She had placed a chair at one side of the table in which she sat, making as if to pour out tea; then suddenly sprang up, turning to the man who still stood twisting his cap between his fingers.
"Do you think you're playing the noble pudding-headed hero in a Drury Lane drama? Haven't you got sense enough to get in out of the rain? Do you suppose I don't know you're starving? How long ago is it since you had a square meal?"
"Didn't I tell you not to ask me questions?"
"You didn't tell me! It will need a very different person from you to tell me things of that kind in my own house."
"Then I'll leave your house."
"No, you don't!" She interposed herself between him and the door. "I say no, you don't; and you can glare at me for all you are worth. I've been glared at by much more dangerous persons than you, and I still live on. You wouldn't lay a finger on me if I'd treated you twenty times as badly as I have done; you may think you would, but you wouldn't; you may tell yourself that you will when you're all alone, but you won't, and you couldn't; you're that kind of man. The devil may get into you, but he won't get into you enough to induce you, when it comes to the pinch, to lay violent hands upon a woman. You say you are going to leave my house, and I say you're not. I say I won't let you; there's a direct challenge. You won't touch me, but I shan't hesitate to touch you. I am that kind. You understand, you are not to leave my house without my permission; and in order that we may know exactly where we are I'm going to lock the door and put the key in my pocket."
"You shan't do that."
"Shan't I? Well, we'll see." All at once her tone changed to one of the most singular appeal. "Man, do you know that I've been starving, and not so very long ago? Why, for years of my life I as good as starved; but there have been times when I've gone without food for days together, and known what it is to feel as you are feeling now." She laid her finger-tips softly on his ragged coat-sleeve. "You're a much stronger man than I supposed, but please don't be a fool; do sit down and have some tea with me, and afterwards you can wring my neck; you'll want lots of strength to do it properly."
CHAPTER IX
The Drapery
He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side; he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea. He ate of everything there was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well supplied, and kept on talking. She was even autobiographical.
"Compared with what I have gone through, with my course of training in life's hard school, what you've endured is nothing, and you see that outwardly I'm none the worse for it. I used to think that there wasn't such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that. It will be the same with you, and more."
"I doubt it."
"Of course, all green hands do; they take life too seriously."
"Do they? When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of that or of being an able-bodied pauper. It was snowing on the day they turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the boots!"
"I know the Christian charity of the parish and of the workhouse master!"
"It's rather more than two months ago, and since then I've never had a square meal nor a comfortable night's lodging. You know what kind of weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have, men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for what I've suffered I have to thank you."
"That's not true."
"That's a lie. I'm eating your food-I can't help eating it, I've got to that-but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I will."
"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched you to the station."
He laid down his knife and fork.
"So I was right."
"About what?"
"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me to enable you to bring off some swindle-what it was I've never understood-and that then you left me in the street, as if I were carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get into your house I have never been able to make out."
"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner-I know all about him-and you'll be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than anything you've had to bear because of me."
"Is that true, that I did what you say?"
"Perfectly, honestly; do you mean to say that you can't remember?"
"Now that you speak of it I do seem to recall something; it's coming back."
"I should think that it probably was; it will all of it come back if you give it time. I know all about you. I know your name, your record, the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met you as you are now, and perhaps deeper-certainly you had no more chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know."
"What's my name?"
"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know?"
"Not-not clearly; sometimes I nearly know, it's on the tip of my tongue, I can see it written, somewhere; but the writing is not plain-I can't quite make it out."
"What do you call yourself?"
"They call me 'Balmy."'
"Who's they?"
"Oh, some of them; some of the swine with whom I herd. I didn't know what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man who's not right in his head-not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a certain point-beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't you undo it?"
"Personally, I did nothing. There was somebody else there besides me; can't you remember him?"
"I do seem to remember someone; wasn't it a man?" She nodded. "I do seem to remember a man, a black-faced man. I suppose he was your tool, and what he did to me was done by your orders."
"He certainly was not my tool. You say they tell you that you're not in your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well dressed, you had money in your pocket. I don't see how I can fairly be held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in your right mind now, you'd see I can't."
"I don't know how much of what you're telling me is true. What do you want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me as a catspaw again?"
"Let me tell you my story, and then you'll begin to understand. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? I can always talk better when I am smoking. And won't you have a cigar?"
"I had a cigar when I saw you last."
"You remember that? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good tobacco."
She placed a box of cigars in front of him. He glared at them as if he would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while she talked.
"My father was a country schoolmaster; I don't remember my mother, but my father died when I was, I suppose, about fourteen. My only relative, an uncle, found me a situation in a draper's shop, where I got no pay because I was so young, but where they worked me from the first thing in the morning till the last thing at night, and gave me in return my food and lodging-such lodging and such food. When I had been there three years they turned me out because I objected to the attentions of the master's son. I knew my uncle wouldn't have me; I'd known that all along. I should have been without a penny, absolutely, if it hadn't been for one of the assistants who lent me a sovereign. With that I came to town-I had ever an adventurous spirit. I went to a big shop, a famous shop; they took me on at once. A sale was coming on, they were in want of extra hands; with people of that sort they didn't want references; the assistants there never had a chance of being dishonest, they were too well looked after. They wanted no character when you came, and they gave you none when you left; you were liable to be discharged at a moment's notice, without any cause being given, and assistants were being discharged like that continually, and they gave you no character though you had been there ten years; they never do give characters, it's a rule of the house. I was there rather more than two years. I was in the mantles when I left. One afternoon just as I was going down for tea, they called me into the office, gave me my wages, and told me I could go; trade was slack, the season was over; they gave me no reason, but that was the only one I could guess that they had for sacking me."
She stopped to knock the ash off her cigarette, smiling to herself as she did so.
"I got another berth after-well, after experiences something like those which you have lately had; I was looking a nice sort of drab by the time I got it. It was in a shop which did a cutting trade, a low-class shop, an open-to-all-hours-of-the-night sort of shop, in a low-class neighbourhood in which people did not start buying till an hour when the shops ought to be closed. What a life I had there! You talk about what you've been doing, and you're a man."
Her thoughts seemed to be harking back, but she still smiled.
"I've seen columns of gush in the papers about the woes of shop assistants; if the British public only knew-if every woman had to serve a term as assistant in some of the shops I could tell them of, things would be altered pretty quick."
She leaned towards him over the table.
"You say you'd like to wring my neck; if you only knew the number of people there were in that shop to whom I would have given almost anything for the chance of wringing theirs-I almost did wring one woman's, who was, ironically, called a housekeeper, and who was an unspeakable thing! You talk of the swine with whom you've herded; you've never had to associate with the likes of her, and be under her thumb-and that's why I left."
Restlessness seemed all at once to seize her. She rose from her seat and stood in front of the fire.
"I did some more starving, and-that sort of thing, then I got another berth, no better than the other. They said my accounts were wrong-they couldn't prove it, and I don't believe they were, but they sent me packing that very day. You've no notion for how little, for nothing at all, a draper's assistant, who may have given months and years good service, is thrown into the ditch, no reason vouchsafed, no remedy obtainable, no character to be had."
She swept out her hands, as if she were brushing from her a flood of memories.
"Oh, I had all sorts of experiences; I was in the place you mentioned for years, although I'm not an old woman now; you see, I got there first when I was so very young; that does make a difference. Oh, I saw the drapery in all its phases; to this hour I can't enter a draper's shop without feeling a chill at the bottom of my spinal column; my skin goes all goose-fleshy; I think of what drapers' shops once meant to me. But there came a time when I had done with them-I'll take care that it's for ever; that was when I reached the very lowest circle in the pit. How many circles were there in Dante's hell? I'm convinced I reached the bottom one."
CHAPTER X
The Woman Tempted Me
"I'd been out of a berth for practically a year; not all the time-I'd been taken on for a few days here, for a week of two there, as odd hand when the rush of the sales was on; but for a year I had had no regular work. How I lived I can't tell you; you know, I had to live, and-well, you talk of the things you've endured, you have no conception how much worse that sort of thing is for a woman than for a man. At last I came down to selling flowers-yes I that was a nice profession, wasn't it?"
She put her hands up to her brow, pressing back her hair; she presented a sufficiently dainty picture then, with her well-fitting gown and her look of perfect health.
"One evening-I'd had a bad day-I was hawking in the Strand, just where I met you when I saw you with those boards upon your back. How it all came back to me! My flowers had not been in very good condition in the morning, they had not grown fresher as the day went on. I offered them to a man who came sauntering along; he stopped to look at them, he soon spotted the state that they were in. 'Why,' he said, 'these things are only fit for throwing away.' Then he looked at me. 'Bertha!' he exclaimed, 'surely it must be you?'"
She laughed. Turning, she stood looking down into the fire, tapping her toe against the curb.
"If I'd only had a peep at him in time I should have let him pass; I shouldn't have tried to make of him a customer, but I hadn't. I had just seen that he was well dressed and looked as though he had money, and, in the dim light, that was all."
She paused for so considerable a space of time that one wondered if she proposed to carry the story any farther. When she did go on it was in an altered tone of voice; she spoke very quietly, very coldly, as if she wished to make a mere statement of facts.
"In one of the shops in which I had had the honour of being an assistant he had acted as shopwalker. We had been on quite decent terms, which was not the case with most of the gentlemen of his sort that I had come across. Rather than that he should have seen me, in my rags, hawking faded flowers in the streets, I would-I would have done anything. When I tried to get away from him he wouldn't hear of it. He called a cab, put me in it, and took me home with him, to his wife; they had quite a nice little house Peckham way. I recognised her as one of the girls who had been at the opposite counter to mine. It was not strange that he had married her; what was queer was that they should be living in such a house, unless one of them had come into a fortune."
Again she paused, staring at the fire as if she were seeking words among the burning coals. Then, turning, she faced the man who was still seated at the table. He had scarcely moved since she had begun her story, as if he found in it a fascination that was not upon the surface, as if he were looking forward, with eager interest, to what he felt was coming.
"Nobody could have been kinder to me than those two people. They gave food, and drink, and clothing, and shelter, and, something more, they gave me the secret of the philosopher's stone; told me how it was that, though no one had left them a fortune, they came to be living there."
Holding her shapely hands in front of her she kept pressing the tips of the fingers together, and then withdrawing them.
"A piece of silk was missing at the shop. She was charged with stealing it. She assured me that she had not stolen it, that she did not know who had, that she knew nothing at all about it; they had not the slightest real evidence that she was the guilty party, but they sacked her all the same. And because the shop-walker sided with her, they chose to assume that he was at least in part responsible for its disappearance, and they sacked him too. So they married. That's a funny sort of love story, isn't it?"
The man spoke, for the first time since she had begun her story.
"It's as good as others I've heard."
"No doubt, love stories are the funniest things. For what would you marry?"
She was looking at him with laughing eyes.
"I shall never marry."
"Sure? Nothing's ever a certainty in that sort of thing. It was only after they were married that they thought of ways and means. They had about twenty pounds between them; they tried and tried, but neither could get a berth; so they decided to throw up the drapery-probably because it had thrown them up-and try another trade. They had given honesty a trial; they decided to try the other, and see if it couldn't be made to pay. It paid uncommonly well; the house in which they were living, the way in which it was furnished, the style in which they did things, was proof enough of that. They told me all about it, quite frankly; then they suggested that I should join them in their new profession. The occasions were not infrequent on which they wanted a partner of my sex, who had her wits about her, and upon whom they could absolutely rely. I did not need much persuasion; like them, I had had enough of honesty; and-here I am-flourishing like a green bay tree."
"Do you mean that you're a thief?"
"A professional thief, exactly; just as you're a gutter-snipe-a much less creditable, and a very much less profitable profession than mine."
She spoke in the airiest of tones, as if the thing that she admitted was a trifle of no account. When she saw that he kept silent she went on.
"I'm about to suggest that you come into the business as a partner of mine."
"What prompts you to suggest it-affection?"
"Not altogether-no." Her eyes were dancing. "What prompts a woman to do anything? She seldom knows, really and truly; I don't believe there ever was a woman who was able to give all the reasons which moved her to do anything. I've had you in my mind ever since I saw you last. I did not do you anything like the ill turn you seem to imagine; I vow and declare to you that when we parted you were, if anything, better off than when we met. But sometimes-oh, sometimes-I think that I must be the very queerest woman that ever was; but then I know better, because all women are queer, and, when she's in the mood, every woman can be the very queerest that ever was."
Quitting the fire, perching herself upon the side of the table, with one foot upon a chair, she began to light another cigarette.
"Sometimes I've felt very bad about you; I didn't like to think of what might have become of you after we had parted. Then when I began to learn certain little facts about your personal history, I was conscious of feeling a sympathy for you which you might have found amusing. I told myself that if ever chance did throw us across each other's path again, I would, if I could, if you stood in need of it, do you a real good turn. When I saw you just now, in that dreary procession of six, and realised that it was you, I knew that my opportunity had come. So now I hope you understand."
"Only very dimly. I am still not so clear-headed as I might be. I want to have things made very plain."
"I will try to make them as plain as you can possibly want them. First of all, I want a partner; do you want to know why?"
"If it wouldn't be troubling you too much."
"I'm not altogether without associates, though I do miss my two first friends."
"What became of them?"
"They brought off a big coup, got bags full of money, went off with it to America, where they started a business of their own, in which I believe they are now doing very well."
"Why didn't they take you with them? Didn't you get your share?"
"Rather, and a first-class time I had with it; one of the times of my life; and I may mention, between ourselves, that, of late years, I've had some good ones. I may tell you about some of them one fine day."
She seemed to be laughing to herself, as if the recollection tickled her. He sat stark, stiff and silent, his strange hollow eyes fixed on her face. She enjoyed her cigarette in silence for some seconds before she went on.
"And as for why they didn't take me with them, one reason is that I wouldn't have gone. Why should I? I should have been in their way, and they most certainly would have been in mine. We parted on the very best of terms; we correspond; one of these days I'm going to pay them a long visit. But, from a purely professional point of view, I've never been able to fill their place, especially his. You've very nearly finished that cigar. Won't you have another?"
"No, thank you; I'm not at the end of this; I'm enjoying it-slowly."
She watched the rings of her cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling.
"You see, in my profession, there are so very few gentlemen; and of all the professions in the world, it's the one in which gentlemen are most needed, the one in which they're sure to get the best reward for their labours. There are one or two things in my mind, big things, things involving quite possibly thousands of pounds, which I can't work alone, in which I need the co-operation of a man whose birth and breeding, whose knowledge of the manners and customs of good society are beyond question. Now, you're the very sort of person I want; Eton and the Guards; from my point of view there couldn't be a finer qualification."
"How do you come to know anything about me?"
"Your name-Sydney Beaton-was on the tab of that very well-worn coat which you had on when first I met you. I know all about Sydney Beaton; shall I tell you what I do know?"
"You needn't."
"I thought you said that you'd forgotten such a lot; that your mind, beyond a certain point, was a blank?"
She was eyeing him with a malicious twinkle in her laughing eyes; he was grimly silent, meeting her look with what seemed to be a strange defiance.
"I'd rather not remember-now."
"I see; it's like that, is it? I don't blame you. I've no wish to touch your sore places, though never so lightly; I've plenty of my own which I'd just as soon people kept their fingers off; I'm not pachydermatous quite. But there's one thing which I should like to ask, if you will let me, and it's this: Have you any expectation of getting back to where you were?"
"None."
"I don't wish to push the knife in, but-do you think there's any probability of your regaining the position you once held? I repeat the question in another form because, as you said, I want to be plain; this time I want you and me to be colleagues, not what we were before, to run no risk of a misunderstanding."
"Not only is there no probability, there is no possibility."
"Not even a thousand to one chance?"
"Nor a million to one. That side of me is dead; there can be no resurrection. There is no person of the name you mentioned any longer; some of my new friends call me 'Balmy'; I call myself James Langham."
"Then, Mr. Langham, let me put it to you as a sound business proposition, that you've everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by becoming my partner in certain delicate matters which I have in my mind's eye."
"You're proposing that I should become a thief?"
"Well, 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'"
What might have been meant for a smile distorted his attenuated visage.
"The sort of thing that I've gone through turns the whole world topsy-turvy; the ladies and gentlemen with whom I have associated think nothing of stealing; they've robbed me times without number of the worthless trifles of which I could be plundered, and-I had to bear it. I've said to myself over and over again when I've been mad with misery, that I would rob a bank if I dared."
"Yes, and if you had the chance. You would not see your way, for instance, to enter, say, the London County and Westminster Bank attired as you are, with the intention of coming out of it a wealthier man."
"You're quite right, I shouldn't."
"What I'm offering you is the opportunity to do that sort of thing with perfect impunity; I'm not doing it out of philanthropic motives; at least I'm not a humbug. I'll give you the means to replenish your wardrobe, which needs it, and to live in comfort for a reasonable time, on the understanding that you'll consider seriously certain propositions that I shall make you, and, if you see your way, that you'll give me your assistance in carrying them out, on sharing terms. Is it a deal?"
For the first time he moved, withdrawing himself from the table and standing up; he was so thin, there was something about him which was so little human, that the ill-assorted, filthy rags of which his attire consisted seemed to be hanging on a scarecrow.
"You feel that you can trust me?"
"I am sure of it."
"Knowing my record?"
"Records like yours don't count in my eye. There's nothing in your record which hints that you ever played false to a woman. I know that you won't play false to me."
"You expect me to tell you that I know you'll never play false to me?"
"Not a bit of it; I know what you've got in your head quite well. I don't ask you to trust me one inch farther than you can see. But at the beginning, at any rate, the confidence will be all on the other side. I'm willing to make an investment for which my only security is faith in you. When you know what these little schemes are of which I have spoken as being in my head, you'll see that it isn't trust I'm asking for; that what I propose is merely a matter of plain and open dealing, in which no question of trust or mistrust can arise on either side. Once more, is it a deal? Are you going back to carrying sandwich-boards in the Strand at a shilling a day in weather like this; with the certainty of there being certain intervals in which you'll be even without a sandwich-board; or are you willing to get something out of the world in return for what it's done for you; to throw black care to the dogs, and laugh with me? Which do you choose-the sty and the swine, cold, hunger and misery; or as good a time as ever a gentleman had? England was made by freebooters; I'm suggesting that you should be a freebooter up to date. As things are, a man can choose no other life which gives much promise of adventure."
There was silence; although she waited for him to speak, the silence remained unbroken. Presently he turned, and looked through the window at the snow which had begun to fall fast, and was being driven here and there by the shrieking wind; then he turned again, and looked at her and at the fire. He still said nothing; but he shivered; and she said:
"I see that you have chosen."