A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 1

by Max Pemberton

CHAPTER I
THE FRIENDSHIP OF LILIAN MORE

I have met a good many in my time who professed to know a lot about Sir Nicolas Steele. I am not going to contradict them here, nor do I wish to write the life of a man whom I have served, on and off, for more years than I care to remember. If ever that's to be done, it must be the business of one who got his learning at school. All that I can speak about is that which I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears during the days when I was servant to him. And if my word can do any thing to set him right before the world, in so far as he can be set right, I give that word willingly, as is his due.

No man, they say, is a hero to his own valet. Maybe they speak truth, though, for my part, I wouldn't pass that for a good saying. Scandal goes as the crow flies, while a reputation for what they call virtue is often long on the road. Sometimes she never gets there at all—a trick, I fancy, she played upon Sir Nicolas Steele. The world has called him most things, from blackmailer down to thief. There aren't many mortal sins which have not been written against his name at one time or other. I alone, perhaps, know the man as he was; know his weaknesses and his strength, his good deeds and his bad. What I shall write in these papers can add nothing to the calumnies which have been put upon him by lying tongues. It is even possible that they will serve him—which is the hope of a man who has to thank him for much!

I have said that, in attempting this task, I don't mean to write a book full of all the odds and ends which those who write novels busy themselves with. My purpose is to speak of some of those curious adventures into which fortune led us together, and in which I played as much the part of a friend as of a servant. For the matter of that, I had not been a year in Sir Nicolas's service before it was plain to me that he stood in need of just that sort of help which I could give him. Daring, and nerve, and generosity, and recklessness—all these he had; but the mind to foresee, and to scheme, and to invent—that he lacked. How far I was able to make up for this, it is not for me to say; my writing must speak for itself upon that point.

When I look back upon my life during the past five years, it seems to me but a few months ago since my master was at the very ebb of his fortunes. I can recall the day as if it had been yesterday when we found ourselves in a two-pair back off Gower Street, and God alone knew where the next sovereign was to come from. We had just returned from Ireland then—it was four years ago—staggering under lies heavy enough to sink a ship. There weren't four doors in all London open to Sir Nicolas; hardly a friend who did not cross the road when we met him. Even some of those he had most right to count upon were the first to show their backs to him. As for enemies, a sum wouldn't have numbered them. You couldn't open a society paper without finding some chatter, which was like fuel to the fire of their talk. Old Lord Heresford swore he'd horsewhip him in the club; the Dublin people posted him for a swindler; there was a dozen versions of the card trouble which had driven us out of Ireland; a hundred tongues could tell you all about Margaret King, the woman who was the first to set the scandal going. Most men would have sunk under circumstances such as these; Nicky Steele did nothing of the sort. He took a two-pair back by Gower Street, and waited for a fairer wind.

"A snap of the finger for the lot of them!" said he; it was the second night we were back. "Let them bark, and be d——d to them. Would I run away because some poor devil of a journalist is making a half a crown by me affairs? They'll shout themselves hoarse in a week, and I'll be on the road again."

"If you took my advice, sir," said I, "you'd be on the road now. You don't forget that Easter is three weeks off. There's plenty who'd be glad to see you in Paris just now."

"'Tis truth ye speak," he replied, "and if I had the money, this very night should see me moving. But what would I do in Paris with a five-pound note for my luggage? 'Tis greedy as a woman is that same city. And ten days yet to the, quarter! The devil take the luck we're having!"

"You don't hope to hear from Mr. Ames, sir?"

"'Twould be a miracle if I did, for 'tis two hundred that he owes me. Bedad, an artist who pays his debts should be put in a museum. And Jack Ames is likely to get no such distinction. But I'll be off after quarter-day, and thankful enough to shake my heels at this dirty country."

He said it all in his careless way, and he never was a man to show the white feather; but I knew that he was hit hard enough, and dreaded the days that must pass until he got his money and we were moving again. All said and done, there's no cure for a trouble of this kind like a bit of travel; and if Paris won't lift the gloom off a man's mind, he may say good-by to the doctors. I feared every hour to hear of him doing something foolish in London; and I know that he slept bad, for more than one night passed and he never got out of his arm-chair. As for the days, those he spent moping over the fire, a picture of dejection that cut your heart to see. Save one little woman—and God knows what he owed to her—there wasn't a human being in all the city who cared a button whether he was alive or dead. But Lilian More was a friend in a thousand. I believe that she saved the life of Sir Nicolas Steele.

He had met her some years before, I don't exactly know where; and it happened that they ran against each other at the corner of Oxford Street on the night after he had spoken to me about going away. She was a slim little thing, not one you would have picked out on a stage as a beauty, but a wonderful woman for kindness, and just as sweet-tempered as any creature I ever clapped eyes on. When she came into a house it was like opening the front door to a breeze of laughter. She had a bright word and a smile for every one, just the prettiest possible smile you could see; and this was the more surprising since her face was the face of a woman who had suffered much and was suffering still. I remember once going into our little parlor, where she had been taking tea with Sir Nicolas, and finding her sitting over the fire with her head resting in her hands; and when I lighted the gas quickly, and she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. My master had gone into the other room to write a letter at the moment; and, of course, I pretended to see nothing. When he came back in a few minutes' time, the whole place was rippling with her laughter. For that was the way of her,—then and always, I don't doubt,—high spirits for others, and misery for herself. How many women must play a part like that!

Nicky met her just when he was most in want of a cheering word. He had not been out of the house for three days, and when he did go out it was only as far as Oxford Street to buy one of the papers which was telling some new story about him. Directly he got back I knew that something had happened. He was a different man from what he had been twenty minutes before, and the lines in his face seemed almost to have been wiped out by his walk.

"Hildebrand," he cried, pretty well before he was in the house, "ye'll lay out my clothes, please; I'm going to the theatre."

"To the theatre, sir?" exclaimed I, just as astonished as a man could be.

"'Tis so," he went on; "and I'll be supping away after. Ye may set out the glasses, and go to bed when you please. Do you remember me speaking of little Lilian More, that I used to know in Birmingham? Well, she's playing at the Royalty, and she's asked me down. I'm to sup with her and her one-armed brother-in-law at Chelsea. Sure, 'tis as good as quinine to hear her laugh, any day."

I said nothing in answer to this, though I was very glad to think that he had met some one who would take his mind off the trouble. Though I did not know Lilian More then, I began to hope he was not going to make a fool of himself, for he put on his dress-clothes anyhow, and such was not his way when he had the mind to please a woman, he being extraordinary vain, as some of my stories will tell. I knew well enough that an hour wouldn't have served him at the glass if the lady had been any thing but a friend to him—and friend he regarded her right through to the end. What it was on her side is not for me to speak about. I believe that she loved him,—I shall believe that to my dying day,—and for love of him she paid with her life, as my story will show.

Well, he went to the theatre, and next day he got up at twelve, and was as busy as a man could be. Almost his first words were talk about Miss More, and that he kept up all the time I was shaving him.

"She has the spirits of twenty," he said; "there was never a brighter little woman born. 'Twas good luck that sent me to Oxford Street for sure! Ye'll see Mrs. Leverty about the lunch I spoke of, though I doubt she'll do much."

"You didn't mention no lunch to me, sir," said I while I helped him into his best frock-coat. "Are you looking for any company?"

"Indeed, and I am; there's Miss More coming, and her brother-in-law, Mr. Connoley—him that has one arm. A strange man he is, too, as full of tales as a bowl of good punch of whiskey. Ye must just talk sweetly to the old lady down stairs, and see what ye can do. 'Tis not much I have at the moment, but I'll not forget her when quarter-day is here."

"We've told her that pretty often already, sir," said I. "If she gets what I've promised her, Mrs. Leverty will be a rich woman on quarter-day."

"Be hanged to that!" cried he. "Ye've a sweet way with you, and will persuade her. 'Twould never do to sit down to bread and cheese and kisses. Have I any cigarettes in the house?"

"You smoked the last in bed this morning," said I; "but we've credit at the tobacconist's, and that will be all right. Perhaps I can manage a couple of bottles of champagne from Williams. I'll tell him you've good company, and that we will recommend him. It's astonishing how many wine merchants live on recommendations, sir. One chap who can't pay recommends another who don't mean to pay, and so they keep the ball rolling. It's a beautiful trade, but I've no fancy for it myself."

He laughed at this, and I went off to get his lunch ready. It was hard work to talk over the old woman who let us the lodgings, but I made a bit of love to her, and when she was smoothed down, I got the champagne from Williams. By the time I was back again Miss More and her brother-in-law were in the sitting-room, and she was already busy putting his ornaments straight and arranging a few flowers she had brought him. It was astonishing to see how her laughing little face brightened up that dingy old apartment. She was here, there, and everywhere, like a butterfly in a garden, and I don't believe she stopped talking from the minute she entered the door until the hansom took her away again.

"Pat," I heard her say—all the women called him Pat—"what a place to get into, Pat! Do you know I've a good mind to ask you where you keep the pig?"

"And wouldn't I be glad to tell you that he was under the table," said he; "'tis not me that has the money to think of pigs just now. Bedad, it's myself I'll be taking to market if times don't change. Will ye be smoking, Mr. Connoley? We've tobacco still in the ship, and that's something."

Connoley, you must know, was the queerest fish I've ever seen out of Billingsgate. He was a long, lean man, with his left hand cut off at the wrist, and his face tattooed by the roots of his beard until it looked like the chest of a sailor. Many's the queer tale he has told me in his time. To listen to him, you would think that no such fire-eating devil ever came out of Texas. Yet I discovered afterward that he was only a barrister on half-pay, so to speak, and that he had a wife and ten children in a little slum off Sloane Street. What work he did, or in whose service he did it, the Lord only knows. I never saw him, so far as my recollection goes, busy with any thing but a pipe—a great German pipe with a cherry stem, which he carried everywhere, like other men carry a stick. An odder figure than his you would never see. The first thing he did when he came to our rooms was to change his boots for a pair of carpet-slippers. Then he stuck himself in an arm-chair by the fire, and I don't think he opened his lips for an hour and a half. Food made no difference to him. He would take a fork in his left hand, and a pipe in his right. When he did speak, it was to tell you how he killed three Bulgarians in Sofia, and had a mysterious fortune awaiting him in the East. He promised to take me there when the time was right, and I couldn't answer him for laughing.

But all this is outside my story. What I wanted to write down is that Connoley smoked, and Nicky Steele laughed, and Miss More told stories all the time our little luncheon party was on. When it was done, they went off together to the West End, and I saw nothing of my master until. one o'clock in the morning. He was lively enough then, and all his depression and melancholy seemed troubles of a year rather than that of twenty-four hours ago.

"Bedad," said he, as I mixed him a whiskey and soda and gave him his smoking-coat, "'tis the best little woman in London, she is, and the merriest. I haven't stopped laughing since I left the house; yet what I laughed at, God only knows. That's the way of a witty woman. Her laugh is like the song of a bird in spring. You don't ask why the bird sings, but you tune yourself up to the chorus. I'll forget that I was ever in Ireland if I am with her long."

"Is she living in London now, sir?" I asked.

"Indeed and she is, though 'tis a poor place of a cabin that she has. I'm to lunch there to-morrow at two. Ye'll not let me forget that—two o'clock sharp, and to the play afterward, if I can manage it——"

"You're not likely to have any engagement," said I.

"Ye speak truth," he replied; "but the money it is that makes a free man. Maybe Jack Ames will pay me this week. I wish I could think so."

"Maybe we shall see a comet in the sky, sir," was my answer; and with that I took myself off to bed.