CHAPTER III
May 24th.
Something has happened. Something fantastic, inconceivable. I
am in a condition to be surprised at nothing. If a witch on a
broomstick rode in through my open window and lectured me on
quaternions, I should accept her visit as a normal occurrence.
I have spent hours walking up and down this book-lined room,
wondering whether the universe or I were mad. Sometimes I
laughed, for the thing is sheerly ridiculous. Sometimes I cursed
at the impertinence of the thing in happening at all. Once I
stumbled over a volume of Muratori lying on the floor, and I
kicked it across the room. Then I took it up, and wept over the
loosened binding.
The question is: What on earth am I to do? Why has Judith chosen
this particular time to shut up her flat and sequester herself in
Paris? Why did my lawyers appoint this particular morning for me
to sign their silly documents? Why did I turn up three hours
late? Why did I walk down the Thames Embankment? And why, oh,
why, did I seat myself on a bench in the gardens below the
terrace of the National Liberal Club?
Yesterday was one of the most peaceful and happy days of my
existence. I worked contentedly at my history; I gossiped with
Antoinette who came to demand permission to keep a cat.
"What kind of a cat?" I asked.
"Perhaps Monsieur does not like cats?" she inquired, anxiously.
"The cat was worshipped as a god by the ancient Egyptians," I
remarked.
"But this one, Monsieur," she said in breathless reassurance,
"has only one eye."
I would sooner talk to Antoinette than the tutorial staff of
Girton. If she woke up one morning and found she had a mind she
would think it a disease.
In the afternoon I strolled into Regent's Park and meeting the
McMurray's nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around
whom seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat,
I took him off to the Zoological Gardens. On the way he told me,
with great glee, that his German governess was in bed with an
awful sore throat; that he wasn't doing any lessons; that the
sheepish hoverer was Milly's young man, and that the silly way
they went on was enough to make one sick. When he had fed
everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I drove him to
the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents. I love a
couple of hours with a child when it is thoroughly happy and on
its best behaviour. And the enjoyment is enhanced by the feeling
of utter thankfulness that he is not my child, but somebody
else's.
In the evening I read and meditated on the happiness of my lot.
The years of school drudgery have already lost their sharp edge
of remembered definition, and sometimes I wonder whether it is I
who lived through them. I had not a care in the world, not a
want that I could not gratify. I thought of Judith. I thought
of Sebastian Pasquale. I amused myself by seeking a Renaissance
type of which he must be the reincarnation. I fixed upon young
Olgiati, one of the assassins of Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Of the
many hundreds of British youths who passed before my eyes during
my slavery, he is the only one who has sought me out in his
manhood. And strange to say we had only a few months together,
during my first year's apprenticeship to the dismal craft, he
being in the sixth form, and but three or four years younger than
I. He was the maddest, oddest, most diabolical and most
unpopular boy in the school. The staff, to whom the conventional
must of necessity be always the Divine, loathed him. I alone
took to the creature. I think now that my quaint passion for the
cinquecento Italian must have had something to do with my
attraction. In externals he is as English as I am, having been
brought up in England by an English mother, but there are
thousands of Hindoos who are more British than he. The McMurrays
were telling me dreadful stories about him this afternoon.
Sighing after an obdurate Viennese dancer, he had lured her
coachman into helpless intoxication, had invested himself in the
domestic's livery, and had driven off with the lady in the
darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town.
What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was
the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine
did the following before my own eyes. We were walking down
Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It
was a black frost, agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out
matches for sale. His hideous red toes protruded through his
boots. "My God, my God!" cried Pasquale, "I can't stand this!"
He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore off his own boots, flung
them to the petrified beggar and drove home in his stocking-feet.
I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings, watched the
recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the
small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck
the boots under his arm and march away with them to the nearest
pawnbroker. If Pasquale had been an equally compassionate
Briton, he would have stopped to think, and have tossed the man a
sovereign. _But he didn't stop to think._ That was my
cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved him for it.
I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented
of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle
on my consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The
sun shone. A thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my
bedroom windows. The tree, laughed and shook out its finery at
me like a woman, saying: "See how green I am, after Sunday's
rain." Antoinette's one eyed black cat (a hideous beast) met me
in the hall and arching its back welcomed me affably to its new
residence. And on my breakfast-table I found a copy of the first
edition of Cristoforo da Costa's "_Elogi delle Donne Illustri_,"
a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord Carnforth, a
perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting in his
library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar's splendid
courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.
Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a
personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning
to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o'clock, having idled
at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed
their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple
Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had passed under
Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg-
weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation
to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the
National Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable
bench. The only other occupant was a female in black. As I take
no interest in females in black, I disregarded her presence, and
gave myself up to the contemplation, of the trim lawns and
flower-beds, the green trees masking the unsightly Surrey side of
the river, and the back of the statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A
continued survey of the last not making for edification (a statue
that turns its back on you being one of the dullest objects made
by man), I took from my pocket a brown leather-covered volume
which I had fished out of a penny box: "_Suite de l'Histoire du
Gouvernement de Venise ou L'Histoire des Uscoques, par le Sieur
Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV._" A whole complete scholarly history
of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally
Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the
most pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth
century Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured
their acrid musty smell. How much learning, thought I, bought
with the heart's-blood, how many million hours of fierce
intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an odour,
an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and there a casual
student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many times,
the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna. As men, their
achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but
their name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance
may be found in the penny scent fountains of to-day. I was
smiling over this quaint olfactory coincidence, and wondering
whether any human being alive at that moment had ever read the
Sieur Houssaie's book, when a tug at my arm, such as a neglected
terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to the workaday
world. I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown,
piteous, imploring dog's eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to
the disregarded female in black.
"Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do."
I stared. She was not in the least like what my half-conscious
glance at the female in black had taken her to be. She was quite
young, remarkably good looking. Even at the first instant I was
struck by her eyes and the mass of bronze hair and the twitching
of a childish mouth. But she had an untidy, touzled, raffish
appearance, due to I knew not what investiture of disrepute. Her
hands--for she wore no gloves--wanted washing.
"What a young girl like yourself must not do," said I, "is to
enter into conversation with men in public places."
"Then I shall have to die," she said, forlornly, edging away from
my side.
She had the oddest little foreign accent. I looked at her again
more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so
disreputable. She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too
big for her. Great pleats of it were secured by pins in
unexpected places, so that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of
decoration--black velvet and bugles--on the bodice.
Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged, fat, second-hand-
clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago for synagogue
wear. On the girlish figure it looked preposterous.
Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed
in black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.
Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again.
Then she shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. My mother had a
housemaid once who always sniffed like that before beginning to
cry. My position was untenable. I could not remain stonily on
the seat while this grotesquely attired damsel wept; and for the
life of me I could not get up and leave her. She looked at me
again. Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely human. I
capitulated.
"Don't cry. Tell me what I can do for you," I said.
She moved a few inches nearer.
"I want to find Harry," she said; "I have lost him."
"Who's Harry?" I naturally inquired.
"He is to be my husband."
"What's his other name?"
"I have forgotten," she said, spreading out her hands.
"Don't you know any one else in London?" I asked.
She shook her head mournfully. "And I am getting so hungry."
I suggested that there were restaurants in London.
"But I have no money," she objected. "No money and nothing at
all but this." She designated her dress. "Isn't it ugly?"
"It is decidedly not becoming," I admitted.
"Well, what must I do? You tell me and I do it. If you don't
tell me, I must die."
She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the
responsibility of her existence. I did not know which to admire
more, her cool assurance or the stoic fortitude with which she
faced dissolution.
"I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two,"
said I, "but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name--"
"After all I don't want so very much to find him," said this
amazing young person. "He made me stay in my cabin all the time
I was in the steamer. At first I was glad, for it went up and
down, side to side, and I thought I would die, for I was so sick;
but afterwards I got better--"
"But where did you come from?" I asked.
"From Alexandretta."
"What were you doing there?"
"I used to sit in a tree and look over the wall--"
"What wall?"
"The wall of my house-my father's house. He was not my father,
but he married my mother. I am English." She announced the fact
with a little air of finality.
"Indeed?" said I.
"Yes. Father, mother--both English. He was Vice-Consul. He
died before I was born. Then his friend Hamdi Effendi took my
mother and married her. You see?"
I confessed I did not. "Where does Harry come in?" I inquired.
She looked puzzled. "Come in?" she echoed.
I perceived her knowledge of the English vernacular was limited.
I turned my question differently.
"Oh," she said with more animation. "He used to pass by the
wall, and I talked to him when there was no one looking. He was
so pretty--prettier than you," she paused.
"Is it possible?" I said, ironically.
"Oh, yes," she replied with profound gravity. "He had a
moustache, but he was not so long."
"Well? You talked to Harry. What then?"
In her artless way she told me. A refreshing story, as old as
the crusades, with the accessories of orthodox tradition; a
European disguise, purchased at a slop dealer's by the precious
Harry, a rope, a midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an
English ship; the anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the
bounding main. A most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air
of sternness, and shot a question at her like a bullet.
"Are you making all this up, young woman?"
She started-looked quite scared.
"You mean I tell lies? But no. It is all true. Why shouldn't
it be true? How else could I have come here?"
The question was unanswerable. Her story was as preposterous as
her garments. But her garments were real enough. I looked long
into her great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth.
She babbled on for a little. I gathered that her step-father,
Hamdi Effendi, was a Turkish official. She had spent all her
life in the harem from which she had eloped with this pretty
young Englishman.
"And what must I do?" she reiterated.
I told her to give me time. One is not in the habit of meeting
abducted Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath
the National Liberal Club. It was, in fact, a bewildering
occurrence. I looked around me. Nothing seemed to have happened
during the last ten minutes. A pale young man on the next bench,
whom I had noticed when I entered, was reading a dirty pink
newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly. On
the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the
cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. Sir Bartle Frere stolidly
kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a
Becket story. I always thought something was wrong with that
man's character.
What on earth could I tell her to do? The best course was to
find the infernal Harry. I asked her how she came to lose him.
It appears he escorted her ashore at Southampton, after having
scarcely set eyes on her during the voyage, put her into a
railway carriage with strict injunctions not to stir until he
claimed her, and then disappeared into space.
"Did he give you your ticket?"
"No."
"What a young blackguard!" I exclaimed.
"I don't like him at all," she said.
How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could
not exactly discover. Apparently she told him, in her confiding
manner, that Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the
train and came back to say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes
on him and the sentimental varlet melted. At Waterloo a man had
told her
she must get out of the carriage--she had travelled alone in it
--and she had meekly obeyed. She had wandered out of the station
and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the
Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry.
Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother
crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the
resemblance was that she did not know the creature's surname.
"By the way," said I, "what is your name?"
"Carlotta."
"Carlotta what? " I asked.
"I have no other name."
"Your father--the Vice-Consul--had one."
She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.
"Ramsbotham," she said at last, triumphantly.
"Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham--no," I broke off. "Such an
appellation is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd.
I can't use it. I must take the liberty of addressing you as
Carlotta."
"But I've told you that Carlotta is my name," she said, in
uncomprehending innocence.
"And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne. People call me 'Sir Marcus.'"
"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta.
She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was
talking to a member of the baronetage.
"Quite so," said I. "Now, Carlotta," I resumed, "our first plan
is to set out in search of Harry. He may have missed his train,
and have followed by a later one, and be even now rampaging about
Waterloo station. If we hear nothing of him, I will drive you to
the Turkish Consulate, give you in charge there, and they will
see you safely home to Alexandretta. The good Hamdi Effendi is
doubtless distracted, and will welcome you back with open
arms."
I meant to be urbane and friendly.
She rose to her feet, grew as white as paper, opened her great
eyes, opened her baby mouth, and in the middle of the Embankment
Gardens plumped on her knees before me and clasped her hands
above her head.
"For God's sake get up!" I shrieked, wrenching her back
acrobatically to the bench beside me. "You mustn't do things
like that. You'll have the whole of London running to look at
us."
Indeed the sight had so far roused the pale young man from his
lethargy that he laid his dirty pink paper on his knees. I kept
hold of Carlotta's wrists. She began to moan incoherently.
"You mustn't send me back--Hamdi will kill me--oh please don't
send me back--he will make me marry his friend Mustapha--Mustapha
has only two teeth--and he is seventy years old--and he has a
wife already--I only went with Harry to avoid Mustapha. Hamdi
would kill me, he would beat me, he would make me marry
Mustapha."
That is what I gathered from her utterances. She was frightened
out of her wits, even into anticlimax.
"But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector," said I.
"You wouldn't be so cruel," she sobbed. The guttural sonority
with which she rolled the "r" in "cruel" made the epithet appear
one of revolting barbarity. She fixed those confounded eyes upon
me.
I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.
I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish
consulate.
I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and
drove her to Waterloo. On the way she reminded me that she was
hungry. I gave her food at the buffet. It appears she has a
passion for hard-boiled eggs and lemonade. She did not seem very
much concerned about finding Harry, but chattered to me about the
appointments of the bar. The beer-pulls amused her particularly.
She made me order a glass of bitter (a beverage which I loathe)
in order to see again how it was done, and broke into gleeful
laughter. The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in
bewilderment. The two or three bar-loafers also stared. I was
glad to escape to the platform.
There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in
a ring round us when we stopped to interview a railway official.
The beautiful, bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her
disreputable attire--I have never seen a broken black feather
waggle more shamelessly--was a sight indeed to strike wonderment
into the cockney mind. And perhaps her association with myself
added to the incongruity. I am long and lean and unlovely, I
know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably
respectable. Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by
the public attention. "Calm and unembarrassed as a fate" she
returned the popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my
efforts to find Harry. In the midst of an earnest discussion
with the station-master she begged me for a penny to put into
an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had seen a small
boy work successfully. I refused, curtly, and turned to the
station-master. A roar of laughter interrupted me again.
Carlotta, with outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an
organ-grinder's monkey, had induced the boy to part with the
sticky bit of toffee, and was in the act of conveying it to
her mouth.
"I'll call to-morrow morning," said I hurriedly to the
station-master. "If the gentleman should come meanwhile,
tell him to leave his name and address."
Then I took Carlotta by the arm and, accompanied by my train of
satellites, I thrust her into the first hansom-cab I could see.
There was no sign or token of Harry. No pretty young man was
hanging dejectedly about the station. None had torn his hair
before the officials asking for news of a lost female in frowsy
black. There was no Harry. There was no further need therefore
to afford the British public a gratuitous entertainment.
"Drive," said I to the cabman. "Drive like the devil."
"Where to, sir?"
I gasped. Where should I drive? I lost my head.
"Go on driving round and round till I tell you to stop." The
philosophic cabman did not regard me as eccentric, for he whipped
up his horse cheerfully. When we had slid down the steep incline
and got free of the precincts of that hateful station, I breathed
more freely and collected my wits. Carlotta sucked her sticky
thumbs and wiped them on her dress.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Across Waterloo Bridge," said I.
"What to do?"
"To dispose of you somehow," I replied, grimly. "But how, I
haven't a notion. There's a Home for Lost Dogs and a Home for
Stray Cats, and a Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard, but as
you are neither a dog nor a cat nor an umbrella, these refuges
are unavailable."
The cab reached the Strand.
"East or west, sir?" inquired the driver.
"West," said I, at random.
We drove down the Strand at a leisurely pace. I passed through a
phase of agonised thought. By my side was a helpless, homeless,
friendless, penniless young woman, as beautiful as a goddess and
as empty-minded as a baby. What in the world could I do with
her? I looked at her in despair. She met my glance with a
contented smile; just as if we were old acquaintances and I were
taking her out to dinner. The unfamiliar roar and bustle of
London impressed her no more than it would have impressed a
little dog who had found a kind master.
"Suppose I gave you some money and put you down here and left
you?" I inquired.
"I should die," she answered, fatalistically. "Or, perhaps, I
should find another kind gentleman."
"I wonder if you have such a thing as a soul," said I.
She plucked at her gown. "I have only this--and it is very
ugly," she remarked again. "I should like a pink dress."
We crossed Trafalgar Square, and I saw by Big Ben that it was a
quarter to six. I could not drive through London with her for an
indefinite period. Besides, my half past seven dinner awaited
me.
Why, oh, why has Judith gone to Paris? Had she been in town I
could have shot Carlotta into Tottenham Mansions, and gone home
to my dinner and Cristoforo da Costa with a light heart. Judith
would have found Carlotta vastly entertaining. She would have
washed her body and analysed her temperament. But Judith was in
retreat with Delphine Carrere, and has left me alone to bear the
responsibilities of life--and Carlotta.
The cab slowly mounted Waterloo Place. I had thought of my aunts
as possible helpers, and rejected the idea. I had thought of a
police station, a hotel, my lawyers (too late), a furnished
lodging, a hospital. My mind was an aching blank.
"Where do you live?" asked Carlotta.
I looked at her and groaned. It was the only solution. "Up
Regent's Park way," I replied, aware that she was none the wiser
for the information.
I gave the address to the cabman through the trap-door in the
roof.
"I'm going to take you home with me for to-night," I said,
severely. "I have an excellent French housekeeper who will look
after your comfort. And to-morrow if that infernal young
scoundrel of a lover of yours is not found, it will not be the
fault of the police force of Great Britain."
She laid her grubby little hand on mine. It was very soft and
cool.
"You are cross with me. Why?"
I removed her hand.
"You mustn't do that again," said I. "No; I am not in the least
cross with you. But I hope you are aware that this event is of
an unprecedented character."
"What is an unprecedented character?" she asked, stumbling over
the long words.
"A thing that has never happened before and I devoutly hope will
not happen again."
Her face was turned to me. The lower lip trembled a little. The
dog-look came into those wonderful eyes.
"You will be kind to me?" she said, in her childish
monosyllables, each word carefully articulated with a long pause
between.
I felt I had behaved like a heartless brute, ever since I thrust
her into the cab at Waterloo. I relented and laughed.
"If you are a good girl and do as I tell you," said I.
"Seer Marcous is my lord and I am his slave," was her astounding
reply.
Then I realised that she had been brought up by Hamdi Effendi.
There is something salutary, after all, in the training of the
harem.
"I'm very glad to hear it," I said.
She closed her eyes. I saw now she was very tired. I thought
she had gone to sleep and I looked in front of me puzzling out
the problem. Presently the cab-doors were thrust violently open,
and if I had net held her back, she would have jumped out of the
vehicle.
"Look!" she cried, in great excitement. "There! There's Harry's
name!"
She pointed to a butcher's cart immediately in front of us,
bearing, in large letters, the name of "E. Robinson."
"We must stop," she went on. "He will tell us about Harry."
It took me from Oxford Circus to Portman Square to convince her
that there were many thousands of Robinsons in London and that
the probability of the butcher's cart being a clue to Harry's
whereabouts was exceedingly remote.
At Baker Street station she asked, wearily: "Is it still far to
your house?"
"No," said I, encouragingly. "Not very far."
"But one can drive for many days through streets in London, and
there will be still streets, still houses? So they tell me in
Alexandretta. London is as big as the moon, not so?"
I felt absurdly pleased. She was capable of an idea. I had
begun to wonder whether she were not merely half-witted. The
fact of her being able to read had already cheered me.
"Many hours, yes," I corrected, "not many days. London seems big
to you?"
"Oh, yes," she said, passing her hand over her eyes. "It makes
all go round in my head. One day you will take me for a drive
through these wonderful streets. Now I am too tired. They make
my head ache."
Then she shut her eyes again and did not open them until we
stopped at Lingfield Terrace. I modified my first impression of
her animal unimpressionability. She is quite sane. If Boadicea
were to be brought back to life and be set down suddenly at
Charing Cross, her psychological condition would not be far
removed from that of an idiot. Yet in her own environment
Boadicea was quite a sane and capable lady.
My admirable man Stenson opened the door and admitted us without
moving a muscle. He would betray no incorrect astonishment if I
brought home a hippogriff to dinner. I have an admiration for
the trained serving-man's imperturbability. It is the guardian
angel of his self-respect. I ordered him to send Antoinette to
me in the drawing-room.
"Antoinette," said I, "this young lady has travelled all the way
from Asia Minor, where the good St. Paul had so many adventures,
without changing her things."
_C'est y Dieu possible_!" said Antoinette.
"Give her a nice hot bath, and perhaps you will have the kindness
to lend her the underlinen that your sex is in the habit of
wearing. You will put her into the spare bedroom, as she is
going to pass the night here, and you will look generally after
her comfort."
"_Bien, M'sieu_," said Antoinette, regarding Carlotta in
stupefaction.
"And put that hat and dress into the dust-bin."
"_Bien, M'sieu._"
"And as Mademoiselle is broken with fatigue, having come without
stopping from Asia Minor, she will go to bed as soon as
possible."
"The poor angel," said Antoinette. "But will she not join
Monsieur at dinner?"
"I think not," said I, dryly.
"But the young ducklings that are roasting for the dinner of
Monsieur?"
"If they were not roasting they might be growing up into ducks,"
said I.
"Oh, la, la!" murmured Antoinette, below her breath.
"Carlotta," said I, turning to the girl who had seated herself
humbly on a straight-backed chair, "you will go with Antoinette
and do as she tells you. She doesn't talk English, but she is
used to making people understand her."
"_Mais, moi parley Francais un peu_," said Carlotta.
"Then you will win Antoinette's heart, and she will lend you her
finest. Good-night," said I, abruptly. "I hope you will have a
pleasant rest."
She took my outstretched hand, and, to my great embarrassment,
raised it to her lips. Antoinette looked on, with a sentimental
moisture in her eyes.
"The poor angel," she repeated.
Later, I gave Stenson a succinct account of what had occurred. I
owed it to my reputation. Then I went upstairs and dressed for
dinner. I consider I owe that to Stenson. It was eight o'clock
before I sat down, but Antoinette's ducklings were delicious and
brought consolation for the upheaval of the day. I was unfolding
the latest edition of _The Westminster Gazette_ with which I
always soothe the digestive half-hour after dinner, when
Antoinette entered to report progress.
She was sound asleep, the poor little one. Oh, but she was
tired. She had eaten some _consomme_, a bit of fish and an
omelette. But she was beautiful, gentle as a lamb; and she had a
skin _on dirait du satin_. Had not Monsieur noticed it?
I replied, with some over-emphasis, that I had not.
"Monsieur rather regards the inside of his books," said
Antoinette.
"They are generally more worth regarding," said I.
Antoinette said nothing; but there was a feminine quiver at the
corners of her fat lips.
She was comfortably disposed of for the night. I drew a breath
of relief. To-morrow Great Scotland Yard should set out on the
track of the absconding Harry. Carlotta's happy recollection of
his surname facilitated the search. I lit a cigarette and opened
_The Westminster Gazette_.
A few moments later I was staring at the paper in blank horror
and dismay.
Harry was found. There was no mistake. Harry Robinson, junior
partner of the firm of Robinson & Co., of Mincing Lane. Vain,
indeed, would it be to seek the help of Great Scotland Yard.
Harry had blown out his brains in the South Western Hotel at
Southampton.
I have read the newspaper paragraph over and over again to-night.
There is no possible room for doubt that it is the same Harry.
The ways of man are past interpretation. Here is an individual
who lures a girl from an oriental harem, attires her in
disgusting garments, smuggles her on board a steamer, where he
claps her, so to speak, under hatches, and has little if anything
to do with her, sets her penniless and ticketless in a London
train, and then goes off and blows his brains out. Where is the
sense of it?
I have not a spark of sympathy for Harry--a callow, egotistical
dealer in currants. He ought to have blown out his brains a year
ago. He has behaved in a most unconscionable manner. How does he
expect me to break the news to Carlotta? His selfishness is
appalling. There he lies, comfortably dead in the South Western
Hotel, while Carlotta has literally not a rag to her back, her
horrific belongings having been dropped into the dust-bin. Who
does he think is going to provide Carlotta with food and shelter
and a pink dress? What does he imagine is to become of the poor
waif? In all my life I have never heard of a more cynical
suicide.
I have walked about for hours, laughing and cursing and kicking
the binding loose of my precious Muratori. I have wondered
whether the universe or I were mad. For there is one thing that
is clear to me--Carlotta is here, and here Carlotta must remain.
Devastating though it be to the well-ordered quietude of my life,
I must adopt Carlotta.
There is no way out of it.
