CHAPTER VII
The next day, Mrs. Vanderstein, busy with a watering-can among the pots of roses that during the season adorned her balcony, and keeping a sharp look-out on the entrance to Fianti’s opposite, was disappointed not to catch another glimpse of Prince Felipe of Targona whom she thought every minute to see issue from beneath the portico.
“What can keep him indoors on so fine a day?” she asked herself repeatedly, for again the sun smote down on the city out of a cloudless azure.
Having spent the hour immediately after luncheon in this vain expectancy, at the imminent risk of both sunstroke and indigestion, she began to despair of her hopes ever being fulfilled, and went back into the drawing-room, where she threw herself dejectedly into a chair.
“If this weather goes on,” she said to Barbara, “we might run over to Dieppe for a few days.”
Mrs. Vanderstein was very much in the habit of making sudden excursions to the other side of the Channel; whenever she was bored at home she would dash off at a moment’s notice to Dieppe or Ostend.
Barbara enjoyed these trips, but sometimes wished Mrs. Vanderstein would not make up her mind to depart quite at the last minute, as she nearly always did. It was awkward occasionally to have only half an hour given one in which to pack.
“Will you go to-day?” she asked, with a shade of anxiety in her voice.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. Vanderstein answered wearily. “I daresay I may.”
Barbara walked over to the open window.
“There’s Madame Justine coming out of Fianti’s,” she remarked presently.
“Really?” said Mrs. Vanderstein, getting up and going to Barbara’s side. “I wonder what she can have been doing there?”
Madame Querterot was hurrying along the pavement, bag in hand. She looked up at the balcony and made a little smiling bow in response to Mrs. Vanderstein’s friendly nod. Then she rounded a corner and was out of sight.
“What a good kind face she has,” Mrs. Vanderstein said as she turned back into the house. “It would cheer up anyone, that delightful smile. It always does me good to see Madame Justine.”
“I can’t think why you like her so much,” said Barbara, as she also came back into the room. “I don’t think she looks particularly nice.”
“Ah, Barbara,” said Mrs. Vanderstein, “at your age you are no judge of character. Now I know a good woman when I see one, and I do admire that one. Look at the way she works day and night to support her idle, ungrateful daughter.”
“I don’t suppose she’s so ungrateful as her mother makes out,” said Barbara. She seemed determined to see no good in poor Madame Querterot.
In the cool of the afternoon the two ladies drove in the Park and visited one or two of the houses of their friends. It was past six when they returned home, and for once the masseuse was waiting for them. She came forward as Mrs. Vanderstein entered, and her manner showed some excitement. In the background hovered Amélie, who would have died sooner than allow Madame Querterot to remain alone in her mistress’ room, hinting darkly, if vaguely, to the other servants that mysterious and terrible results would have to be expected if such a liberty were accidentally permitted.
“Oh, madame,” cried Madame Querterot, “I have such amusing news. At all events I hope that you will laugh and not be offended if I repeat it to you.”
“What is it, Madame Justine?”
“Figure to yourself, madame, that this morning I received a summons – but, madame,” said Madame Querterot, checking herself on a sudden and casting a look of scarcely veiled malice towards the other occupants of the bedroom, “what I have to tell you is of a nature somewhat private. Is it possible that you permit that I speak with you alone?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vanderstein; “why not, if you wish. Amélie, I will ring when I want you, please. Barbara, do you mind going away till I call you? Thanks so much. I must hear this amusing story of Madame Justine’s.”
Barbara and the maid lost no time in obeying, and left the room; but while the one did so with alacrity, her pride preventing her from showing any curiosity, even for a moment, as to what Madame Querterot might have to relate, Amélie was at no pains to conceal the dislike, almost amounting to hatred, which shone in her eyes as she fixed them in an angry stare on her compatriot before she slowly moved towards the door. Some day she hoped to be revenged on this woman, this odious, talkative bourgeoise, for the way in which she had wormed herself, if not into her mistress’ confidence, at all events into such familiar impertinent terms with her; when, if Mrs. Vanderstein could but be brought to feel about her, in her bones, as Amélie felt, she would recognise her for a person to whom an honest woman, let alone a lady at all comme il faut, would scorn to address herself.
Her rage and indignation continued to augment as the minutes passed and no bell summoned her back to her duties. Though no fonder of work than her fellows, Amélie’s whole soul rose in revolt against the idea that she could be dispensed with. And when at last, after an hour’s waiting, both she and Miss Turner were recalled to the bedroom, one of them at least re-entered it with murderous feelings in her heart, which she vented by making faces at the masseuse behind the ladies’ backs and vowing to herself that the day of vengeance could not be much longer delayed.
As for Barbara, she was struck immediately she returned to her friend by a suppressed excitement, a restlessness of manner, which seemed to betray that there had been something of personal interest in Madame Querterot’s confidences. She did not like, however, to ask what the Frenchwoman had had to tell in private, and as Mrs. Vanderstein did not volunteer any information, but was very silent all the evening, fully occupied apparently with her own thoughts, Barbara was not sorry when bedtime came.
“Do you still think of running over to Dieppe?” she asked, as she said good night.
“To Dieppe!” cried her friend, “good gracious, no! I have all kinds of engagements, and you have forgotten that my box is taken for the gala performance of the opera on Monday. I shall certainly stay in London for the present!”
Clearly Mrs. Vanderstein had forgotten the half-formed intention of the afternoon.
Well, that would not prevent her changing her mind again, thought Barbara, and they might be off across the Channel in a day or two in spite of to-night’s decision.
But days elapsed and no more was said on the subject. Every evening saw Madame Querterot arrive as usual; but now there was always a private interview between her and Mrs. Vanderstein, which left that lady flushed and smiling.
Barbara could not imagine what was happening to cause all these changes. She disliked Madame Querterot and vaguely resented the secret that she felt was being kept from her. Why should Mrs. Vanderstein have secrets with this horrid little Frenchwoman and leave her out in the cold? How could she allow the woman’s familiarity? Barbara was both piqued and disgusted at the whole trend of the matter.
On Sunday they walked in the Park with a certain Mrs. Britterwerth, a friend of Mrs. Vanderstein.
After a day or two of clouds and rain, during which people shivered and said it was like winter, the weather had cleared again to the radiant brightness which distinguished that summer from those preceding and following it. The Park was gay with light dresses and brilliant coloured parasols. The flowers, too, were at their best – the rain had come at the right moment for them and the beds were a vision of beauty – but they received scanty attention, as usual, people flocking to the other side of the road, where, to tell the truth, it was very pleasant on the green lawns beneath the trees.
The three ladies strolled up and down in the shade. Mrs. Vanderstein called it taking exercise, and did it once a week for the sake of her figure. Mrs. Britterwerth was really stout and would gladly have sat down after a turn or two, but was not allowed to by her more energetic friend.
“Consider, my dear, what a lot of good it does us,” said Mrs. Vanderstein.
Here, presently, they were joined by Joseph Sidney, and soon Barbara found herself walking on ahead with him, while the two others followed them at a little distance.
She had not seen him since the night at Covent Garden, and she noticed with concern that he looked worn and worried.
“I saw that Averstone did no good,” she said, as soon as they were out of earshot.
“No,” said Sidney shortly.
“Did you back him?” she asked, and knew the answer before he spoke.
“Oh yes,” he said, “I backed him all right. He’d have won, I daresay, if I hadn’t spoilt his chance with my rotten luck.”
Barbara walked on in silence for a minute.
“I’m sorry,” she said at length. “It was my fault. I gave you the tip.”
“Nonsense,” he answered almost roughly. “Your money’s gone too.”
“Did you lose much last week?” she asked abruptly.
“So much,” he replied, “that it’s no good trying to hide it from you. It’s bound to come out in a few days. The truth is that I’ve lost every penny my uncle left me and every sixpence I had before. Worse than that! I’ve lost money I can’t pay, and I shall not only have to leave the regiment, but – ” he broke off bitterly and slashed with his stick at the grass. “Well, you know what it means,” he finished lamely.
“Oh, it can’t be as bad as that!” cried Barbara. “Tell Mrs. Vanderstein. She will help you. How I wish I had some money!”
“Do you think she would help me?” asked Sidney. “She would let me blow my brains out first. You don’t realise, perhaps, what a violent prejudice she has against betting. Look at this letter. I got it the day after I saw you at the opera.” He pulled from his pocket a large sheet of blue writing paper on which Barbara at once recognised Mrs. Vanderstein’s unmistakable handwriting.
“My dear Joseph,” it ran,
“I hope there is no truth in what I hear about your betting on race-horses. It is a practice I deplore with all my heart and I should be very sorry to see you descend to such unprincipled depths. Without entering upon a long dissertation, I must tell you that, unless you henceforward sever all connection with bookmakers and their kind, I shall think it my duty to depart from your uncle’s wishes and leave my money away from you altogether. It pains me to write like this and I trust it is unnecessary, but it is best to have things understood.
“Your affectionate aunt,“Ruth Vanderstein.”
Barbara read the letter in horror-struck silence.
“That’s the sort of help I should get from her,” said Sidney, as she gave it back to him.
“Something must be done,” she repeated dully; “can’t you borrow from some one?”
“I’ve been losing steadily for three years,” replied the young man, “and I had to go to the money-lenders long ago. I can’t get another penny from them. It’s rather funny if you think of how my uncle made his money, isn’t it? But perhaps you don’t know,” he went on hastily, seeing the blank look on Barbara’s face. “So that’s how it is,” he started afresh. “It’s all up with me, you see. I’m absolutely done for unless I can get £10,000 by next week. I’m pretty desperate, I can tell you. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get the money.”
He spoke in emphatic tones, and several of the passing crowd turned their heads to see who it was who so loudly published the unfortunate state of his financial affairs. Sidney was quick to realise the attention he was attracting, and lowered his voice to a more confidential pitch. Neither he nor his companion specially remarked one among those who glanced up at them on hearing the outspoken words, a small spare man with a clean-shaven face and brown hair fading to a premature greyness. Nor if they had done so would either of them have recognised in this correctly dressed, spick and span Londoner, whose well-fitting morning coat and patent leather boots so exactly resembled those worn by Sidney himself and nearly every smart young man to be met with in the Park that day, the well-known private detective, Mr. Gimblet, the man most dreaded by the criminal class of the entire kingdom.
Walking at a more rapid pace than they, he was in the act of overtaking the couple as they strolled along, when something in Sidney’s voice, a note of despairing recklessness more than the words themselves that he uttered, aroused his interest and wakened his ever ready curiosity. He continued to walk on without slackening his speed, and did not look back until he had advanced some fifty yards. Then he hesitated, loitered a moment, and finally sat down on one of the green chairs, which stood conveniently unoccupied, just before Sidney and Barbara strolled unconcernedly by.
Before they had passed, Gimblet had made a quick survey of the young man’s face, on which signs of worry and anxiety were very plainly to be noted.
“I wonder who it is,” he thought; and continued, when they had gone on, to gaze meditatively after the young people.
In his turn he failed to observe two ladies who came up in the opposite direction to that in which his head was turned. Mrs. Vanderstein observed his intent expression as she approached, and following the direction of his eyes murmured to her friend:
“Do you see that man staring at Barbara? He looks quite moonstruck. She attracts a great deal of attention. Such a dear girl, I don’t know what I should do without her.”
“You are so good to her,” murmured her companion. “The question is rather, what would she do without you? But she is certainly an attractive young person, especially to men. I wonder that you are not afraid to let that delightful nephew of yours see so much of her.”
To Barbara, walking mechanically by Sidney’s side, it seemed suddenly as if some strange darkness hung over the face of nature. The lightness of heart with which she had gone forth out of the house, the high spirits natural to her that constituted the only legacy of any value which she had inherited from her father, deserted her now to make place for distress on the young man’s account. Nor was it only at the thought of the trouble that had fallen on him that she recoiled horror-struck and that the sunlight took on a quality of gloom, which made the present hour such a dismal one and those of the future to appear encircled in a dusk that deepened, as it receded, till it merged into that utter obscurity over whose boundaries Joe seemed already to be slipping and vanishing. It was the effect of his disaster on her own life that chiefly terrified and shocked her. What would she do without the only man friend of anything like her own age whom she knew in London and whose tastes so much resembled her own? She would hear no more sporting gossip, be cut off from her one remaining link with the racing world. What would she do without him if he disappeared as he threatened? What would she do without the only person in the world she cared to see? The only person in the world she cared for… The knowledge came to her suddenly like a revelation and she stumbled for a moment in her walk as she realised with a flash of self-comprehension the full meaning of her dread.
In that instant she saw and realised that to lose Joe Sidney would be, for her, to lose all.
He, occupied in a recital of his troubles, noticed nothing beyond his own almost unconscious relief in speaking at length of the worries he had for so long kept to himself. It was a comfort to have so sympathetic a listener.
Still, not much comfort could be extracted even from that, with the crisis in his life so real and so near at hand, and he was soon repeating his earlier assertions that it was no use talking, and that there was no hope for him of anything but absolute ruin.
“Your aunt. She must, oh, she must help you!” Barbara heard herself saying again.
Again Sidney shook his head.
“You don’t understand her. She will act in accordance with her ideas. We Jews – ”
“You are not a Jew!” Her voice was indignant.
“My mother was a Jewess. You don’t suppose I am ashamed of it? We Jews have stronger convictions – opinions – principles – call them what you like – than Christians are in the habit of hampering themselves with. We are more apt, I should say, to live up to our theories. My aunt looks on gambling as the most deadly of sins. Where you or I perceive a green track and a few bookies, she sees, I do believe, a personage with horns and a tail, brandishing a pitchfork. I’m not at all sure she isn’t right. I am at least quite sure that if I could get out of this mess I’d never go near a race-course or have so much as a look at the odds again as long as I lived. It’s not much use saying that now, is it? But believe me, help from Aunt Ruth is out of the question. You may scratch it. This is the end of all for me. I shall just have to go. Drop out, as many better men have had to do before me.”
“Oh don’t talk like that,” cried Barbara. She had pulled herself together, and was thinking clearly and rapidly. “Listen to me. If you can’t go to Mrs. Vanderstein with the truth, can’t you go to her with” – she hesitated – “something else?”
“A lie,” said Joe bluntly. “I don’t wonder you think I’d not be above a lie if it could save me. But can you suggest one with which I could go to her and ask for £10,000? If you can, let’s hear it, for goodness’ sake. But of course you can’t. She’s not an absolute fool!” He laughed again, a short, hard laugh.
“You don’t know Mrs. Vanderstein as well as I do, though you are a relation,” said Barbara. “She has weak points, you know. At least she has one weakness. I wonder if you know what it is?”
They had come to the Corner and paused by the rails. Instinctively Barbara turned about, looking to see if Mrs. Vanderstein were within earshot.
“Why, look at her now,” she cried.
Sidney, too, turned, and followed the direction of her gaze.
His aunt and her friend had reached a point some fifty yards behind them. Mrs. Vanderstein’s face was radiant. A rosy colour dyed her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled, when for a moment she lifted them and glanced in the direction of the roadway. But for the most part they seemed to be modestly cast down and Mrs. Vanderstein appeared interested solely in the toes of her shoes; these, though of the most pleasing aspect, did not entirely justify the delight the lady seemed to feel in them. She may, perhaps, have been wondering whether or no they touched the ground, for so lightly did she tread that a mere spectator might have felt very grave doubts on the subject. She looked, indeed, to be walking upon air. Even Sidney, unobservant as he commonly was of the expressions of people to whom he was not at the moment talking, could not help noticing her unusual demeanour. Indeed she looked the incarnation of happiness.
“What’s the matter with her?” he asked, turning again to the girl beside him.
For answer she made a movement of her hand towards the road.
“Do you see that?” she inquired.
There was very little traffic in the Park on that Sunday evening. A motor or two rolled through, but they were few and far between. Joe saw nothing remarkable or that could, to his thinking, in any way account for his aunt’s strange looks. One carriage only was driving by, a barouche occupied by an elderly lady and three foreign-looking men. There was nothing about them to attract attention.
“What in the world is there to see?” he said, in bewilderment.
“In that carriage are Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother,” said Barbara, “and Mrs. Vanderstein gets as excited as that whenever she sees any kind of a Royal personage. I don’t think,” she added truthfully, “that I ever saw her show it quite so plainly, but you can see the effect they have on her. Royalty is what really interests her most in life. You wouldn’t believe how much she is thrilled by it. It is an infatuation, almost a craze.”
“I had no notion she was like that,” said Joe, with an air of some disgust. “I should never have thought she was such a frightful snob.”
“I don’t think it is snobbishness with Mrs. Vanderstein,” said Barbara. “It’s more a sort of romanticness. But I don’t suppose you understand. The point is that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to meet any kind of a little princeling. And if she once met him, there’s nothing he could ask she wouldn’t give. After all,” she went on in an argumentative tone, “she ought not to let you be ruined. I am sure Mr. Vanderstein never would have. And £10,000 is really so little to her. Why, her pearls alone are worth far more. What does a sum like that matter? It’s only four or five hundred a year. She wouldn’t miss it a bit.”
“I daresay,” said Sidney, “but I don’t see what good that does me.”
“Have you got a friend you can trust who would stretch a point to help you?”
“Not a decimal point as far as cash is concerned. In other ways, I daresay I have got one or two. They’d help me all right, poor chaps, if they’d got any money themselves.”
“It’s not money. I mean some one who would take a little trouble.”
“Oh yes, I think I can raise one of that sort. For that matter,” said Sidney, “if you don’t mind my calling you a friend, I think no one could want a better one. It’s no end good of you to be so sympathetic and let me bore you with my rotten affairs.”
The girl turned away her face.
“Of course I am a friend,” she said, “but you will want a man, if my idea is any good. Now listen, I have got a plan.”
Barbara hesitated. She was very conscious that the idea which had come to her was not one which would commend itself to Joe. A few hours before she would have scornfully rejected the suggestion that she herself could ever be brought to tolerate such an expedient, but now everything was changed and all her convictions of right and wrong were shaken and tottering, if not entirely swept aside by the fear of the imminent danger to the man she loved. Her one feeling now was that at any cost the peril must be averted, and the question of the moment was how to represent her design in such terms as would prevail on him to see in it a path that a man might conceivably follow and yet retain some remnant of self-esteem.
Very carefully, choosing her words with deliberation, she disclosed to Sidney the plan that to her seemed to offer the only chance of setting his affairs in order. As she expected, he refused at first to entertain the idea at all; undismayed, she returned to the attack and persisted, with Jesuitical reasonings and syllogisms, in showing him that in the method she proposed lay his only hope of obtaining the necessary money. Very slowly and reluctantly he allowed himself to be persuaded. No one could have listened for half an hour to Barbara’s cajolements without giving way.
At the first sign of his weakening she redoubled her efforts, and as she talked, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged by Joe’s objections and the difficulties he pointed out, he gradually succumbed to her wheedling, and once he had thrust his scruples into the background became nearly as enthusiastic as she was herself.
Before they parted the plan was worked out in every point. It remained but to take the faithful necessary friend of Joe’s into their confidence. This, Joe told her, had better be a subaltern in his regiment, by name Baines, luckily in London at the present moment.
“As long,” he said with a return to former doubts, “as old Baines is equal to the job. There’s not much he’d stick at, though.”
“Yes,” said Barbara, and was silent a minute during which the difficulties of carrying out her plan successfully seemed to swarm around her with quite a new vigour. “If anything should turn up,” she faltered, “to make this idea impossible, you will try telling Mrs. Vanderstein the truth, won’t you? It is a chance, after all.”
“Well, it can’t make things worse, I suppose,” he agreed. “I hope it won’t come to that. I don’t think it will now; but if it does, I promise, if it pleases you, that I will make a clean breast of it to her.”
“Thank you,” she murmured; and then as they turned, “there she is now, making signs that we should go back.”