Chapter XII: A Cavalier Makes Advances

I grieve to hint a doubt of my chosen patron, but enlarged experience of St. Nicholas has led me to believe that he lacks consistency. His action is jerky. Though he will often sweep down, as of old, in a pale haze of glory, to rescue some votary from instant shipwreck, he is hardly a saint in whom a girl can repose implicit confidence. At tight places of social trial he is apt to fail one.

I had but one consolation. The ticket had fallen on the floor face downward.

I stooped to pick it up. My cheeks, I feel sure, must have glowed with crimson. Shame tingled in my ears. But Romeo was beforehand with me. He raised the scrap of paper and handed it to me, still face downward, with a faint inclination. I lifted my lowered eyelids. My swimming eyes parleyed with his for a second. I cannot say whether he was aware what manner of thing he was passing me; but I fancy he _did_ know. Yet if he knew I felt sure he interpreted the episode aright, for his glance was one of mute respect and sympathy.

I crushed the unspeakable pasteboard into my pocket, never uttering a word, and rushed, hot and red, from the room, without daring to speak to him.

On the stairs I debated whether I could ever come back. Prudence and Shame fought it out between them. Prudence won. I determined to go on as if nought untoward had happened.

I might have failed, even so, in my resolution, had it not chanced that my road to the Depository of my machine lay past the eating-house where I was wont to retire for bodily refreshment from Flor and Fingelman’s. As I reached the door a hand touched my arm. I looked round, startled, and saw the Grand Vizier, outward bound from luncheon, with his hairy hands, his goggle eyes, his shiny black coat grown green on the seams, and his false diamond pin shaped like a shoe of the noble animal.

“Good-morning, miss,” he said in a pert tone.

I echoed his salute, and made as though I would pass on hurriedly. But I noted in his accent, even from the three words he had spoken, a change of mien; he was almost what for him might be deemed respectful.

“Look here,” he went on, striding after me, and keeping abreast of me against my will. “That was a devilish clever letter of yours—to the governor, you know—a _devilish_ clever letter!”

“I am proud to have earned the approbation of so competent a critic,” I answered in my chilliest voice. “Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley——”

He glanced at me with suspicion. I think his first and most flattered idea was that I mistook him for a distinguished baronet; his second, neutral in tint, that I was mad; his third, and most reluctant, that I was poking sly fun at him.

“Look here,” he began again—it was his formula for introducing a fresh paragraph in his converse—“I’ve got an invitation for you. I’ve been looking about for you everywhere. Will you come with me on Thursday night, dress circle, at the Olympic?”

He rolled it out impressively, as one who felt sure that the solemnity of the dress circle would subdue my stubborn neck.

“No, thanks,” I answered; “I never go to theatres with casual acquaintances.”

Then I walked on still faster, for I foresaw that I must often meet him in future, since our offices lay close together; and I judged it best to let him see at once I did not crave the honour of his society.

“Oh, but this is on the square,” he went on. “You don’t understand. You think I don’t mean right by you because I am a gentleman in a position of Trust and Responsibility, and you are”—he was about to say “a type-writer girl,” but he checked himself in time and substituted for it the phrase “a lady stenographer.” “While you were at the office,” he went on, “I couldn’t treat you on equal terms, of course, because of my official position. But when I read that letter I saw at one glance you had brains; and I like a girl with brains, and I mean to walk out with one.”

“Indeed?” I answered. “Then I advise you not to waste your valuable time on a woman who does not pant for that privilege.”

He let his mouth drop open. “But it’s a ticket for two,” he expostulated, “given me by a friend of mine who takes a part in the piece. You’d better think twice. It isn’t every day one gets a chance of a seat in the dress circle. And if I go at all I like to take a young lady.”

This marked advance. I had gone up in the world. At Southampton Row I had been “a young person.”

He continued to talk, and I continued to turn my coldest shoulder.

At last we reached the door of the Depository. The goggle eyes ogled me. I saw that some violent act was needful if I were to escape persecution at the man’s hands in future. I paused by the step. “I am going in here,” I said, bravely.

The Vizier did not observe the peculiar character of the shop as a shrine of St. Nicholas. “I will wait for you,” he answered, waving one hairy hand with cheerful promptitude.

I braced myself up for a deadly thrust. “I have left my machine here,” I went on in a cold clear voice, “and I am going in . . . to redeem it. I shall then carry it home. A Gentleman in a position of Trust and Responsibility will not like to be seen by my side as I carry it.”

He glanced up at the mystic sign—one glance, no more. I saw his face grow pale. To so respectable a man such conduct was inexplicable. Refuse a ticket for the dress circle, and yet——

I darted in, with the same fierce flush of shame and repugnance as before. But this time the need for getting rid of him had given me false courage.

When I emerged with the machine, a limp flaccid creature, half-dead with disgust, the Grand Vizier had melted away, disappeared among the phantoms. So again Apollo or St. Nicholas had saved me.

Our courses crossed afterwards in the street many times. But his tolerance of type-writer girls had its proper limits. He tacked across to the other side as I hove in sight lest he should be exposed to the risk of having to acknowledge a salute from so compromising a person.

I will say for St. Nicholas that though he has curious methods of bringing about the deliverance of those who trust him, he is a gentleman at heart, and he usually succeeds in the end in giving effect to his benevolent intentions.