It was one of the great moments in Lionel's life when he handed her into the prosaic vehicle. From the chemist's shop to the cab was only a few feet, but for that paltry space the young man felt as a king must feel when he makes a royal progress abroad. There was no cheering from the crowd that had gathered, hoping for blood, or at least bandages; but the whispers ("That's him! That's him! Torfs! He's all right!" etc.) thrilled him with a sense of self-importance to which he had long been a stranger. He found it a little difficult to refrain from raising his hat and bowing his thanks to the kindly creatures. As for the lady, she walked on air and seemed unconscious of an audience.
The cab was reached all too soon. Lionel waved aside a cloud of would-be helpers, and with a sigh of misery opened the door. The lady got in; but just as he was on the point of shutting himself off from every hope, she leaned forward.
"There is room for two!" she breathed.
It was a fine thing for him that his hand was upon the door, for the invitation shook him as the wind the rushes. The crowd, the pavement, even the gross material substance of the constable, reeled before him. He heard but dimly the voice of the chauffeur asking whither he was to drive. "To Heaven!" he muttered, and then recklessly, "Or hell, if you like!" The chauffeur looked anxiously at him, fearing he had suffered mentally from his exertions. Lionel caught the suspicion in his eye and steadied himself. "I beg your pardon," he said brokenly; "I was repeating some poetry of my childhood--Paradise Lost--Milton, you know. Can't imagine what put it in my head. Drive round and round the park."
"Which park?" asked the man gruffly.
"The farthest and biggest," said Lionel, and clambered in.
They drove for several minutes without a word being spoken. Lionel was so amazed by the aptness and desirability of the adventure that he could not utter a word. He could only think, "What a perfectly topping girl! How will it end? What shall I do--say--think? She is the most charming creature I have met; she invites a kiss--might I?... Be careful, Lionel! Your fortune is at stake! The secretaryship! Mrs. Barker and her rent! A false step would ruin all! Besides, she is such a dear ..." These and a hundred other fancies flickered through his brain.
The strange lady was silent, too. It may have been that she felt she had been a little imprudent in her invitation to the cavalier, hero though he was. Leaning back against the cushion, she gazed pensively out of the window at the streets and traffic, lost in thought. Her companion stared fixedly at the stolid back of the chauffeur: that, at least, was real and a corrective.
It was the lady who spoke first, and with a sympathetic engaging accent, nicely calculated to stir the most sluggish blood.
"Well?" she said.
Lionel awoke from his trance and turned. "Ah!" he murmured, and seized her hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed it with a passionate reverence. "Ah!" he said again, and "Ah!" punctuating the exclamations with tender salutes.
"You should not do that," reproved the lady, though her voice betrayed neither astonishment nor indignation. "It is foolish." She laughed musically.
"Foolish!" echoed Lionel with a fine contempt. "Madam, it is anything but that. If this be foolishness, then youth and joy and a careless heart are folly, and woman is folly----"
"I thought that men were agreed upon that," she said.
"Cynics and pedagogues may hold the heresy," admitted Lionel, "but not the happy, the young and the wise."
"Your youth and happiness are patent," she retorted, "but how am I to be sure of your wisdom?"
He laughed.
"If you accept my youth and gaiety, I have good hopes of convincing you of that."
She withdrew her hand from his ardent clasp, as if he had been too presumptuous, or at least premature. Lionel cursed himself for a coxcomb and hastened to make his peace.
"You are not angry?" he asked anxiously. "I have not offended you----?"
"No," she said, after an infinitesimal pause. "I am ... not ... angry."
There was a query in her tone that restored his self-confidence, a quality of which he had usually good store. With a resolute movement he took her in his arms. Possibly she was too amazed to protest; certainly at first she made not the least resistence to the onset. It was not until his lips touched hers that she gave a little cry as of shame. "No, no!" she pleaded. "You must not ... my husband ..."
Lionel was a man of the world, but as chance would have it, he was a man of honor, too. He dropped the lady like a hot coal at the appalling word, and sat back rigid in his own corner of the cab. His companion, mastered by emotion, covered her face with her hands. Presently she peeped between her fingers and repeated his words, almost his accent.
"You are ... not ... angry?"
"I am never angry with a woman," he replied; but the lie was obvious. She laid a soft hand upon his arm.
"You have not told me your name yet," she murmured. "I must always cherish in my memory a brave man who is not too brave to be a gentleman."
He moved uneasily, reflecting that noblesse sometimes finds it difficult to oblige.
"I am called Lionel Mortimer."
"I am called Beatrice Blair. Lionel ..." she went on with a reflective sweetness, and he started as if stung. Her hand restrained while it aroused him. "No: you must not mind that. I call you Lionel because"--she turned aside as if struggling with her feelings--"I am a mother. My little boy is called--was called Lionel."
"I am sorry," he said sincerely. "Go on."
"You must think hardly of me." He shook his head. "Yes, you must--it is only natural. But I should like you to know the reason why I asked you to----"
By this time Lionel was in a very good humor with himself. Warned by his recent heroism and virtue, flattered by the interest shown in him by this delightful creature, he was prepared for anything.
"I never ask a woman for a reason," he said, smiling. "I have the most complete faith."
"How old are you?" she asked; and when he answered "Twenty-seven," she laughed.
They drove in silence for a space; presently she asked what time it was. He put his hand to his pocket and then withdrew it. She had observed the action--"Your pocket has been picked?"
"No," he said frankly. "As a matter of fact, I pawned my watch a week ago."
"Then you are poor!" she cried impulsively. "Oh! I beg your pardon,--I did not mean----"
Lionel was never disconcerted by his lack of means, and the chuckle was perfectly honest as he replied, "Distinctly poor. I am glad to think I can still create an illusion of wealth in an artificial light, but really I am worth very little."
"You do not mind?" she said, her eyes dancing.
"I admit," he said, "that I should prefer to be well off. But, being poor, I see no use in making myself unhappy. I should prefer to pay half a guinea for a stall rather than a shilling for the gallery. Still, I contrive pretty tolerably to enjoy the play."
"You are a philosopher," she approved.
"A poor man can't afford to be anything else."
After a pause she said, "It must be getting late. Will you please tell the man to drive to the Macready Theater?--the stage-door."
He opened the window, smiling to himself. "An actress!" he thought; "the young man's dream of an adventure! This is absurdly conventional." After directing the chauffeur, he sat back, wondering what the end would be, content to wait on fortune. The lady, too, did not speak again until they had almost reached their destination. Then she took a purse from her satchel and said with friendly good-humor, "This is my frolic, and I wish to pay for it. Please!"
Lionel was too well-bred to interpose bourgeois objections. Besides, it was a case of necessity: his sixpence-ha'penny had been burning a hole in his pocket for the last ten minutes.
"Fair lady," he said lightly, "I would if I could, but I can not. Five shillings will be more than enough."
She gave him half a sovereign, and he wished he had been a street arab to whom she could have said, "And keep the change." This, however, was clearly impossible, nor did it appear to enter the lady's head. After he had paid the man she received the balance with a careless gravity. He raised his hat.
"You are not going?" she asked in surprise.
"Unless I can be of further service."
"But that is why I have brought you here! You have not heard my reason yet, and you must--at least in justice to myself. This is only the beginning: you can be of the greatest service if you will. Come!"
Lionel followed her through the stage-door. Adventure beckoned, and he was not the man to disobey the seductive finger. True, the lady had a husband--a scurvy thought--but he had proved himself as strong as she. And she was deucedly pretty.
They passed the janitor, who touched his hat to the lady, and went along a passage. Then up a flight of stairs and down another corridor, where sundry couples were lounging and chatting between their entrances. It was evidently a costume play, and the sight of doublets, rapiers and helmets was a pleasant thing after the drabness of the threshold. Illusion again threw her veil over the crudities of life; romance sounded the horn of hope and hallooed Lionel to the pursuit.
The lady stopped suddenly before a door. This she opened and entered the room beyond. Lionel followed, closed the door, and looked about him. He was no stranger to the regions "behind," for in his younger days he had been the friend of many actors and actresses not a few. With the dressing-rooms of the men he was well acquainted,--those dingy color-washed chambers, lighted by flaring gas, divided by racks for dresses, equipped at times with but the washing-basin, stifling of atmosphere, with little room to turn about in. In his younger days, as has been observed, he had savored the delights of these unromantic barracks, and had thoroughly enjoyed the experience; now he was blase.
Of the women's dressing-rooms he was ignorant, but in truth he was far from curious. He supposed they were something of a replica of what he had seen already,--four or five creatures herded in a bare loose-box, in the intervals of painting and dressing, engaged with talk of frills or scandal. The private dressing-rooms of those great creatures, the leading men and ladies, were still a sealed book. He had never known (oh, horrid thought!) a "lead," and he surveyed the present room with interest.
There was little to reward him, for it was a very ordinary room, quietly furnished with two or three easy chairs, a dressing-table covered with "making-up" apparatus, a number of photographs scattered about in various coigns of vantage, a wall-paper of a warm terra-cotta tint, a soft carpet to correspond. A brass curtain-rod divided the room in two, but the curtain was not drawn. "Will you sit down?" said the hostess; "I must leave you for a moment. Try that chair in the corner,--it is the best. And do smoke--the cigarettes are close to you on that little table."
With a swift movement she pulled the curtain along its rod and disappeared behind it. There followed a slight clicking as if she was switching on more light; then a soft rustling and the sound of her voice humming an air from Carmen. Lionel obediently lighted a cigarette and patiently awaited events.
In less than ten minutes she drew the curtain and stood before him again. But now she was a different creature. Her Bond Street costume had disappeared, the twentieth-century had gone. The piquant head was covered only with the dark masses of hair that gleamed seductively. She was clad in a sort of peignoir, a loose flowing robe of Oriental texture, crimson of hue, with dull gold braiding and tassels. Her face was rouged and powdered, but in the brilliant electric glare it seemed neither out of keeping nor meretricious. As she stood, holding the drawn curtain with one hand, she looked as if she had stepped straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights.
"Do you like it?" she asked carelessly, sure of the effect. Poor Lionel, on most occasions ready of tongue, who took a pride in never showing surprise, could only murmur "Admirable!" With this, however, she seemed content, and sat down in a convenient chair.
"Luckily, it is a straight make-up," she said, taking a cigarette and lighting it. "As a rule I use grease-paint, but to-night I was in a hurry and made-up dry. I want to talk. I am not on for a while, and my dress can be slipped on in five minutes. I mean to tell you as briefly as I can my history. It is your due."
Lionel made a noble gesture of dissent. "I am sure," he said chivalrously, "it is all it should have been--"
She interrupted with some acerbity. "That is not my reason. I have nothing either to excuse or condone. But as I have already put you to considerable trouble, and mean (if you are willing to help, me) to put you to still more, it is but fair that you should know all."
Lionel bowed as gracefully as he could.
"I will make it as short as I can," she continued. "There is much that is strange and improbable in it, but I beg you to keep silent and forbear to question me until the end. I was born in a little village on the southeast coast. I was a twin, the other child being a sister, the replica of myself. My mother died when I was only two years old. When I was seventeen I was kidnaped by a tribe of Rumanian gipsies who wished to be revenged on my father. He had prosecuted some of them for poaching on his land. I was smuggled to the coast, and then across to the continent.
"I do not mean to waste time in lingering over details immaterial to my purpose. Were I writing a book I could fill a volume with the strange incidents of my abduction and wanderings. But as time is short I will come to the point at once. We journeyed by slow stages across the continent, and of course I was jealously guarded the whole time. My English dress was burned, my skin stained a brownish hue. Whenever observation threatened I was immured in a small black hole, made at the end of one of the caravans by a false partition. The police failed to trace me, for the gipsies had been cunning enough to stay some weeks in England after my capture to throw my relatives off the scent, keeping a strict watch upon me. So with this inadequate resume you must realize that we have passed through Germany, Austria, Rumania, Bulgaria and Rumelia. We crossed the Turkish frontier, and I still had no plan of escape. Oh, yes! I had tried--once! The threats they used on my detection were more than enough to prevent me trying a second time.
"At last we reached Constantinople, where we stayed a night in a huge caravansary. I was too well watched to be able to write a letter. The next evening I was sold to a Turkish officer of the sultan's body-guard. Blindfolded and gagged, I was put into a kind of sedan-chair under cover of darkness and carried to his palace. I was escorted to a fine suite of apartments, furnished in the eastern manner, but lit with electric light. By this time I was so inured to tribulation that I slept peacefully the whole night.
"The next morning the lord of the household arrived. He salaamed profoundly and plunged at once into the business of the day. 'Fair lady,' he began--and I was surprised at his excellent English and supreme courtesy--'believe me when I say that I regret your sufferings. But as I am not the man to beat about the bush, I make bold to inform you, with all possible respect and determination, that you are destined to become my wife.'
"I was not unprepared for this, but replied firmly that I would never marry any one against my will. I added that I was a British subject, and that as soon as my plight was known I should be rescued and vengeance exacted.
"He laughed pleasantly. 'This is not England,' he said, 'and you will never be rescued. Let me put the matter plainly. I have bought you to satisfy a whim. I have long wished for an English wife, because I happen to admire English women more than any others. I have made efforts to contract an alliance by orthodox methods, but have not succeeded. Set your mind at rest, however; I intend no violence against your lovely person. If you refuse me, you will remain a prisoner in a gilded cage, but no harm shall come to you.'
"'But why----' I began. He waved his hand.
"'Because I could wish that you might learn to love me. At present I can not expect it; for the future, who knows? I am a bachelor by choice--you need have no western fears of polygamy. I am rich, young and powerful. And I hope that you will find out that, though of another civilization, I can fulfil your idea of a gentleman. For the present your jailer and lover bids you farewell.'
"He left me in a state of stupefaction. For some days after this I saw nothing of him. I was treated with the utmost respect, as if I were mistress of the household, but I was a prisoner. I was allowed to walk in the spacious high-walled garden; but devoted slaves were close at hand to prevent my communicating with the outer world.
"After a week had elapsed, Lukos--for that was my master's name--began to pay regular visits to my chamber. He exerted himself to the utmost to interest and charm, but as yet he never mentioned love. He would talk of a thousand things--books, philosophy, the drama, even of fashion--and being most versatile and accomplished, I found him excellent company. I did not feel much resentment, for I had begun to learn the world and understand his point of view, but I was inflexibly opposed to a marriage by force. I was resolved to die a captive, if necessary, rather than yield.
"This went on for two years. You start? It is true. No breath of my imprisonment reached the embassy--much less my home. For a captive, my life was easy, and during the long months my hopes had died, though my determination was as English and stubborn as ever. Lukos was equally persistent in maintaining his original attitude--gentle, persuasive, polite, though now he often urged his suit. I admit that in other circumstances I might have yielded, but pride kept me strong.
"But I must hurry on--"
As she said these words there was a knock, and a dresser entered.
"Twenty minutes, Miss Blair," she said, without a glance at Lionel.
"More than enough," said the strange lady, but she rose as she spoke. "You will stay to hear the end, Mr. Mortimer? I am on for most of this act, but if you find it interesting, please stay and smoke. You must excuse me."
"By all means," said Lionel, rising. "Shall I--?"
He looked toward the door. "Oh, no!" she replied, and drew the curtain once more. Then she and the dresser disappeared behind it. A brief interval elapsed and she came forth dressed to play her part. She threw him a bright smile as he sprang to the door. "You must theorize till I come again," she said cheerfully, and he smiled back. The dresser followed her mistress, and he was left alone.
