The Rain-Girl/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII
DR. TALLIS PRESCRIBES
FOR hours Beresford had been sitting looking straight in front of him. It was past noon; yet the breakfast-things still lay on the table, just as the porter had brought them up three hours before. Twice the man had entered to clear away, only to be sent away by a curt shake of the head. The coffee was cold in the pot, the eggs and bacon lay a sickly-looking mess bound together by a grey film of chilled fat.
On the corner of the table lay a pile of money, notes, silver and copper. Was it only that morning that he had counted it with eager fingers and tingling pulses? Eleven pounds four shillings and three-pence.
The figures seemed to have burned themselves into his brain. For hours he had sat watching them. They were everywhere. They stared back at him from the opposite wall, they blinked at him from the ceiling, the clock ticked them into his ears, and they had eaten themselves indelibly into his brain.
Did sailors feel like that when adrift in an open boat with the water-cask empty? He wondered. Presently his gaze left the opposite wall and lighted on the telephone instrument. For a second the flicker of a smile relieved the shadows. That was the link with Lola. But was there a link with Lola now?
Eleven pounds four shillings and threepence!
It meant that the end was very near, was here, in fact. The shock of the discovery had numbed him. What a fool he had been. It was strange, though, how fate seemed determined to eat into his rapidly vanishing resources. There had been the expense of staying at the Ritz-Carlton, whilst Lola was at the Belle Vue. Such rotten luck, then; but why trouble to build up the whole fabric of misfortune? From somewhere at the back of his mind he recalled a favourite phrase of the little cockney in his section, "Any'ow, that'll settle your little 'ash, ole son." That was exactly what was about to happen. His little hash was on the eve of being settled.
Slowly out of the chaos of his disordered thoughts was being constructed the Great Determination. It was as if an anæsthetic were being administered. That little tube of morphia tablets he had brought back from France seemed to be for ever dancing about in his thoughts. At first he had struggled against it; but gradually he had been overcome, until now he was almost reconciled to the inevitable. The will to live was dropping from him like a garment. Everybody had a right to decide for himself. Had not a coroner said as much publicly, and he was the high-priest of sudden death? Temporary insanity, that was what they called it, temporary
Again his eye caught sight of the telephone. With a quick movement he caught up the receiver and, without pausing to think, gave the number of the Belle Vue. He would tell Lola everything. She would understand. He would work, yes, work and carry-on.
A minute later he replaced the receiver upon its rest with a jar. She was still away. She had gone away—to avoid him.
During the previous fortnight he had telephoned time after time—always to receive the same reply, that Miss Craven had gone away for a few days, or that Miss Craven had not returned. He had written twice; but again no reply. It had really been a nine days' wonder, he had told himself a dozen times, and this was the end.
What he had done during that fortnight he did not know. He was conscious of having gone out from time to time for meals; but for the rest, he was afraid of leaving the place, lest in his absence a message should come through from Lola. The porter had come to regard him curiously, so persistent had been his enquiries as to whether or no the man had received and forgotten some telephone-message he felt sure she must have sent.
He had given instructions that letters were to be taken up to him immediately. He seemed to live in a constant state of expectation. The telephone-bell caused him to start violently, the sound of the porter's key in his lock would bring him to his feet with a suddenness that sometimes disconcerted the man. For a fortnight he had been living on the unsubstantial diet of hope.
There was no doubt about it; Lola was determined to drop him. It was Mrs. Crisp, he told himself, she was responsible. It had been a fortnight of torture, a fortnight that had brought with it the conviction that for him, Richard Beresford, nothing mattered but the Rain-Girl.
A ring at the telephone caused him to start violently. He snatched up the receiver.
"Dr. Tallis! Yes, show him up."
A minute later he was shaking Tallis cordially by the hand.
"What luck," he cried. "I'm awfully glad to see you."
He was conscious that Tallis was regarding him critically.
"You're not exactly a credit to me, young fellow," he said as he dropped into a chair with a sigh of content.
"I slept badly last night," Beresford explained in self-defense. "I've—I've been to Folkestone" he broke off suddenly.
"Folkestone!"
"Yes, you recommended the place, didn't you?"
"You found her then?" he said, looking up with interest.
"Found who?" enquired Beresford, with simulated indifference.
"Tell me about it," he said quietly, and before he knew what was happening, Beresford found himself telling the story of his encounter with Lola in St. James's Street and what had ensued.
"And now," he concluded bitterly, "she's dropped me, dropped me into the bottomless pit of" He look across at Tallis, the picture of hopeless despair.
"I'm beginning to think you were right," he said. "I ought not to have tried to drag you back."
Beresford shrugged his shoulders.
"And now, what's the next move?"
"The deluge," replied Beresford with a short laugh that caused Tallis to look at him narrowly. "I've just been taking stock of my finances. There's exactly eleven pounds four shillings and threepence. I put it off day after day, and it's come as a bit of a shock. Still," he added reminiscently, "there was Folkestone."
"I'm not sure, young fellow, that I ought not to hand you over to the nearest policeman as a dangerous lunatic," said Tallis. "What the devil's going to be the outcome of this business I'm hanged if I know." His tone was not so flippant as his words.
"The outcome, my dear Æsculapius, is that for once in my life I have had a rattling good time."
"And now?"
"There's always that little tube of morphia tablets that I brought home from France," he said with a laugh.
"So that's the present state of the temperamental barometer," said Tallis as he proceeded to stuff tobacco into his pipe-bowl from the jar on the table.
For some time the two smoked in silence. To Beresford Tallis was always a soothing influence. He seemed to possess the faculty of forgetting the other fellow's existence until spoken to.
"I'm the very deuce of a mystery to myself," Beresford said presently with a wry smile. "Somewhere I suppose there's a kink in me."
"You're probably passing through the sturm und drang of romance," said Tallis. "It's the Renaissance strain in you coming out."
"I wonder," murmured Beresford meditatively; then after a pause he added, "You see, Tallis, no girl ever really meant anything to me before. I seemed always to regard them in a detached sort of way, just as Drewitt does. This is I wonder if you understand?"
Tallis nodded as he gazed into the bowl of his pipe. Suddenly it struck Beresford that what made Tallis so easy to talk to was that he always appeared to be absorbed in something else, generally his pipe. It was much easier talking about such things to a man who did not persist in looking at you.
"I seem always to have been waiting for something to happen." He paused and looked across at Tallis a little apologetically.
"The latent spirit of romance."
Beresford looked at him sharply.
"Go on," said Tallis, catching his eye, "I'm serious."
"I suppose that was it. I could never have got—have got to care about any of those I met at afternoon-teas, or dinner-parties, and as for the"
"Fluff," suggested Tallis, as Beresford hesitated.
"Well, as for them," he shrugged his shoulders. "But look here, I'm talking the most unwholesome rot."
"My dear man, you are merely succeeding in being a self-conscious ass," said Tallis casually, as he dug into the bowl of his pipe with his penknife. "As a matter of fact, for the first time since we've been acquainted, you're beginning to talk sense." He paused, folded up his knife and replaced it in his pocket.
"We medicos find romance in unaccustomed places," he continued a moment later. "It's a seething spirit of unrest. Every one seems ashamed of it. I've discovered it in the most extraordinary environments. With you it's a case of the Dream-Girl."
"The Dream-Girl?" repeated Beresford.
"Every mother's son of us knows her; but she seldom materialises. When she does it's generally as a sort of Lorelei."
"You're a queer sort of fish for a doctor," said Beresford with a smile.
"We never admit of the feminine equivalent to the Fairy Prince," continued Tallis, "yet at first we all have a Dream-Girl in our minds, later she's blotted out; but that's not our fault, it's theirs—some of them," he added as if as an afterthought.
For some time they continued to smoke contentedly.
"It's strange you should have mentioned that," said Beresford, at length. "I've often wondered if"
"What's in you is in the rest of us, only most of us are not so honest about it. Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who said that we men are all in the gutter; but some of us are looking at the stars. You're looking at the stars, Beresford, that's all."
"I suppose you're right," said Beresford a little doubtfully.
"With you it's the spirit of romance," continued Tallis quietly. "If you had lived a few centuries earlier, you would have gone about the country on a horse with a ten-foot pole asking for trouble. You would have been a disciple of Peter the Hermit, and every other uncomfortable person who preached the high-falutin'. The only trouble is that you won't face facts."
"What facts?" demanded Beresford, almost aggressively.
"Well, for instance, that you're head-over-heels in love with this girl and you're afraid to tell her so. You expect her to make the running."
"Don't be an ass."
Tallis relapsed into silence again. Several times Beresford looked across at him; but he appeared to have forgotten everything but his pipe, at which he pulled contentedly.
"Do you seriously expect?" began Beresford, when it had become obvious that Tallis was waiting for him to continue the conversation.
"No, I don't," was the calm retort.
"Then why" began Beresford.
"Because I've known you long enough to be convinced that you're incapable of doing what to any one else is the most obvious thing in the world."
"You don't know her."
"I'm beginning to suspect that you don't either," was the dry retort.
"She was just good pals with me at Folkestone, because I was a sort of watch-dog," said Beresford reminiscently. "Since then she has dropped me—gone away," he added.
"She's probably become self-conscious owing to auntie having given her a wigging. You can always trust a woman to know how to touch another on the raw. A high-spirited girl suffers a good deal when told that she's made herself cheap. In all probability that's what her aunt managed to convey."
Beresford shook his head gloomily. Tallis merely shrugged his shoulders.
"You didn't see the way she looked through all those fellows at the Imperial," he said, as if determined to convince himself of the hopelessness of his position. "It used to wither them, all except that Jew chap with the Scotch name. He was too moist for anything to wither."
"Well, are you going to ask her to marry you?"
"Good Lord, no!" cried Beresford, sitting up as if the idea had startled him.
"Well, there's a lot to be said for celibacy."
"Don't be an ass," growled Beresford. "You know I don't mean that."
"Sometimes it's a little difficult to discover exactly what you do mean," said Tallis with a smile.
"She thinks me different from other men"
"She always does," drily.
Beresford walked over to the fireplace and, with unnecessary vigour, proceeded to knock the ashes out of his pipe. Returning to his chair he reached for the tobacco-jar.
"I don't want her to think" he began as he proceeded mechanically to fill his pipe, then he stopped.
"That you're after the money," suggested Tallis. "Couldn't you somehow manage to convey to her that she, and not her millions, is 'the goods'?"
"No, I can't, and what's more, I won't," snapped Beresford irritably.
"That ten-foot pole again, young fellow," smiled Tallis. "You're going to sacrifice your only chance of happiness for an abstract code of honour. Well, it's your funeral; but I'm sorry. What's it to be?"
"There are always the tablets," said Beresford grimly.
"Yes, there are always the tablets; but somehow I don't think that would be the way to her heart."
"What do you mean?" demanded Beresford quickly.
"I think she's of the strong-man school, the see-it-through-at-any-price, nail-your-colours-to-the-mast order, the little-midshipmite-business, you know. She's the sort of girl that would never hear the name of that splendid chap Gates without a half-thought prayer. There are some like that," he added casually, as he pocketed his pipe and, selecting a cigarette from the box, proceeded to light it.
"You're not going?" asked Beresford, as Tallis rose and stretched himself.
"Yes, I'm afraid I must toddle, my son."
"Don't go for a minute. You were saying?"
"Merely that you are making a mistake," was the smiling reply. "But as yours is a nature peculiarly adapted to the making of mistakes, there's nothing unusual in that. There are three courses open to you and, of course, you choose the wrong one."
"Three?" interrogated Beresford.
"Marry the girl, clear out, and the tablets. You'll end by clearing out, although you think now it'll be the tablets."
Beresford looked at him for a moment, then laughed.
"Have another whisky-and-soda," he said.
"No, thanks," said Tallis, "I really must be off."
"You don't understand," said Beresford, as they walked towards the door.
"I understand this much, that like all idealists you are obsessed by the thought of material obstacles. Well, good-bye, and the best of luck. If I can do anything By the way, there's a pal of mine, a ship's doctor. He's sailing quite soon. I'll ring him up. He'll get you a passage as purser or something. Here, I'll write down his name."
Tallis drew a pencil from his pocket and wrote on the back of one of his own cards:—
"Dr. Henry Seaman,
S.S. Allanmore,
East India Docks."
"Thanks," said Beresford, taking the card; "but I don't think I'm cut out for a purser."
"No, don't ring for the lift, I'll walk down. 'Bye," and with a wave of his hand Tallis was gone.
Beresford closed the door and returned to his pipe and chair, and the never-ending riddle, THE FUTURE.