Chapter III: Book I: A Society Scandal (3)

Wingrave took no more notice of her. She and Aynesworth walked together to the station. As they passed the little whitewashed cottage, she suddenly let go his hand, and darted inside.

“Wait one moment,” she cried breathlessly.

She reappeared almost at once, holding something tightly clenched in her right hand. She showed it to him shyly.

“It is for you, please,” she said.

It was a silver locket, and inside was a little picture of herself. Aynesworth stooped down and kissed her. He had had as many presents in his life as most men, but never an offering which came to him quite like that! They stood still for a moment, and he held out her hands. Already the morning was astir. The seagulls were wheeling, white-winged and noiseless, above their heads; the air was fragrant with the scent of cottage flowers. Like a low, sweet undernote, the sea came rolling in upon the firm sands--out to the west it stretched like a sheet of softly swaying inland water. For those few moments there seemed no note of discord--and then the harsh whistle of an approaching train! They took hold of hands and ran.

It was, perhaps, as well that their farewells were cut short. There was scarcely time for more than a few hurried words before the train moved out from the queer little station, and with his head out of the window, Aynesworth waved his hand to the black-frocked child with her pale, eager face already stained with tears--a lone, strange little figure, full of a sort of plaintive grace as she stood there, against a background of milk cans, waving a crumpled handkerchief!

Wingrave, who had been buried in a morning paper, looked up presently.

“If our journeyings,” he remarked drily, “are to contain everywhere incidents such as these, they will become a sort of sentimental pilgrimage.”

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

“I am sorry,” he said, “that my interest in the child has annoyed you. At any rate, it is over now. The parson was mysterious, but he assured me that she was provided for.”

Wingrave looked across the carriage with cold, reflective curiosity.

“Your point of view,” he remarked, “is a mystery to me! I cannot see how the future of an unfledged brat like that can possibly concern you!”

“Perhaps not,” Aynesworth answered, “but you must remember that you are a little out of touch with your fellows just now. I daresay when you were my age, you would have felt as I feel. I daresay that as the years go on, you will feel like it again.”

Wingrave was thoughtful for a moment.

“So you think,” he remarked, “that I may yet have in me the making of a sentimentalist.”

Aynesworth returned his gaze as steadfastly.

“One can never tell,” he answered. “You may change, of course. I hope that you will.”

“You are candid, at any rate!”

“I do not think,” Aynesworth answered, “that there is any happiness in life for the man who lives entirely apart from his fellow creatures. Not to feel is not to live. I think that the first real act of kindness which you feel prompted to perform will mark the opening of a different life for you.”

Wingrave spread out the newspaper.

“I think,” he said, with a faint sneer, “that it is quite time you took this sea voyage.”

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES

Mr. Lumley Barrington, K.C. and M.P., was in the act of stepping into his carriage to drive down to the House, when he was intercepted by a message. It was his wife’s maid, who came hurrying out after him.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, “but her ladyship particularly wished to see you as soon as you came in.”

“Is your mistress in?” Barrington asked in some surprise.

“Yes, sir!” the maid answered. “Her ladyship is resting, before she goes to the ball at Caleram House. She is in her room now.”

“I will come up at once,” Barrington said.

He kept the carriage waiting while he ascended to his wife’s room. There was no answer to his knock. He opened the door softly. She was asleep on a couch drawn up before the fire.

He crossed the room noiselessly, and stood looking down upon her. Her lithe, soft figure had fallen into a posture of graceful, almost voluptuous ease; the ribbons and laces of her muslin dressing gown quivered gently with her deep regular breathing. She had thrown off her slippers, and one long, slender foot was exposed; the other was doubled up underneath her body. Her face was almost like the face of a child, smooth and unwrinkled, save for one line by the eyes where she laughed. He looked at her steadfastly. Could the closing of the eyes, indeed, make all the difference? Life and the knowledge of life seemed things far from her consciousness. Could one look like that--even in sleep--and underneath--! Barrington broke away from his train of thought, and woke her quickly.

She sat up and yawned.

“Parsons managed to catch you, then,” she remarked.

“Yes!” he answered. “I was just off. I got away from Wills’ dinner party early, and called here for some notes. I must be at the House”--he glanced at the clock--“in three-quarters of an hour!”

She nodded. “I won’t keep you as long as that.”

Her eyes met his, a little furtively, full of inquiry. “I have done what you wished,” he said quietly. “I called at the Clarence Hotel!”

“You saw him!”

“No! He sent back my card. He declined to see me.”

She showed no sign of disappointment. She sat up and looked into the fire, smoothing her hair mechanically with her hands.

“Personally,” Barrington continued, “I could see no object whatever in my visit. I have nothing to say to him, nor, I should think, he to me. I am sorry for him, of course, but he’d never believe me if I told him so. What happened to him was partly my fault, and unless he’s changed, he’s not likely to forget it.”

She swayed a little towards him.

“It was partly--also--mine,” she murmured.

“I don’t see that at all,” he objected. “You at any rate were blameless!”

She looked up at him, and he was astonished to find how pale she was.

“I was not!” she said calmly.

There was a short silence. Barrington had the air of a man who has received a shock.

“Ruth!” he exclaimed, glancing towards the door, and speaking almost in a whisper. “Do you mean--that there are things which I have never known?”

“Yes!” she answered. “I mean that he might, if he chose, do us now--both of us--an immense amount of harm.”

Barrington sat down at the end of the sofa. He knew his wife well enough to understand that this was serious.

“Let us understand one another, Ruth,” he said quietly. “I always thought that you were a little severe on Wingrave at the trial! He may bear you a grudge for that; it is very possible that he does. But what can he do now? He had his chance to cross examine you, and he let it go by.”

“He has some letters of mine,” Lady Ruth said slowly.

“Letters! Written before the trial?”

“Yes!”

“Why did he not make use of them there?”

“If he had,” Lady Ruth said, with her eyes fixed upon the carpet, “the sympathy would have been the other way. He would have got off with a much lighter sentence, and you--would not have married me!”

“Good God!” Barrington muttered.

“You see,” Lady Ruth continued, resting her hand upon her husband’s coat sleeve, “the thing happened all in a second. I had the check in my hand when you and Sir William came crashing through that window, and Sir William’s eyes were upon me. The only way to save myself was to repudiate it, and let Wingrave get out of the affair as well as he could. Of course, I never guessed what was going to happen.”

“Then it was Wingrave,” Barrington muttered, “who played the game?”

“Yes!” Lady Ruth answered quietly. “But I am not so sure about him now. You and I, Lumley, know one another a little better today than we did twelve years ago. We have had a few of the corners knocked off, I suppose. I can tell you things now I didn’t care to then. Wingrave had lent me money before! He has letters from me today, thanking him for it.”

Barrington was a large, florid man, well built and well set up. In court he presented rather a formidable appearance with his truculent chin, his straight, firm mouth, and his commanding presence. Yet there was nothing about him now which would have inspired fear in the most nervous of witnesses. He looked like a man all broken up by some unexpected shock.

“If he had produced those letters--at the trial--”

Lady Ruth shrugged her shoulders.

“I risked it, anyhow,” she said. “I had to. My story was the only one which gave me a dog’s chance, and I didn’t mean to go under--then. Wingrave never gave me away, but I fancy he’s feeling differently about it now!”

“How do you know, Ruth?”

“I have seen him! He sent for me!” she answered. “Lumley, don’t look at me like that! We’re not in the nursery, you and I. I went because I had to. He’s going to America for a time, and then he’s coming back here. I think that when he comes back--he means mischief!”

“He is not the sort of man to forget,” Barrington said, half to himself.

She shuddered ever so slightly. Then she stretched out a long white arm, and drawing his head suddenly down to her, kissed him on the lips.

“If only,” she murmured, “he would give up the letters! Without them, he might say--anything. No one would believe!”

Barrington raised his eyes to hers. There was something almost pathetic in the worshiping light which shone there. He was, as he had always been, her abject slave.

“Can you think of any way?” he asked. “Shall I go to him again?”

“Useless!” she answered. “You have nothing to offer in exchange. He would not give them to me. He surely would not give them to you. Shall I tell you what is in his mind? Listen, then! He is rich now; he means to make more money there. Then he will return, calling himself Mr. Wingrave--an American--with imaginary letters of introduction to us. He has ambitions--I don’t know what they are, but they seem to entail his holding some sort of a place in society. We are to be his sponsors.”

“Is it practicable?” he asked.

“Quite,” she answered. “He is absolutely unrecognizable now. He has changed cruelly. Can’t you imagine the horror of it? He will be always in evidence; always with those letters in the background. He means to make life a sort of torture chamber for us!”

“Better defy him at once, and get over,” Barrington said. “After all, don’t you think that the harm he could do is a little imaginary?”

She brushed the suggestion aside with a little shiver.

“Shall I tell you what he would do, Lumley?” she said, leaning towards him. “He would have my letters, and a copy of my evidence, printed in an elegant little volume and distributed amongst my friends. It would come one day like a bomb, and nothing that you or I could do would alter it in the least. Your career and my social position would be ruined. Success brings enemies, you know, Lumley, and I have rather more than my share.”

“Then we are helpless,” he said.

“Unless we can get the letters--or unless he should never return from America,” she answered.

Barrington moved uneasily in his seat. He knew very well that some scheme was already forming in his wife’s brain.

“If there is anything that I can do,” he said in a low tone, “don’t be afraid to tell me.”

“There is one chance,” she answered, “a sort of forlorn hope, but you might try it. He has a secretary, a young man named Aynesworth. If he were on our side--”

“Don’t you think,” Barrington interrupted, “that you would have more chance with him than I?”

She laughed softly.

“You foolish man,” she said, touching his fingers lightly. “I believe you think that I am irresistible!”

“I have seen a good many lions tamed,” he reminded her.

“Nonsense! Anyhow, there is one here who seems quite insensible. I have talked already with Mr. Aynesworth. He would not listen to me!”

“Ah!”

“Nevertheless,” she continued softy, “of one thing I am very sure. Every man is like every woman; he is vulnerable if you can discover the right spot and the right weapons. Mr. Aynesworth is not a woman’s man, but I fancy that he is ambitious. I thought that you might go and see him. He has rooms somewhere in Dorset Street.”

He rose to his feet. A glance at the clock reminded him of the hour.

“I will go,” he said. “I will do what I can. I think, dear,” he added, bending over her to say farewell, “that you should have been the man!”

She laughed softly.

“Am I such a failure as a woman, then?” she asked with a swift upward glance. “Don’t be foolish, Lumley. My woman will be here to dress me directly. You must really go away.”

He strode down the stairs with tingling pulses, and drove to the House, where his speech, a little florid in its rhetoric, and verbose as became the man, was nevertheless a great success.

“Quite a clever fellow, Barrington,” one of his acquaintances remarked, “when you get him away from his wife.”

A FORLORN HOPE

Aynesworth ceased tugging at the strap of his portmanteau, and rose slowly to his feet. A visitor had entered his rooms--apparently unannounced.

“I must apologize,” the newcomer said, “for my intrusion. Your housekeeper, I presume it was, whom I saw below, told me to come up.”

Aynesworth pushed forward a chair.

“Won’t you sit down?” he said. “I believe that I am addressing Mr. Lumley Barrington.”

Not altogether without embarrassment, Barrington seated himself. Something of his ordinary confidence of bearing and demeanor had certainly deserted him. His manner, too, was nervous. He had the air of being altogether ill at ease.

“I must apologize further, Mr. Aynesworth,” he continued, “for an apparently ill-timed visit. You are, I see, on the eve of a journey.”

“I am leaving for America tomorrow,” Aynesworth answered.

“With Sir Wingrave Seton, I presume?” Barrington remarked.

“Precisely,” Aynesworth answered.

Barrington hesitated for a moment. Aynesworth was civil, but inquiring. He felt himself very awkwardly placed.

“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “I must throw myself upon your consideration. You can possibly surmise the reason of my visit.”

Aynesworth shook his head.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I must plead guilty to denseness--in this particular instance, at any rate. I am altogether at a loss to account for it.”

“You have had some conversation with my wife, I believe?”

“Yes. But--”

“Before you proceed, Mr. Aynesworth,” Barrington interrupted, “one word. You are aware that Sir Wingrave Seton is in possession of certain documents in which my wife is interested, which he refuses to give up?”

“I have understood that such is the case,” Aynesworth admitted. “Will you pardon me if I add that it is a matter which I can scarcely discuss?”

Barrington shrugged his shoulders.

“Let it go, for the moment,” he said. “There is something else which I want to say to you.”

Aynesworth nodded a little curtly. He was not very favorably impressed with his visitor.

“Well!”

Barrington leaned forward in his chair.

“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “you have made for yourself some reputation as a writer. Your name has been familiar to me for some time. I was at college, I believe, with your uncle, Stanley Aynesworth.”

He paused. Aynesworth said nothing.

“I want to know,” Barrington continued impressively, “what has induced you to accept a position with such a man as Seton?”

“That,” Aynesworth declared, “is easily answered. I was not looking for a secretaryship at all, or anything of the sort, but I chanced to hear his history one night, and I was curious to analyze, so far as possible, his attitude towards life and his fellows, on his reappearance in it. That is the whole secret.”

Barrington leaned back in his chair, and glanced thoughtfully at his companion.

“You know the story of his misadventures, then?” he remarked.

“I know all about his imprisonment, and the cause of it,” Aynesworth said quietly.

Barrington was silent for several moments. He felt that he was receiving but scanty encouragement.

“Is it worth while, Mr. Aynesworth?” he asked at length. “There is better work for you in the world than this.”

Again Aynesworth preferred to reply by a gesture only. Barrington was watching him steadily.

“A political secretaryship, Mr. Aynesworth,” he said, “might lead you anywhere. If you are ambitious, it is the surest of all stepping stones into the House. After that, your career is in your own hands. I offer you such a post.”

“I am exceedingly obliged to you,” Aynesworth replied, “but I scarcely understand.”

“I have influence,” Barrington said, “which I have never cared to use on my own account. I am willing to use it on yours. You have only to say the word, and the matter is arranged.”

“I can only repeat,” Aynesworth said, “that I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Barrington, but I cannot understand why you should interest yourself so much on my behalf.”

“If you wish me to speak in plain words,” Barrington said, “I will do so. I ask you to aid me as a man of honor in the restoration of those letters to my wife.”

“I cannot do it,” Aynesworth said firmly. “I am sorry that you should have come to me with such an offer. It is quite out of the question!”

Barrington held out his hand.

“Do not decide too hastily,” he said. “Remember this. Sir Wingrave Seton had once an opportunity of putting those letters to any use he may have thought fit. He ignored it. At that time, their tenor and contents might easily have been explained. After all these years, that task would be far more difficult. I say that no man has a right to keep a woman’s letters back from her years after any friendship there may have been between them is over. It is not the action of an honorable man. Sir Wingrave Seton has placed himself outside the pale of honorable men.”

“Your judgment,” Aynesworth answered quietly, “seems to me severe. Sir Wingrave Seton has been the victim of peculiar circumstances.”

Barrington looked at his companion thoughtfully. He was wondering exactly how much he knew.

“You defend him,” he remarked. “That is because you have not yet found out what manner of man he is.”

“In any case,” Aynesworth answered, “I am not his judge. Mr. Barrington,” he added, “You must forgive me if I remind you that this is a somewhat unprofitable discussion.”

A short silence followed. With Barrington it did not appear to be a silence of irresolution. He was leaning a little forward in his chair, and his head was resting upon his hand. Of his companion he seemed for the moment to have become oblivious. Aynesworth watched him curiously. Was he looking back through the years, he wondered, to that one brief but lurid chapter of history; or was it his own future of which he was thinking,--a future which, to the world, must seem so full of brilliant possibilities, and yet which he himself must feel to be so fatally and miserably insecure?

“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said at last, “I suppose from a crude point of view I am here to bribe you.”

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

“Is it worth while?” he asked a little wearily. “I have tried to be civil--but I have also tried to make you understand. Your task is absolutely hopeless!”

“It should not be,” Barrington persisted. “This is one of those rare cases, in which anything is justifiable. Seton had his chance at the trial. He chose to keep silence. I do not praise him or blame him for that. It was the only course open to a man of honor. I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever. He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense. You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else in reason that you will!”

Aynesworth rose to his feet. He wished to intimate that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was at an end.

“Your proposition, Mr. Barrington,” he said, “is absolutely impossible. In the first place, I have no idea where the letters in question are, and Sir Wingrave is never likely to suffer them to pass into my charge.”

“You have opportunities of finding out,” Barrington suggested.

“And secondly,” Aynesworth continued, ignoring the interruption, “whatever the right or the wrong of this matter may be, I am in receipt of a salary from Sir Wingrave Seton, and I cannot betray his confidence.”

Barrington also rose to his feet. He was beginning to recognize the hopelessness of his task.

“This is final, Mr. Aynesworth?” he asked.

“Absolutely!” was the firm reply.

Barrington bowed stiffly, and moved towards the door. On the threshold he paused.

“I trust, Mr. Aynesworth,” he said hesitatingly, “that you will not regard this as an ordinary attempt at bribery and corruption. I have simply asked you to aid me in setting right a great injustice.”

“It is a subtle distinction, Mr. Barrington,” Aynesworth answered, “but I will endeavor to keep in mind your point of view.”

Barrington drove straight home, and made his way directly to his study. Now that he was free from his wife’s influence, and looked back upon his recent interview, he realized for the first time the folly and indignity of the whole proceedings. He was angry that, a man of common sense, keen witted and farseeing in the ordinary affairs of life, should have placed himself so completely in a false, not to say a humiliating position. And then, just as suddenly, he forgot all about himself, and remembered only her. With a breath of violets, and the delicate rustling of half-lifted skirts, she had come softly into the room, and stood looking at him inquiringly. Her manner seemed to indicate more a good-natured curiosity than real anxiety. She made a little grimace as he shook his head.

“I have failed,” he said shortly. “That young man is a prig!”

“I was afraid,” she said, “that he would be obstinate. Men with eyes of that color always are!”

“What are we to do, Ruth?”

“What can we?” she answered calmly. “Nothing but wait. He is going to America. It is a terrible country for accidents. Something may happen to him there! Do go and change your things, there’s a dear, and look in at the Westinghams’ for me for an hour. We’ll just get some supper and come away.”

“I will be ready in ten minutes,” Barrington answered. He understood that he was to ask no questions, nor did he. But all the time his man was hurrying him into his clothes, his brain was busy weaving fancies.

PROFESSOR SINCLAIR’S DANCING ACADEMY

Mr. Sinclair, or as he preferred to be called, Professor Sinclair, waved a white kid glove in the direction of the dancing hall.

“This way, ladies and gentlemen!” he announced. “A beautiful valse just about to commence. Tickets, if you please! Ah! Glad to see you, Miss Cullingham! You’ll find--a friend of yours inside!”

There was a good deal of giggling as the girls came out from the little dressing room and joined their waiting escorts, who stood in a line against the wall, mostly struggling with refractory gloves. Mr. Sinclair, proprietor of the West Islington Dancing Academy, and host of these little gatherings--for a consideration of eighteenpence--did his best, by a running fire of conversation, to set everyone at their ease. He wore a somewhat rusty frock coat, black trousers, a white dress waistcoat, and a red tie. Evening dress was not DE RIGUEUR! The money at the door, and that everyone should behave as ladies and gentlemen, were the only things insisted upon.

Mr. Sinclair’s best smile and most correct bow was suddenly in evidence.

“Mademoiselle Violet!” he exclaimed to a lady who came in alone, “we are enchanted. We feared that you had deserted us. There is a young gentleman inside who is going to be made very happy. One shilling change, thank you. Won’t you step into the cloak room?”

The lady shook her head.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Sinclair,” she said, “I would rather keep my hat and veil on. I can only stay for a few minutes. Is Mr. Richardson here, do you know? Ah! I can see him.”

She stepped past the Professor into the little dancing hall. A young lady was pounding upon a piano, a boy at her side was playing the violin. A few couples were dancing, but most of the company was looking on. The evening was young, and Mr. Sinclair, who later on officiated as M.C., had not yet made his attack upon the general shyness. The lady known as Mademoiselle Violet paused and looked around her. Suddenly she caught sight of a pale, anemic-looking youth, who was standing apart from the others, lounging against the wall. She moved rapidly towards him.

“How do you do, Mr. Richardson?” she said, holding out her hand.

He started, and a sudden rush of color streamed into his cheeks. He took her hand awkwardly, and he was almost speechless with nervousness.

“I don’t believe you’re at all glad to see me!” she remarked.

“Oh! Miss Violet!” he exclaimed. He would have said more, but the words stuck in his throat.

“Can we sit down somewhere?” she said. “I want to talk to you.”

There were one or two chairs placed behind a red drugget curtain, where adventurous spirits led their partners later in the evening. They found a place there, and the young man recovered his power of speech.

“Not glad to see you!” he exclaimed almost vehemently. “Why, what else do you suppose I come here for every Thursday evening? I never dance; they all make game of me because they know I come here on the chance of seeing you again. I’m a fool! I know that! You just amuse yourself here with me, and then you go away, back to your friends--and forget! And I hang about round here, like the silly ass that I am!”

“My dear--George!”

The young man blushed at the sound of his Christian name. He was mollified despite himself.

“I suppose it’s got to be the same thing all over again,” he declared resignedly. “You’ll talk to me and let me be near you--and make a fool of me all round; and then you’ll go away, and heaven knows when I’ll see you again. You won’t let me take you home, and won’t tell me where you live, or who your friends are. You do treat me precious badly, Miss Violet.”

“This time,” she said quietly, “it will not be the same. I have something quite serious to say to you.”

“Something serious--you? Go on!” he exclaimed in excitement.

“Have you found another place yet?”

“No. I haven’t really tried. I have a little money saved, and I could get one tomorrow if--”

She stopped him with a smiling gesture.

“I don’t mean that--yet,” she said. “I wanted to know whether it would be possible for you to go away for a little time, if someone paid all your expenses.”

“To go away!” he repeated blankly. “What for?”

Mademoiselle Violet leaned a little nearer to him.

“My mistress asked me yesterday,” she said, “if I knew anyone who could be trusted who would go away, at a moment’s notice, on an errand for her.”

“Your mistress,” he repeated. “You really are a lady’s maid, then, are you?”

“Of course!” she answered impatiently. “Haven’t I told you so before? Now what do you say? Will you go?”

“I dunno,” he answered thoughtfully. “If it had been for you, I don’t know that I’d have minded. I ain’t fond of traveling.”

“It is for me,” she interrupted hastily. “If I can find her anyone who will do what she wants, she will make my fortune. She has promised. And then--”

“Well, and then?”

Mademoiselle Violet looked at him thoughtfully.

“I should not make any promises,” she said demurely, “but things would certainly be different.”

The young man’s blood was stirred. Mademoiselle Violet stood to him for the whole wonderful world of romance, into which he had peered dimly from behind the counter of an Islington emporium. Her low voice--so strange to his ears after the shrill chatter of the young ladies of his acquaintance--the mystery of her coming and going, all went to give color to the single dream of his unimaginative life. Apart from her, he was a somewhat vulgar, entirely commonplace young man, of saving habits, and with some aptitude for business, in a small way. He had been well on his way to becoming a small but successful shopkeeper, thereby realizing the only ideals which had yet presented themselves to him, when Madame Violet had unconsciously intervened. Of what might become of him now he had no clear conception of himself.

“I’ll go!” he declared.

Mademoiselle Violet’s eyes flashed behind her veil. Her fingers touched his for a moment.

“It is a long way,” she said.

“I don’t care,” he answered valiantly.

“To--America!”

“America!” he gasped. “But--is this a joke, Miss Violet?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not! America is not a great journey.”

“But it will cost--”

She laughed softly.

“My mistress is very rich,” she said. “The cost does not matter at all. You will have all the money you can spend--and more.”

He felt himself short of breath, and bereft of words.

“Gee whiz!” he murmured.

They sat there in silence for a few moments. A promenading couple put their heads behind the screen, and withdrew with the sound of feminine giggling. Outside, the piano was being thumped to the tune of a popular polka.

“But what have I go to do?” he asked.

“To watch a man who will go out by the same steamer as you,” she answered. “Write to London, tell me what he does, how he spends his time, whether he is ill or well. You must stay at the same hotel in New York, and try and find out what his business is there. Remember, we want to know, my mistress and I, everything that he does.”

“Who is he?” he asked. “A friend of your mistress?”

“No!” she answered shortly, “an enemy. A cruel enemy--the cruelest enemy a woman could have!”

The subdued passion of her tone thrilled him. He felt himself bewildered--in touch with strange things. She leaned a little closer towards him, and that mysterious perfume, which was one of her many fascinations, dazed him with its sweetness.

“If you could send home word,” she whispered, “that he was ill, that anything had happened to him, that he was not likely to return--our fortunes would be made--yours and mine.”

“Stop!” he muttered. “You--phew! It’s hot here!”

He wiped the perspiration recklessly from his forehead with a red silk handkerchief.

“What made you come to me?” he asked. “I don’t even know the name of your mistress.”

“And you must not ask it,” she declared quietly. “It is better for you not to know. I came to you because you were a man, and I knew that I could trust you.”

Her flattery sank into his soul. No one else had ever called him a man. He felt himself capable of great things. To think that, but for the coming of this wonderful Mademoiselle Violet, he might even now have been furnishing a small shop on the outskirts of Islington, with collars and ties and gloves designed to attract the youth of that populous neighborhood!

“When do I start?” he asked with a coolness which surprised himself.

She drew a heavy packet from the recesses of the muff she carried.

“All the particulars are here,” she said. “The name of the steamer, the name of the man, and money. You will be told where to get more in New York, if you need it.”

He took it from her mechanically. She rose to her feet.

“You will remember,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“I ain’t likely to forget anything you’ve said tonight,” he answered honestly. “But look here! Let me take you home--just this once! Give me something to think about.”

She shook her head.

“I will give you something to hope for,” she whispered. “You must not come a yard with me. When you come back it will, perhaps--be different.”

He remained behind the partition, gripping the packet tightly. Mademoiselle Violet took a hasty adieu of Mr. Sinclair, and descended to the street. She walked for a few yards, and then turned sharply to the left. A hansom, into which she stepped at once, was waiting there. She wrapped herself hastily in a long fur coat which lay upon the seat, and thrust her hand through the trap door.

“St. Martin’s Schoolroom!” she told the cabman.

Apparently Mademoiselle Violet combined a taste for philanthropy with her penchant for Islington dancing halls. She entered the little schoolroom and made her way to the platform, dispensing many smiles and nods amongst the audience of the concert, which was momentarily interrupted for her benefit. She was escorted on to the platform by a young and earnest-looking clergyman, and given a chair in the center of the little group who were gathered there. And after the conclusion of the song, the clergyman expressed his gratification to the audience that a lady with so many calls upon her time, such high social duties, should yet find time to show her deep interest in their welfare by this most kind visit. After which, he ventured to call upon Lady Barrington to say a few words.

MEPHISTOPHELES ON A STEAMER

In some respects, the voyage across the Atlantic was a surprise to Aynesworth. His companion seemed to have abandoned, for the time at any rate, his habit of taciturnity. He conversed readily, if a little stiffly, with his fellow passengers. He divided his time between the smoke room and the deck, and very seldom sought the seclusion of his state room. Aynesworth remarked upon this change one night as the two men paced the deck after dinner.

“You are beginning to find more pleasure,” he said, “in talking to people.”

Wingrave shook his head.

“By no means,” he answered coldly. “It is extremely distasteful to me.”

“Then why do you do it?” Aynesworth asked bluntly.

Wingrave never objected to being asked questions by his secretary. He seemed to recognize the fact that Aynesworth’s retention of his post was due to a desire to make a deliberate study of himself, and while his own attitude remained purely negative, he at no time exhibited any resentment or impatience.

“I do it for several reasons,” he answered. “First, because misanthropy is a luxury in which I cannot afford to indulge. Secondly, because I am really curious to know whether the time will ever return when I shall feel the slightest shadow of interest in any human being. I can only discover this by affecting a toleration for these people’s society, which I can assure you, if you are curious about the matter, is wholly assumed.”

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

“Surely,” he said, “you find Mrs. Travers entertaining?”

Wingrave reflected for a moment.

“You mean the lady with a stock of epigrams, and a green veil?” he remarked. “No! I do not find her entertaining.”

“Your neighbor at table then, Miss Packe?”

“If my affections have perished,” Wingrave answered grimly, “my taste, I hope, is unimpaired. The young person who travels to improve her mind, and fills up the gaps by reading Baedeker on the places she hasn’t been to, fails altogether to interest me!”

“Aren’t you a little severe?” Aynesworth remarked.

“I suppose,” Wingrave answered, “that it depends upon the point of view, to use a hackneyed phrase. You study people with a discerning eye for good qualities. Nature--and circumstances have ordered it otherwise with me. I see them through darkened glasses.”

“It is not the way to happiness,” Aynesworth said.

“There is no highroad to what you term happiness,” Wingrave answered. “One holds the string and follows into the maze. But one does not choose one’s way. You are perhaps more fortunate than I that you can appreciate Mrs. Travers’ wit, and find my neighbor, who has done Europe, attractive. That is a matter of disposition.”

“I should like,” Aynesworth remarked, “to have known you fifteen years ago.”

Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.

“I fancy,” he said, “that I was a fairly average person--I mean that I was possessed of an average share of the humanities. I have only my memory to go by. I am one of those fortunate persons, you see, who have realized an actual reincarnation. I have the advantage of having looked out upon life from two different sets of windows.--By the bye, Aynesworth, have you noticed that unwholesome-looking youth in a serge suit there?”

Aynesworth nodded.

“What about him?”

“I fancy that he must know--my history. He sits all day long smoking bad cigarettes and watching me. He makes clumsy attempts to enter into conversation with me. He is interested in us for some reason or other.”

Aynesworth nodded.

“Shocking young bounder,” he remarked. “I’ve noticed him myself.”

“Talk to him some time, and find out what he means by it,” Wingrave said. “I don’t want to find my biography in the American newspapers. It might interfere with my operations there. Here’s this woman coming to worry us! You take her off, Aynesworth! I shall go into the smoking room.”

But Mrs. Travers was not so easily to be disposed of. For some reason or other, she had shown a disposition to attach herself to Wingrave.

“Please put me in my chair,” she said to him, holding out her rug and cushion. “No! Not you, Mr. Aynesworth. Mr. Wingrave understands so much better how to wrap me up. Thanks! Won’t you sit down yourself? It’s much better for you out here than in the smoking room--and we might go on with our argument.”

“I thought,” Wingrave remarked, accepting her invitation after a moment’s hesitation, “that we were to abandon it.”

“That was before dinner,” she answered, glancing sideways at him. “I feel braver now.”

“You are prepared,” he remarked, “for unconditional surrender?”

She looked at him again. She had rather nice eyes, quite dark and very soft, and she was a great believer in their efficacy.

“Of my argument?”

He did not answer her for a moment. He had turned his head slightly towards her, and though his face was, as usual, expressionless, and his eyes cold and hard, she found nevertheless something of meaning in his steady regard. There was a flush in her cheek when she looked away.

“I am afraid,” she remarked, “that you are rather a terrible person.”

“You flatter me,” he murmured. “I am really quite harmless!”

“Not from conviction then, I am sure,” she remarked.

“Perhaps not,” he admitted. “Let us call it from lack of enterprise! The virtues are all very admirable things, but it is the men and women with vices who have ruled the world. The good die young because there is no useful work for them to do. No really satisfactory person, from a moral point of view, ever achieved greatness!”

She half closed her eyes.

“My head is going round,” she murmured. “What an upheaval! Fancy Mephistopheles on a steamer!”

“He was, at any rate, the most interesting of that little trio,” Wingrave remarked, “but even he was a trifle heavy.”

“Do you go about the world preaching your new doctrines?” she asked.

“Not I!” he answered. “Nothing would every make a missionary of me, for good or for evil, for the simple reason that no one else’s welfare except my own has the slightest concern for me.”

“What hideous selfishness!” she said softly. “But I don’t think--you quite mean it?”

“I can assure you I do,” he answered drily. “My world consists of myself for the central figure, and the half a dozen or so of people who are useful or amusing to me! Except that the rest are needed to keep moving the machinery of the world, they might all perish, so far as I was concerned.”

“I don’t think,” Mrs. Travers said softly, “that I should like to be in your world.”

“I can very easily believe you,” he answered.

“Unless,” she remarked tentatively, “I came to convert!”

He nodded.

“There is something in that,” he admitted. “It would be a great work, a little difficult, you know.”

“All the more interesting!”

“You see,” he continued, “I am not only bad, but I admire badness. My wish is to remain bad--in fact, I should like to be worse if I knew how. You would find it hard to make a start. I couldn’t even admit that a state of goodness was desirable!”

She looked at him curiously. The night air was perhaps getting colder, for she shivered, and drew the rug a little closer around her.

“You speak like a prophet,” she remarked.

“A prophet of evil then!”

She looked at him steadfastly. The lightness had gone out of her tone.

“Do you know,” she said, “I am almost sorry that I ever knew you?”

He shook his head.

“You can’t mean it,” he declared.

“Why not?”

“I have done you the greatest service one human being can render another! I have saved you from being bored!”

She nodded.

“That may be true,” she admitted. “But can you conceive no worse state in the world than being bored?”

“There is no worse state,” he answered drily. “I was bored once,” he added, “for ten years or so; I ought to know!”

“Were you married?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Not quite so bad as that,” he answered. “I was in prison!”

She turned a startled face towards him.

“Nonsense!”

“It is perfectly true,” he said coolly. “Are you horrified?”

“What did you do?” she asked in a low tone.

“I killed a man.”

“Purposely?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“He attacked me! I had to defend myself.”

She said nothing for several moments.

“Shall I go?” he asked.

“No! Sit still,” she answered. “I am frightened of you, but I don’t want you to go away. I want to think.... Yes! I can understand you better now! Your life was spoilt!”

“By no means,” he answered. “I am still young! I am going to make up for those ten years.”

She shook her head.

“You cannot,” she answered. “The years can carry no more than their ordinary burden of sensations. If you try to fill them too full, you lose everything.”

“I shall try what I can do!” he remarked calmly.

She rose abruptly.

“I am afraid of you tonight,” she said. “I am going downstairs. Will you give my rug and cushion to the deck steward? And--good night.”

She gave him her hand, but she did not look at him, and she hurried away a little abruptly.

Wingrave yawned, and lighting a cigar, strolled up and down the deck. A figure loomed out of the darkness and almost ran into him. It was the young man in the serge suit. He muttered a clumsy apology and hurried on.

A COCKNEY CONSPIRATOR

“The bar closes in ten minutes, sir!” the smoking room steward announced.

The young man who had been the subject of Wingrave’s remarks hastily ordered another drink, although he had an only half-emptied tumbler in front of him. Presently he stumbled out on to the deck. It was a dark night, and a strong head wind was blowing. He groped his way to the railing and leaned over, with his head half buried in his hands. Below, the black tossing sea was churned into phosphorescent spray, as the steamer drove onwards into the night.

Was it he indeed--George Richardson? He doubted it. The world of tape measures and calico counters seemed so far away; the interior of his quondam lodgings in a by-street of Islington, so unfamiliar and impossible. He felt himself swallowed up in this new and bewildering existence, of which he was so insignificant an atom, the existence where tragedy reared her gloomy head, and the shadows of great things loomed around him. Down there in the cold restless waste of black waters--what was it that he saw? The sweat broke out upon his forehead, the blood seemed turned to ice in his veins. He knew very well that his fancy mocked him, that it was not indeed a man’s white face gleaming on the crest of the waves. But none the less he was terrified.

Mr. Richardson was certainly nervous. Not all the brandy he had drunk--and he had never drunk half as much before in his life--afforded him the least protection from these ghastly fancies. The step of a sailor on the deck made him shiver; the thought of his empty state room was a horror. He tried to think of the woman at whose bidding he had left behind him Islington and the things that belonged to Islington! He tried to recall her soft suggestive whispers, the glances which promised more even than her spoken words, all the perfume and mystery of her wonderful presence. Her very name was an allurement. Mademoiselle Violet! How softly it fell from the lips!... God in heaven, what was that? He started round, trembling in every limb. It was nothing more than the closing of the smoking room door behind him. Sailors with buckets and mops were already beginning their nightly tasks. He must go to his state room! Somehow or other, he must get through the night...

He did it, but he was not a very prepossessing looking object when he staggered out on deck twelve hours later, into the noon sunshine. The chair towards which he looked so eagerly was occupied. He scarcely knew himself whether that little gulp of acute feeling, which shot through his veins, was of relief or disappointment. While he hesitated, Wingrave raised his head.

Wingrave did not, as a rule, speak to his fellow passengers. Of Richardson, he had not hitherto taken the slightest notice. Yet this morning, of all others, he addressed him.

“I believe,” he said, holding it out towards him, “that this envelope is yours. I found it under your chair.”

Richardson muttered something inarticulate, and almost snatched it away. It was the envelope of the fatal letter which Mademoiselle Violet had written him to Queenstown.

“Sit down, Mr. Richardson, if you are not in a hurry,” Wingrave continued calmly. “I was hoping that I might see you this morning. Can you spare me a few minutes?”

Richardson subsided into his chair. His heart was thumping against his ribs. Wingrave’s voice sounded to him like a far-off thing.

“The handwriting upon that envelope which I have just restored to you, Mr. Richardson, is well known to me,” Wingrave continued, gazing steadfastly at the young man whom he was addressing.

“The envelope! The handwriting!” Richardson faltered. “I--it was from--”

An instant’s pause. Wingrave raised his eyebrows.

“Ah!” he said. “We need not mention the lady’s name. That she should be a correspondent of yours, however, helps me to understand better several matters which have somewhat puzzled me lately. No! Don’t go, my dear sir. We must really have this affair straightened out.”

“What affair?” Richardson demanded, with a very weak attempt at bluster. “I don’t understand you--don’t understand you at all.”

Wingrave leaned a little forward in his chair. His eyebrows were drawn close together; his gaze was entirely merciless.

“You are not well this morning,” he remarked. “A little headache perhaps! Won’t you try one of these phenacetine lozenges--excellent things for a headache, I believe? Warranted, in fact, to cure all bodily ailments for ever! What! You don’t like the look of them?”

The young man cowered back in his chair. He was gripping the sides tightly with both hands, and the pallor of a ghastly fear had spread over his face.

“I--don’t know what you mean,” he faltered. “I haven’t a headache!”

Wingrave looked thoughtfully at the box between his fingers.

“If you took one of these, Mr. Richardson,” he said, “you would never have another, at any rate. Now, tell me, sir, how you came by them!”

“I know nothing about--” the young man began.

“Don’t lie to me, sir,” Wingrave said sharply. “I have been wondering what the ---- you meant by hanging around after me, giving the deck steward five shillings to put your chair next mine, and pretending to read, while all the time you were trying to overhear any scraps of conversation between my secretary and myself. I thought you were simply guilty of impertinent curiosity. This, however, rather alters the look of affairs.”

“What does?” Richardson asked faintly. “That box ain’t mine.”

“Perhaps not,” Wingrave answered, “but you found it in my state room and filled it up with its present contents. My servant saw you coming out, and immediately went in to see what you had stolen, and report you. He found nothing missing, but he found this box full of lozenges, which he knows quite well was half full before you went in. Now, what was your object, Mr. Richardson, in tampering with that box upon my shelf?”

“I have--I have never seen it before,” Richardson declared. “I have never been in your state room!”

The deck steward was passing. Wingrave summoned him.

“I wish you would ask my servant to step this way,” he said. “You will find him in my state room.”

The man disappeared through the companion way. Richardson rose to his feet.

“I’m not going to stay here to be bullied and cross examined,” he declared. “I’m off!”

“One moment,” Wingrave said. “If you leave me now, I shall ask the captain to place you under arrest.”

Richardson looked half fearfully around.

“What for?”

“Attempted murder! Very clumsily attempted, but attempted murder none the less.”

The young man collapsed. Wingrave’s servant came down the deck.

“You sent for me, sir?” he inquired respectfully.

Wingrave pointed towards his companion.

“Was that the person whom you saw coming out of my state room?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” the man replied at once.

“You could swear to him, if necessary?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“That will do, Morrison.”

The man withdrew. Wingrave turned to his victim. “A few weeks ago,” he remarked, “I had a visit from the lady whose handwriting is upon that envelope. I had on the table before me a box of phenacetine lozenges. She naturally concluded that I was in the habit of using them. That lady has unfortunately cause to consider me, if not an enemy, something very much like it. You are in correspondence with her. Only last night you placed in my box of these lozenges some others, closely resembling them, but fortunately a little different in shape. Mine were harmless--as a matter of fact, a single one of yours would kill a man in ten minutes. Now, Mr. Richardson, what have you to say about all this? Why should I not send for the captain, and have you locked up till we arrive at New York?”

Richardson drew his handkerchief across his damp forehead.

“You can’t prove nothing,” he muttered.

“I am afraid that I must differ from you,” Wingrave answered. “We will see what the captain has to say.”

He leaned forward in his chair, to attract the attention of a seaman.

Richardson interposed.

“All right,” he said thickly. “Suppose I own up! What then?”

“A few questions--nothing terrifying. I am not very frightened of you.”

“Go on!”

“How did you become acquainted with the writer of that letter?”

Richardson hesitated.

“She came to a dancing class at Islington,” he said.

Wingrave’s face was expressionless, but his tone betrayed his incredulity.

“A dancing class at Islington! Nonsense!”

“Mind,” the young man asserted, “it was her mistress who put her up to this! It was nothing to do with her. It was for her mistress’s sake.”

“Do you know the mistress?” Wingrave asked.

“No; I don’t know her name even. Never heard it.”

“Your letter, then, was from the maid?”

“Of course, it was,” Richardson answered. “If you recognize the writing, you must know that yourself.”

Wingrave looked reflectively seaward. The matter was not entirely clear to him. Yet he was sure that this young man was telling the truth, so far as he could divine it.

“Well,” he said, “you have made your attempt and failed. If fortune had favored you, you might at this moment have been a murderer. I might have warned you, by the bye, that I am an exceedingly hard man to kill.”

Richardson looked uneasily around.

“I ain’t admitting anything, you know,” he said.