Chapter XI: The Quest of the Veiled Woman

_To the benevolent and pitiful. Fifty pounds will save a wretched wife and mother from ruin and disgrace. Help implored: by letter or personal interview. Address, Suppliant_, 050271, _Daily Post._

No one instituting a philanthropic mission could have been less adequately equipped for it in one way than Gilead himself. Beginning by presuming in all others an integrity as pure as his own, he had from the first to put force upon his nature to cultivate that suspicion of motive, that moral self-guardedness, which are the first essentials of practical benevolence. He had, in short, in recognizing the eternal human duplicities, to learn to distinguish finely between cant and sincerity; and he was not always successful. Practice and experience did much for him; yet there were occasions still when guile found the opportunity to encounter him triumphantly on his emotional side.

Such was the case in the affair which we have entitled as above--a quest which he could never recall without humiliation, and the memory of which made him feel sore for years afterwards. But it is true that he was hit, in its connection, on quite another than the humanitarian side; and it was that wound, no doubt, which most rankled.

He himself saw and interviewed ‘Suppliant’ during the temporary, and unfortunate, absence of Miss Halifax, who, by his desire, had undertaken the case. He entrusted many such to her now, especially where feminine appeals were concerned. It seems slanderous to apply so shrewd a term to those soft and seductive orbs, but indeed the amanuensis had a ‘lynx eye’ for the shams and hypocrisies of her own sex. Without doubt her native perspicacity had saved her employer from the clutches of many a plausible impostor miscalled of the weaker vessel.

‘Suppliant’--she introduced herself hurriedly, diffidently by the name--entered upon Gilead in one of the unguarded moments. He was impressed by her appearance at once; it was all that it should have been under the circumstances--quiet and unaffected, though with a suggestion of strong repressed emotion in the thickly-veiled face. She seemed a young woman, she was certainly a graceful and slender, as her sober frock betrayed. It was of black, and just sufficiently faded to confess long usage. There was a heavy trimming of beads at the skirt hem, which weighed down its folds prettily about the tips of a couple of little shoes, worn but shapely. The long motor veil which embraced her hat and neck was of a heliotrope colour, not so diaphanous as to reveal, yet enough to suggest the entreaty of two large plaintive eyes.

But the attractive, the moving thing about her was her voice--so soft, so musical, that, before she had half uttered her prayer, it was granted.

Gilead, as he placed a chair for the visitor, apologized in his courteous way.

“I am so sorry. The lady, Miss Halifax, who has made your case her interest, is unhappily engaged elsewhere for the moment. If you would prefer to await her return--”

The visitor made a little distressed movement.

“I did not know,” she said, hesitating--there was that low huskiness in her voice which seems to caress--“I did not know. Since receiving your letter--I heard, I have been told--are you not Mr Balm?”

“Yes, I am Mr Balm.”

“O, I don’t know what to do!” she whispered. “It is so urgent, and they say about you--”

“Nothing unflattering, I trust,” said Gilead smiling, seeing that she paused for an expression.

“O, no, no!” answered the visitor. “But only that one appealing to you--to you above all--may expect--”

Again she stopped. “Reason, I hope,” said Gilead gently. “I try to practise it. Sympathy and help, unless given in reason, are likely to defeat their own objects, are they not?”

“Yes,” said the visitor forlornly; and she seemed to droop a little.

“Does that discourage you?” asked the young man.

She raised her head.

“Is it in reason,” she said, “to expect one, however merciful, however pitiful, to save another from the just consequences of his own misdeeds?”

“That depends,” said Gilead, “whether or not mercy to the sinner entails a wrong to the sinned against.”

She sighed, and whispered: “I do not know--I do not know. If you will only tell me?”

“You have been informed of us, it seems,” said Gilead. “You will have learnt, in that case, of the inviolately confidential nature of our mission, and of the necessity it is under of demanding truth for its first desideratum. You will answer my questions or not as you please; but you must not be offended when I tell you that it is impossible for us to move in any matter unless in the clear light of understanding. Am I to ask, then?”

“O, if you will!” she murmured.

“Very well,” said Gilead--“your name?”

“It is--Nightingale; Mrs Nightingale.”

He bowed his head gravely. “I have your advertisement in mind. I recall also your allusion to someone’s misdeeds. Was your choice of the male pronoun accidental or intentional?”

“It was intentional.”

“Am I to know to whom it referred?”

“It referred to my husband.”

He was very concerned for her. She appeared to feel acutely the shame of her admission.

“I am sorry,” he said, “sincerely sorry to have to cause you this pain. But the surgical knife, relentless as it seems, is often the shortest cut to convalescence.”

To his distress she uttered a little wincing cry, as if the very edge of his metaphor had touched her.

“O! it was that,” she said--“the knife, the necessity, that was the cause of all.”

He looked at her, pitifully, remorsefully. “I perceive,” he said, “that I have blundered somehow. Will you not say something that will put me right with myself?”

“How could you know!” she answered, pressing an agitated hand to her bosom. “Our Gracie--our one darling! It was to save her, sir--they had to operate at once; and afterwards--the nursing, the change of air--”

She broke off with a little gasp.

“I understand,” said Gilead. “She was your only child, and her dear life was at stake. You incurred expenses--am I right?”

She controlled herself with an effort, sitting erect, clasping and wreathing her hands before her.

“Overwhelming to people in our position,” she answered. “But _he_ said yes--it was to be--he would find the means, though to secure them he must sell his soul to destruction. O! I little guessed what fatal significance lay behind his words. I trusted him; I was in despair; not until three days ago had I ever dared to question--to face, the possible truth. And then he himself struck me dumb with it. To save the little life so dear to us, he had robbed his employer.”

She rose to her feet, seemed to shiver, and dropped back again. Gilead, in the deepest commiseration, had also risen.

“Command yourself,” he said. “Tell me all. You will not find me an unsympathetic confidant.”

She appeared to cast a look at him of the most pathetic gratitude.

“I will,” she said--“O, I will! We had been so happy and so contented--and then the blow--the horror! His position was one of trust; but indeed, indeed, the temptation was overwhelming. He had intended, the emergency once past, to move heaven and earth to restore what he had borrowed--only that. But Fate was always against him. And now, at last--” she rose again, in uncontrollable agitation--“to-morrow morning,” she said, “the accountants are to begin their annual examination of the books, and if before then he has failed to make good the deficit, we are disgraced and ruined for ever.”

A brief silence succeeded her agonized cry, during which Gilead battled with his emotions. It was not so much the anguish, perhaps, as the heart-moving tone of its utterance which stirred the very bowels, so to speak, of his official circumspection. He made but a feeble attempt to assert his independence. This story, on the face of it, seemed to him one of the most pitifully tragic to which he had ever listened. That a man should be so cast down and trampled on in the name of fond humanity appeared to him monstrous. There were some temptations which it was even irreligious to resist. Was not Nature one with God?

“Mrs Nightingale,” he said, “I need affect no hesitation in assuring you that you have my sincerest sympathy in your trouble, and that your case comes directly within our province. If you will kindly leave me your address--”

Something in her attitude--some suggestion of hope but half fulfilled, of resignation setting itself to endure long hours of doubt and fear, overcame him finally. He turned to his desk, sat down, produced a cheque-book, and prepared to write.

“No,” he said. “I will not condemn you to it. The sum was fifty pounds, you say. I will trust you, or never myself again.”

He wrote, rose, and handed a draft to the visitor.

“Take it,” he said--“I have made it payable at the counter--and peace go with you.”

He thought she was about to fall on her knees to him, and he prevented her.

“I am sure this confidence will be as sacred to you as it is to me,” he said. “There is no need to say more, unless it is now to give me your address.”

She murmured it, sobbing, and he took it down from her lips: “Myrtle Villa, Garden Lane, Gospel Oak.” And then, with many passionate, half coherent expressions of gratitude, she left him.

He sat pondering for some little while after she was gone, the glow of his impulsive action slowly cooling. He would not regret it; yet for some reason he felt a nervousness in confessing, as would come to be necessary, its nature to Miss Halifax. He felt quite sure that _she_, however moved, would have kept the balance of her judgment at the discriminating poise.

During the afternoon he paid a visit to some famous Auction rooms in Wellington Street. A notable sale of Japanese colour prints was advertised, and the precious lots were on show. Gilead’s love for these things was either a weakness or a fine enthusiasm, according to the point of view. He was enraptured with the art, and was a ruinous competitor where he coveted rare examples of it. Still, as yet he was not so bitten but that he could resist--occasionally--temptation at what he considered absurdly inflated prices. The final stage of the disease had not hopelessly overtaken him. This day, very possibly, was to mark the turning point.

It was certainly a demoralizing display. A St Anthony of a virtuosic cast would have had a desperate struggle not to succumb to its seductions. The walls of the big room were bedizened, tapestried with a very profusion of covetable things, all representing the better or best periods of the leading schools. Such a sale, such a chance for the collector, had not yet occurred in London. It was to extend over five days, and included examples of all the notable artists from Kiyonobu to Kuniyoshi.

Gilead spent an absorbed hour or so in the room before leaving instructions as to which delectable _nishiki-ye_ he wished to acquire, if possible. In this matter he desired to temper cupidity with reason; and he put force upon himself--or imagined that he did--in deciding the limits to which he would go. It was no parsimony, of course, which moved him to this caution. It was a reluctance merely to associate himself with that form of plutocracy which, in its greediness to possess at any figure, sets that standard of artificial values which is the despair of the poor but honest collector. An admirable principle in itself, though perhaps, from the seller’s point of view, an admirably one-sided. Nevertheless, a humorist might have observed that the young gentleman was careful, in the case of those prints which he particularly wanted for himself, to leave bids morally calculated to beat any possible competitor out of the field. It seemed the more perverse of him therefore to exhibit an obstinately inelastic spirit before perhaps the finest example of a Haronobu in the room.

It was an exquisite thing, harmonious in tone and composition, perfect in registration, as flawless a specimen of artistic and technical work as was ever produced by this incomparable artist. It represented a young girl being carried on the shoulder of a man to a temple for the meyamairi or naming ceremony, attendants following; and in condition and treatment and the soft intricacies of its colour scheme it fairly baffled criticism.

“There, sir! What do you think of that?”

It was Mr Desmund who spoke, art expert and valuer to a well-known firm of print and book sellers. He had accompanied Gilead round the room, booking his bids--an unwearying resourceful man, with a drooping light moustache, a bright complexion, and pale blue eyes, tired but interested. He wore a loose blue serge suit with a bright tie; his shoulders were bent a trifle beneath their load of specialised knowledge; he was a busy soul, but never too busy for enthusiasm in the right directions or to the right people. What Mr Desmund did not know about Japanese art was not, in the vernacular, worth the knowing.

“There, sir!” he said, confident of the exclamation of delight that was to follow.

It came, but in tempered form.

“Good,” said Gilead. “It is a fine example.”

He was more gratified with the print than he thought it politic to confess.

“Good!” said Mr Desmund. “There’s not another to better, or equal it, in Europe. Look at that background; look at that gauffrage. You should secure it, Mr Balm. You won’t get such an opportunity again.”

“When does it occur for sale?”

“On the first day, sir.”

“That’s to-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow.”

“What will it fetch--give me an idea?”

“Fifty pounds--not a penny less.”

“O! that’s absurd.”

The expert tapped his note-book.

“I’ve a commission myself, sir, for forty.”

Gilead hummed and ha’d a little.

“I think it’s preposterous; it’s against all my principles; but--well, I’ll go to forty-five.”

“You’d better leave me a margin--take my advice.”

“No.”

“A pound or two.”

“Not a copper farthing.”

“You’ll lose it.”

“Very well; but I don’t believe I shall.”

“Not a shilling over forty-five pounds, then, Mr Balm?”

“Not a shilling.”

He fancied the thing was a bluff; and in that he wronged both the expert and himself. He really coveted the print grievously; but he hardly doubted that he was safe to secure it. Nevertheless, as time went on, fears began to assail him. Supposing after all, that Desmund were right in his surmise, and that he should come to be outbidden? It would be ridiculous--an insane exaggeration of values, but--

No one who has not lusted after a particular print, book, carving, or any rare and costly work of art, nor felt in himself the processes of that mania which, beginning in a studiously qualified desire for the object, mounts swiftly through growing apprehensions of rival desires to an unqualified and reckless passion to secure it, can possibly enter into his feelings. Those grew acute with the hours; and, as the following morning wore on, neighboured on hysteria. Still he fought for sanity, held himself tight, and when the time came, obliged himself to face the dreary ordeal of lunch. In the midst, the Haronobu suddenly rose before him, stupendous, irresistible, and blocked all his field of moral vision. He must have it, he decided, at any price. He glanced at the clock, rose, snatched his hat, and, palpitating all through, rushed for the Auction room. It was packed, and he could barely gain the door. As he did so, he heard the voice of the auctioneer proclaiming Lot 40--but one step, and that the wrong way, removed from the object of his desire. The immortal print was that moment sold. Whether for rapture or despair his fate was cast.

With that recognition of the inevitable, reason, if only temporary, returned to him, and he to his office. He thought his brief dementia over, and contented himself with despatching a telegram to the expert, asking if he had been so fortunate as to acquire for him the print in question. The answer--it only arrived after an unconscionable interval--completely prostrated him.

“_Regret sold at fifty._”

The world was darkened; heaven eclipsed; for the moment life itself seemed hardly worth living. The virtuoso will understand better than I can explain.

Gilead, in a state of profound depression, sought out Mr Desmund the next morning.

“You were right,” he said, “and I was a fool.” (I think he emphasised it)

It comforted him only partially to find that every other one of his bids had been successful. He received the parcel in a gloomy silence. His collection, minus the Haronobu, seemed little better than trash and vanity.

“Who got it--do you know?” he asked drearily.

Mr Desmund shook his head. “It was bought a broker, sir. I daresay I can find out.”

“No,” said Gilead. “No. After all it would only aggravate the sore.”

The sore, however, healed, or nearly, in the process of time. Japanese prints were really only the recreation of a mind devoted to the interests of humanity.

One day, weeks later, Gilead had occasion to motor with a friend to the city. It was a dusty morning, and the two wore goggles. At the Bank of England the car drew up by the kerb while the friend entered the building. He was gone so long that Gilead had ample time to study the endless types of humanity that drifted beside him. They were all intent on business and money-making, and he wondered if there was one in all the confused throng capable of properly appreciating his feelings over his lost Haronobu.

While he gazed, speculative, philosophic and lazy, a figure, two figures, standing by the end of Bartholomew-lane caught and fixed his attention. They were so close by that he fancied they must have that moment emerged, or he would have noticed them sooner. One was of a woman, slender, graceful, dressed in faded black and closely veiled, the other of a little girl, poorly but neatly clad and of a fairy prettiness.

He stirred, oddly smitten with some memory; and in the same instant the woman thrust out a white hand, dumbly proffering to a passer-by a little basketful of matches, and he perceived, with a certain consciousness of shock, that she was begging.

Presently he lay back again and watched the two. They stood all the time he was there at the street-corner, and during that brief space he observed that they reaped quite a small harvest in silver and copper. Mostly people gave, and demanded nothing in return. Now and then one would wisely insist on goods for his money. Men, young glossy cits and sober fathers of families, were moved obviously by the charm of the little face raised to them--and also, it seemed, by something else. Gilead was not long in discovering what that something was. The veiled woman, in addition to the mystery encompassing her, had, whether pleading or returning thanks, the softest, the most musical voice it was possible to imagine.

He looked down at her feet; the black skirt, weighted with a heavy bead trimming, dropped prettily about them. Only the veil was different. Yet he could not doubt for a moment that he saw before him Mrs Nightingale, the pitiful suppliant of Gospel Oak.

Had it, then, for all his timely help, come to this, and was she driven to beg upon the streets, her little Gracie the lure to public charity? He was perplexed, vaguely dissatisfied, at a loss how to act, when he suddenly perceived a friend of his coming round the corner from Throgmorton Street. The young fellow paused a moment to slip a sixpence into the child’s hand before he came on. As he approached, Gilead accosted him, and, after greetings and a commonplace or two, remarked pleasantly:--

“That was mistaken charity, you know, Robson. You should have insisted on your matchbox in exchange.”

The other stared a moment, gathered, and laughed.

“O, that!” he said. “It’s one’s instinctive homage, I suppose, to a lovely face and a soft voice--the two best things in nature.”

“I daresay. And doesn’t she know and trade on it, too.”

“Well, if you put it that way, to quite a respectable tune, I should say. The two are familiar figures at that corner--have been for some time. They catch the drift there, you see, from a dozen golden ways. It’s a good pitch.”

“So I should think. Is anything known about them?”

“Not that I’m aware. It’s the mystery does the business, you see. They’re there as regular as clockwork from ten to four, and then they go. I’ve noticed them a dozen times, and they always move off on the stroke.”

Gilead, after parting with the young gentleman, grew so restless over the non-reappearance of his other friend, that in the end he left a message for him with the chauffeur, and, stopping a taxicab, drove back to the office. Arrived there, he instantly despatched in the same vehicle a member of his staff to Gospel Oak, with directions to the man to make exhaustive enquiries. He was already quite prepared for the result, and expressed no surprise when informed that there was no such place in Gospel Oak as Garden Lane, and consequently no Myrtle Villa, and, by inference, no Mrs Nightingale. Her ‘complaint,’ it was evident, dated from other and less righteous groves. He prepared, very stern and quietly wrathful, to act upon that assumption.

Fortunately for his purpose the weather, though it did not yet rain, was sufficiently threatening to justify a waterproof. He selected one with a very high turn-up collar, in which he muffled the lower part of his face. A cap pulled low down over his eyes completed a sort of disguise which he had no doubt would prove efficient. A quarter to four that same afternoon saw him posted in Threadneedle Street at a point whence, from amidst the hurrying throng, he could easily watch the movements of the woman and child, who were still stationary in their place at the street corner.

At the first stroke of the hour, punctual to his information, the woman took the child’s hand in hers and, moving away, became on the instant one of the unconsidered crowd. Gilead followed, instant but wary, in pursuit. She led him to the Mansion House Station, where, standing behind her, he heard her take tickets for Victoria, whither he journeyed in a neighbouring carriage. Thence, ‘shadowing’ his quarry, he ran her into an omnibus, to the roof of which he himself mounted. It took them by the Queen’s Road and Cheyne Walk to the Albert Bridge and across. He had paid his fare, for security, for the entire route, and was prepared therefore to descend at once when, at the corner of Park Road, the woman and child got out. It was raining by then, and his umbrella afforded him useful cover. The child, as if by established custom, ran away towards the adjacent slums; the woman herself walked southward down the Albert Road. At a block of handsome flats bordering on Battersea Park she turned, and, passing without stopping through the swing doors, mounted the stairs to the second floor. Following at her heels as close as he might venture, he came upon her letting herself in at a certain door with a latchkey; and, even as he reached the place, the door closed and he was alone.

He let some moments pass while he considered the situation. Wrathful suspicion still claimed him hotly, yet he was conscious that at present it amounted to no more, and that it was above all things necessary for him to behave with circumspection. After a minute of deliberation, he tapped resolutely with the brass knocker that hung upon the door. The connoisseur in him observed, as he did so, that the knocker was good and an antique.

After some little delay the door was opened, or half opened, as if the person behind it questioned the character of the visitor, and a woman looked out. She was neat, formal, severe in aspect, suggesting the housekeeper to a greater mansion. She wore an apron, but no cap. Her face was narrow, the lips compressed, her bosom flat, and the hair drawn plainly down her temples.

“Yes?” she said, in a thin harsh voice.

“I wish to see Mrs Nightingale,” said Gilead.

“Who?”

“Mrs Nightingale.”

“She doesn’t live here,” said the woman, and prepared to shut the door. Gilead, quietly but effectively, prevented her.

“Pardon me. I saw her this moment go in,” he said.

“You are mistaken, sir.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will you take your foot away, sir, or must I call for some one?”

“You may call,” said Gilead. “I don’t think it would be wise. She may not be Mrs Nightingale--nothing more likely--and yet fear exposure.”

To his surprise, the woman opened the door wide, beckoned him in and closed it upon them.

“What are you saying?” she whispered fiercely. Her eyes sparkled in their gloomy rings. “Why do you speak like that on the public stair?”

“Why do you force me to?” said Gilead.

She stared at him a moment. Then, “Come,” she said, and led the way into a pretty room beyond.

Its windows faced upon the park; the polished floor was spread with Eastern rugs; chairs, little tables, what-nots, a bookcase, a dainty bureau, a daintier corner-cupboard, all of rare old Chippendale and loaded where they might be with bijoutry, silver, and exquisite scraps of china, made up the furniture. And on the walls, all framed in slender white, hung many beautiful specimens of Japanese colour prints, _among them, in a place of honour, the very Haronobu which Gilead had coveted_. Looking round and round in amazement, his eyes suddenly fixed themselves on the prize; and there they remained riveted, while he endeavoured to take in the stupendous situation.

The truth dawned, grew plain, grew monstrous to him as he gazed. She had played that trick upon him, had invented that lying story with the sole purpose of acquiring its possession; and out of his humanity, his--yes, his damned credulity--he had come to be defrauded and desolated. He could not doubt it. He pointed at the print speechless.

“Yes,” said the woman; “these things are a fancy--a craze--of my sister’s--I don’t hold by them myself--and that is her latest. She values it above everything.”

He turned upon her, goaded to frenzy.

“Your sister!” he cried--“she is your sister? And she values it, does she? Will you, I wonder, when I tell you that she procured from me by fraud the money with which to pay for it?”

“I told you,” said the woman, cold and passionless, “that personally I didn’t hold by them. This one, I know, was beyond our means.”

“Do you know what story she invented to augment those means?”

“No, sir, I don’t; nor do I intend to ask. I take it that you were her victim in some way. She is a woman of the most resourceful imagination.”

“You look upon it in that light? Then I presume, of course, that you are her partner and abettor in the other fraud?”

“What fraud?”

“Why, this,” said Gilead, with a comprehensive, disdainful gesture--“all the fruits, I am to conclude, of begging at street corners?”

“Why is that a fraud?” said the woman. “Not merit but natural qualifications are the key to all success. It is the taking, not the good person, who gets on in the world. If the public likes to pay toll to a lovely face, a sweet voice, why should we disappoint it and starve? We have no other alternative, believe me?”

“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly--“is that hers?”

“No,” answered the woman; “she hires it. We have neither of us been married, and children as children are hateful to us. I do not think any man could be got to marry my sister Emile. The face behind her veil is ravaged--unsightly. She owes no debt of gratitude to man or God; we neither of us do; they are our enemies. Is that a fraud--the mystery of her veil? Let him answer for it who wove its meshes. She had been beautiful once. Only her voice lives and pleads in a dead land; and with it and through it she obtains these means to the amelioration of her bitter lot--these little toys and graces which her soul loves, and to surround herself with which she suffers and wearies through each livelong day. Call it a fraud if you will. In this inhuman world our souls have ceased to count with us.”

Sick at heart, Gilead turned to the door.

“Are you going to expose her,” said the woman--“to tear her veil away?”

“No,” he answered. “I want fresh air, that’s all.”