THE LION AND THE UNICORN
By Richard Harding Davis
IN MEMORY OF MANY HOT DAYS AND SOME HOT CORNERS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
LT.-COL. ARTHUR H. LEE, R.A.
British Military Attache with the United States Army
Contents
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
ON THE FEVER SHIP
THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT
THE VAGRANT
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
THE LION AND THE UNICORN
Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in Jermyn
Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course, turned into
lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss was a Florist to the
Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his flowershop, just in front
of the middle window on the first floor. By stretching a little, each of
them could see into the window just beyond him, and could hear all that
was said inside; and such things as they saw and heard during the reign
of Captain Carrington, who moved in at the same time they did! By day
the table in the centre of the room was covered with maps, and the
Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags wrapped
around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the maps and
measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to himself. It was a
selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the Captain’s only intellectual
pursuit, for at night, the maps were rolled up, and a green cloth was
spread across the table, and there was much company and popping of
soda-bottles, and little heaps of gold and silver were moved this way
and that across the cloth. The smoke drifted out of the open windows,
and the laughter of the Captain’s guests rang out loudly in the empty
street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes reprovingly to
the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath them and lay in wait,
dozing on their folded arms, for the Captain’s guests to depart. The
Lion and the Unicorn were rather ashamed of the scandal of it, and they
were glad when, one day, the Captain went away with his tin boxes and
gun-cases piled high on a four-wheeler.
Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said: “I wish you good luck, sir.”
And the Captain said: “I’m coming back a Major, Prentiss.” But he never
came back. And one day--the Lion remembered the day very well, for on
that same day the newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out
the news of “a ’orrible disaster” to the British arms. It was then that
a young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to meet
her and led her upstairs. They heard him unlock the Captain’s door and
say, “This is his room, miss,” and after he had gone they watched her
standing quite still by the centre table. She stood there for a very
long time looking slowly about her, and then she took a photograph of
the Captain from the frame on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket,
and when she went out again her veil was down, and she was crying. She
must have given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her “Your
ladyship,” which he never did under a sovereign.
And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could they
hear the address she gave the cabman. But it was somewhere up St. John’s
Wood way.
After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and the
Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful ladies and
smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy flowers and “buttonholes,”
and the little round baskets of strawberries, and even the peaches
at three shillings each, which looked so tempting as they lay in the
window, wrapped up in cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.
Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five guineas
a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew that in the
economy of nations there must always be a higher price for the rich
American, or else why was he given that strange accent, except to betray
him into the hands of the London shopkeeper, and the London cabby?
The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the window
nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St. James’s
Church, that stretched between their street and Piccadilly.
“You’re lucky in having a bit of green to look out on,” he said to
Prentiss. “I’ll take these rooms--at five guineas. That’s more than
they’re worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your conscience needn’t
trouble you.”
Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. “How do
you do?” he said. “I’m coming to live with you for a little time. I
have read about you and your friends over there. It is a hazard of new
fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind to me, and if I win, I will
put a new coat of paint on your shield and gild you all over again.”
Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American’s pleasantry, but the new
lodger only stared at him.
“He seemed a social gentleman,” said the Unicorn, that night, when the
Lion and he were talking it over. “Now the Captain, the whole time he
was here, never gave us so much as a look. This one says he has read of
us.”
“And why not?” growled the Lion. “I hope Prentiss heard what he said of
our needing a new layer of gilt. It’s disgraceful. You can see that Lion
over Scarlett’s, the butcher, as far as Regent Street, and Scarlett is
only one of Salisbury’s creations. He received his Letters-Patent only
two years back. We date from Palmerston.”
The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped and
looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk, before he
opened the door with his night-key. They heard him enter the room and
feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment later he appeared at the
Lion’s window and leaned on the sill, looking down into the street below
and blowing whiffs of smoke up into the warm night-air.
It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and the
streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from the play,
and with groups of men in black and white, making their way to supper
at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining lamps inside and out,
dashed noiselessly past on mysterious errands, chasing close on each
other’s heels on a mad race, each to its separate goal. From the cross
streets rose the noises of early night, the rumble of the ’buses, the
creaking of their brakes, as they unlocked, the cries of the “extras,”
and the merging of thousands of human voices in a dull murmur. The great
world of London was closing its shutters for the night, and putting out
the lights; and the new lodger from across the sea listened to it with
his heart beating quickly, and laughed to stifle the touch of fear and
homesickness that rose in him.
“I have seen a great play to-night,” he said to the Lion, “nobly played
by great players. What will they care for my poor wares? I see that I
have been over-bold. But we cannot go back now--not yet.”
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded “good-night” to the
great world beyond his window. “What fortunes lie with ye, ye lights of
London town?” he quoted, smiling. And they heard him close the door of
his bedroom, and lock it for the night.
The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and placed them
along the broad cornice that stretched across the front of the house
over the shop window. The flowers made a band of scarlet on either side
of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy’s jacket.
“I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers before
his altar,” the American said that morning to a visitor.
“The British public you mean,” said the visitor; “they are each likely
to tear you to pieces.”
“Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play is
something awful,” hazarded the American.
“Wait and see,” said the visitor.
“Thank you,” said the American, meekly.
Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. It
seemed to be something of great moment to the American. It was only a
bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and bound in brown
paper covers. There were two of them, and the American called them by
different names: one was his comedy and one was his tragedy.
“They are both likely to be tragedies,” the Lion heard one of the
visitors say to another, as they drove away together. “Our young friend
takes it too seriously.”
The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window writing on
little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in reading over one of
the plays to himself in a loud voice. In time the number of his visitors
increased, and to some of these he would read his play; and after they
had left him he was either depressed and silent or excited and jubilant.
The Lion could always tell when he was happy because then he would go to
the side table and pour himself out a drink and say, “Here’s to me,” but
when he was depressed he would stand holding the glass in his hand, and
finally pour the liquor back into the bottle again and say, “What’s the
use of that?”
After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more
frequently abroad, sallying forth in beautiful raiment, and coming home
by daylight.
And he gave suppers too, but they were less noisy than the Captain’s had
been, and the women who came to them were much more beautiful, and their
voices when they spoke were sweet and low. Sometimes one of the women
sang, and the men sat in silence while the people in the street below
stopped to listen, and would say, “Why, that is So-and-So singing,” and
the Lion and the Unicorn wondered how they could know who it was when
they could not see her.
The lodger’s visitors came to see him at all hours. They seemed to
regard his rooms as a club, where they could always come for a bite to
eat or to write notes; and others treated it like a lawyer’s office and
asked advice on all manner of strange subjects. Sometimes the visitor
wanted to know whether the American thought she ought to take £10 a
week and go on tour, or stay in town and try to live on £8; or whether
she should paint landscapes that would not sell, or racehorses that
would; or whether Reggie really loved her and whether she really loved
Reggie; or whether the new part in the piece at the Court was better
than the old part at Terry’s, and wasn’t she getting too old to play
“ingenues” anyway.
The lodger seemed to be a general adviser, and smoked and listened
with grave consideration, and the Unicorn thought his judgment was most
sympathetic and sensible.
Of all the beautiful ladies who came to call on the lodger the one the
Unicorn liked the best was the one who wanted to know whether she loved
Reggie and whether Reggie loved her. She discussed this so interestingly
while she consumed tea and thin slices of bread that the Unicorn almost
lost his balance in leaning forward to listen. Her name was Marion
Cavendish and it was written over many photographs which stood in silver
frames in the lodger’s rooms. She used to make the tea herself, while
the lodger sat and smoked; and she had a fascinating way of doubling the
thin slices of bread into long strips and nibbling at them like a mouse
at a piece of cheese. She had wonderful little teeth and Cupid’s-bow
lips, and she had a fashion of lifting her veil only high enough for one
to see the two Cupid-bow lips. When she did that the American used to
laugh, at nothing apparently, and say, “Oh, I guess Reggie loves you
well enough.”
“But do I love Reggie?” she would ask sadly, with her tea-cup held
poised in air.
“I am sure I hope not,” the lodger would reply, and she would put down
the veil quickly, as one would drop a curtain over a beautiful picture,
and rise with great dignity and say, “if you talk like that I shall not
come again.”
She was sure that if she could only get some work to do her head would
be filled with more important matters than whether Reggie loved her or
not.
“But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just
at present,” she said. “If I don’t get a part soon,” she announced, “I
shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at evening
parties.”
“That seems a desperate revenge,” said the American; “and besides, I
don’t want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play Nancy.”
“I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy,” Miss Cavendish
answered.
They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that
his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must play
Nancy.
The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair,
who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy.
Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave and
fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even of the
lodger--especially of the lodger, who it appeared had known her
very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be
independent of him and the two Americans had many arguments and disputes
about it, but she always said, “It does no good, Philip; it only hurts
us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no one but my art,
and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do not, and, of
course, the man I am to marry, must.” Then Carroll would talk, walking
up and down, and looking very fierce and determined, and telling her
how he loved her in such a way that it made her look even more proud and
beautiful. And she would say more gently, “It is very fine to think that
any one can care for like that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in
the same way it would be wicked of me to marry you, and besides--” She
would add very quickly to prevent his speaking again--“I don’t want
to marry you or anybody, and I never shall. I want to be free and to
succeed in my work, just as you want to succeed in your work. So please
never speak of this again.” When she went away the lodger used to sit
smoking in the big arm-chair and beat the arms with his hands, and he
would pace up and down the room while his work would lie untouched and
his engagements pass forgotten.
Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger
stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of
visits to country houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was
painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss
Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End
theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
beautiful in a white boating frock and a straw hat with a Leander
ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting pole and
she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
“Why don’t you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?” Miss
Cavendish asked. “You need it; you look ill.”
“I’d like to, but I can’t,” said Carroll. “The fact is, I paid in
advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I’d be losing five
guineas a week on them.”
Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered his
American humor.
“But five guineas--why that’s nothing to you,” she said. Something in
the lodger’s face made her pause. “You don’t mean----”
“Yes, I do,” said the lodger, smiling. “You see, I started in to lay
siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large
town, and it didn’t fall as quickly as I thought it would. So I am
economizing. Mr. Lockhart’s Coffee Rooms and I are no longer strangers.”
Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward him
“Are you in earnest?” she asked. “For how long?”
“Oh, for the last month,” replied the lodger; “they are not at all
bad--clean and wholesome and all that.”
“But the suppers you gave us, and this,” she cried, suddenly, waving her
hands over the pretty tea-things, “and the cake and muffins?”
“My friends, at least,” said Carroll, “need not go to Lockhart’s.”
“And the Savoy?” asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head.
“A dream of the past,” said Carroll, waving his pipe through the
smoke. “Gatti’s? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the
Chancellor’s, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old
England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot of bitter
twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It’s most amusing on
the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about
myself. They are both most interesting subjects.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Miss Cavendish declared helplessly. “When I
think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel like a robber.”
“Don’t,” begged Carroll. “I am really the most happy of men--that is, as
the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn’t so damned miserable.
But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--I have £80 to last me
through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next to
yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That’s enough.”
“But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?” asked Miss
Cavendish.
“I do--that is, I could,” answered Carroll, “if I wrote the things that
sell; but I keep on writing plays that won’t.”
“And such plays!” exclaimed Marion, warmly; “and to think that they are
going begging.” She continued indignantly, “I can’t imagine what the
managers do want.”
“I know what they don’t want,” said the American. Miss Cavendish drummed
impatiently on the tea-tray.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so abject about it,” she said. “If I were a man
I’d make them take those plays.”
“How?” asked the American; “with a gun?”
“Well, I’d keep at it until they read them,” declared Marion. “I’d sit
on their front steps all night and I’d follow them in cabs, and I’d lie
in wait for them at the stage-door. I’d just make them take them.”
Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. “I guess I’ll give up and go
home,” he said.
“Oh, yes, do, run away before you are beaten,” said Miss Cavendish,
scornfully. “Why, you can’t go now. Everybody will be back in town soon,
and there are a lot of new plays coming on, and some of them are sure
to be failures, and that’s our chance. You rush in with your piece and
somebody may take it sooner than close the theatre.”
“I’m thinking of closing the theatre myself,” said Carroll. “What’s the
use of my hanging on here?” he exclaimed. “It distresses Helen to know I
am in London, feeling about her as I do--and the Lord only knows how it
distresses me. And, maybe, if I went away,” he said, consciously, “she
might miss me. She might see the difference.”
Miss Cavendish held herself erect and pressed her lips together with a
severe smile. “If Helen Cabot doesn’t see the difference between you
and the other men she knows now,” she said, “I doubt if she ever will.
Besides--” she continued, and then hesitated. “Well, go on,” urged
Carroll.
“Well, I was only going to say,” she explained, “that leaving the girl
alone never did the man any good unless he left her alone willingly.
If she’s sure he still cares, it’s just the same to her where he is. He
might as well stay on in London as go to South Africa. It won’t help
him any. The difference comes when she finds he has stopped caring. Why,
look at Reggie. He tried that. He went away for ever so long, but
he kept writing me from wherever he went, so that he was perfectly
miserable--and I went on enjoying myself. Then when he came back, he
tried going about with his old friends again. He used to come to the
theatre with them--oh, with such nice girls--but he always stood in the
back of the box and yawned and scowled--so I knew. And, anyway, he’d
always spoil it all by leaving them and waiting at the stage entrance
for me. But one day he got tired of the way I treated him and went
off on a bicycle tour with Lady Hacksher’s girls and some men from his
regiment, and he was gone three weeks and never sent me even a line; and
I got so scared; I couldn’t sleep, and I stood it for three days more,
and then I wired him to come back or I’d jump off London Bridge; and he
came back that very night from Edinburgh on the express, and I was so
glad to see him that I got confused, and in the general excitement I
promised to marry him, so that’s how it was with us.”
“Yes,” said the American, without enthusiasm; “but then I still care,
and Helen knows I care.”
“Doesn’t she ever fancy that you might care for some one else? You have
a lot of friends, you know.”
“Yes, but she knows they are just that--friends,” said the American.
Miss Cavendish stood up to go, and arranged her veil before the mirror
above the fireplace.
“I come here very often to tea,” she said.
“It’s very kind of you,” said Carroll. He was at the open window,
looking down into the street for a cab.
“Well, no one knows I am engaged to Reggie,” continued Miss Cavendish,
“except you and Reggie, and he isn’t so sure. SHE doesn’t know it.”
“Well?” said Carroll.
Miss Cavendish smiled a mischievous kindly smile at him from the mirror.
“Well?” she repeated, mockingly. Carroll stared at her and laughed.
After a pause he said: “It’s like a plot in a comedy. But I’m afraid I’m
too serious for play-acting.”
“Yes, it is serious,” said Miss Cavendish. She seated herself again
and regarded the American thoughtfully. “You are too good a man to be
treated the way that girl is treating you, and no one knows it better
than she does. She’ll change in time, but just now she thinks she wants
to be independent. She’s in love with this picture-painting idea, and
with the people she meets. It’s all new to her--the fuss they make over
her and the titles, and the way she is asked about. We know she can’t
paint. We know they only give her commissions because she’s so young
and pretty, and American. She amuses them, that’s all. Well, that cannot
last; she’ll find it out. She’s too clever a girl, and she is too fine
a girl to be content with that long. Then--then she’ll come back to you.
She feels now that she has both you and the others, and she’s making
you wait: so wait and be cheerful. She’s worth waiting for; she’s young,
that’s all. She’ll see the difference in time. But, in the meanwhile, it
would hurry matters a bit if she thought she had to choose between the
new friends and you.”
“She could still keep her friends, and marry me,” said Carroll; “I have
told her that a hundred times. She could still paint miniatures and
marry me. But she won’t marry me.”
“She won’t marry you because she knows she can whenever she wants to;”
cried Marion. “Can’t you see that? But if she thought you were going to
marry some one else now?”
“She would be the first to congratulate me,” said Carroll. He rose and
walked to the fireplace, where he leaned with his arm on the mantel.
There was a photograph of Helen Cabot near his hand, and he turned this
toward him and stood for some time staring at it. “My dear Marion,” he
said at last, “I’ve known Helen ever since she was as young as that.
Every year I’ve loved her more, and found new things in her to care for;
now I love her more than any other man ever loved any other woman.”
Miss Cavendish shook her head sympathetically.
“Yes, I know,” she said; “that’s the way Reggie loves me, too.”
Carroll went on as though he had not heard her.
“There’s a bench in St. James’s Park,” he said, “where we used to sit
when she first came here, when she didn’t know so many people. We used
to go there in the morning and throw penny buns to the ducks. That’s
been my amusement this summer since you’ve all been away--sitting on
that bench, feeding penny buns to the silly ducks--especially the black
one, the one she used to like best. And I make pilgrimages to all the
other places we ever visited together, and try to pretend she is with
me. And I support the crossing sweeper at Lansdowne Passage because she
once said she felt sorry for him. I do all the other absurd things that
a man in love tortures himself by doing. But to what end? She knows how
I care, and yet she won’t see why we can’t go on being friends as we
once were. What’s the use of it all?”
“She is young, I tell you,” repeated Miss Cavendish, “and she’s too sure
of you. You’ve told her you care; now try making her think you don’t
care.”
Carroll shook his head impatiently.
“I will not stoop to such tricks and pretence, Marion,” he cried
impatiently. “All I have is my love for her; if I have to cheat and to
trap her into caring, the whole thing would be degraded.”
Miss Cavendish shrugged her shoulders and walked to the door. “Such
amateurs!” she exclaimed, and banged the door after her.
Carroll never quite knew how he had come to make a confidante of Miss
Cavendish. Helen and he had met her when they first arrived in London,
and as she had acted for a season in the United States, she adopted
the two Americans--and told Helen where to go for boots and hats, and
advised Carroll about placing his plays. Helen soon made other friends,
and deserted the artists, with whom her work had first thrown her. She
seemed to prefer the society of the people who bought her paintings, and
who admired and made much of the painter. As she was very beautiful and
at an age when she enjoyed everything in life keenly and eagerly, to
give her pleasure was in itself a distinct pleasure; and the worldly
tired people she met were considering their own entertainment quite
as much as hers when they asked her to their dinners and dances, or
to spend a week with them in the country. In her way, she was as
independent as was Carroll in his, and as she was not in love, as he
was, her life was not narrowed down to but one ideal. But she was not
so young as to consider herself infallible, and she had one excellent
friend on whom she was dependent for advice and to whose directions she
submitted implicitly. This was Lady Gower, the only person to whom Helen
had spoken of Carroll and of his great feeling for her. Lady Gower,
immediately after her marriage, had been a conspicuous and brilliant
figure in that set in London which works eighteen hours a day to keep
itself amused, but after the death of her husband she had disappeared
into the country as completely as though she had entered a convent,
and after several years had then re-entered the world as a professional
philanthropist. Her name was now associated entirely with Women’s
Leagues, with committees that presented petitions to Parliament, and
with public meetings, at which she spoke with marvellous ease and
effect. Her old friends said she had taken up this new pose as an outlet
for her nervous energies, and as an effort to forget the man who alone
had made life serious to her. Others knew her as an earnest woman,
acting honestly for what she thought was right. Her success, all
admitted, was due to her knowledge of the world and to her sense of
humor, which taught her with whom to use her wealth and position, and
when to demand what she wanted solely on the ground that the cause was
just.
She had taken more than a fancy for Helen, and the position of the
beautiful, motherless girl had appealed to her as one filled with
dangers. When she grew to know Helen better, she recognized that these
fears were quite unnecessary, and as she saw more of her she learned
to care for her deeply. Helen had told her much of Carroll and of his
double purpose in coming to London; of his brilliant work and his lack
of success in having it recognized; and of his great and loyal devotion
to her, and of his lack of success, not in having that recognized, but
in her own inability to return it. Helen was proud that she had been
able to make Carroll care for her as he did, and that there was anything
about her which could inspire a man whom she admired so much, to believe
in her so absolutely and for so long a time. But what convinced her that
the outcome for which he hoped was impossible, was the very fact that
she could admire him, and see how fine and unselfish his love for her
was, and yet remain untouched by it.
She had been telling Lady Gower one day of the care he had taken of her
ever since she was fourteen years of age, and had quoted some of the
friendly and loverlike acts he had performed in her service, until one
day they had both found out that his attitude of the elder brother was
no longer possible, and that he loved her in the old and only way. Lady
Gower looked at her rather doubtfully and smiled.
“I wish you would bring him to see me, Helen” she said; “I think I
should like your friend very much. From what you tell me of him I doubt
if you will find many such men waiting for you in this country. Our men
marry for reasons of property, or they love blindly, and are exacting
and selfish before and after they are married. I know, because so many
women came to me when my husband was alive to ask how it was that I
continued so happy in my married life.”
“But I don’t want to marry any one,” Helen remonstrated gently.
“American girls are not always thinking only of getting married.”
“What I meant was this,” said Lady Gower, “that, in my experience, I
have heard of but few men who care in the way this young man seems to
care for you. You say you do not love him; but if he had wanted to gain
my interest, he could not have pleaded his cause better than you have
done. He seems to see your faults and yet love you still, in spite of
them--or on account of them. And I like the things he does for you. I
like, for instance, his sending you the book of the moment every week
for two years. That shows a most unswerving spirit of devotion. And the
story of the broken bridge in the woods is a wonderful story. If I were
a young girl, I could love a man for that alone. It was a beautiful
thing to do.”
Helen sat with her chin on her hands, deeply considering this new point
of view.
“I thought it very foolish of him,” she confessed questioningly, “to
take such a risk for such a little thing.”
Lady Gower smiled down at her from the height of her many years.
“Wait,” she said dryly, “you are very young now--and very rich; every
one is crowding to give you pleasure, to show his admiration. You are
a very fortunate girl. But later, these things which some man has done
because he loved you, and which you call foolish, will grow large in
your life, and shine out strongly, and when you are discouraged and
alone, you will take them out, and the memory of them will make you
proud and happy. They are the honors which women wear in secret.”
Helen came back to town in September, and for the first few days was so
occupied in refurnishing her studio and in visiting the shops that she
neglected to send Carroll word of her return. When she found that a
whole week had passed without her having made any effort to see him,
and appreciated how the fact would hurt her friend, she was filled with
remorse, and drove at once in great haste to Jermyn Street, to announce
her return in person. On the way she decided that she would soften the
blow of her week of neglect by asking him to take her out to luncheon.
This privilege she had once or twice accorded him, and she felt that the
pleasure these excursions gave Carroll were worth the consternation they
caused to Lady Gower.
The servant was uncertain whether Mr. Carroll was at home or not, but
Helen was too intent upon making restitution to wait for the fact to be
determined, and, running up the stairs, knocked sharply at the door of
his study.
A voice bade her come in, and she entered, radiant and smiling her
welcome. But Carroll was not there to receive it, and instead, Marion
Cavendish looked up at her from his desk where she was busily writing.
Helen paused with a surprised laugh, but Marion sprang up and hailed her
gladly. They met half way across the room and kissed each other with the
most friendly feeling.
Philip was out, Marion said, and she had just stepped in for a moment to
write him a note. If Helen would excuse her, she would finish it, as she
was late for rehearsal.
But she asked over her shoulder, with great interest, if Helen had
passed a pleasant summer. She thought she had never seen her looking so
well. Helen thought Miss Cavendish herself was looking very well also,
but Marion said no; that she was too sunburnt, she would not be able to
wear a dinner-dress for a month. There was a pause while Marion’s quill
scratched violently across Carroll’s note-paper. Helen felt that in some
way she was being treated as an intruder; or worse, as a guest. She did
not sit down, it seemed impossible to do so, but she moved uncertainly
about the room. She noted that there were many changes, it seemed more
bare and empty; her picture was still on the writing-desk, but there
were at least six new photographs of Marion. Marion herself had brought
them to the room that morning, and had carefully arranged them in
conspicuous places. But Helen could not know that. She thought there was
an unnecessary amount of writing scribbled over the face of each.
Marion addressed her letter and wrote “Immediate” across the envelope,
and placed it before the clock on the mantelshelf. “You will find Philip
looking very badly,” she said, as she pulled on her gloves. “He has been
in town all summer, working very hard--he has had no holiday at all. I
don’t think he’s well. I have been a great deal worried about him,” she
added. Her face was bent over the buttons of her glove, and when she
raised her blue eyes to Helen they were filled with serious concern.
“Really,” Helen stammered, “I--I didn’t know--in his letters he seemed
very cheerful.”
Marion shook her head and turned and stood looking thoughtfully out of
the window. “He’s in a very hard place,” she began abruptly, and then
stopped as though she had thought better of what she intended to say.
Helen tried to ask her to go on, but could not bring herself to do so.
She wanted to get away.
“I tell him he ought to leave London,” Marion began again; “he needs a
change and a rest.”
“I should think he might,” Helen agreed, “after three months of this
heat. He wrote me he intended going to Herne Bay or over to Ostend.”
“Yes, he had meant to go,” Marion answered. She spoke with the air of
one who possessed the most intimate knowledge of Carroll’s movements and
plans, and change of plans. “But he couldn’t,” she added. “He couldn’t
afford it. Helen,” she said, turning to the other girl, dramatically,
“do you know--I believe that Philip is very poor.”
Miss Cabot exclaimed incredulously, “Poor!” She laughed. “Why, what do
you mean?”
“I mean that he has no money,” Marion answered, sharply. “These rooms
represent nothing. He only keeps them on because he paid for them in
advance. He’s been living on three shillings a day. That’s poor for him.
He takes his meals at cabmen’s shelters and at Lockhart’s, and he’s been
doing so for a month.”
Helen recalled with a guilty thrill the receipt of certain boxes of
La France roses--cut long, in the American fashion--which had arrived
within the last month at various country houses. She felt indignant
at herself, and miserable. Her indignation was largely due to the
recollection that she had given these flowers to her hostess to decorate
the dinner-table.
She hated to ask this girl of things which she should have known better
than any one else. But she forced herself to do it. She felt she must
know certainly and at once.
“How do you know this?” she asked. “Are you sure there is no mistake?”
“He told me himself,” said Marion, “when he talked of letting the plays
go and returning to America. He said he must go back; that his money was
gone.”
“He is gone to America!” Helen said, blankly.
“No, he wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let him,” Marion went on. “I told
him that some one might take his play any day. And this third one he has
written, the one he finished this summer in town, is the best of all, I
think. It’s a love-story. It’s quite beautiful.” She turned and
arranged her veil at the glass, and as she did so, her eyes fell on the
photographs of herself scattered over the mantelpiece, and she smiled
slightly. But Helen did not see her--she was sitting down now, pulling
at the books on the table. She was confused and disturbed by emotions
which were quite strange to her, and when Marion bade her good-by she
hardly noticed her departure. What impressed her most of all in what
Marion had told her, was, she was surprised to find, that Philip was
going away. That she herself had frequently urged him to do so, for his
own peace of mind, seemed now of no consequence. Now that he seriously
contemplated it, she recognized that his absence meant to her a change
in everything. She felt for the first time the peculiar place he held
in her life. Even if she had seen him but seldom, the fact that he was
within call had been more of a comfort and a necessity to her than she
understood.
That he was poor, concerned her chiefly because she knew that, although
this condition could only be but temporary, it would distress him not to
have his friends around him, and to entertain them as he had been used
to do. She wondered eagerly if she might offer to help him, but a second
thought assured her that, for a man, that sort of help from a woman was
impossible.
She resented the fact that Marion was deep in his confidence; that it
was Marion who had told her of his changed condition and of his plans.
It annoyed her so acutely that she could not remain in the room where
she had seen her so complacently in possession. And after leaving a
brief note for Philip, she went away. She stopped a hansom at the door,
and told the man to drive along the Embankment--she wanted to be quite
alone, and she felt she could see no one until she had thought it all
out, and had analyzed the new feelings.
So for several hours she drove slowly up and down, sunk far back in
the cushions of the cab, and staring with unseeing eyes at the white
enamelled tariff and the black dash-board.
She assured herself that she was not jealous of Marion, because, in
order to be jealous, she first would have to care for Philip in the very
way she could not bring herself to do.
She decided that his interest in Marion hurt her, because it showed that
Philip was not capable of remaining true to the one ideal of his life.
She was sure that this explained her feelings--she was disappointed that
he had not kept up to his own standard; that he was weak enough to turn
aside from it for the first pretty pair of eyes. But she was too honest
and too just to accept that diagnosis of her feelings as final--she knew
there had been many pairs of eyes in America and in London, and that
though Philip had seen them, he had not answered them when they spoke.
No, she confessed frankly, she was hurt with herself for neglecting her
old friend so selfishly and for so long a time; his love gave him claims
on her consideration, at least, and she had forgotten that and him, and
had run after strange gods and allowed others to come in and take her
place, and to give him the sympathy and help which she should have been
the first to offer, and which would have counted more when coming from
her than from any one else. She determined to make amends at once
for her thoughtlessness and selfishness, and her brain was pleasantly
occupied with plans and acts of kindness. It was a new entertainment,
and she found she delighted in it. She directed the cabman to go to
Solomons’s, and from there sent Philip a bunch of flowers and a line
saying that on the following day she was coming to take tea with him.
She had a guilty feeling that he might consider her friendly advances
more seriously than she meant them, but it was her pleasure to be
reckless: her feelings were running riotously, and the sensation was so
new that she refused to be circumspect or to consider consequences. Who
could tell, she asked herself with a quick, frightened gasp, but that,
after all, it might be that she was learning to care? From Solomons’s
she bade the man drive to the shop in Cranbourne Street where she was
accustomed to purchase the materials she used in painting, and Fate,
which uses strange agents to work out its ends, so directed it that
the cabman stopped a few doors below this shop, and opposite one where
jewelry and other personal effects were bought and sold. At any other
time, or had she been in any other mood, what followed might not have
occurred, but Fate, in the person of the cabman, arranged it so that the
hour and the opportunity came together.
There were some old mezzotints in the window of the loan shop, a string
of coins and medals, a row of new French posters; and far down to the
front a tray filled with gold and silver cigarette-cases and watches and
rings. It occurred to Helen, who was still bent on making restitution
for her neglect, that a cigarette-case would be more appropriate for a
man than flowers, and more lasting. And she scanned the contents of
the window with the eye of one who now saw in everything only something
which might give Philip pleasure. The two objects of value in the tray
upon which her eyes first fell were the gold seal-ring with which Philip
had sealed his letters to her, and, lying next to it, his gold watch!
There was something almost human in the way the ring and watch spoke to
her from the past--in the way they appealed to her to rescue them from
the surroundings to which they had been abandoned. She did not know what
she meant to do with them nor how she could return them to Philip; but
there was no question of doubt in her manner as she swept with a rush
into the shop. There was no attempt, either, at bargaining in the way
in which she pointed out to the young woman behind the counter the
particular ring and watch she wanted. They had not been left as
collateral, the young woman said; they had been sold outright.
“Then any one can buy them?” Helen asked eagerly. “They are for sale to
the public--to any one?”
The young woman made note of the customer’s eagerness, but with an
unmoved countenance.
“Yes, miss, they are for sale. The ring is four pounds and the watch
twenty-five.”
“Twenty-nine pounds!” Helen gasped.
That was more money than she had in the world, but the fact did not
distress her, for she had a true artistic disregard for ready money, and
the absence of it had never disturbed her. But now it assumed a sudden
and alarming value. She had ten pounds in her purse and ten pounds at
her studio--these were just enough to pay for a quarter’s rent and the
rates, and there was a hat and cloak in Bond Street which she certainly
must have. Her only assets consisted of the possibility that some one
might soon order a miniature, and to her mind that was sufficient. Some
one always had ordered a miniature, and there was no reasonable doubt
but that some one would do it again. For a moment she questioned if it
would not be sufficient if she bought the ring and allowed the watch
to remain. But she recognized that the ring meant more to her than the
watch, while the latter, as an old heirloom which had been passed down
to him from a great-grandfather, meant more to Philip. It was for
Philip she was doing this, she reminded herself. She stood holding his
possessions, one in each hand, and looking at the young woman blankly.
She had no doubt in her mind that at least part of the money he had
received for them had paid for the flowers he had sent to her in
Scotland. The certainty of this left her no choice. She laid the ring
and watch down and pulled the only ring she possessed from her own
finger. It was a gift from Lady Gower. She had no doubt that it was of
great value.
“Can you lend me some money on that?” she asked. It was the first time
she had conducted a business transaction of this nature, and she felt as
though she were engaging in a burglary.
“We don’t lend money, miss,” the girl said, “we buy outright. I can give
you twenty-eight shillings for this,” she added.
“Twenty-eight shillings,” Helen gasped; “why, it is worth--oh, ever so
much more than that!”
“That is all it is worth to us,” the girl answered. She regarded the
ring indifferently and laid it away from her on the counter. The action
was final.
Helen’s hands rose slowly to her breast, where a pretty watch dangled
from a bowknot of crushed diamonds. It was her only possession, and she
was very fond of it. It also was the gift of one of the several great
ladies who had adopted her since her residence in London. Helen had
painted a miniature of this particular great lady which had looked so
beautiful that the pleasure which the original of the portrait derived
from the thought that she still really looked as she did in the
miniature was worth more to her than many diamonds.
But it was different with Helen, and no one could count what it cost her
to tear away her one proud possession.
“What will you give me for this?” she asked defiantly.
The girl’s eyes showed greater interest. “I can give you twenty pounds
for that,” she said.
“Take it, please,” Helen begged, as though she feared if she kept it a
moment longer she might not be able to make the sacrifice.
“That will be enough now,” she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.
She put Lady Gower’s ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip’s
ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great
fortune. She turned back at the door.
“Oh,” she stammered, “in case any one should inquire, you are not to say
who bought these.”
“No, miss, certainly not,” said the woman. Helen gave the direction to
the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at the
watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. The thought that they had
been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever, and
that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled her
with most intense delight and pleasure. She took up the heavy gold ring
and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much too
large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully in the
palm of her right hand. She was smiling, and her face was lit with shy
and tender thoughts. She cast a quick glance to the left and right as
though fearful that people passing in the street would observe her, and
then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her left hand. She gazed
at it with a guilty smile and then, covering it hastily with her other
hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat frowning far out before
her with puzzled eyes.
To Carroll all roads led past Helen’s studio, and during the summer,
while she had been absent in Scotland it was one of his sad pleasures to
make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and look
up at the empty windows of her rooms.
It was during this daily exercise that he learned, through the arrival
of her luggage, of her return to London, and when day followed day
without her having shown any desire to see him or to tell him of her
return he denounced himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.