

in performance of some vestal's ritual, up the grand staircase. Turning

to the right at the first landing, she traversed a long corridor which

was no part of the route to her cubicle on the ninth floor. This

corridor was lighted by glowing sparks, which hung on yellow cords from

the central line of the ceiling; underfoot was a heavy but narrow

crimson patterned carpet with a strip of polished oak parquet on either

side of it. Exactly along the central line of the carpet Nina tripped,

languorously, like an automaton, and exactly over her head glittered the

line of electric sparks. The corridor and the journey seemed to be

interminable, and Nina on some inscrutable and mystic errand. At length

she moved aside from the religious line, went into a service cabinet,

and emerged with a small bunch of pass-keys. No. 107 was Lionel

Belmont's sitting-room; No. 102, his bedroom, was opposite to 107. No.

108, another sitting-room, was, as Nina knew, unoccupied. She

noiselessly let herself into No. 108, closed the door, and stood still.

After a minute she switched on the light. These two rooms, Nos. 108 and

107, had once communicated, but, as space grew precious with the growing

success of the Majestic, they had been finally separated, and the door

between them locked and masked by furniture. By reason of the door, Nina

could hear Lionel Belmont moving to and fro in No. 107. She listened a

long time. Then, involuntarily, she yawned with fatigue.

'How silly of me to be here!' she thought. 'What good will this do me?'

She extinguished the light and opened the door to leave. At the same

instant the door of No. 107, three feet off, opened. She drew back with

a start of horror. Suppose she had collided with her father on the

landing! Timorously she peeped out, and saw Lionel Belmont, in his

shirt-sleeves, disappear round the corner.

'He is going to talk with his friend Mr. Pank,' Nina thought, knowing

that No. 120 lay at some little distance round that corner.

Mr. Belmont had left the door of No. 107 slightly ajar. An unseen and

terrifying force compelled Nina to venture into the corridor, and then

to push the door of No. 107 wide open. The same force, not at all

herself, quite beyond herself, seemed to impel her by the shoulders into

the room. As she stood unmistakably within her father's private

sitting-room, scared, breathing rapidly, inquisitive, she said to

herself:

'I shall hear him coming back, and I can run out before he turns the

corner of the corridor.' And she kept her little pink ears alert.

She looked about the softly brilliant room, such an extravagant triumph

of luxurious comfort as twenty years ago would have aroused comment even

in Mayfair; but there were scores of similar rooms in the Majestic. No

one thought twice of them. Her father's dress-coat was thrown arrogantly

over a Louis Quatorze chair, and this careless flinging of the expensive

shining coat across the gilded chair somehow gave Nina a more intimate

appreciation of her father's grandeur and of the great and glorious life

he led. She longed to recline indolently in a priceless tea-gown on the

couch by the fireplace and issue orders.... She approached the

writing-table, littered with papers, documents, in scores and hundreds.

To the left was the brown bag. It was locked, and very heavy, she

thought. To the right was a pile of telegrams. She picked up one, and

read:

'_Pank, Grand Hotel, Birmingham. Why not burgle hotel? Simplest

most effective plan and solves all difficulties._--BELMONT.'

She read it twice, crunched it in her left hand, and picked up another

one:

'_Pank, Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. Your objection absurd. See safe

in bureau at Majestic. Quite easy. Scene with girl second

evening_.--BELMONT.'

The thing flashed blindingly upon her. Her father and Mr. Pank belonged

to the swell mob of which she had heard and seen so much at Doncaster.

She at once became the excessively knowing and suspicious hotel employé,

to whom every stranger is a rogue until he has proved the contrary. Had

she lived through three St. Leger weeks for nothing? At the hotel at

Doncaster, what they didn't know about thieves and sharpers was not

knowledge. The landlord kept a loaded revolver in his desk there during

the week. And she herself had been provided with a whistle which she was

to blow at the slightest sign of a row; she had blown it once, and seven

policemen had appeared within thirty seconds. The landlord used to tell

tales of masterly and huge scoundrelism that would make Charles Peace

turn in his grave. And the landlord had ever insisted that no one, no

one at all, could always distinguish with certainty between a real gent

and a swell-mobsman.

So her father and Mr. Pank had deceived everyone in the hotel except

herself, and they meant to rob the safe in the bureau to-morrow night.

Of course Mr. Lionel Belmont was a villain, or he would not have

deserted her poor dear mother; it was annoying, but indubitable.... Even

now he was maturing his plans round the corner with that Mr. Pank....

Burglars always went about in shirt-sleeves.... The brown bag contained

the tools....

The shock was frightful, disastrous, tragic; but it had solved the

situation by destroying it. Practically, Nina no longer had a father. He

had existed for about four hours as a magnificent reality, full of

possibilities; he now ceased to be recognisable.

She was about to pick up a third telegram when a slight noise caused her

to turn swiftly; she had forgotten to keep her little pink ears alert.

Her father stood in the doorway. He was certainly the victim of some

extraordinary emotion; his face worked; he seemed at a loss what to do

or say; he seemed pained, confused, even astounded. Simple, foolish Nina

had upset the balance of his equations.

Then he resumed his self-control and came forward into the room with a

smile intended to be airy. Meanwhile Nina had not moved. One is inclined

to pity the artless and defenceless girl in this midnight duel of wits

with a shrewd, resourceful, and unscrupulous man of the world. But one's

pity should not be lavished on an undeserving object. Though Nina

trembled, she was mistress of herself. She knew just where she was, and

just how to behave. She was as impregnable as Gibraltar.

'Well,' said Mr. Lionel Belmont, genially gazing at her pose, 'you do

put snap into it, any way.'

'Into what?' she was about to inquire, but prudently she held her

tongue. Drawing, herself up with the gesture of an offended and

unapproachable queen, the little thing sailed past him, close past her

own father, and so out of the room.

'Say!' she heard him remark: 'let's straighten this thing out, eh?'

But she heroically ignored him, thinking the while that, with all his

sins, he was attractive enough. She still held the first telegram in her

long, thin fingers.

So ended the nocturne.

IV

At five o'clock the next morning Nina's trifling nose was pressed

against the windowpane of her cubicle. In the enormous slate roof of the

Majestic are three rows of round windows, like port-holes. Out of the

highest one, at the extremity of the left wing, Nina looked. From thence

she could see five other vast hotels, and the yard of Charing Cross

Station, with three night-cabs drawn up to the kerb, and a red van of

W.H. Smith and Son disappearing into the station. The Strand was quite

empty. It was a strange world of sleep and grayness and disillusion.

Within a couple of hundred yards or so of her thousands of people lay

asleep, and they would all soon wake into the disillusion, and the

Strand would wake, and the first omnibus of all the omnibuses would come

along....

Never had simple Nina felt so sad and weary. She was determined to give

up her father. She was bound to tell the manager of her discovery, for

Nina was an honest servant, and she was piqued in her honesty. No one

should know that Lionel Belmont was her father.... She saw before her

the task of forgetting him and forgetting the rich dreams of which he

had been the origin. She was once more a book-keeper with no prospects.

At eight she saw the manager in the managerial room. Mr. Reuben was a

young Jew, aged about thirty-four, with a cold but indestructibly polite

manner. He was a great man, and knew it; he had almost invented the

Majestic.

She told him her news; it was impossible for foolish Nina to conceal her

righteousness and her sense of her importance.

'Whom did you say, Miss Malpas?' asked Mr. Reuben.

'Mr. Lionel Belmont--at least, that's what he calls himself.'

'Calls himself, Miss Malpas?'

'Here's one of the telegrams.'

Mr. Reuben read it, looked at little Nina, and smiled; he never laughed.

'Is it possible, Miss Malpas,' said he, 'that you don't know who Mr.

Belmont and Mr. Pank are?' And then, as she shook her head, he continued

in his impassive, precise way: 'Mr. Belmont is one of the principal

theatrical managers in the United States. Mr. Pank is one of the

principal playwrights in the United States. Mr. Pank's melodrama

'Nebraska' is now being played at the Regency by Mr. Belmont's own

American company. Another of Mr. Belmont's companies starts shortly for

a tour in the provinces with the musical comedy 'The Dolmenico Doll.' I

believe that Mr. Pank and Mr. Belmont are now writing a new melodrama,

and as they have both been travelling, but not together, I expect that

these telegrams relate to that melodrama. Did you suppose that

safe-burglars wire their plans to each other like this?' He waved the

telegram with a gesture of fatigue.

Silly, ruined Nina made no answer.

'Do you ever read the papers--the _Telegraph_ or the _Mail_, Miss

Malpas?'

'N-no, sir.'

'You ought to, then you wouldn't be so ignorant and silly. A hotel-clerk

can't know too much. And, by-the-way, what were you doing in Mr.

Belmont's room last night, when you found these wonderful telegrams?'

'I went there--I went there--to----'

'Don't cry, please, it won't help you. You must leave here to-day.

You've been here three weeks, I think. I'll tell Mr. Smith to pay you

your month's wages. You don't know enough for the Majestic, Miss Malpas.

Or perhaps you know too much. I'm sorry. I had thought you would suit

us. Keep straight, that's all I have to say to you. Go back to

Doncaster, or wherever it is you came from. Leave before five o'clock.

That will do.'

With a godlike air, Mr. Reuben swung round his office-chair and faced

his desk. He tried not to perceive that there was a mysterious quality

about this case which he had not quite understood. Nina tripped

piteously out.

In the whole of London Nina had one acquaintance, and an hour or so

later, after drinking some tea, she set forth to visit this

acquaintance. The weight of her own foolishness, fatuity, silliness, and

ignorance was heavy upon her. And, moreover, she had been told that Mr.

Lionel Belmont had already departed back to America, his luggage being

marked for the American Transport Line.

She was primly walking, the superlative of the miserable, past the

façade of the hotel, when someone sprang out of a cab and spoke to her.

And it was Mr. Lionel Belmont.

'Get right into this hansom, Miss Malpas,' he said kindly, 'and I guess

we'll talk it out.'

'Talk what out?' she thought.

But she got in.

'Marble Arch, and go up Regent Street, and don't hurry,' said Mr.

Belmont to the cabman.

'How did he know my name?' she asked herself.

'A hansom's the most private place in London,' he said after a pause.

It certainly did seem to her very cosy and private, and her nearness to

one of the principal theatrical managers in America was almost

startling. Her white frock, with the black velvet decorations, touched

his gray suit.

'Now,' he said, 'I do wish you'd tell me why you were in my parlour last

night. Honest.'

'What for?' she parried, to gain time.

Should she begin to disclose her identity?

'Because--well, because--oh, look here, my girl, I want to be on very

peculiar terms with you. I want to straighten out everything. You'll be

sort of struck, but I'll be bound to tell you I'm your father. Now,

don't faint or anything.'

'Oh, I knew that!' she gasped. 'I saw the moles on your wrist when your

were registering--mother told me about them. Oh, if I had only known you

knew!'

They looked at one another.

'It was only the day before yesterday I found out I possessed such a

thing as a daughter. I had a kind of fancy to go around to the old spot.

This notion of me having a daughter struck me considerable, and I

concluded to trace her and size her up at once.' Nina was bound to

smile. 'So your poor mother's been dead three years?'

'Yes,' said Nina.

'Ah! don't let us talk about that. I feel I can't say just the right

thing.... And so you knew me by those pips.' He pulled up his right

sleeve. 'Was that why you came up to my parlour?'

Nina nodded, and Lionel Belmont sighed with relief.

'Why didn't you tell me at once, my dear, who you where?'

'I didn't dare,' she smiled; 'I was afraid. I thought you wouldn't----'

'Listen,' he said; 'I've wanted someone like you for years, years, and

years. I've got no one to look after----'

'Then why didn't _you_ tell _me_ at once who you were?' she questioned

with adorable pertness.

'Oh!' he laughed; 'how could I--plump like that? When I saw you first,

in the bureau, the stricken image of your mother at your age, I was

nearly down. But I came up all right, didn't I, my dear? I acted it out

well, didn't I?'

* * * * *

The hansom was rolling through Hyde Park, and the sunshiny hour was

eleven in June. Nina looked forth on the gay and brilliant scene:

rhododendrons, duchesses, horses, dandies--the incomparable wealth and

splendour of the capital. She took a long breath, and began to be happy

for the rest of her life. She felt that, despite her plain frock, she

was in this picture. Her father had told her that his income was rising

on a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and he would thank her

to spend it. Her father had told her, when she had confessed the scene

with Mr. Reuben and what led to it, that she had grit, and that the

mistake was excusable, and that a girl as pretty as she was didn't want

to be as fly as Mr. Reuben had said. Her father had told her that he was

proud of her, and he had not been so rude as to laugh at her blunder.

She felt that she was about to enter upon the true and only vocation of

a dainty little morsel--namely, to spend money earned by other people.

She thought less homicidally now of the thirteen chorus-girls of the

previous night.

'Say,' said her father, 'I sail this afternoon for New York, Nina.'

'They said you'd gone, at the hotel.'

'Only my baggage. The _Minnehaha_ clears at five. I guess I want you to

come along too. On the voyage we'll get acquainted, and tell each other

things.'

'Suppose I say I won't?'

She spoke despotically, as the pampered darling should.

'Then I'll wait for the next boat. But it'll be awkward.'

'Then I'll come. But I've got no things.'

He pushed up the trap-door.

'Driver, Bond Street. And get on to yourself, for goodness' sake!

Hurry!'

'You told me not to hurry,' grumbled the cabby.

'And now I tell you to hustle. See?'

'Shall you want me to call myself Belmont?' Nina asked.

'I chose it because it was a fine ten-horse-power name twenty years

ago,' said her father; and she murmured that she liked the name very

much.

As Lionel Belmont the Magnificent paid the cabman, and Nina walked

across the pavement into one of the most famous repositories of

expensive frippery in the world, she thrilled with the profoundest

pleasure her tiny soul was capable of. Foolish, simple Nina had achieved

the _nec plus ultra_ of her languorous dreams.

* * * * *

CLARICE OF THE AUTUMN CONCERTS

I

'What did you say your name was?' asked Otto, the famous concert

manager.

'Clara Toft.'

'That won't do,' he said roughly.

'My real proper name is Clarice,' she added, blushing. 'But----'

'That's better, that's better.' His large, dark face smiled carelessly.

'Clarice--and stick an "e" on to Toft--Clarice Tofte. Looks like either

French or German then. I'll send you the date. It'll be the second week

in September. And you can come round to the theatre and try the

piano--Bechstein.'

'And what do you think I had better play, Mr. Otto?'

'You must play what you have just played, of course. Tschaikowsky's all

the rage just now. Your left hand's very weak, especially in the last

movement. You've got to make more noise--at my concerts. And see here,

Miss Toft, don't you go and make a fool of me. I believe you have a

great future, and I'm backing my opinion. Don't you go and make a fool

of me.'

'I shall play my very best,' she smiled nervously. 'I'm awfully obliged

to you, Mr. Otto.'

'Well,' he said, 'you ought to be.'

At the age of fifteen her father, an earthenware manufacturer, and the

flamboyant Alderman of Turnhill, in the Five Towns, had let her depart

to London to the Royal College of Music. Thence, at nineteen, she had

proceeded to the Conservatoire of Liége. At twenty-two she could play

the great concert pieces--Liszt's 'Rhapsodies Hongroises,' Chopin's

Ballade, Op. 47, Beethoven's Op. 111, etc.--in concert style, and she

was the wonder of the Five Towns when she visited Turnhill. But in

London she had obtained neither engagements nor pupils: she had never

believed in herself. She knew of dozens of pianists whom she deemed

more brilliant than little, pretty, modest Clara Toft; and after her

father's death and the not surprising revelation of his true financial

condition, she settled with her faded, captious mother in Turnhill as a

teacher of the pianoforte, and did nicely.

Then, when she was twenty-six, and content in provincialism, she had met

during an August holiday at Llandudno her old fellow pupil, Albert

Barbellion, who was conducting the Pier concerts. Barbellion had asked

her to play at a 'soirée musicale' which he gave one night in the

ball-room of his hotel, and she had performed Tschaikowsky's immense and

lurid Slavonic Sonata; and the unparalleled Otto, renowned throughout

the British Empire for Otto's Bohemian Autumn Nightly Concerts at Covent

Garden Theatre, had happened to hear her and that seldom played sonata

for the first time. It was a wondrous chance. Otto's large, picturesque,

extempore way of inviting her to appear at his promenade concerts

reminded her of her father.

II

In the bleak three-cornered artists'-room she could faintly hear the

descending impetuous velocities of the Ride of the Walkyries. She was

waiting in her new yellow dress, waiting painfully. Otto rushed in, a

glass in his hand.

'You all right?' he questioned sharply.

'Oh, yes,' she said, getting up from the cane-chair.

'Let me see you stand on one leg,' he said; and then, because she

hesitated: 'Go on, quick! Stand on one leg. It's a good test.' So she

stood on one leg, foolishly smiling. 'Here, drink this,' he ordered, and

she had to drink brandy-and-soda out of the glass. 'You're better now,'

he remarked; and decidedly, though her throat tingled and she coughed,

she felt equal to anything at that moment.

A stout, middle-aged woman, in a rather shabby opera cloak, entered the

room.

'Ah, Cornelia!' exclaimed Otto grandly.

'My dear Otto!' the woman responded, wrinkling her wonderfully enamelled

cheeks.

'Miss Toft, let me introduce you to Madame Lopez.' He turned to the

newcomer. 'Keep her calm for me, bright star, will you?'

Then Otto went, and Clarice was left alone with the world-famous

operatic soprano, who was advertised to sing that night the Shadow Song

from 'Dinorah.'

'Where did he pick you up, my dear?' the decayed diva inquired

maternally.

Clarice briefly explained.

'You aren't paying him anything, are you?'

'Oh, no!' said Clarice, shocked. 'But I get no fee this time----'

'Of course not, my dear,' the Lopez cut her short. 'It's all right so

long as you aren't paying him anything to let you go on. Now run along.'

Clarice's heart stopped. The call-boy, with his cockney twang, had

pronounced her name.

She moved forward, and, by dint of following the call-boy, at length

reached the stage. Applause--good-natured applause--seemed to roll

towards her from the uttermost parts of the vast auditorium. She

realized with a start that this applause was exclusively for her. She

sat down to the piano, and there ensued a death-like silence--a silence

broken only by the striking of matches and the tinkle of the embowered

fountain in front of the stage. She had a consciousness, rather than a

vision, of a floor of thousands of upturned faces below her, and tier

upon tier of faces rising above her and receding to the illimitable dark

distances of the gallery. She heard a door bang, and perceived that some

members of the orchestra were creeping quietly out at the back. Then she

plunged, dizzy, into the sonata, as into a heaving and profound sea. The

huge concert piano resounded under the onslaught of her broad hands.

When she had played ten bars she knew with an absolute conviction that

she would do justice to her talent. She could see, as it were, the

entire sonata stretched out in detail before her like a road over which

she had to travel....

At the end of the first movement the clapping enheartened her; she

smiled confidently at the conductor, who, unemployed during her number,

sat on a chair under his desk. Before recommencing she gazed boldly at

the house, and certain placards--'Smoking permitted,' 'Emergency exit,'

'Ices,' and 'Fancy Dress Balls'--were fixed for ever on the retina of

her eye. At the end of the second movement there was more applause, and

the conductor tapped appreciation with his stick against the pillar of

his desk; the leader of the listless orchestra also tapped with his

fiddle-bow and nodded. It seemed to her now that she more and more

dominated the piano, and that she rendered the great finale with

masterful and fierce assurance....

She was pleased with herself as she banged the last massive chord. And

the applause, the clapping, the hammering of sticks, astounded her,

staggered her. She might have died of happiness while she bowed and

bowed again. She ran off the stage triumphant, and the applause seemed

to assail her little figure from all quarters and overwhelm it. As she

stood waiting, concealed behind a group of palms, it suddenly occurred

to her that, after all, she had underestimated herself. She saw her rosy

future as the spoiled darling of continental capitals. The hail of

clapping persisted, and the apparition of Otto violently waved her to

return to the stage. She returned, bowed her passionate exultation with

burning face and trembling knees, and retired. The clapping continued.

Yes, she would be compelled to grant an encore--to _grant_ one. She

would grant it like a honeyed but imperious queen.

Suddenly she heard the warning tap of the conductor's baton; the

applause was hushed as though by a charm, and the orchestra broke into

the overture to 'Zampa.' She could not understand, she could not think.

As she tripped tragically to the artists'-room in her new yellow dress

she said to herself that the conductor must have made some mistake, and

that----

'Very nice, my dear,' said the Lopez kindly to her. 'You got quite a

call--quite a call.'

She waited for Otto to come and talk to her.

At length the Lopez was summoned, and Clarice followed to listen to her.

And when the Lopez had soared with strong practised flight through the

brilliant intricacy of the Shadow Song, Clarice became aware what real

applause sounded like from the stage. It shook the stage as the old

favourite of two generations, wearing her set smile, waddled back to the

debutante. Scores of voices hoarsely shouted 'Encore!' and 'Last Rose

of Summer,' and with a proud sigh the Lopez went on again, bowing.

Clarice saw nothing more of Otto, who doubtless had other birds to

snare. The next day only three daily papers mentioned the concert at

all. In fact, Otto expected press notices but once a week. All three

papers praised the matchless Lopez in her Shadow Song. One referred to

Clarice as talented; another called her well-intentioned; the third

merely said that she had played. The short dream of artistic ascendancy

lay in fragments around her. She was a sensible girl, and stamped those

iridescent fragments into dust.

III

The _Staffordshire Signal_ contained the following advertisement: 'Miss

Clara Toft, solo pianist, of the Otto Autumn Concerts, London, will

resume lessons on the 1st proximo at Liszt House, Turnhill. Terms on

application.' At thirty Clarice married James Sillitoe, the pianoforte

dealer in Market Square, Turnhill, and captious old Mrs. Toft formed

part of the new household. At thirty-four Clarice possessed a little

girl and two little boys, twins. Sillitoe was a money-maker, and she no

longer gave lessons.

Happy? Perhaps not unhappy.

* * * * *

A LETTER HOME[2]

[2] Written in 1893.

I

Rain was falling--it had fallen steadily through the night--but the sky

showed promise of fairer weather. As the first streaks of dawn appeared,

the wind died away, and the young leaves on the trees were almost

silent. The birds were insistently clamorous, vociferating times without

number that it was a healthy spring morning and good to be alive.

A little, bedraggled crowd stood before the park gates, awaiting the

hour named on the notice board when they would be admitted to such

lodging and shelter as iron seats and overspreading branches might

afford. A weary, patient-eyed, dogged crowd--a dozen men, a boy of

thirteen, and a couple of women, both past middle age--which had been

gathering slowly since five o'clock. The boy appeared to be the least

uncomfortable. His feet were bare, but he had slept well in an area in

Grosvenor Place, and was not very damp yet. The women had nodded on many

doorsteps, and were soaked. They stood apart from the men, who seemed

unconscious of their existence. The men were exactly such as one would

have expected to find there--beery and restless as to the eyes, quaintly

shod, and with nondescript greenish clothes which for the most part bore

traces of the yoke of the sandwich board. Only one amongst them was

different.

He was young, and his cap, and manner of wearing it, gave sign of the

sea. His face showed the rough outlines of his history. Yet it was a

transparently honest face, very pale, but still boyish and fresh enough

to make one wonder by what rapid descent he had reached his present

level. Perhaps the receding chin, the heavy, pouting lower lip, and the

ceaselessly twitching mouth offered a key to the problem.

'Say, Darkey!' he said.

'Well?'

'How much longer?'

'Can't ye see the clock? It's staring ye in the face.'

'No. Something queer's come over my eyes.'

Darkey was a short, sturdy man, who kept his head down and his hands

deep in his pockets. The raindrops clinging to the rim of an ancient hat

fell every now and then into his gray beard, which presented a drowned

appearance. He was a person of long and varied experiences; he knew that

queer feeling in the eyes, and his heart softened.

'Come, lean against the pillar,' he said, 'if you don't want to tumble.

Three of brandy's what you want. There's four minutes to wait yet.'

With body flattened to the masonry, legs apart, and head thrown back,

Darkey's companion felt more secure, and his mercurial spirits began to

revive. He took off his cap, and brushing back his light brown curly

hair with the hand which held it, he looked down at Darkey through

half-closed eyes, the play of his features divided between a smile and a

yawn.

He had a lively sense of humour, and the irony of his situation was not

lost on him. He took a grim, ferocious delight in calling up the

might-have-beens and the 'fatuous ineffectual yesterdays' of life. There

is a certain sardonic satisfaction to be gleaned from a frank

recognition of the fact that you are the architect of your own

misfortune. He felt that satisfaction, and laughed at Darkey, who was

one of those who moan about 'ill-luck' and 'victims of circumstance.'

'No doubt,' he would say, 'you're a very deserving fellow, Darkey, who's

been treated badly. I'm not.'

To have attained such wisdom at twenty-five is not to have lived

altogether in vain.

A park-keeper presently arrived to unlock the gates, and the band of

outcasts straggled indolently towards the nearest sheltered seats. Some

went to sleep at once, in a sitting posture. Darkey produced a clay

pipe, and, charging it with a few shreds of tobacco laboriously gathered

from his waistcoat pocket, began to smoke. He was accustomed to this

sort of thing, and with a pipe in his mouth could contrive to be

moderately philosophical upon occasion. He looked curiously at his

companion, who lay stretched at full length on another bench.

'I say, pal,' he remarked, 'I've known ye two days; ye've never told me

yer name, and I don't ask ye to. But I see ye've not slep' in a park

before.'

'You hit it, Darkey; but how?'

'Well, if the keeper catches ye lying down, he'll be on to ye. Lying

down's not allowed.'

The man raised himself on his elbow.

'Really now,' he said; 'that's interesting. But I think I'll give the

keeper the opportunity of moving me. Why, it's quite fine, the sun's

coming out, and the sparrows are hopping round--cheeky little devils!

I'm not sure that I don't feel jolly.'

'I wish I'd got the price of a pint about me,' sighed Darkey, and the

other man dropped his head and appeared to sleep. Then Darkey dozed a

little, and heard in his waking sleep the heavy, crunching tread of an

approaching park-keeper; he started up to warn his companion, but

thought better of it, and closed his eyes again.

'Now then, there,' the park-keeper shouted to the man with the sailor's

cap, 'get up! This ain't a fourpenny doss, you know. No lying down.'

A rough shake accompanied the words, and the man sat up.

'All right, my friend.'

The keeper, who was a good-humoured man, passed on without further

objurgation.

The face of the younger man had grown whiter.

'Look here, Darkey,' he said, 'I believe I'm done for.'

'Never say die.'

'No, just die without speaking.'

His head fell forward and his eyes closed.

'At any rate, this is better than some deaths I've seen,' he began again

with a strange accession of liveliness. 'Darkey, did I tell you the

story of the five Japanese girls?'

'What, in Suez Bay?' said Darkey, who had heard many sea-stories during

the last two days, and recollected them but hazily.

'No, man. This was at Nagasaki. We were taking in a cargo of coal for

Hong Kong. Hundreds of little Jap girls pass the coal from hand to hand

over the ship's side in tiny baskets that hold about a plateful. In that

way you can get three thousand tons aboard in two days.'

'Talking of platefuls reminds me of sausage and mash,' said Darkey.

'Don't interrupt. Well, five of these gay little dolls wanted to go to

Hong Kong, and they arranged with the Chinese sailors to stow away; I

believe their friends paid those cold-blooded fiends something to pass

them down food on the voyage, and give them an airing at nights. We had

a particularly lively trip, battened everything down tight, and scarcely

uncovered till we got into port. Then I and another man found those five

girls among the coal.'

'Dead, eh?'

'They'd simply torn themselves to pieces. Their bits of frock things

were in strips, and they were scratched deep from top to toe. The

Chinese had never troubled their heads about them at all, although they

must have known it meant death. You may bet there was a row. The

Japanese authorities make you search ship before sailing, now.'

'Well?'

'Well, I shan't die like that. That's all.'

He stretched himself out once more, and for ten minutes neither spoke.

The park-keeper strolled up again.

'Get up, there!' he said shortly and gruffly.

'Up ye get, mate,' added Darkey, but the man on the bench did not stir.

One look at his face sufficed to startle the keeper, and presently two

policemen were wheeling an ambulance cart to the hospital. Darkey

followed, gave such information as he could, and then went his own ways.

II

In the afternoon the patient regained full consciousness. His eyes

wandered vacantly about the illimitable ward, with its rows of beds

stretching away on either side of him. A woman with a white cap, a white

apron, and white wristbands bent over him, and he felt something

gratefully warm passing down his throat. For just one second he was

happy. Then his memory returned, and the nurse saw that he was crying.

When he caught the nurse's eye he ceased, and looked steadily at the

distant ceiling.

'You're better?'

'Yes.'

He tried to speak boldly, decisively, nonchalantly. He was filled with a

sense of physical shame, the shame which bodily helplessness always

experiences in the presence of arrogant, patronizing health. He would

have got up and walked briskly away if he could. He hated to be waited

on, to be humoured, to be examined and theorized about. This woman would

be wanting to feel his pulse. She should not; he would turn

cantankerous. No doubt they had been saying to each other, 'And so

young, too! How sad!' Confound them!

'Have you any friends that you would like to send for?'

'No, none.'

The girl--she was only a girl--looked at him, and there was that in her

eye which overcame him.

'None at all?'

'Not that I want to see.'

'Are your parents alive?'

'My mother is, but she lives away in the Five Towns.'

'You've not seen her lately, perhaps?'

He did not reply, and the nurse spoke again, but her voice sounded

indistinct and far off.

When he awoke it was night. At the other end of the ward was a long

table covered with a white cloth, and on this table a lamp.

In the ring of light under the lamp was an open book, an inkstand and a

pen. A nurse--not _his_ nurse--was standing by the table, her fingers

idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in evening dress. Perhaps a

doctor. They were conversing in low tones. In the middle of the ward was

an open stove, and the restless flames were reflected in all the brass

knobs of the bedsteads and in some shining metal balls which hung from

an unlighted chandelier. His part of the ward was almost in darkness. A

confused, subdued murmur of little coughs, breathings, rustlings, was

continually audible, and sometimes it rose above the conversation at the

table. He noticed all these things. He became conscious, too, of a

strangely familiar smell. What was it? Ah, yes! Acetic acid; his mother

used it for her rheumatics.

Suddenly, magically, a great longing came over him. He must see his

mother, or his brothers, or his little sister--someone who knew him,

someone who _belonged_ to him. He could have cried out in his desire.

This one thought consumed all his faculties. If his mother could but

walk in just now through that doorway! If only old Spot even could amble

up to him, tongue out and tail furiously wagging! He tried to sit up,

and he could not move! Then despair settled on him, and weighed him

down. He closed his eyes.

The doctor and the nurse came slowly up the ward, pausing here and

there. They stopped before his bed, and he held his breath.

'Not roused up again, I suppose?'

'No.'

'H'm! He may flicker on for forty-eight hours. Not more.'

They went on, and with a sigh of relief he opened his eyes again. The

doctor shook hands with the nurse, who returned to the table and sat

down.

Death! The end of all this! Yes, it was coming. He felt it. His had been

one of those wasted lives of which he used to read in books. How

strange! Almost amusing! He was one of those sons who bring sorrow and

shame into a family. Again, how strange! What a coincidence that

he--just _he_ and not the man in the next bed--should be one of those

rare, legendary good-for-nothings who go recklessly to ruin. And yet, he

was sure that he was not such a bad fellow after all. Only somehow he

had been careless. Yes, careless; that was the word ... nothing

worse.... As to death, he was indifferent. Remembering his father's

death, he reflected that it was probably less disturbing to die one's

self than to watch another pass.

He smelt the acetic acid once more, and his thoughts reverted to his

mother. Poor mother! No, great mother! The grandeur of her life's

struggle filled him with a sense of awe. Strange that until that moment

he had never seen the heroic side of her humdrum, commonplace existence!

He must write to her, now, at once, before it was too late. His letter

would trouble her, add another wrinkle to her face, but he must write;

she must know that he had been thinking of her.

'Nurse!' he cried out, in a thin, weak voice.

'Ssh!'

She was by his side directly, but not before he had lost consciousness

again.

The following morning he managed with infinite labour to scrawl a few

lines:

'DEAR MAMMA,

'You will be surprised but not glad to get this letter. I'm done

for, and you will never see me again. I'm sorry for what I've done,

and how I've treated you, but it's no use saying anything now. If

Pater had only lived he might have kept me in order. But you were

too kind, you know. You've had a hard struggle these last six

years, and I hope Arthur and Dick will stand by you better than I

did, now they are growing up. Give them my love, and kiss little

Fannie for me.

'WILLIE.

'_Mrs. Hancock_----'

He got no further with the address.

III

By some turn of the wheel, Darkey gathered several shillings during the

next day or two, and, feeling both elated and benevolent, he called one

afternoon at the hospital, 'just to inquire like.' They told him the man

was dead.

'By the way, he left a letter without an address. Mrs. Hancock--here it

is.'

'That'll be his mother; he did tell me about her--lived at Knype,

Staffordshire, he said. I'll see to it.'

They gave Darkey the letter.

'So his name's Hancock,' he soliloquized, when he got into the street.

'I knew a girl of that name--once. I'll go and have a pint of

four-half.'

At nine o'clock that night Darkey was still consuming four-half, and

relating certain adventures by sea which, he averred, had happened to

himself. He was very drunk.

'Yes,' he said, 'and them five lil' gals was lying there without a

stitch on 'em, dead as meat; 's 'true as I'm 'ere. I've seen a thing or

two in my time, I can tell ye.'

'Talking about these Anarchists--' said a man who appeared anxious to

change the subject.

'An--kists,' Darkey interrupted. 'I tell ye what I'd do with that muck.'

He stopped to light his pipe, looked in vain for a match, felt in his

pockets, and pulled out a piece of paper--the letter.

'I tell you what I'd do. I'd--'

He slowly and meditatively tore the letter in two, dropped one piece on

the floor, thrust the other into a convenient gas-jet, and applied it to

the tobacco.

'I'd get 'em 'gether in a heap, and I'd--Damn this pipe!'

He picked up the other half of the letter, and relighted the pipe.

'After you, mate,' said a man sitting near, who was just biting the end

from a cigar.

THE END.