Chapter IV: An Outcast

The dark man’s knowledge of the restaurant was evidently as accurate as his acquaintance with the locality of the switch which would plunge it in darkness. How he piloted them Magdalen could not tell, but in a breathless instant she found herself in a back street. Behind them she saw the lights flash up in Krug’s windows.

“Call a hansom,” she said, for to walk might be to come straight on the man, who by this time was sure to have been put out. “Oh, I haven’t thanked you! I can’t. What made you do it?”

The man whistled for a cab before he answered her, and then lied--scrupulously.

“I’ve seen rows here before,” with a shrug. “I fancy you haven’t.” He could not tell the girl that what he had done was simply for what he had seen in her great eyes--for the pride and shame and anger in them.

“We never were here before!” she cried sharply. “We were lonely, we’d”--with truth--“no cook, so we came out to dinner. My sister was tired, and we thought Krug’s would do. How dare they let in men like that?” Even in the dim street he could see the dark fire in her glance. “He was coming straight for us, and I never saw him in my life.”

“He was ‘running amuck,’” he coolly remarked. “Suppose we walk on to meet a cab!”

He had no desire to be discovered on the back steps by an outraged proprietor. Half-a-dozen people must have seen who put out the lights.

Dolly, hanging heavily on Magdalen’s arms, had never opened her mouth. The girl gave her an impatient shake.

“Come,” she said, “and do thank the man, Doll! If it hadn’t been for him we should have been in the papers; say something civil.”

But Dolly was past speaking. Limp and lifeless, she slipped through Magdalen’s arm to the pavement. The girl stooped and lifted her like a child.

“She’s fainted,” she said. “She was frightened to death. Where’s that hansom?”

“Here,” as one drew up beside the curb. “Please let me take her. You can’t manage it,” taking her words for gospel.

Dolly had had her back to him in the restaurant; he had no idea it was her name the man was bawling, though he might have put two and two together if he had seen her face. But Magdalen turned an abrupt shoulder as he would have taken Dolly from her.

“I can carry her,” she said with a queer feeling that she had been carrying Dolly all the time they had been together, and would have to carry her as long as they lived. The man stepped back quietly as she lifted the other woman into the hansom. He knew it was all she could do, yet she managed to look as if it were effortless. He had never thought a girl could be so strong. But, for all her strength she was panting as she turned to him and held out a slim bare hand.

“Good-night,” she said; “it’s no use trying to thank you, for I can’t. But if it hadn’t been for you there would have been--oh, I can’t think of it! But I want you to believe something. I didn’t know that man. I don’t see why he should have been coming straight for--me!” with a hesitation so short he did not see it.

“He imagined he knew you. They often do,” almost roughly. “Don’t thank me; I saw you didn’t want a row, that was all. But if you’ll forgive me, I’d keep out of restaurants you know nothing about. Worse things might happen than a man calling across the room to you.”

The girl gave him a sudden glance. If it was full of uneasiness it was also somewhat threatening.

“It was not my name he called,” she said slowly, as if she were thinking between each word. “My name is Magdalen.”

Before he could answer she had slipped into the hansom, said to the driver something he did not catch and was gone. Her benefactor was left on the curbstone, with the vanishing cab the only object in view.

“Magdalen!” he thought, remembering the wonderful white and blackness of the girl, her strange, rusty hair. “Well, it’s no concern of mine, for I’ll never lay my eyes on her again, but I wish to Heaven she’d been called something else. For all the faces ever made for tragedy and passion that’s one of the most striking I have ever seen!”

But the girl was none of his business, of all men’s on earth. For which reason probably he turned and went back to the restaurant, in spite of his conviction that all the breakages during the evening would be put down to the person who had dared to take the law in his own hands and turn off Harry Krug’s electric light. Of money he had little enough, or he would never have entered the half-caste place, but it had suddenly come over him that the black-browed girl who could lift another woman like a feather and make a man who never acted on impulse play the fool to get her out of a tight place could also forget her unpaid-for-dinner. Really forget, or he would never have stirred a peg for her in spite of Krug’s long arm.

And so it happened that a tall man, with a cool and guiltless countenance, appeared to the head-waiter in the now calm dining-room and paid “Magdalen’s” bill; also to his own surprise was caught and thanked by the proprietor for his evil action.

“In the dark he was removed,” said Krug gaily. “Next minute lights and--as you see! All compose themselves. You save me, sir, much noise, also police. Have at least a Benedictine?”

His benefactor was almost too surprised to decline, but he did and got out; to stand on the pavement outside with a grim hand in his pocket.

He had one penny.

Yesterday his prospects had been gorgeous, even from his point of view; to-night----

“By George, I’d forgotten!” he said with a blank face enough. “Well, my dinner’s paid for, and I’ve often despised breakfast. I suppose the governor”--but his eyes hardened.

After to-day he had no desire to apply to his father for breakfast or anything else. With a whistle that was not gay this new pauper pursued his way past his club. That his subscription was unpaid had been quite unimportant yesterday; to-night he had no desire to go into a place where next week he would be posted. Besides, for all he knew, the thing might be common gossip, and a pitying look would make him wish to kick his best friend.

It was the melodrama of the thing that annoyed him; next week all the papers would have “Curious Case in High Life. Great Sensation.” And the papers, thank God! would not begin to know how curious the case might have been if it were known. In a black humor he made his way to the uncomfortable rooms he had called home since yesterday, when he had dashed out of his father’s house for the last time. And there he sat down and reviewed the situation.

Assets--one penny and a large wardrobe. Occupation--none. Former employment--waiting for dead men’s shoes. Prospects--_nil_.

His glance fell on a book lying open on the table, as it had fallen from a hastily unpacked portmanteau. And his excellent eyesight was no pleasure to him as it marked a sentence in his brain.

“Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning! Quite chopfallen!”

Where indeed? The man shut the book quietly.

“Chopfallen I won’t be,” he said to himself. “After all, I believe I’m glad: I never liked my father. What does knowing him a little better matter? And if things turn out as I think they will, I’m done with the whole brood. To-morrow I’ll set about making my living!”

The last sentence sounded so ludicrous that he laughed alone in the chilly, untidy bedroom. He who had never been taught to do anything but spend an allowance, to talk of earning.

With a real yawn he cast his troubles behind him and went to bed. And the curious thing was that instead of dreaming of his own probable starvation he only saw in his sleep a strange face, with black eyes and rusty-iron hair, a face that cried to him for help.

In his dream he thought he turned away laughing.

“The girl’s name,” he said, “is Magdalen!”