Chapter VIII

Vingie, stroking on a glove with ecstatic fingers, gazed round the best bedroom of Leonie Falsecastle's flat with much the same expression as stout Cortez displayed when he stared at the Pacific, silent upon a peak in Darien.

"You don't look happy, Mary!" she observed. "Hasn't our independence any charm for you? Have you realized we can do exactly as we like regardless of consequences?"

The pretty maid ran her hand mechanically into the foot of a silk stocking and sighed.

"I always had a great deal of liberty at Wynwood, miss," she answered sorrowfully. "More charming people than the servants' hall there I never wish to meet, particularly the second chauffeur, and here there's nobody at all except that there image of a cook."

"Friends will rally round you," promised Vingie. "This isn't the only flat in the block and the hall porter's frightfully good-looking. Bear up! I shall be back early after lunch, unless anything exciting happens."

She sank to the ground floor in a gilded cage, bringing back into the lift-boy's soul all he had ever beheld of Theda Bara, Mae Murray, Bebe Daniels, and other Helens of that modern Troy situated in California. The hall porter swept a taxi to the curb rather than summoned it. Vingie stood a moment lost in thought.

"The Savoy!" she commanded at last.

"I'm alone!" she crooned dreamily as they breasted the surge of the traffic. "Nobody knows where I am, what I'm going to eat, when I shall go home. I can do exactly as I please. How wonderful the world looks sometimes!"

It is the business of all good _maîtres d'hôtel_ to know every one; they stand before kings, princes, and governors and deal out justice tempered with mercy. The face of the Honorable Virginia Lauriston is not strange to fame; she smiled kindly at the ambassadorial presence who greeted her and shook her head. "I'm waiting for somebody. Probably he's got a table," she explained, and turned aside to a superlative chair.

For Vingie who had never done anything of the kind before, it seemed the very breath of adventure to sit in the vestibule of the great restaurant, the guest of no one, unexpected of any, and watch the come and go of all the sundry. She presented an aloof alluring figure, with the straight lines of the modern girl, very self-sufficing, and played at being alone in the world, penniless, hungry, seeking some man whom she could trust sufficiently to ask in the language of eyes for her lunch. It seemed so real that a little thrill of faintness passed through her; there emanated a distinct wave of brutality from the average well-fed male.

"He'll have to be very young; they're kind and sympathetic when they're young--before too many of us have sponged on them," reflected Vingie.

As if in answer to her prayers, at that very moment there passed toward her through the door a quite young man, pale and dark, upon whose slight shoulders care, the Black Horseman, rode without remorse.

She watched the young man pause, remove his hat and pass a handkerchief across his damp brow. His sensitive nostrils dilated, and his troubled blue eyes sought in vain a friendly face amid this throng of strangers. His clothes, his manner and the cut of his hair suggested the unspiritual wealth of the suburbs rather than the insolvent charm of the West End. His glance met Vingie's and he made a perceptible movement toward her even as a child turns to its mother; then with a flush of embarrassment he moved irresolutely in the opposite direction.

With all the hauteur of an abandoned woman Vingie rose and stalked frigidly across his path. As she did so a bunch of artificial violets at her breast detached itself and fell almost at his feet. Remotely elegant, Vingie pursued her path. A hand plucked at her sleeve; she turned haughtily to perceive the blue-eyed stranger.

"Pardon me--your flowers," explained the young man, licking his dry lips.

He stood offering them, intolerably plaintive, and if he had had a tail he would have wagged it. His entire being announced dumbly she was not that sort of girl, and even if she had been he was not that kind of man.

Vingie, with a pretty smile, took the violets from his hand and said: "Thank you so much. Have you a pin?"

The young man passed moist, imploring hands over his body in search of pins he knew to be nonexistent. Finally he announced in despairing tones that he had no pin but would obtain one if it cost him his life, or words to that effect. She let him go on a wild piece of knight-errantry, watched him appeal to a uniformed man who sent little boys dashing hither and thither. Finally he returned with assorted spoil and offered it. Vingie secured the violets in leisurely fashion while the young man watched as in a dream.

"I've given you a great deal of trouble," she said in a gentle voice. "I'm ever so grateful, particularly as you look dreadfully worried. You see, I rather value these violets, as it happens."

"They come out at three pounds the dozen bunches wholesale, but I dare say you paid ten shillings for them," he replied absently, and then blushed scarlet.

"What on earth----?" began Vingie.

Omnipotence descended on them, wrapped in a smile.

"This way, Madame," exclaimed Omnipotence, and swooped forward into the restaurant. He revealed his carefully wrought miracle, a table decently secluded, not too near the band and not too far away. Vingie seated herself; the young man collapsed into the chair on her right. A waiter commenced the ritual of luncheon.

"Of course, it's all a mistake and you aren't to pay for my lunch," said Vingie, with a happy sigh, "though now we are here you may as well tell me what's on your mind. But, my dear man, for heaven's sake pretend to look after me, and order some food and put a brave face on things or they'll think I'm a nurse in plain clothes and you're my patient."

The young man, turning to the waiter, rapped out a sequence of commands in the most hard-hearted fashion. Then he became his mild distracted self.

"My name is Anthony Brooks," he began, "and, as you suggest, I am in sad trouble. But you would hardly understand, for I don't suppose business ever comes into your life. I hope it never will, Miss 'Er."

"I'm Virginia Lauriston. Go on!" commanded Vingie.

He smiled as one humoring a woman, or a lunatic.

"I am at the parting of the ways," he declared. "Either I continue and risk everything, or I get out and remain with a pittance. If only I knew a little about women I could make up my mind more easily."

Vingie looked at him pitifully.

"You don't mean you're going to get married?" she asked.

Anthony Brooks blushed, put down his soup spoon and looked her squarely in the face.

"Before the war my father was comparatively a wealthy man," he explained. "We lived in some luxury at Surbiton, and I never imagined I should need to work. However, he has just died and I find myself with a few thousand pounds and a dress-making business in Bond Street, which father owned. He was a widower and at one time I believe there may have been something between him and the manageress of those days. However, she left when the business began to lose money. It's been losing money ever since. What I must settle is whether to try to make it pay, or sell it for what it will fetch. My capital isn't large enough to divide. If I stick to the business all the money will have to go into it."

Vingie shook her head gravely.

"I want grilled sole, please," she said. "There's not the faintest use you trying to run this dress-making show alone. My dear man, you were born a victim for women. Any woman could do what she pleased with you. Look where you've landed this morning for instance--at lunch with me, a complete stranger, just because I meant you to."

"Women," retorted Anthony Brooks with the bigoted assurance of the entirely ignorant, "are just like anybody else. Treat them fairly and they will respond fairly. Attempt to browbeat them and they will burst into tears and break their hearts."

"My dear," said Vingie very sincerely, "take your few thousands and buy an annuity, or War Loan, or hire a piano organ and grind it in the streets, but give up this idea of a dressmaking business. You'll be bullied by your staff and find yourself dressing a lot of customers free of charge, simply because they've told you some hard-luck story."

"I raised the wages of the staff only this morning," confessed Anthony Brooks defiantly. "They have as much right to the money as I have. After all they produce it--that is, they would produce it if the place wasn't being run at a loss."

"I would like _pêche Melba_, please," murmured Vingie in a far-away voice. Her eyes saw visions of splendor; she molded costly fabrics on the supple forms of beautiful girls; the fame of her name ricochetted from boudoir to baronial hall; she created costumes for musical comedies and remedied the dry respectability of clothes worn in court circles. She intrigued with charmeuse and dreamed in cloth of gold.

"On the other hand," she went on, "if you were to take me into partnership I could raise a little capital and save you from this fatal softness of yours where women are concerned. A great many useful people would come to us for their clothes out of sheer curiosity. I could get a little work out of the blonde enchantress whose wages you've just raised. The _maître d'hôtel_ can tell you all about me, and if you care to ring up the Foreign Minister, he's an old friend of mine. Besides, I know a man in the _Daily Tale_ who'd give us some very useful publicity. It's always rather a stunt if a society girl tries to do a job of work."

Anthony Brooks looked doubtfully across the small table. He had heard of sirens without ever meeting one, and although her clothes, her appurtenances, and a certain expectation of being obeyed commended Vingie to him, he had not the remotest idea who had paid for her belongings, and her name meant nothing in Surbiton.

"What is your real reason for suggesting a partnership?" he asked with dreadful cunning.

Vingie exhaled a little cloud of scented smoke.

"Adventure, the fight for a business that's going down-hill, and an opportunity to run a show of my own," she answered. "You'll never get so good an offer from anybody else. I'll put up a thousand pounds capital and not take a penny out till the place is paying. Harden your heart, Mr. Brooks, and take the plunge!"

"Who are your solicitors, please?" inquired Mr. Brooks, still darkly.

"Scrymgeour, Scrymgeour & Fortescue, 1002 St. James Street," she answered, giving the name of Sir Charles' men of business without a second's hesitation.

"Mine are Abrahams & Abrahams, 4914 Chancery Lane."

Vingie crushed out her cigarette-end and drew money from her wrist-bag.

"Let's go and pick up one of the chosen people in a taxi and take him round to Scrymgeour and fix it," she suggested.

"I insist on paying for lunch," began Mr. Brooks turning rather red, but she raised a protesting hand.

"This is a Dutch treat, partner. When the business is paying you can take me out and celebrate. Till then we'll settle our own expenses."

It is certain that the chiseled, aristocratic profile of Mr. Scrymgeour expressed all, if not more than he felt when the ward of his distinguished client, Sir Charles Gillespie, came with alien solicitors and an entire stranger to enter into a deal of partnership. The very furniture in the room--and nothing had been touched since 1721--cried fie upon this outrage. Nevertheless the influence of a pretty girl is such that no open quarrel ensued, although the whole affair ruined Mr. Scrymgeour's golf for several weeks. They delved in balance sheets and audits, hereunto and thereunto they set their seals, and the deed was done.

Vingie entering number ten Criteria Mansions toward the hour of dinner clung in exhaustion to Mary and then sank on to a divan, a black satin divan bestrewn with cushions.

"Mary," she gasped, "I'm quite dead, but I've taken a quarter share in a frock shop. For heaven's sake tear my things off and get me the hottest bath and half fill it with bath-salts. I want to wallow and gloat."

"Really, miss!" responded Mary politely, answering the first part of the remark. She coaxed off shoes and stockings, removed a frock and loosened masses of wavy hair. A small private smile played about her mouth.

"Give me a cigarette and tell me what you're grinning at!" demanded Vingie.

The smile widened, and Mary glanced down coyly.

"It's the hall-porter, miss," she confessed. "As you said, he _is_ rather good-looking, and such a gentlemanly young fellow."