mosscrop had not the heart to breakfast alone in his deserted lodgings.
the impulse to get away mastered him on the instant of its appearance. he strode forth as if delay were fraught with sore perils. at a shabby luncheon-bar in the strand below he consumed a cup of abominable coffee and a dry sausage-roll in the same nervous haste. the barmaid in attendance was known to him. she annoyed him now by displaying in her manner the assumption that he wished to laugh and joke with her as usual. he glowered at her instead, and met her advances to conversation with a curt nod.
“you must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she commented loftily.
“very likely,” he answered with cold brevity, counting out the necessary coppers and turning on his heel.
outside he seemed to himself to choose the direction of his steps quite at random. he walked slowly, trying to fasten his brain down to the task of conjecturing what on earth it all meant. alas, his mind was as empty as those desolate rooms up at the top of dunstan’s inn. the power of coherent speculation had left him. it was hardly possible even to arrange in decent sequence the details of what had happened. an indefinitely sweeping rage at destiny in general oppressed all his faculties. he muttered meaningless oaths under his breath as he went along, directed at an intangible “it” which was equally without form and personality, a mere abstract symbol of the universal beastliness of things.
the notion of cursing vestalia did not suggest itself. so far as he had any intelligible thoughts about her, they were instinctively exculpatory. she seemed indeed to have behaved stupidly, but it must have been under a misapprehension of some sort. something perverse had happened to lead her off into a foolish course of action. he resolutely declined to open his mind to any other view of her. she must have quitted the inn for some reason which wholly satisfied her sense of honourable conduct. what was this reason? had she conjured it up out of her own meditations, or had it been furnished to her from an external source?
all at once he stopped short, mental and bodily progress alike arrested by a striking thought. “damn him!” he murmured to himself, as he turned this new idea over. how that it had come to him, he fairly marvelled at the dulness which had failed to discover it at the beginning. it was as plain as the nose on one’s face—the earl had bidden vestalia to begone. “ah, that miserly, meddling fool of a drumpipes!” he groaned, between clenched teeth.
this laying bare of the mystery brought no consolation. the day was as irretrievably ruined, the tender little romance as ruthlessly crushed, as ever. a certain doubtful solace seemed to offer itself in the shape of a quarrel with drumpipes, but mosscrop shook his head despondently at it. what good would that do? and for that matter, how should one go to work to quarrel with that tough-hided, fatuous, conceited, dense-witted, imperturbable, and impenetrable idiot? he would never even perceive that the attempt was being made. david piled up in reverie the loathly epithets upon the over-large bald head of his friend with a savage satisfaction. “you preposterous clown!” he snarled at the burly blond image of the absent nobleman in his mind’s eye. “you gratuitous and wanton ass! oh, you unthinkable duffer!”
and somehow there was after all a kind of relief in these comminatory exercises. the dim light of a possible diversion began to filter through the storm-cloud of mosscrop’s wrath. he was still bitterly depressed, and furious as well, of course, but self-possession was returning to him, and with it the capacity for planning and ordering his movements. it occurred to him that he ought to do something to turn his thoughts temporarily at least from this world-weary sadness.
up on the opposite corner his eye caught the legend “savoy street.” he stared at the small sign, perched above the dingy brick cornice of the first-floor, for a moment with an unreflecting gaze. then he turned and walked briskly down the steep hillside thoroughfare, and into the courtyard of the great hotel which, like the street and the quarter, commemorates in its name the first of a long and steadfast line of needy continental princes whose maintenance the british tax-payer has found himself fated to provide.
at the desk, he wrote out a card and sent it up as an accompaniment to the inquiry whether mr. laban skinner was in or not.
no, it was reported presently; mr. skinner had gone out—but the young lady was in.
david pondered this unexpected intelligence. “did she tell you that she was in?” he asked the boy, suspiciously.
yes; she had done so.
mosscrop discovered that he had been quite unprepared for this. he knit his brows and ruminated upon it. his impression had been at the time that the girl disliked him, or at least disliked the proposition which her absurd father had made. it seemed to him, moreover, that he disliked, her in turn. she had stared rudely at poor vestalia—but then it should be remembered in fairness that all women did that to one another. her attitude towards him had been ostentatiously apathetic, almost to the point of insolence; and yet he recalled that in that moment when he had caught her unawares, she had been displaying a notable interest in what was going on. the notion that there had been a sort of challenge underlying the mask of studied indifference she had presented to him returned to his mind. and he still needed diversion, too, as much as ever.
“if you will show the way,” he said to the boy at this juncture.
the lift bore them a long distance upward, quite to the roof it seemed. david formed the impression that rents must be cheap at that altitude; hut when he took the first glance round the sitting-room into which he found himself presently ushered, the idea vanished.
it was a large and imposingly-appointed room, exhaling, as it were, an effect of high-priced luxury. the broad windows at the front came down to the floor, and opened upon a balcony. there were awnings hung outside to ward off the sunshine, and this threw the whole apartment into a mellow twilight, contrasting sharply with the brightness of the corridor mosscrop had just quitted.
he looked about him, hesitatingly, to make sure that there really was no one in the room. the glimpse of some white drapery fluttering against the edge of a chair out on the balcony caught his eye, and he moved across to the nearest open window. the noble prospect of the thames viewed from this height impressed itself with great vividness upon his mind, even in advance of his perception that he had indeed found miss skinner. he looked downward with a gaze which embraced both the girl and the river, and for a moment they preserved an equally unconscious aspect.
the young lady then lifted her head, sidewise, and acknowledged mosscrop’s presence by a slow drooping movement of her black lashes. “how do you do?” she remarked, placidly. “bring out a chair for yourself.”
he did as he was told, and seated himself near the balustrade, so that he partially faced her; but he looked again at the wonderful picture below, to collect his thoughts.
“i had no idea it was so magnificent up here,” he said at last.
“indeed,” commented his companion. it was impossible to say whether the remark was in the nature of an exclamation or an inquiry. mosscrop found himself compelled to glance up, if only to determine this open question.
the realisation that she was extremely well worth looking at swept over him like a flood, at the instant of his lifting his eyes. it suited her to be hare-headed, and to wear just the creamy white cashmere house-gown that he beheld her in. the glossy plaits and masses of her hair were wonderful. in the softened, tinted half-shadow of the awning her dark skin glowed with a dusky radiance which fascinated him. her mien was as imperious as ever, but it suggested now an empress disposed to play, a sultana whose inclination was for amusement.
“did you come up to see the view? i daresay it is even better from the leads. you call them leads here, don’t you? your novels always do, i know.”
this speech of hers, languidly delivered, had its impertinent side, without doubt, but mosscrop caught in its tone a not unamiable intention. she did not smile in response to the puzzled questioning of his swift glance, but he convinced himself none the less that it was a pleasantry. he noted in this instant of confused speculation that she had a book in her lap—a large, red-covered volume with much gilt on the binding—and that she kept a finger in it to mark some particular place.
“your father was good enough to ask me to call,” he reminded her, with gentleness.
“i asked for him, and i——”
“you are disappointed to find him out?” yes; there could be no doubt she was amusing herself. “oh, that depends,” ventured david, with temerity.
the girl surveyed him at her leisure. “if i remember aright,” she said, “you were invited conditionally. you were to come, or rather to communicate with us, if you decided to close with my father’s offer. so i suppose you’ve made up your mind to accept.”
“well, i should like to talk more about it; get a clearer idea of what was proposed.”
“my father takes great pains in expressing himself. i should have said his explanation was as full as anything could well be on this earth.”
“to speak frankly,” replied david, “i got the idea that you didn’t care much about your father’s scheme—in fact, that you disliked it. that’s what i wanted to be clear about. it would be ridiculous for me to be going round, delivering instructive lectures to you on antiquities and ruins and so forth, and you hating me all the while for a bore and a nuisance. it would place us both in a false position.”
“and you can’t stand false positions, eh?”
mosscrop rose. “i’m afraid i can’t stand this one, at all events,” he answered, with dignified brevity.
“oh, you mustn’t think of going!” his hostess protested, with a momentary ring of animation in her voice. “my father’s liable to return any minute, and he’d be greatly put out to find he’d missed you.”
“i could wait for him in the reception room downstairs,” he suggested, moodily—“or, for that matter, i don’t know that it’s very important that we should meet at all.”
“i don’t call that a bit polite,” she commented.
“i’m afraid your standards of politeness are beyond me,” he began, formally. then the absurdity of the thing struck him, and he grinned in a reluctant fashion. “do you really want me to stay?” he asked, with the spirit of banter in his tone.
“oh that depends,” she mocked back at him. “if you can be amusing, yes.”
“just how amusing must i be?” he propped into his chair again, and this time laid his hat aside.
“oh, say as much so as you were yesterday with the young lady of the butter-coloured hair. i think that would about fill the bill.”
mosscrop ground his teeth with swift annoyance. then he chuckled in a mood of saturnine mirth. finally he sighed, and dolefully shook his head.
“ah, yesterday!” he mourned, drawing a still deeper breath.
“you were extremely entertaining, then,” pursued the other, ignoring his emotions. “do you find yourself—as a usual thing, i mean—varying a good deal from day to day? i ask entirely from curiosity. i’ve never met anyone before in precisely your position.”
“no, i should think not!” he assented, with gloomy emphasis. “i can well believe that my position is unique in the history of mankind. such grotesque luck could scarcely repeat itself. but i beg your pardon—it isn’t a thing that would interest you; i had no business to mention it at all.”
“it was i who mentioned it, i believe,” she corrected him calmly.
there was obvious meaning in her insistence. he looked up at her in vague surprise, the while he mentally retraced the steps by which the conversation had reached this point. there was undoubtedly a very knowing expression in her eyes. clearly she had meant to associate vestalia with what she described as his position—the position which she deemed so unusual; it was equally plain that she desired him to understand that she did so. it was impossible that she should know anything of what had happened. he searched his memory, and made sure that no personal hint of any sort had drifted into that rambling discourse of his in the assyrian corridors, which the americans had more or less overheard. what then was she talking about?
ah, what indeed? she lay back in her chair, and met his gaze of bewildered interrogation with a fine show of composure. she looked at him tranquilly through lazy, halfclosed eyelids. his suspicions discerned beneath the passive surface of this regard animated under-currents of ironical amusement and triumph. there was nothing overt upon which he could found the challenge to an explanation, but as he continued to scrutinise her, he could fancy that her whole presence radiated the suggestion of repressed glee. whatever the mystery might be, she was extracting great delight from her possession of a clue to it.
“yes, it was you who mentioned my position,” he remarked, groping lamely for some sure footing on which to redress his disadvantage. “i don’t know that! quite follow you; wherein do you find my position, as you term it, so exceptional?
“you yourself have boasted that it couldn’t be matched in all history,” she reminded him. her tone was casual enough, but the sense of sport began to gleam unmistakably in her eyes.
“now you argue in a circle,” he remonstrated, with a shade of professional acerbity in his voice. “your remark came before mine, and hence cannot possibly have been based upon my subsequent comment. if i may be permitted the observation, they seem to teach logic but indifferently in the united states.”
“oh, that is why we came here,” retorted the girl, with ostentatious na?veté. the conceit pleased her so much that she bent forward, and assumed the manner of one communicating an important fact. “that is why i had my father make you an offer at once. you know, most professors, and teachers, and so on, are so hard to understand. but the moment i laid eyes on you i said, ‘there’s a man that i can see through as if he were plate-glass; i can read him like a book.’ and, of course, that must be the most valuable of all qualities in an instructor.”
“so i am entirely transparent, am i? i present no secrets to your gaze?” mosscrop spoke like one in whom pique and a sense of the comical struggled for mastery. “then i cannot do better than beg you to tell me some things about myself. why, for example, do i sit here patiently and submit to be laughed at, heckled, satirised, and generally bully-ragged by a young lady, whose title to do these things is not in the least apparent to me?”
“why, don’t you remember? you’re waiting for papa.”
“and incidentally providing his offspring, in the interim, with much harmless and chaste entertainment,” put in mosscrop, drily. “i am charmed to have diverted you so successfully. it occurs to me, since you are so readily amused, that you must have been wofully bored before i made my happy appearance.”
“oh, quite the contrary,” exclaimed the girl, with a sudden stress in her tone, which hinted that this was what she had been waiting for. she opened the volume, as she spoke, at the place marked by her finger. “i was reading in the peerage, you know. it is a most entrancing book. i am never dull when i am reading about earls and things.”
“i have heard that the work enjoys a remarkable popularity in your country,” david remarked, sourly.
“there is such romance in it!” she went on, in mock rhapsody; “it makes such appeals to the imagination! it puts you at once in an atmosphere of chivalry, of knightly adventures and exploits, of tournaments and chain-armour, and courts of love——”
“and of divorce, and bankruptcy, too,” he interposed. “don’t forget those.”
the girl looked grave for a moment, and nodded her head as if in relenting apology. then she recovered her high spirits by as swift a transition.
“and such splendid old names as you get, too!” she continued, with her eyes on the open page. “listen to this, for example. could anything be finer?”
drumpipes, earl of. (sir archibald-coro-nach-dugal-strathspey-malcolm- linkhaw) viscount dunfugle of inverdummie, and baron pilliewillie of slug-angus, morayshire, all in the peerage of scotland, and a baronet of nova scotia. born august 24th, 1866. succeeded his grandfather as 19th earl january 10th, 1888. married may 2nd, 1890, janet-eustasia-marjory, 3rd daughter of the master of craigie-whaup by his wife, the hon. tryphena pincock (who deceased march 6th, 1879), elder daughter of the 4th baron dubb of kilwhissel. seat, skirl castle, near lossiewink, elgin. club, wanderers.
she read it all with marked deliberation and distinctness of utterance. when she finished, silence reigned for some time on the balcony.
“well, am i not right?” she asked at last, lifting her head, and flashing the full richness of her black eyes into mosscrop’s face. “don’t you admit the inspiration of such names?”
david answered in a hesitating, dubious manner. “i am more curious about the source—and scope—of your inspiration,” he said.
“unhappily, it cannot be pretended that you are transparent. you confront me with an opacity against which my feeble wits beat in vain. i can see that it is known to you that i know drumpipes. but why this fact should assume in your mind such portentous and mysterious dimensions, and why you should treat it with the air of one who has unearthed a great conspiracy, a terrible secret, i can’t for the life of me comprehend.”
“ah, you are more complicated than i had thought,” she replied. “i did not imagine you would keep up the defence so long.”
“me?—a defence? never,” cried david, incited in some vague way by this remark to an accession of assurance. “i defend nothing. i surrender with eagerness. i roll myself at your feet, miss skinner. all i crave in return is that you will put a label on my submission. it may be weak, but i should dearly like to know what it is that i am abandoning.”
“what i should suggest that you give up is your attempt to deceive me—us—as to your identity.”
“ah! am i indeed someone else, then? upon my word, i can’t congratulate the other fellow.”
“you wrote your name down for my father yesterday, and again on this card here this morning, as mosscrop—david mosscrop.”
he assented by a nod, and allowed the beginnings of an abashed and contrite look to gather upon his face.
“well, it just happened that, the moment i first laid eyes on you, i knew who you really were. by the merest accident, your picture had been shown to me—by a gentleman who knows you intimately, and is indeed distantly related to you—on shipboard coming over. i recognised you instantly, there in the museum, and i made papa speak to you. i was curious to see what you would say and do.”
“i’m afraid you were disappointed. did you think i would shout and dance, or what?” he struggled with some degree of success to speak impassively.
“i had never met any one before in your position in life, and i had the whim to experiment on my own account.” she said this as if defending her action to herself more than to her auditor.
“and may i have my little whim gratified too?” he asked. “i am extremely curious to know how you like your experiment as far as you have got with it.”
she did not answer immediately, and he occupied the interval by an earnest mental scuffle after some clue to what she was driving at. he knew of no man who possessed his portrait—at least among those who went down to the sea in ships. he had had no photograph taken for years, to begin with. a distant relation of his, she had said, and on a very recent voyage from america. who the deuce could it be? what acquaintance of his had been of late in america? all at once the answer leaped upward in his mind. he laughed aloud, with an abruptness which took him not less than his companion by surprise. but then a puzzled scowl overshadowed the grin on his countenance. he saw a little way farther into the millstone, but that was all.
“i hope you don’t regret your experiment,” he repeated. “it would have been simpler, perhaps, if your father had mentioned that you were friends of mr. linkhaw’s. that in itself would have been an ample introduction.”
“perhaps we should have done so, had you been alone.” her tone was cool to the verge of haughtiness.
he rapidly considered what this might mean. her remark clearly indicated that vestalia’s presence had seemed to her reprehensible. why? there was some intricacy here which he could not fathom. that confounded drumpipes had told her—what? eureka! he had it! the picture that she had seen was a little cheap ambrotype of drumpipes and himself, standing together, which had been made by a poor devil of a wayside photographer, two derby days before. undoubtedly that was what the earl had shown her—the only one he could have shown her. and—why of course—drumpipes had pointed him, david, out as the earl. what his motive could have been, heaven only knew, but this was palpably the key to the riddle.
he grasped this key with decision, on the instant. he straightened himself, frowned a little, and laboriously stiffened the tell-tale muscles about his mouth.
“i don’t think i quite like this notion of linkhaw’s babbling about me and my affairs,” he said, with austerity.
“oh, i assure you,” she protested, anxiously, “he was very cautious. he only gave the most sparing answers to my questions. i had to literally drag things from him.”
“but what business had he showing my picture about to begin with? he shall hear what i think of it! men’s allowances have been stopped for less than that.”
“it will be very unjust indeed if you visit it upon him,” the girl urged, almost tremulously; “it was all my fault. i asked him one day if he had ever met a nobleman, and he, quite as a matter of course, mentioned that one of his own relatives was an earl. one day, later, he was showing me a little tin-type of himself, and he merely said that you were the other person in the picture, that was all.”
“and then you proceeded to drag things from him. i believe that was your phrase,” remarked david, in a severe tone. the sensation of having this proud and insolent beauty in a tremor of entreaty before him was very delightful.
“naturally, i asked him questions,” she replied, with a little more spirit. “earls don’t grow on every bush with us. and for that matter, why, goodness me! he did nothing but praise you from morning till night. by his account, one would think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. he made you out a regular saint. i was quite prepared to see you with a halo round your head—and instead, i——”
she stopped short, with a confused and deprecatory smile. david, noting it, rejoiced that he had taken a peremptory tone about the garrulous linkhaw.
“instead, you discovered that i was a mere flesh and blood mortal like the rest.” he permitted himself to unbend, and even to smile a little, as he furnished this conclusion to her sentence. “was it a very painful disillusionment?”
“oh, i’ve read and heard enough about the lives that your class lead here in europe,” she replied, with a marked reversion toward her former manner. “i don’t pretend that i was really surprised.”
david assumed a judicial expression. “considering the way we are brought up, and the temptations that are thrust upon us,” he said, impartially, “i would not say that we are so much worse than other men.”
“but you are pretty bad—that you must admit.”
before david had satisfactorily framed the admission expected of him, the sound of an opening door and of footsteps came from within.
“it is papa,” whispered the girl, leaning forward in a confidential manner. “i’m going to tell him.”
“i see no valid objection,” answered david, with dignity.
