THE CRUISE OF THE MAKE-BELIEVES
[Illustration: "'TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES I AM A RICH MAN.'"
(_See page 97_) FRONTISPIECE]
THE CRUISE OF THE MAKE-BELIEVES
BY
TOM GALLON
AUTHOR OF "TATTERLEY," "MEG THE LADY," ETC.
_Illustrated by_
CH. GRUNWALD
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1907
_Copyright, 1907_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1907
COLONIAL PRESS
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS & CO.
BOSTON, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PRINCESS NEXT DOOR 1
II. THE KING OF A LEAN KINGDOM 17
III. THE PRINCE JUMPS OVER THE WALL 38
IV. THE PRINCESS GOES TO DINNER 56
V. THE GREAT GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE 72
VI. SCHEMERS AND DREAMERS 87
VII. FAREWELL TO ARCADIA STREET 103
VIII. THE PRINCE CUTS THE KNOT 118
IX. AND THE PRINCESS TIES IT AGAIN 138
X. A DESPERATE REMEDY 160
XI. PURSUIT 175
XII. MISS MAKE-BELIEVE WAKES UP 191
XIII. MISERY MAKES STRANGE BOAT-FELLOWS 213
XIV. THE CASTAWAYS 229
XV. THE SIMPLE LIFE 244
XVI. THE AMAZING PRINGLE 255
XVII. EXPLANATIONS 270
XVIII. MISS MAKE-BELIEVE ESCAPES 286
XIX. THE LAMPS ARE LIT IN ARCADIA STREET 309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"'TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSES I AM A RICH MAN'" _Frontispiece_
PAGE
"'I MAY GO AWAY AGAIN AT A MOMENT'S NOTICE'" 66
"SHE TURNED HER OWN FACE THEN, AND HID IT ON THE
FRIENDLY BREAST OF SIMON QUARLE" 212
"THEY STOOD HERE IN THE MOONLIGHT AND SILENCE" 253
THE CRUISE OF THE MAKE-BELIEVES
CHAPTER I
THE PRINCESS NEXT DOOR
THE thin young man with the glossy hat got out of the cab at the end of
the street, and looked somewhat distrustfully down that street; glanced
with equal distrust at the cabman. A man lounging against the corner
public-house, as though to keep that British institution from falling,
and leaving him without refreshment, got away from it, and inserted
himself between the driver and the fare, ready to give information or
advice to both, on the strength of being a local resident.
"Are you quite sure that this is Arcadia Street?" asked the young
man in the glossy hat. He had a thin, meagre, precise sort of
voice--delicate and mincing.
"Carn't yer see it wrote up?" demanded the driver, pointing with his
whip to the blank wall that formed one side of the street. "Wotjer
think I should want to drop yer in the wrong place for?" He was a
cross driver, for he had already been driving about in the wilds of
Islington in search of Arcadia Street for a long time, and he was
doubtful whether or not that fact would be remembered in the fare.
"Yus--this is Arcadia Street, guv'nor," said the man from the
public-house. "You take it from me; I've bin 'ere, man an' boy, since
before I could remember. Wot part of it was you wantin', sir?"
But the young man had already given the cabman a substantial fare, and
had turned away. The man from the public-house jogged along a little
behind him, eager to be of service for a consideration to a man to
whom a shilling or two seemed to mean nothing at all; a few bedraggled
staring children had sprung up, as if by magic, and were also lending
assistance, by the simple expedient of walking backwards in front
of the stranger, and stumbling over each other, and allowing him to
stumble over them. And still the young man said nothing, but only
glanced anxiously at the houses.
He did not fit Arcadia Street at all. For he was particularly well
dressed, with a neatness that made one fear almost to brush against
him; while Arcadia Street, Islington, is not a place given to
careful dressing, or even to neatness. Moreover, silk hats are not
generally seen there, save on a Monday morning, when a gentleman of
sad countenance goes round with a small book and a pencil, in the
somewhat cheerless endeavour to collect rents; and his silk hat is one
that has seen better days. So that it is small wonder that the young
man was regarded with awe and surprise, not only by the straggling
children, but also by several women who peered at him from behind
doubtful-looking blinds and curtains.
Still appearing utterly oblivious of the questions showered upon him
by the now frantic man who had constituted himself as guide, the young
man had got midway up the street, and was still searching with his
eyes the windows of the houses. If you know Arcadia Street at all,
you will understand that in order to search the windows he had but to
keep his head turned in one direction; for the habitable part of the
street lies only on the left-hand side, the other being formed by a
high blank wall, shutting in what is locally known as "The Works." From
behind this wall a noise of hammering and of the clang of metal floats
sometimes to the ears of Arcadia Street, and teaches them that there is
business going on, although they cannot see it.
Now, just as the young man had reached the middle of the street, and
the loafer who had accompanied him was almost giving up in despair,
the eyes of the young man looked into the eyes of a young girl on the
other side of a sheet of glass. The sheet of glass represented one part
of one window of a house, and at the moment the young man turned his
gaze in that direction, she was setting up against the glass a card
which bore the modest inscription--"Board and Residence." And she was
so unlike Arcadia Street generally that the young man stopped, and made
a faltering movement with one arm, as though he would have raised his
hat, and looked at her helplessly. Instantly, something to his relief,
she raised the window, careless of what became of the card, and looked
out at him.
"Perhaps, sir, you might be looking for--" So she began; and then
faltered and stopped.
"You're very good," he responded, in his precise voice. "Name of
Byfield--Mr. Gilbert Byfield. Does he live here?"
"Next door, sir," she said, as she slowly lowered the window. And it
seemed to the young man that for a moment, although she was evidently
interested in him, a shadow of disappointment crossed her face.
He raised his hat, disclosing for a moment a very neatly arranged head
of fair hair, parted accurately in the middle; and then rang the bell
at the adjoining house. By this time his guide, seeing that he was
about to escape, began rapidly to urge his claims, the while the young
man took not the faintest notice of him, but kept his eyes fixed on the
door he expected to see open every moment.
"Didn't I tell yer w'ere it was, guv'nor?" demanded the man. "Where'd
you 'ave bin, if it 'adn't bin for me; you might 'ave lorst yerself
a dozen times. I says to meself, w'en I sees yer gettin' out of the
cab--I says to meself--''E's a gent--that's wot 'e is--'e's one of the
tip-tops. You look arter 'im,' I says, 'an' see if 'e don't do the
'andsome by yer.' . . . Well--of all the ugly smug-faced dressed-up----"
For the door had opened, and the young man of the glossy hat had been
swallowed up inside. Mr. Byfield was at home. The loafer looked the
house up and down aggressively, and seemed on the point of expressing
his opinion concerning it and its inhabitants publicly; deemed that
a waste of breath apparently; and drifted away, to take up his old
position at the corner of the street. The children, coming reluctantly
to the understanding that there was not likely to be a fight, or even
an altercation, drifted away also.
Above the curtain of the window of the next house the plaintive pretty
face of the girl appeared again for a moment, and then was withdrawn.
So far as the street was concerned, the incident was closed, and the
mystery of the young man's appearance had been transferred to the house
itself. For his inquiry for Mr. Byfield had led to his being directed
up certain shabby stairs, until he came to a door; he had just raised
his knuckles delicately to knock upon it, when it was flung open, and
the man he had come to see stood before him.
It would be difficult indeed to imagine a greater contrast between any
two men than that which existed between the visitor and the visited.
For Gilbert Byfield was big and hearty--not in any sense of mere
fleshiness, but rather because there was a largeness about his actions
and his gestures--a certain impulsive eagerness in all he did, as
though each day was all too short for what he wanted to crowd into it.
He was in his shirt-sleeves (for it seems always to be hot and stuffy
in Arcadia Street, Islington) and a pipe was in his mouth. He grinned
amiably, but a little sheepishly, at his visitor; suddenly leaned
forward, and caught the immaculate one by the hand and drew him into
the room.
"Of all wonders," he ejaculated--"how did you get here?"
The thin young man, who had removed his hat, was glancing round the
dingy walls of the room, and at the table in the centre that was
strewn with books and papers. "My dear Byfield," he said, in his thin
voice, "I might almost repeat that question to you. I am amazed,
Byfield; I am pained and outraged. Why are you hiding in this place?"
Gilbert Byfield threw himself into his chair, and laughed. "No question
of hiding," he said. "I came here for a change of air--change of
scene--change of surroundings. I'm studying."
"What for?" demanded the visitor.
Byfield leant forward over the table, and looked at his friend half
contemptuously, half whimsically. "The world I've left behind me,"
he said, "was peopled by quite a lot of men of the type of a certain
Jordan Tant----"
"Thank you," said the other, with a nod.
"All very worthy and delightful people, but unfortunately all saying
the same thing--day after day--year in and year out. They were always
dressed in the same fashion, and they always had a certain considerable
amount of respectable money in the pockets of their respectable
clothes; and they always got up at exactly the same hour every morning,
and they lived their dear little Tant-like lives, until the time came
for them to be turned, in due course, into little Tant-like corpses,
and presumably after that into nice little Tant-like angels. And I
got tired of them, and finally gave them up. Now," he added, throwing
himself back in his chair, and laughing good-humouredly, "you know all
about it."
Mr. Jordan Tant had seated himself on a chair opposite his friend,
and had been listening attentively. He now hitched his trousers up
carefully over his knees, displaying rather neat ankles, and began
to speak in an argumentative fashion, with his neat head a little on
one side. "You're not complimentary, Byfield," he said; "but then you
never were. I should not have found you, but for the fact that some one
mentioned to me that you were living in a place called Arcadia Street,
Islington; and as I wondered a little what reason you could possibly
have for leaving your own natural surroundings, I decided to look you
up. As for the Tant-like people of whom you speak so scornfully, I
would remind you that they belong properly to that sphere to which you
also belong, when you are not in your present revolutionary spirit. You
are forgetting what I have endeavoured often to remind you about; you
are forgetting the dividing line which must be kept between the classes
and the masses. The world knows you as Mr. Gilbert Byfield--with any
amount of money, and any amount of property; you are masquerading as a
very ordinary person, in a very ordinary and commonplace neighbourhood.
Now what, for instance, do you pay for these rooms?" He glanced round
as he spoke.
"Ten shillings a week--which of course includes the use of the
furniture," said Gilbert, smiling. "Meals extra."
"Horrible!" exclaimed his friend. "Where is the comfortable set of
chambers in the West End; where is your place in the country--your
yacht--everything of that kind? And what in the name of fortune are you
doing it for?"
"I've already told you," responded the other, good-humouredly. "I
wanted to see what life really was, when you didn't have someone near
at hand to feed you, and clothe you, and make much of you; I wanted
to look at a world where banking accounts and dividends were unknown,
and stocks and shares something not to be considered. I wanted to see
what people were like who had to scramble for a living--to scramble,
in fact, for the crumbs that fall from tables such as mine. I had read
in books of people who had a difficulty in making both ends meet--and
quite nice people at that; I had dreamed of a world outside my own
very ordinary one, where romance was to be found--and beauty--and
love and tenderness. I was sick to death of the high voices and the
gracious airs and the raised eyebrows of most of the women I knew--the
time-killers, with nothing in the world to occupy them; I wanted to
take off my coat, and get back to what I know my grandfather, at least,
was in his time: a real hard-working citizen. A better man than ever
I shall be, Jordan; a clear-headed, clear-hearted fellow, with no
nonsense about him. He made a fortune--and my father trebled it; it has
been my sacred mission to spend it. There"--he got to his feet, and
stretched his arms above his head, and laughed--"I've done preaching;
and you shall tell me all the news from the great world out of which I
have dropped."
"What news can I have to give you?" demanded Mr. Tant, with an almost
aggressive glance at his friend. "Oh, I know what you're going to say,"
he added rapidly as he raised his hand--"that that is the best comment
on what you have said. But, at all events, we live respectably--not in
hovels."
"Respectable is the word," said Gilbert, with something of a sigh. "And
yet I'm sure that you really have news--of a sort. Come--a bargain with
you: you shall give me your news, bit by bit, and item by item; and
I'll see if I can match it from my experience here."
"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Jordan Tant, shifting uneasily on
his chair, and finally drawing up his legs until his heels rested on
the front wooden rail of it--"in the first place, Miss Enid wonders
what has become of you, and is naturally somewhat troubled about you."
He said it sulkily, with the air of one to whom the delivery of the
message was a disagreeable task.
"Exactly. And the fair Enid is in that drawing-room which is like a
hot-house, and is yawning the hours away, and glancing occasionally at
the clock, to determine how long it is since she had lunch, and how
best she shall get through the time before tea is announced. To match
that, my item of news is of a certain little lady who has a habit of
tucking up her sleeves, the better to get through hours that are all
too short for the work that must fill them, who is afraid to glance at
a clock, for fear it should tell her how time is flying; and who never
by any chance had a best frock yet that wasn't almost too shabby to
wear before it was called best at all. Go on."
"Oh--so that's the secret, is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tant, nodding his
head like a smooth-plumaged young bird. "There's a woman in Arcadia
Street--eh?"
"Beware how you speak of her lightly," said Gilbert. "In Arcadia Street
are many women; they hang out of the windows, and they scream at their
children, and they tell their husbands exactly what their opinion is
concerning the characters of those husbands whenever the unfortunate
men are not at work. But--mark the difference, my Tant!--there is but
one woman worthy of the name, and I have found her. She lives next
door."
"Then I've seen her," replied Jordan Tant. "Rather pretty, perhaps--but
pale and shabby."
"Ah--she hadn't got her best frock on," said Gilbert. "You have to wait
for Sundays to see the best frock; and then you have to pretend that it
isn't really an old frock pretending to be best. Where did you see her?"
"Sticking a card in the window--something about apartments
or--lodgings," said Mr. Tant. "I think she thought there was some
chance that I might be insane enough to want to live in Arcadia Street."
"Poor little girl!" said Gilbert softly, as he seated himself on the
edge of the table, and thrust some of his papers out of the way. "She
dreams about lodgers--and hopes for the sort that pay. I believe she
gets up in the morning, dreadfully afraid that those who owe her
money have run away in the night; I believe she goes to bed at night,
wondering if by any possibility she can squeeze another bedstead in
somewhere to accommodate a fresh one. She would like to go out into the
highways and byways, and gather in all possible lodgers, and drive them
before her to the house; and keep 'em there for ever. You've only got
to say 'Lodgers!' to that girl, and her eyes brighten at once."
"What an extraordinary person!" exclaimed Mr. Jordan Tant, opening his
eyes very wide, and staring up at the other man. "What's she do it for?"
"For a living, Tant--for a sordid horrible grinding sweating living."
Gilbert got up in his excitement, and began to bang one fist into the
palm of his other hand close to the face of Mr. Jordan Tant. "You talk
of life--and respectability--and what not; I tell you I've seen more
life in a week in Arcadia Street than ever I saw in years before. Look
out into the streets; you'll see a dozen sights that shock you--you'll
see a dozen things that are unlovely. And yet I tell you that I have
stepped in this place straight into the heart of Fairyland--and that
I dream dreams, and see visions. And all on account of a pale-faced
shabby girl, who lives next door, and lies in wait behind the parlour
window to catch the lodgers who never pay her when they come!"
"Why don't you live there yourself?" demanded Mr. Tant. "You'd pay her
well enough."
Gilbert shook his head a little sadly. "That wouldn't do at all," he
said, "because I should take all the romance out of the thing. Besides,
in Arcadia Street you mustn't pay more than a certain amount, or you
bring down suspicion upon yourself. No--my method is a more subtle one:
I am the mysterious man who lives next door--(which is quite a great
way off in Arcadia Street, I can assure you)--and I appear to her only
with a sort of halo of romance about me."
"You're in love with her, I suppose?" suggested Mr. Tant.
"That's crude--and untrue," said Gilbert. "That's the only thing you
sort of people seem to think about: you look at a girl, and instantly
you're in love with her. Doesn't it occur to you that it may be
possible that I, from the distance of my thirty-five years, may look at
this child of seventeen--or perhaps even less--and feel sorry for her,
and desirous of helping her. Bah!--what do you know of romance?"
"I know this about it," said Mr. Tant, a little sullenly, "that if I go
back to Miss Enid, and tell her that you take a deep interest in a very
pretty girl of seventeen, who lives next door to you in a slum, and
with whom you occasionally visit Fairyland, it is more than possible
that the lady to whom you are supposed to be engaged----"
"I am not engaged to her," exclaimed Gilbert, almost savagely.
"May have something to say regarding romance on her own account. I
state facts." Thus Mr. Jordan Tant, very virtuously, and with his head
nodding in a sideways fashion at his friend.
"You pervert them, you mean," exclaimed Gilbert. "Besides, if you're
so deeply interested in Miss Enid Ewart-Crane, this will be a splendid
opportunity for you to set yourself right with her, to my everlasting
damage."
"You know perfectly well that she'd never look at me," said Mr. Tant.
"She's a glorious creature--a wonderful woman, and in your own sphere
of life; I can't see why you neglect her as you do."
"I have been told ever since I was a mere boy that at some future date
I should marry Enid--if I were good. It's just like a small boy being
offered anything--if he is good; he begins to loathe the idea of it at
once. Enid is all that you say--and I like her very much; but if I've
got to marry her I'll choose my own time for it. At present I'm in
Fairyland--and I mean to stop there."
"What do you mean by Fairyland?" asked Mr. Tant testily.
"You wouldn't understand if I told you," replied Gilbert. Then he added
quickly, and with contrition--"There--there--my dear fellow, I didn't
mean to hurt your feelings; you're not really a bad sort, if you'd come
out of your shell sometimes, and let the real wind of the real earth
ruffle your hair a bit. I must talk to someone--and I'm not sorry to
find you here to-day; only you mustn't tell anyone outside."
"Of course not," almost snapped Mr. Tant.
"I came here in the first place, Tant," began Gilbert, seating himself
again on the table, "with the expectation of finding that I had got
among commonplace people--and not nice commonplace people at that. Then
I saw this girl--this mere child, that even a hard world and a hard
and sordid life had not changed, struggling on day by day to make a
living--not for herself, or for any selfish reason--but to keep those
who should by rights have kept her. And I saw her, above all things,
doing something else, and doing it rather splendidly."
"I don't understand you. What else was she doing?" asked Jordan Tant.
It was growing dark in Arcadia Street, and the lamps were being
lighted. With the dying of the day a sort of hush had fallen upon the
place; the sounds outside were subdued, as though even Arcadia Street
might be inclined for rest. Gilbert had walked across to the window,
and stood there, looking out; his face was turned from his friend.
"This child to whom life was a mean and sordid struggle had taught
herself a lesson--had shown herself how best to live another life.
You'll think it mean and commonplace, perhaps; but this little
drudge--child alike in years and in thoughts--had learnt how to
make-believe to perfection; knew how to gild the commonplace bricks and
mortar of Arcadia Street so that the mean houses became palaces--the
mean back gardens places of beauty, wherein one might stroll beneath
the light of the moon, and listen even unto nightingales. Think of it,
Tant; this child who had never known anything but the mean streets of
a great city had yet learnt how to dream, and almost how to make her
dreams come true. I tell you, man, you've only got to look into her
eyes to understand that there is in her that brave spirit that defies
poverty and disaster--that brave spirit that aims straight for the
skies."
Mr. Jordan Tant sat still for a moment or two without speaking. He was
used by this time to this impulsive friend, who was for ever doing
unconventional things; and now, with this new unconventional thing to
face, he had no words either of reproof or admonition. Very slowly he
lifted first one foot and then the other from the wooden rail of the
chair, and stood up; picked up his hat, and brushed it carefully on his
sleeve.
"I've nothing to say to you," he said at last. "I expect, if the truth
were known, you'd find that the lady who dwells in Fairyland in her
spare moments has a scheming mind, and a money-grubbing soul; you'd
find she thought more of the price of chops than she does of all the
romances that ever were invented for fools to read. What am I to tell
Miss Enid?"
Gilbert Byfield laughed good-humouredly. "Tell her," he said, "that
I shall come and see her very soon. But you need not, of course, say
anything about----"
"About the Princess next door? I suppose not." Mr. Jordan Tant walked
to the door of the room, and laid his hand upon the handle. "It'll be
all right for you--and you'll give up this madness, just as you have
given up many, many others. But what about the--the Princess?"
"You don't understand in the least," said Gilbert, a little hastily.
"She thinks no more of me than she might think of anybody who was good
to her--kind to her."
"But so very few people have been good or kind to her, you see," Mr.
Tant reminded him, as he opened the door.
"I'll come with you, and find a cab for you; you might get lost,"
said Gilbert. "And pray get all those silly notions out of your head;
if you knew this child as well as I do, you'd look at the matter
in a different light. At the same time, as people are so apt to
misunderstand even our best motives, perhaps you'd better not say
anything to Enid--or to her mother. If there's any explaining to be
done, I can do it when I come to see them."
He found the cab for his friend, and saw him drive away. Walking back
slowly into Arcadia Street, he determined that he would if possible see
that little Princess next door that very evening--if only to assure
himself that she was the child he knew her to be, and he her big
friend--years and years older and wiser.