Chapter III

One evening, a week later, Valentine came quietly into my room. I had not seen him in the interval, and was immediately struck, though it was semi-dusk, by the expression on his face. It was white and smiling, and the eyes more brightly inscrutable than ever.

A storm had just crashed across the town, and left everything dripping in a liquid fog. Looking down, one could see the house-fronts, submerged in the running pavements, become the very “baseless fabrics of a vision.” The hansom-drivers, bent over their glazed roofs, rode each with a shadowy phantom of himself reversed, like an oilskin Jack of Spades. No pedestrian but, like Hamlet, had his “fellow in the cellarage” keeping pace with him. The solid ground seemed melted, and the unsubstantial workings of the world revealed. To souls hemmed in by bricks, there are more commonplace, less depressing sights than a wet London viewed from a third story.

There was a box in my window, with some marguerites in it, the sickly pledges of a rather jocund spring. Valentine, joining me as I leaned out, handled a half-broken stem very tenderly.

“It has been beaten down, _like poor Nanny_, by the storm,” he said. “We must tie it to a stick.”

I did not answer for a minute. Then very deliberately I drew in my head and sat down. Again like my shadow, in this city of shadows, Valentine did the same. For some five minutes we must have remained opposite one another without speaking. Then sudden and grim I set my lips, and asked the question he seemed to invite.

“Are you the stick?”

He nodded, with a smile, which I could hardly see now, on his face.

“You speak figuratively, of course,” I said, “in talking of _tying_ her to you?”

“No,” he said. “I talk of the real bond.”

“Of matrimony?”

“Certainly.”

With a naughty word, I jumped to my feet, strode the round of the room, sat down flop on the table, put my hands in my pockets, tried to whistle, laughed, and burst out—“I suppose you intend this, in a manner, for a confidence? I suppose you are taking straight up the tale of a week ago? Well, _I_ haven’t lost the impression of that moment, or gone mad in the interval. Do you want me to sympathize with _your_ insanity, or to argue you out of it—which?”

He did not answer. Indeed, the offensiveness of my tone was not winning.

“I am perfectly aware,” I went on, “that the melodramatic unities demand an espousal with the interesting spirit we have called back to life. They have a way, at the same time, of ignoring Aunt Mims. You will, I am sure, forgive me if I say that it is the figure of that good lady which sticks last in _my_ memory.”

Still he did not answer.

“I will put my point,” I continued, growing a little angry—“I will put my point, as you seem to ask it, with all the delicacy I can. You drew an analogy between—between some one and that broken cabbage yonder. The sentiment is unexceptionable; only in France they consider those things weeds.”

“Do they?” he said coolly. “We don’t.”

“No; because we must justify ourselves for exalting ’em out of their proper sphere. They’ll not cease to smell rank, though, however you give ’em the middle place in your greenhouse.”

I struck my knee viciously with my open palm.

“That was in vile bad taste, Val. I beg your pardon for saying it. But, deuce take it, man! you can’t have come to me, a worldling and an older one, for sympathy in this midsummer madness?”

I was off the table again, going to and fro and apostrophizing him at odd turns.

“Let’s drop parables—and answer plainly, if it’s in you. You don’t exhale sentiment as a rule. Did or did not that touch about ‘poor Nanny’ imply a hint of some confidence put in me?”

“I’ve always considered you my closest friend.”

“Flattered, I’m sure; though I didn’t guess it. You put such conundrums—excuse me—beyond the time of a plain man to guess. Well, I say, I’m flattered, and I’ll take the full privilege. It’s natural you should feel an interest in——by the way, I regret to say I only know her as the Brompton Sleeping Girl.”

“She’s Nanny Nolan.”

“In Miss Nolan, then. A propos, I’ve never yet asked, and mustn’t know, I suppose, the secret of your ‘open sesame’?”

“No, I can’t tell you.”

“O, it doesn’t matter! Only, as a question of this confiding friendship——”

“It isn’t my secret alone.”

“Then I’ve no more to say. But I presume she’s the—the flower in question?”

“O, yes! And I’m the stick.”

He said it with a quiet laugh.

“I shouldn’t have supposed it, on my honour,” I assured him. “You can have stuck at very little in a week.”

I took a few turns, and faced him, or his motionless shadow, very solemnly.

“Now,” I demanded, “for the plain speaking. Will you answer me the truth? I brought away an impression, as I said. It might have been, after all, an impertinent one. A man’s a man for a’ that—though I confess I can’t quite apply the moral to a woman. Still, I’ll ask you frankly: How is she socially?”

“Nothing at all. Her father was a colour-sergeant, a red-headed Celt from over the border of dreams. He’s gone to join the Duke of Argyll’s cloud army at Inverary. Her aunt’s an ex-coryphée living on a mysterious pension.”

“Of course; only rather worse than I supposed.”

“Verender, I must tell you the girl is without reproach. Socially, it is true, they are in a very limited way. They eke out existence in a number of small directions, even, as you know, hop-picking.”

“I’ve nothing but respect for Miss Nolan’s virtues. I can even appreciate the appeal of her prettiness to a susceptible nature, which I don’t think mine is. Anyhow, I’m no Pharisee to pelt my poor sister of the gutter because she’s fallen in it. That’s beside the question. But it isn’t, to ask what in the name of tragedy induces you, with your wealth, your refinement, your mental and social amiability, to sink all in this investment of a—of a fancy bespoke—there, I can put it no differently.”

“Call it my amiability, Verender. She’s like the centurion’s daughter. There’s something awfully strange, awfully fascinating, after all, in getting into her confidence—in entering behind that broken seal of death.”

“You’re not an impressionable Johnny—at least, you shouldn’t be. You’ve passed the Rubicon. This child with a child—with Aunt Mim, good Lord! Have you thought of the consequences?”

“Yes; all of them.”

“Of the—pardon me. Do you know who _he_ was?”

“Yes.”

I stared aghast at him—at the deeper blot of gloom from which his voice proceeded.

“And you aren’t afraid—for her; for yourself?”

“You mean, of her relapsing?” he said clearly. “Not when she knows the truth—knows what a poor thing he is.”

“Are you sure _you_ know woman? She is apt to have a curious tenderness for the blackguard who distinguishes her with his most especial brand of villainy. Then she hasn’t learned it—the truth—yet?”

“No. Aunt Mim has been loyal.”

“Well, well she may be, so long as you offer yourself the prize to such a self-denying ordinance. She sees which side her bread’s buttered, no doubt. And how does she account for the little stranger?”

“By adoption. It’s an odd thing, Verender—Verender, it’s a very odd thing, and very pitiful, to see how _she_—little Nanny—distrusts the child—looks on it sort of askance—almost hates it, I think. I’ve a very difficult part to play.”

I groaned.

“Then why play it? What does it all matter to you? You’ve opened her eyes. Isn’t that enough, without waiting till she’s opened yours?”

“Ah!” he said, obviously not attending to me. “But that isn’t the whole of my difficulty. The truth is, she appears to shrink from me too.”

“You’ll forgive me,” I said grimly. “That’s your first comforting statement.”

“I don’t know how it is,” he continued, in a low voice, self-pondering; “she’s frightened—distressed, before a shadow she can’t define. Sometimes and somehow it seems as if she wants to love me, but can’t—as if she were trying, and vainly, to shape out of a great gloom the obstacle which separates us. And I want to help her; and yet I, too, can’t understand. Shall I ever, I wonder?”

I stared at him. “Isn’t it plain enough? But you have love’s eyes, I suppose.” Then I asked, a little softened, “Does she ever lose herself, trying to piece that broken time?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “She speaks so little. She is like a little shy ghost—half-materialized—fearful between spirit and matter—very sweet and pathetic.”

With the last word he turned abruptly and strode out of the room. I was not so much astonished at his curt conclusion, as at a certain tell-tale cough which accompanied it.

“O, hang the fellow!” I muttered. “If he’s developed tears in his voice, I give him up.”