VIRTUE TRIUMPHANT
THE Prince and Princess were obliged to confess to each other,
when Lord Alistair was gone, that they had failed to find a way of
unravelling the tangle of his life.
In reality they had done more than they knew. Their kindly treatment of
him, coming just at the moment when he felt himself a social Ishmael,
rejected by all classes in turn, had given him back no small portion of
his self-respect. He could not help contrasting the delicate attentions
of Prince Herbert, the representative of the greatest House in Europe,
and an English gentleman to boot, with the pretentious compliments of
the poor waif of royalty from the Mediterranean whose bogus honours he
had stooped to accept a day or two before.
Nor could he resist the incense to his pride offered by the clumsy
abasement of the pickle-selling baronet. It was something to feel that
he still excited the envy of the Lawthorns and the Mendes. He might
be a bankrupt, but he was still Lord Alistair Stuart, and heir to one
of the greatest titles of Britain. The highest in the land still felt
affection for him; the noblest women thought him worthy of their
concern.
These reflections accompanied him on the way up to town the next
morning, and prepared him to face his public examination with a lighter
heart. After all, bankruptcy was not fatal to a man in his position. He
had nothing to lose. His creditors could not take the allowance made
him by his brother. But for Molly, indeed, he need not be a bankrupt
at all. But for her, and his quixotic refusal to abandon her, the
proceedings against him would have been dropped already, and he himself
would be enjoying the traditional honours of the returned prodigal.
Why had he refused to leave Molly? After all, was it not true that he
had exaggerated Molly’s claim on him? She had preferred him to Mendes,
doubtless, but her choice had not been taken from any exalted motive
of self-sacrifice. If it had been inspired by the hope that he would
marry her, it was a selfish choice enough. She knew pretty well that
Mendes would never do that. Yes, his refusal to leave her had been
quixotic--that was the right word. For her own sake, since it was
evident that she shrank from facing poverty with him, for her own sake
it would have been better to say good-bye.
The public examination did not turn out to be a very formidable ordeal.
Lord Alistair, who was at his best when he was on his defence against
the Philistines, came through it with flying colours. The advocate
engaged by his creditors to bully him in the approved professional
style bullied in vain. The bankrupt’s answers were in the lightest vein
of good-natured irresponsibility. He declared that he kept no accounts,
had no idea what he spent, only bought the things his tradesmen teased
him to buy, and felt confident of his ability to pay for everything if
these unwise proceedings had not been sprung upon him. The creditors
present began to fear they were unwise, it being evident that they
could not hope to recover from Lord Alistair even enough to pay
their demolished barrister. In the end they were glad to adjourn the
examination in the hope that the Duke of Trent might yet be induced to
make an offer on his brother’s behalf.
Before he went home Alistair had the gratification of seeing his name
once more on the news-bills of the evening papers, but this time
accompanied by editorial compliments, such as “Insolvent’s Witty
Replies,” “Calls his Creditors Unwise,” and so on. It was a brilliant
victory, and the middle class had never been made to look more
ridiculous.
Alistair got back to Chelsea sooner than he expected, and found the
house empty. After letting himself in with his latchkey, he rang the
bell to ask if the mistress of the house had left any message for him,
but no one answered the summons.
The household arrangements were so irregular that there was nothing
very surprising in all the servants being out together. Nevertheless,
one of those subtle sensations which we call presentiments warned
Alistair that the emptiness of the house was a sign of crisis.
He took the trouble to go down into the kitchens. There, as he had
already foreboded, he found everything lying about in disorder. The
dirty plates and dishes from lunch were heaped up in the sink, and the
fire in the range had died out. He could find no shoes or umbrellas or
other belongings of the servants, such as they would be likely to keep
downstairs.
Already convinced that the servants had deserted the house, or been
dismissed in a body, he mounted to the top floor, and had his judgment
confirmed by the state of the attics. All the trunks were gone. The
beds had been made, no doubt in the forenoon, before the crash,
but everything else wore an untidy and dismantled air. The homely
dressing-tables looked bare without the presence of brushes, and there
was dirty water in one of the wash-stand basins. Several drawers stood
half out of the various chests, showing bits of paper, broken buttons,
and an odd glove.
It was the first time Lord Alistair had ever visited this part of the
house, and the whole spectacle depressed him. He found himself pitying
the departed servants who had had to occupy such mean and desolate
quarters. Why should it be necessary for these fellow-creatures to pass
their lives so shabbily? Why should one man be worse off than another?
And that sensation of a spiritual kinship between himself and all the
underlings of the world, which had first come to him as he stood on
Westminster Bridge, returned like a wave of melancholy over his heart.
Instead of going downstairs again, he went to the window of the attic
in which he happened to find himself, and looked out. It was a glimpse
of back-door London--that unknown London which hides behind the stately
squares and fashionable terraces and busy rows of shops. At that hour
a mist breathed on the roofs and gables of the houses, making them
beautiful. Each particular chimney was invested with a romantic air,
and had a character of its own. There were two, a tall one with a
little one beside it, at the end of a long roof-comb, and the group
suggested a stately lady leading her child by the hand. Behind them
came a short squat chimney that might have been the maid carrying a
bundle. Farther along a pair of slender, crooked chimney-pots bent
towards each other, like two beaux of the eighteenth-century meeting
and bowing on the Pantiles.
Looking lower down, another world revealed itself. Here were small
yards in which a little grass grew of its own accord, and tall, gaunt
clothes-props were the substitutes for trees. Strange barrels that
could have nothing in them were stacked against a wall to rot away.
The backs of the next row of houses were divided from these yards by a
mysterious lane that led nowhere. To the right there was just visible
a little branch street, with houses on only one side of it. Such small
houses they were, with a door and three windows to each, and yet in
the ground-floor window of one of them there was actually a card, as if
it had lodgings to let.
More interesting than the houses in the side-street were those just
opposite, across the mysterious lane. By looking closely it was
possible to see something of the life that went on in them. People
came out of their back-doors into the little yards which opened into
the lane. Watching these people was like watching the inhabitants of
another planet; they might live there for years, and you live in your
house for years, and you might watch each other every day all that
time, and yet you would never become anything to them, nor they to you.
They might be born, and grow up, and marry, and die, and you would
never know so much as their names.
Compared with the commonplace sights of the front streets, this was
like a peep into the wonder-world. The sky was turning from yellow
to violet under the enchantment of sunset, and all the air seemed to
be full of a deep sigh. Wicked faces began to peer from the bricks
of the houses, and the chimneys, if they were looked at long enough,
really moved and nodded to each other as if they were communicating
secrets overhead. Even the clothes-props down below felt the influence,
and came to life, and the clothes on the lines changed into ghostly
people whispering to and nudging one another as the darkness gave them
courage. It was impossible to believe that this was London, that the
Underground Railway ran beneath, and that the hospital stood not far
off. It was easier to think that you had strayed into the heart of some
haunted town, thousands of years ago, wherein dwelt a mystic folk,
worshipping strange gods, and going about the streets of their doomed
city, noiseless and hushed.
The sudden stopping of wheels outside, and the instant clamour of
a bell, broke Alistair’s trance. With the dazed feeling of a man
just recalled from sleep he stumbled down the stairs, and opened the
front-door to Molly.
She marched in, dressed in her most extravagant clothes, with a hat,
which Alistair could not remember seeing before, on her head, and a
more than usually profuse display of jewels on her arms and hands.
Her cheeks were bright with rouge and powder, and there was a hard,
metallic glint in her eyes which warned him that she had been drinking.
“Well, old boy, how did you get on?” she burst out, in a voice tainted
with huskiness. “I had a row with the servants while you were away,
and sacked the whole lot of them, and a good thing too. Jump into my
carriage, and we’ll go off and have a nice little dinner at the Savoy
or wherever you like, and a box at the theatre after. Cheer up!”
While she was rattling on with an evident anxiety not to give him time
to think, Alistair was glancing from her painted face to her jewelled
fingers, and from the new hat to the coupé which had brought her to the
house.
“Come in here,” he said, in a quiet tone of authority, at the same time
closing the front-door.
He led the way into the drawing-room, Molly following with reluctant
steps, and a look of defiance.
“Well, what is it? What do you want to say now?” she demanded.
“Where have you come from?” asked Alistair.
“Where have I come from? What business is that of yours? I can go where
I like, can’t I? I’ve been shopping, if you want to know.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“Never mind! What money? Can’t I have a little money of my own? I’ve
been giving you money lately.”
“I know you have. And I’m very sorry I let you. But that was money you
got on your jewels, and I gave you some of them myself. You have been
getting some more since I went away, and I want to know where you got
it.”
“Suppose I borrowed it; what’s that to you?”
“Who lent it to you?”
“I shan’t tell you. You’ve no right to ask.”
“No, I know I have no right over you. But I have the right to say I
won’t eat a dinner without knowing who is paying for it.”
“I shall pay for it; isn’t that enough?”
“With whose money? You have just admitted that you had been borrowing.”
“I borrowed it from Carter’s--there!”
Stuart shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.
“Where did you think I got it from, then?”
“From Mendes. I don’t know anyone else who would be likely to lend you
money.”
For a moment Molly wavered between wrath and fear. Then something in
Alistair’s face overcame her, and she broke down in a whimper.
“Don’t be angry with me, Alistair! Don’t look like that. I didn’t know
what to do. The servants all left me, I had nowhere to go, and we’ve
been so hard up lately. I thought you wanted money badly. It was for
you more than for myself, really. I was afraid you would get tired of
living with me if we were poor. You threatened to give up the house and
everything only the other day; you know you did. I didn’t think you
would mind my borrowing a little from him--he’s your friend as well as
mine. I didn’t go to his house, only to his office in the City; and he
was awfully good, and gave me a hundred pounds at once, and told me to
come again when I wanted more.”
Alistair remembered his own reception in Mendes’ office.
“He wouldn’t have given the hundred pounds to me,” was all he said.
“No!--you’re not going!” Molly screamed, as she saw him turning from
her. “Alistair! Alistair!”
She cast herself on the ground before him and caught him by the foot,
in a paroxysm of sobs and wails.
“I’m very sorry for you, Molly. I’m not angry with you at all; I’ve
no right to be; but I can’t live with you any longer; you must see
that. I fancied it would come to this sooner or later. I don’t blame
you; I dare say I ought to blame myself. But I can’t live on money that
another man gives you; you must know that well enough.”
“I’ll give it back to him. I haven’t spent half of it. I’ll take it all
back to him to-morrow. I’ll sell something to make it up.”
She began desperately tearing off bracelets and rings and dropping them
on the floor.
But Alistair’s mind was made up. He was surprised to find how perfectly
easy it was for him to act now that the moment had come. He had not
known that he should be so glad to be free.
“Nothing that you could do now would alter the fact that you have taken
money from Mendes,” he said. “We may as well make up our minds to what
has happened. It was bound to come sooner or later. It is better to
part like this than to drag on till we should be both sick of each
other. It’s good-bye.”
“I will never speak to Mendes again. I will never see him,” sobbed
Molly.
Stuart took a step towards the door of the room. She sprang to her feet
and got in front of him, clinging round him to prevent his going. The
scene became dreadful and ugly. He had to struggle step by step out of
the room and into the hall. It was a fight to get his hat off the stand
and put it on. He felt that it was imperative that he should get away
there and then. Another hour spent with Molly would be irretrievable
dishonour. At the front-door the miserable woman made a still more
frantic struggle. He had to unclasp her fingers by main force, and to
thrust her back with one hand while he turned the latch with the other.
If he had not promptly slipped his foot in between door and doorpost
she would have slammed the door to again before he could open it. And
all the time she kept up an incessant wailing appeal to him for mercy.
For the first time in his life Alistair felt that he was doing a cruel
thing.
He was still shuddering from the sound of Molly’s last moan as he got
into a cab at the street-corner and gave the direction:
“Colonsay House.”