A Gentleman's Gentleman/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
A HOUSE OF GLOOM IN CHELSEA
During the next ten days it seemed to me that I did little but run backward and forward between Gower Street and Trafalgar Square, at Chelsea, where Miss More had her flat, A queer place it was too—just a bit of a studio, one of six, all built up a yard, which might have belonged to a stable; and as bare as a barn save for the merry little woman who lived in it. A right pleasant welcome she always gave me, I must say, and many's the glass of good Scotch whiskey I have drank in her parlor.
"We must do our best for your master," she would say while she took out her purse—and that she did every time I went to her rooms; "we must do our best for him, and see that he is not left too much alone. I know what it is to want friends myself. Things will come all right presently, and he will forget that this has happened. You must make it your business to see that he does not mope in the house. Encourage him to go out, and get him away to Paris as soon as possible—you understand what I mean?"
"I understand, miss," said I; "and thank you kindly for thinking of it. I wish it was all as nice and straight as your words. But how a man who hasn't five pounds to his back is to cross the Channel, I really don't know. He isn't no Captain Webb, miss; and I don't forget that we're in the middle of March."
She laughed at this, but she was never one to laugh long when I was alone with her; and presently she became very serious.
"He did not tell me it was as bad as that," she said—and I could see that she was thinking hard—"but now I understand many things. We must find a way out of this, Hildebrand. I am sure we can do it between us. You won't forget the letter, and be sure that he comes to the theatre to-night. When one wants to cry, there is no place like a gloomy house to cry in."
"That's true, miss," I replied; "though, if you ask me, all the crying in Europe won't make a five-pound note of a tailor's bill when your credit has gone walking. I was never one to believe in the waterworks myself, nor is Sir Nicolas, I make sure. A wonderful light heart he has most times, though I must say that I never remember such a three months as this year has brought him. If it hadn't been for you, God knows what would have happened to him."
"Oh, I have done nothing," she answered—"nothing at all; any friend would have done as much. I cannot forget what I owed to him in Birmingham five years ago. He was very good to me then, and I should be ashamed not to try and help him here."
Now, this was news to me, for I knew nothing at that time of any past relations between Sir Nicolas and herself, though I could quite imagine that any man would have gone out of his way to do a turn to so kind-hearted a creature. Yet what kindness he had shown to her, or in what position they had stood to each other, I knew no more than the dead. Her whole life seemed to me to be as great a mystery as any thing I had ever heard of. She had plenty of money, and yet she lived in a hovel where I wouldn't have stabled a donkey. She had the grace and fascination of twenty women, and yet there was not a whisper of a love affair in her life. They told you at the theatre of a hundred offers of marriage which she had declined; they spoke of the "opportunities" she had given the cold shoulder to; of the extraordinary silence which she maintained whenever her own life was mentioned. No nun in a convent could have blotted out her past more successfully. People declared that they worshipped her. They could say no more; and even the boldest of them never dared to put a second embarrassing question to the woman who knew so well how to keep her own secrets and to defend them.
I thought of all these things on my way from Chelsea to Gower Street, and while I could make nothing of them, I was far from easy about our own future. A big-hearted man like Nicky Steele, who never said no to a woman in his life, was always dangerous when there was a woman hanging about him; and I knew well enough that little Lilian More worshipped the ground he trod on. It did not suit my plan at all that he should wind up by marrying a bit of a play-actress; for I felt his title would be worth money abroad, and abroad I meant that he should go. None the less was I sure that there was danger in the situation, and with that danger I determined to cope.
I saw this just when I arrived at our own place, expecting to find my master impatient for his lunch. I found him engaged with something much more important. He had a scrap of a letter in his hand when I came in; and he was walking up and down the parlor, still wearing his dressing-gown, but looking for all the world like a man who has been scared half out of his wits. Nor did he let any time pass before he told me what the matter was.
"Read this," said he, holding out the dirty, crumpled sheet of note; "read it, and tell me if you ever saw the like to it?"
I took the letter and found that it contained two lines of crabbed and winding writing, done in pencil. It was some minutes before I could make head or tail of the thing; but when at last I read it, I was just as much astonished as he was.
"If you are seen at Lilian More's again, I will blow your brains out."
This was all of it—no address, no date, no signature; note-paper which you might have bought at a farthing the sheet, and a handwriting which might have been a parson's, and might have been a schoolboy's. And as if to blind us further, the postmark was Chancery Lane, which, as all the world knows, has nothing particular to do with Chelsea.
"Well," said Sir Nicolas, while I stood gaping at the letter like a board-school boy might gape at a slice of Greek, "can ye read it?"
"Oh, I can read it all right, sir," I replied; "it ain't a difficult handwriting to read."
"Indeed, and it is not. I call it altogether a very pretty production; 'tis worthy of the murdering scoundrel who had the impudence to send it."
"Then you know who sent it, sir?"
"Should I know who sent it? The devil take me if I have the ghost of an idea, unless it's the barrister with the one arm. 'Tis a queer letter entirely."
"That's true, sir; but I don't think Mr. Connoley wrote it. If he was having a bit of fun with you, he'd set about it different to that. You don't forget his three Bulgarians and his fortune in the East? What's more, he likes to see you at Chelsea. I'm as sure of that as of my own name."
"Then who the blazes would send such a thing?"
"That I can't say off-hand. Maybe one of the young men who hang about Miss More at the theatre. It isn't to be expected that all of them would see her come here and say nothing about it. You don't know of any friends that would have the right to speak for her, sir?"
"Not the shadow of one. When I met her in Birmingham eight years ago, her father was living—a bookseller down at Oxford he was; but he died three years ago, and I never heard that she had a brother."
"Then it's one of her theatre friends," said I, "and, if he comes my way, I'll wipe him down with a hickory towel. Don't you trouble about that, sir. A young man in' love is fond of flying to pistols—when he don't fly to whiskey and soda. You toss the thing into the fire, and I'll do the rest."
He heard me out, and then he seemed persuaded.
"Bedad," said he, "I believe ye're right, and it's some jealous little boy out of the wings that is anxious to crow upon my own dung-heap. The impudence of the devil! 'Tis as good as a play that any one should think I would be marrying Miss More. They'll laugh finely at the theatre when I pass it round."
"I wouldn't do that for a bit, sir," said I; "we may as well try and find out how the land lies. There are plenty of lunatics walking about the world, and it's just as well to know what road they take"
"Would ye have me seek police protection, then? 'Tis funny I would look with a policeman at my heels for the matter of a penny letter from a maniac. Faith, I'll just put it in my pocket-book, and show it to Miss More when she comes. 'Twill be a good laugh for the pair of us."
He seemed pleased with this idea, and, sure enough, when she came up with Connoley in the afternoon, the three of them had a rare laugh over it.
"'Tis to many we are, Lilian," said my master, reading the letter out aloud, while the one-armed barrister smoked harder than ever—"to marry we are, and here is the man who will forbid the banns, d'ye see? The murdering scoundrel, to want to blow me brains out!"
"He'll never do that, Nicky," said Connoley; "that's beyond him. He may excavate the cavity, but as for blowing your brains out, why, ye can't blow out what isn't there to blow. Now, when I was in Bulgaria—you remember the three men I shot there"
"Be hanged to your three men!" cried Sir Nicolas. "Is it not yerself that has shot them twenty times in this very room?"
"And why not?" says Connoley. "If there's a more curious story than mine since I met 'The Raven' in the Strand, I'd be glad to hear of it. But ye've no literary faculty, Nicky—not a trace of it."
"There was nothing so vulgar ever run in me family," exclaimed my master. "We never came lower than pathriots since I can remember. Ye'll not claim to be a cousin of mine, Roderick. Bedad, I'll change my name if you do. 'Tis a sweet name is More, and I would carry it finely."
He looked at Miss More when he said this, and all three of them laughed together.
"You seem to think it a very good joke, Pat," said she.
"I have heard no better since I came out of Ireland!" cried he. "That they should want to blow out my brains! I knew it would amuse you finely."
With this laugh they changed the subject; but during the afternoon I saw Miss More with tears in her eyes, as I have told you, and I am sure it was a very poor joke to her, though Nicky was blind to the end of it, and never so much as suspected what I knew all along. As for the silly letter, he forgot that as soon as he had torn it up. I heard him making an appointment to go down to Chelsea that very night, and get a picture of Lilian More in her theatre clothes. He was always messing about with photographs and stinking chemicals, and if he took one picture of that bright little woman, he took fifty. I have one now stuck on the mantle-shelf of my room here—I burned a dozen before he went down to Derbyshire and nearly married Miss Oakley there; but the photograph of Miss More in her theatre clothes is in the hands of the man who, in some sort of way, has the best right to it, though God help him when he looks at it, say I.