Chapter I: Part 1

Wilhelmina in London

By

Barry Pain

Author of “Eliza,” “Eliza Getting On,”
“Exit Eliza,” etc.

NEW EDITION

London
John Long, Limited
Norris Street, Haymarket
1912

Contents

I. STRANDED

II. MR. NATHAN GOULD

III. THE MAN OF MEANS

IV. THE MAN BEHIND THE DOOR

V. THE SPIRITS OF HANFORD GARDENS

VI. UNREWARDED

VII. A QUEER COMMISSION

VIII. THE PEGASUS CAR

IX. A LOSS AND A GAIN

Wilhelmina in London

I

STRANDED

It is quite possible to love a person whom one does not respect, of whom one even disapproves. I loved my father, but I certainly did not respect him. He did not even respect himself.

When he married my mother, much against the wishes of his family, my grandfather bought him an annuity of two hundred a year, and desired to have nothing more to do with him. My mother died when I was quite a little girl, but I have a vivid recollection that she was just about as helpless as my father. In times of financial crisis--and, thanks to my father, these were very frequent--the two would sit staring at one another over the fire, and say that this was the beginning of the end, or exhort each other to hope and courage, but never, by any chance, take any practical way of dealing with the situation. On these gloomy occasions my father generally made a will. I do not think he, at any time, had anything to leave us worth mentioning, but the sonorous phrases and the feeling that he was doing something business-like seemed to give him a melancholy satisfaction. I have the last will that he made before me now. It begins: “I, Bernard Castel, being of sound mind and understanding, and at peace with God and man, do hereby give and bequeath all my real and personal estate, of whatsoever kind, to my only beloved daughter, Wilhelmina.” There followed directions as to the ways of disposing of this estate, supposing it should exceed twenty-five thousand pounds at the time of his death, and further directions if it should exceed fifty thousand. At that time we were as usual skating on the very edge of bankruptcy. I remember my father returned in triumph from dealing with the local tradesman who was his principal creditor. “I have done it, Wilhelmina,” he said. “And I doubt if any other man in the world could have done it. Another coat of paint and there would have been a collision.”

I suppose he really loved me. He often told me, especially when a financial crisis was at its worst, that I was all he had in the world. But he never insured his life, and never made any provision for me after his death. After all, I believe that a father and a girl of sixteen, even if they happen to be gentle-folks, can live in the country on two hundred a year, and even put by a few pounds for insurance. The trouble was that my father could not let his income alone. Every quarter-day brought some new scheme, generally of a wildly speculative and gambling character. And before next quarter-day we were terribly hard up. At first my father confided these schemes to me, but I am quite practical, and I hated them, and told him so. Then he kept his schemes to himself, merely observing, in the deepest despondency when the bottom had dropped out of them, “Wilhelmina, I fear that I have made a fool of myself again.” He sometimes earned a little money by writing, and I think might have earned more. He wrote stories of the most extreme sentimentality and of the most aggressively moral character; and one of the Sunday magazines used to publish them. He and I have screamed over them many a time. Shortly after one quarter-day he went down to a land auction in Essex and bought a small plot for ten pounds. When I remonstrated, he said feebly that an excellent free luncheon had been provided for all who attended the sale, and that, after all, much money had been made by poultry farming. I asked him if either he or I knew one single fact about poultry, except that they never laid as many eggs as one expected. He admitted it, and in a rare fit of remorse sat down at once and wrote a story about a girl with consumption which brought him in nearly enough to cover the difference between the price he had paid for the land and the price he sold it for a few days later.

He was popular, as most extravagant men with a sense of humour are, but his sense of humour had a blind point. He could never see that any of his wild-cat business was utterly ridiculous, or understand why sometimes in the middle of our deepest distress I could not help laughing at him. Yet he did not take his literary work seriously at all, and it used to be my chief amusement to get him to read out his own stories, with his own parenthetical comments. His popularity certainly served him at some of the times of crisis, and made his creditors lenient with him. During his last illness several people to whom he owed money, and had owed money for a long time, sent him presents. I thought it was rather touching. We were living then at a village called Castel-on-Weld, and we lived there simply and solely because my father happened to come upon the name in an old Bradshaw, and thought that it would be nice and hereditary to be Bernard Castel, Esq., of Castel-on-Weld. I am not aware that any of his ancestors had ever lived within a hundred miles of the place.

On the day after the funeral I got the only letter I ever received from my grandfather. It did not pretend to any grief over the dead, and it informed me, in a courteously acidulated way, that he did not wish to see me and that I had nothing to expect from him. But it enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, to cover present expenses and until I was able to get work.

Now, I think a really fine and high-spirited girl out of a penny book would have torn that cheque in half and sent it back to him with a few dignified words. But I did not see why my butcher and baker and candlestick maker should be called upon to finance my exhibition of a proud and imperious nature. That was what it would have come to, for we owed money to the butcher and the baker, and I do not doubt we should have owed it to the candlestick maker as well, but for the fact that there was no candlestick maker in the village. So I wrote:--

“DEAR GRANDPAPA,--Thanks very much for the two hundred pounds, which will be most useful, but you don’t seem to know how to write a letter to a girl who has just lost her father. I shan’t bother you.--Your affectionate granddaughter,

“WILHELMINA.”

Then the parson and the doctor came round, and they were two good men. The doctor said that medical etiquette did not permit him to make any charge to an orphan girl, and that if he took my money he would be hounded out of the profession, and quite properly. But I told him that I thought he was lying, and made him take the money. As it was, he had given us any amount of his care and time and charged about half nothing for it. He was not a rich man either. The parson said that his wife wanted someone to act as a companion and to assist in looking after the little girls. I thanked him very much, but I said that I believed, if she thought it over, she would find that she didn’t. They gave me lots of good advice, and when I sold all the furniture and effects they bid frantically against one another for the six bottles of distinctly inferior sherry which at that time constituted our entire cellar. Other friends did similar acts of kindness at the sale. I had meant it to be a perfectly genuine sale, but all the time I felt that I was passing round the hat. I do not think the auctioneer has ever forgotten it. The way that sherry, with the maker’s name giving it away on every bottle, fetched the price of a vintage Chateau d’Yquem of great age, must have made an indelible impression.

I had thought it all out. I really did not want to take from these good people what was given in the merest charity. I was not, as a matter of fact, very intimate with any of them. I did not want to be a companion, even if the parson’s wife had had any sort of use for a companion. I had quite clearly made up my mind that there was no work in the world that I should be ashamed to do, if I could do it; but that I would not take up anything which could not possibly lead to anything. Now, nearly every feminine occupation recommended to the distressed but untrained gentlewoman is a _cul-de-sac_, and when you get over the wall at the end of the _cul-de-sac_ you are in the workhouse. I had also decided that I must get out of Castel-on-Weld, because things did not happen there, and in consequence I could not take advantage of things happening. I determined to go to London.

Beyond the general principles which I have indicated I had no clear idea of what I was going to do, but I had got new clothes, no debts, and about seventy-five pounds in cash. I think I was well educated, though rather in a general and erratic way. My father, who had never been in France in his life, spoke the most idiomatic, and even the most argotic, French, with the vilest of accents. He infinitely preferred French fiction to English, and I will do him the justice to say that he generally remembered to look it up. It is possible that, with my knowledge of French, music and literature, I might have become a governess, but to become a governess is to walk deliberately into the _cul-de-sac_. I had vague ideas that I should like to get into some kind of business, and by cleverness, and practicality, and temperance, and early rising, and the rest of the bag-of-tricks, worm my way slowly upwards until I was a manageress and indispensable. All the time I should be saving money, and should then be ready to start for myself. I had not decided what the business was to be; once in London I should have time to look about me.

I had also thought of marriage. Even if I had not thought of it, the fact that the doctor proposed to me twice would have reminded me of it. I was pretty enough, and though the idea of falling in love never occurred to me, I thought that I might marry rather well one day. That was an additional reason for leaving Castel-on-Weld. I had already twice refused the only marriageable man in the neighbourhood. But in any case I was only eighteen and I did not mean to marry for some time to come.

I was going to play a lone hand, and the honest truth is that I rather enjoyed the prospect. I was going to London, a place where things happen, and I was going to do what I wanted in the way I wanted. And perhaps I should starve, and perhaps I should have fun. So one morning I got into a third-class railway carriage, and an old woman talked to me at length about her somewhat unseemly physical infirmities. I hope I was sympathetic, but my mind was already in London, looking out for the possibility of adventure.

I did not have to wait long in London to discover that strange things happen there. The first thing that I noticed on my arrival at Charing Cross was that on the platform, under the clock, there were some fifteen girls, all of whom wore the closest possible physical resemblance to myself. We might all have been sisters.

II

MR. NATHAN GOULD

It was something of a surprise.

If on my arrival in London I had found waiting on the platform at Charing Cross one girl of the same height as myself, the same colour of hair, the same type of face, and the same style of clothes, I might have thought it merely a coincidence. But here were fifteen girls, all, so far as I could see, exactly similar. They were not in groups, but scattered about the platform under the clock. They never spoke to one another, but it struck me that they looked at one another curiously and with something like veiled hostility. I saw the same expression on their faces whenever one of them happened to pass me. I could not imagine what it meant, and I wanted to find out. I sent a porter to the cloak-room with my belongings, and stood against the bookstall waiting events. It was then two minutes to one.

At one o’clock precisely a man of about thirty-five, in a light overcoat, with a folded newspaper in his hand, walked rapidly into the station and stood still, looking about him. His personal appearance was not in his favour. He wore too much jewellery, and the expression on his face was one of furtive spite. One of the girls who were waiting walked close past him very slowly. He looked at her intently, but made no sign, and she then passed out of the station. A second girl did the same thing, except that she lingered at a little distance from him. A third was just approaching, when he came rapidly forward to me and raised his hat.

“I think,” he said, in a slightly foreign accent, “I am right in presuming that you are here in response to my advertisement in this morning’s _Mail_.”

“No,” I said, “I have seen no advertisement. I don’t know you, and don’t understand why you should speak to me.”

“I hope,” he said, “you will give me an opportunity of explaining. It can do you no harm, and may be very profitable to you. It is a matter of life and death, or I would not trouble you. I assure you that I mean no disrespect whatever.”

By his tone and manner it was perfectly evident that he was not talking to me merely because I was a pretty girl. He was the kind of man whom anyone would distrust at sight, but of whom no one could have been afraid. I was not in the least afraid. I shrugged my shoulders.

“This is wildly unusual,” I said, “and I don’t like it. You may begin your explanations. If at any moment I think them at all unsatisfactory, I shall send you away. Begin by showing me the advertisement.”

He handed me the paper in his hand, with the advertisement marked, and I read as follows:--

“If the lady of eighteen with dark hair and blue eyes, pale complexion, good-looking, height five-foot-seven, will be on the platform of Charing Cross, under the clock, at 1 p.m. precisely this morning, the man in the light overcoat, with the folded newspaper, will meet her there and liberally reward her services.”

“Well?” I said.

“The advertisement was not addressed to any particular lady. I merely wanted to find one who would bear a close resemblance to my half-sister, who died about a month ago. My mother is seriously ill, and the death of my half-sister, to whom she was devoted, has been kept from her. If she knew of that death there is no doubt that she would succumb at once. She has been told that my half-sister is away in the country, but she has begun to suspect, and we have had to promise to produce her. You are exactly like her, you have the same tone of voice, you spoke to me exactly as she would have spoken if a stranger had addressed her. The impersonation will be a very easy one; you will have to be in the same room with my mother for a few moments, and will have little to say. The room will not be brightly lit, and the doctor would not permit any but the briefest interview. You will be prolonging her life for a few days--at the best I fear it cannot be for more than that--and you will remove a load of terrible suffering from her mind. For this I am ready to pay you five pounds now, and one pound for every day that you remain at my house. My name is Gould--Mr. Nathan Gould. Here is my card.”

The card bore an address in Wilbraham Square, Bloomsbury. I thought the matter over for a few seconds. One can do a great deal of thinking in a few seconds. “Mr. Gould,” I said, “if I believed your story entirely I would do what you want for nothing. I neither believe it nor disbelieve it entirely. I have the impression that you are keeping something back.”

“Not intentionally. I explained myself as quickly and briefly as possible, but I am ready to answer any questions.”

“Possibly I am not in a position to ask the questions which would be material.” At this I thought he winced slightly. “I consider that I take a great risk, and I do not take a great risk unless the consideration is proportionately great. If you will pay me fifty pounds in cash now, and five pounds for every day that I remain in your house, I will come. I have only just arrived in London, have no friends here, and was on the point of going to an hotel. If you accept my terms I can come at once. If not, there is no more to be said.”

He did not seem much surprised. “Is that your last word?” he asked.

“It is.”

“Very well. You shall have my cheque for fifty pounds as soon as we reach my house, and the rest of the money will be paid you day by day.”

“That will not do,” I said. “We will drive now to your bank, and you will draw fifty pounds in notes or gold. We shall then go on to my bank, where I shall deposit the money. After that I am at your service.”

“You are a business-like woman,” he said. “It is queer to be distrusted when one is really perfectly honest, but it shall be as you wish. If you will come with me I will call a cab.”

“You will call two,” I said. “A four-wheeler for myself and my luggage, and a hansom for yourself.”

My programme was punctually carried out. As it happened, we both banked in Lombard Street, and it was not long before that part of the business was concluded and we had arrived at the house in Wilbraham Square. It was a good Georgian house, and looked well kept. Gould paid the cabman and introduced his latch-key.

“No,” I said, “ring. I prefer it.” I wanted particularly to see who would answer the door. An extremely commonplace and honest-looking parlourmaid answered it. When she saw me she staggered back aghast.

“That’s all right, Annie,” said Mr. Gould reassuringly. “The resemblance is striking, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the maid. “It took me very much by surprise.”

“All right upstairs?” asked Gould.

“I believe so. The doctor is just leaving.”

By this time the man had brought my luggage into the hall. At the same moment a grey-headed old gentleman came down the stairs, slipping a stethoscope into his side-pocket. He also seemed startled at seeing me.

I trusted that old gentleman, and I trusted the maid who had opened the door, and I did not trust Mr. Nathan Gould a bit. At this moment his air was far more that of a man who has recently pulled off a clever financial coup than of a son who has succeeded in saving a mother to whom he is devoted from a great sorrow. Gould went forward to the doctor at once.

“How is she?” he asked eagerly.

“No change,” said the doctor. He looked across at me. “Really,” he said, “the resemblance is astounding.”

Gould brought him up to me. “This is our doctor,” he said. “Dr. Wentworth.” Gould hesitated. I had not given him my name.

“I am Miss Tower,” I said.

The doctor bowed. “May I ask,” I said, “if you have been attending Mrs. Gould for some time?”

“Certainly,” he said. “For the last five years.”

“I should like very much to speak with you alone for a few minutes. Have you the time, and would you be so very kind as to do this for me?”

The doctor looked inquiringly at Gould. Gould was furious. He knew, of course, that I was about to ask for his character. But he restrained himself. “Miss Tower,” he said, with a touch of bitterness, “has already made it quite clear to me that she must have her own way. I believe there is no one in the drawing-room.” The doctor held open the door for me.

“I will give you as many minutes as you want, with pleasure,” he said.

I gave him my story as briefly as I could, and told him all that had passed between Mr. Gould and myself. “I am going to be quite frank,” I went on. “I do not trust the man in the least. I do not believe he has one atom of love or respect for his mother.”

“He has not,” said the doctor.

“Why then does he want this impersonation?”

“What he has told you is true. Mrs. Gould is very ill. There are various complications, but it is the heart which we have to fear principally. It is impossible to cure her, but I confidently believe that by coming here you will prolong her life and make her last days much happier. As to Mr. Gould’s motives, I have perhaps no right to speak. He has not confided in me. I will only give you the facts. Mrs. Gould is one of two sisters, of equal fortune, and bitterly jealous of one another. The elder sister died in her seventy-fourth year. She did not wish Mrs. Gould to have any advantage over her, and left her money to accumulate until Mrs. Gould’s seventy-third birthday, when Mrs. Gould comes into it. She was a cranky old woman, and did not like the idea of her sister having any more money than she had. Mrs. Gould is a wealthy woman now, and on her seventy-third birthday, which will be in a few days’ time, will be twice as wealthy. If she does not live till her seventy-third birthday, the whole of her sister’s money goes to the London Hospital. Do you see?”

“Yes,” I said, “I see. She has doubtless left her money to her son, and in the event of her surviving until her seventy-third birthday he will profit.”

“Precisely. Her entire estate is left equally between Mr. Gould and his half-sister, and in the event of the death of either the whole goes to the survivor. That is the situation in a nutshell.”

“Then what have I to fear?”

“Nothing at all until after that seventy-third birthday.”

“I see,” I said meditatively. I could imagine that after that date Mr. Gould’s filial affection might undergo some remarkable changes.

The doctor gave me some useful information about the half-sister and explained to me exactly what I was to do when I was admitted to his patient’s room. He also gave me his address. “You may find that useful in a week’s time,” he said.

My luggage had already been taken up and the maid showed me the way to my room. On the stairs we met Mr. Gould. “It is all right,” he said in a low voice, “I have just come from my mother’s room. She is overjoyed. You will see her this evening.” He paused and added, “And have you heard the worst of me?”

“Not yet,” I said. “That will come.”

Then he guessed how much I knew, and hated me almost as much as I hated him.

The maid who was unpacking for me asked me if I would lunch downstairs with Mr. Gould, or if I preferred to lunch in my own room. It is always well to get to know one’s enemy, and I did not hesitate. A few minutes later I was sitting down to lunch alone with a man whom two hours before I had never seen in my life, and of whom I now knew very little, and nothing which was not dead against him.

He was really very clever. He hardly spoke of his mother at all, he was quiet in his manner, and showed himself most attentive to my personal comfort. I was not to consider myself a prisoner at all. I could have the brougham that afternoon and go anywhere I liked. If it was convenient to me to be back at six o’clock, that would be the best time for me to see his mother. But if not, some other arrangement might be made. Did I like the room that had been given me? If not, it could be changed. There was another little room just opposite to it in the same passage, which was being got ready to serve as a private sitting-room for me.

I thanked him, and said I was not going out. Turning the conversation away from myself, I made him talk to me about his half-sister. He talked about her in the most easy and matter-of-fact way. I do not suppose he ever cared for her or for anybody except himself. All the same, the information that I got as to minute points of her personal appearance and her manner of speaking were very useful.

At six o’clock I was quite ready. Mr. Gould now seemed a little nervous and excited. He kept on giving me fragments of stupid advice and telling me things that he had told me before. The interview was to be a very short one, and the doctor and the nurse were both in the dimly lit room when I entered it, though they stood at some distance from the bed. On the bed lay the dying woman--a handsome old Jewess, with white-yellow skin of one even tint, colourless lips, and blazing eyes. I went straight up to the bed and took her claw of a hand and bent over her and kissed her. She spoke in a very low voice, and I just caught the words, “Thought I’d lost you.”

“No,” I said, “I’m here, and I will not leave you again until you get better.”

Her eyes closed and opened again and fixed themselves on me. “Pray for me,” she said.

Still holding her hand, I dropped down on my knees by her bedside. My thoughts flew frantically in unlikely directions. I remembered my own mother sitting before the fire and saying with helpless solemnity that it was the beginning of the end. I was not quite sure where I had put my watch-key, and puzzled about it. I recalled vividly a fat old woman who had travelled up in the same compartment with me and I wondered where she had gone. And all the time I was holding the old woman’s hands and trying to pray, and hearing the clock on the mantelpiece tick, as it seemed to me, constantly quicker and quicker.

Presently the doctor touched me on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw that the old woman had fallen asleep. I released her hand gently, and slipped out of the room. When I got outside I was shaking like a leaf, and there was Mr. Gould full of eager questions. I answered him as well as I could. He was delighted.

“Now,” I said, “let me go to my own rooms for the rest of the day.”

He looked at me curiously. “Why,” he said, “you seem upset. I suppose you are not as used to it as we are. You ought to have a brandy-and-soda. Let me get it for you.”

I refused that, went off to my own room, lay down on the bed, and began to cry. I had not the faintest idea what I was crying about. It was all so strange and horrible. But soon I sat up and bullied myself. I could see that there might be much to do which would want all my sense and none of my emotion. I dined in my own room, and with my dinner there was brought to me a letter from Mr. Gould, thanking me for my kindness and enclosing a five-pound note.

The next two days passed quietly enough. I now saw the old woman two or three times a day. The third day was the day before the birthday. In the afternoon Mrs. Gould, who had been getting much better, became rapidly worse, fainted, and was unconscious for quite a long time. Gould made a fool of himself. He whipped the doctor off into the dining-room, and talked so loudly that I could hear in the drawing-room. “Look here, doctor,” he said, “you must keep her alive for another nine hours. You can do it if you like, you know. Use more stimulants. You want to flog that heart. Keep it going somehow. Were you trying oxygen?”

“Mr. Gould,” said the doctor, “you know that your mother refuses to see any other doctor, and that any attempt to force one upon her would certainly be fatal. Otherwise I should have thrown up this case before. As it is, I am not going to enter into any consultation with yourself or any other ignorant and unqualified person. And it would help me to keep my temper, and would therefore facilitate my work, if I had no interviews with you of any kind. Send your inquiries through the servant.”

The doctor came out and shut the door. He looked into the drawing-room for a moment. “Miss Tower,” he said, “if Mrs. Gould lives until after twelve to-night, look out.”

“I had meant to,” I said.

Then he went up to his patient.

At twelve that night Mrs. Gould was alive and sleeping peacefully. As soon as Mr. Gould had heard this glad news he went up to bed. That night, for the first time, I had not received my fee. At breakfast next morning he was distinctly disrespectful in his manner. “Look here,” he said, “the best of friends must part. You’ve done all I wanted, and there is no doubt my mother will get on all right without you now. She has got rid of the idea that my half-sister is dead, and that was the main point. I’ve told them to pack your things, and as soon as you’re ready to go you shall have that last fiver you managed to screw out of me. You’ve been paid a sight too well, but I’m a man of my word.”

“I’m not going,” I said.

“Not going? Don’t talk in that silly way. You’ll have to go. I can starve you out--I can throw you out by force if you like. Still, I don’t want a scene. I suppose I must make it two fivers instead of one. That’s what you’re after.”

I took out the slip of paper on which Dr. Wentworth had written down his address for me. “It’s quite true,” I said. “You may have my things packed and put on a cab, and may ask me to leave the house. If I do so that will be the address to which the cabman will drive, and the consequences are likely to be serious for you.”

He raved and abused like a drunken cad for a few moments, and then went out of the room--and, a moment later, out of the house.

At eleven that morning Mrs. Gould died suddenly in my arms. It was a quick and painless ending. A telegram was sent to Mr. Gould’s office in the City, and the reply came back that he was not there. Dr. Wentworth came down to the drawing-room with me and seemed slightly hesitating. “Excuse me,” he said, “for asking the question, but have you any friends in London?”

“None,” I said.

“And have you any plans?”

“None; except to leave this place immediately. I shall see what happens. It was through seeing what happened that I came here. At any rate, I’m not going to take on any of the underpaid work leading to nothing of which women seem to be so fond.”

“I don’t quite like this,” he said. “I rather wish you’d go and talk things over with my wife. But you won’t, and after all, I don’t know that it would do much good. You’re playing a lone hand and you rather like it, and you can take care of yourself.”

I talked to him a little longer and then my cab came. As I drove away I saw Mr. Gould approaching the house. He was not helpless, but he was a little more than half drunk. I wondered for what act he had been trying to find the courage.

III

THE MAN OF MEANS

My principal feeling on leaving Mr. Gould’s house was one of extreme weariness. The emotions wear one out more than work does. I had been living idly and even luxuriously, but I was more tired than I used to be in the days when I lived with my father and during some financial or domestic crisis the whole of the housework fell to my lot. I had Mr. Gould’s five-pound notes in my pocket, and I drove to a good hotel. I stopped there for three days, and I think I spent most of my time in bed and asleep. Then I said to myself, “Wilhelmina, this will not do. You are spending too much, and you are earning nothing, and you are not even looking about you.” So I left my good hotel and went to a cheap boarding-house. And on the second night that I was there a young Hindoo proposed marriage to me. Also the cooking was very bad. So I left.

While I was there I had calculated that I had enough money to furnish a very small flat and to live for very nearly a year. I found my flat in a Brompton back street. It was not one of the mansions with lifts and liveried porters and electric light and lots of white paint. It was a little thirty-pound house which had been ingeniously converted into three flats. One was in the basement, and you entered it down the area steps, and paid seven shillings a week when you got there. The ground-floor flat was eight shillings, and the upstairs flat seven-and-six. I went in for luxury and eight shillings. I had a separate entrance, and when I shut my front door I was alone in my own little world. The world contained a sitting-room, bedroom and kitchen, and was extremely dirty and horrible until I set to work on it. I need not say that I spent more money than I had intended on cleaning, furnishing and decorating. Everybody does that. As an economy and a punishment I did everything for myself. The flat above me was occupied by a horse-keeper from one of the ’bus-yards and his wife. The wife did a little intermittent cheap dressmaking. They both drank, used improper language, and occasionally flung paraffin lamps at one another. The flat below had been occupied by an old man who lived alone, and had got tired of it and died. I met his dead body coming up those area steps as I moved in. After that the flat remained untenanted. Every Saturday a knowing-looking young man with a pencil behind his ear, and an account book and a black bag, called for the eight shillings. And as long as you paid that, nobody cared who you were, or what you did, or why you did it. I rather liked that.

When I was comfortably installed I began to think things out. I decided at first to go in for the gratitude of the aged. You know the kind of thing. You render the old gentleman or old lady some slight service in a ’bus or railway carriage, and a month later they die and leave you all their money. I think I was right in believing in the gratitude of the aged. Compared with the young they are very grateful. But I fancy they have a great tendency to have wives and children or other near relations, and to abstain from leaving their money to the entire stranger who has opened the carriage door for them. One day, in Chancery Lane, a horse in a hansom cab came down rather excessively, and a very aged solicitor shot out in a miscellaneous heap into the middle of the road. I helped him up, saved his hat from the very jaws of an omnibus, so to speak, and said I was sorry for him. He did not even ask for my name and address, and at the moment of going to press I have heard nothing further from him. The other old people to whom I was able to offer some slight service seemed to think that a few words of warm thanks would be all I required. I began to disbelieve in the familiar stories of the wills of the wealthy.

And then I embarked on a business which I am afraid must prove conclusively that I was a daughter of my father, for it was just the mad, wild-cat kind of thing that he would certainly have embarked on himself, if he had ever thought of it. Briefly, I put an advertisement in one of the most popular of the Sunday papers, and also in the _Morning Post_, addressed to all who were unhappy in love. “I know the heart, and I know the world,” was the way I began. I pointed out cunningly that however much one might need advice in these matters, there was always a feeling of embarrassment in consulting anyone who knew you. The only person in whom one could confide was the entire stranger. I pointed out, moreover, that real names and addresses need never be given to me. I only required to know the facts, and I would send a letter of advice specially written for each case for the sum of half a crown. Their letters were to be directed to “Irma.” And I gave the address of a little newsagent, who took in letters for me.

I ran this business for about two months. It began slowly, but after the first fortnight I really had as much as I could do. I always asked the people to whom I sent letters to recommend me to their friends, and in many cases I know that they did so. I gave the best advice that I could, and I had a small shilling book on the marriage laws which I found very useful. Not one couple in a hundred that wants to get married really knows how it may or may not be done. My clients were chiefly women, and I have grave doubts as to the seriousness of some of the few men who applied to me. But I did not mind in the least so long as their postal orders were enclosed. The women seemed to belong almost exclusively to two sets--domestic servants and foolish people in smart society. The middle-class would have nothing to do with me, and I am not sure, although I always gave the best advice I could, that the middle-class was not right. Only once or twice, in the curious confessions that were poured out on me, did I come upon anything that I should have called real romance. There was plenty of vanity, there was plenty of sentimentality, and there was a good deal of acute money-grubbing. It was really interesting work, though it kept me a great deal indoors, and though I am not sure even now that it was quite honest.

At the end of the first month some blessed young man, whom I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking, wrote a short and chaffing article about my advertisement. For days after this I was simply inundated with letters, and I had to send out post cards to my clients explaining that, owing to the pressure of business, my letters of advice to them would probably be delayed for some days. Among those letters was one bearing the address of a house in Berkeley Square, which was so extraordinary that I give it in full. It was one of the few letters that I received from men:--

“DEAR MADAM,--I have seen your advertisement, and also the short article upon it in the _Daily Courier_, and my own case is so curious that I have decided to address you. I enclose a postal order for half a crown as required, but I am a man of means, and in the event of your being able to assist me I shall, as you will see, propose a more adequate remuneration. I have been a great traveller and sportsman, and you may possibly have come upon my recent work on _Sport in Thibet_. I have now returned to England and am anxious to marry. But I am prevented by a strange psychological characteristic of my own.

“The fact, put briefly, is that I cannot stand fear. Any evidence of timidity in a man inspires me with rage, and in a woman with disgust. However attractive she may be, at the slightest sign that she fears me, love vanishes completely. I cannot stand her, I cannot bear to be with her. This is the more unfortunate because I am by nature a dominant person. I have been told that my eyes are mesmeric. I do not believe in this nonsense, but certainly women seem to find it difficult to meet my gaze fairly and squarely. I have a somewhat hasty temper, and nothing exasperates it more than the attempt to smooth it down, accompanied as it always is by fear of what I may do next. I want a woman who does not care one straw what I do next--who will be absolutely free from every form of cowardice, physical or moral, as I am myself. The mother of my children must not be a coward.

“I am thirty-seven years of age, wealthy, and not, I believe, much uglier than other men, and I cannot find the woman that I require. Possibly, among the many cases which must have been brought to your notice, you will have come across some such woman. If so, and if you will arrange a meeting between her and me, I will pay you the sum of one hundred pounds, provided, of course, that I am satisfied on the question of her courage. If, though satisfied on this point, I do not wish to marry her, I will pay her also the sum of one hundred pounds for the trouble which I have given her. She must, of course, not be older than I am myself, and I confess that good looks are a great consideration with me. Social standing is of no importance whatever. I do not allow popular prejudices to interfere with my actions, even when they are of the least importance, and far less do I admit of such interference in my choice of a wife.--I am, my dear madam, faithfully yours, ----.”

I do not give his signature. It is a name that you will find in Debrett, though I did not look it up at the time. That letter gave me a great deal to think over. There was a queer mixture of bragging and modesty about it. Yet, I asked myself, how could he give me the facts which it was necessary for me to know without appearing to brag? The commission of one hundred pounds was certainly tempting, but none of my correspondents occurred to me as being likely to meet his requirements, even if they had not had their own affairs on their hands. Fear is a feminine quality. Women have a right to it; without being cowardly, they may be able to realise a danger, and they may have delicate nerves. Nor can I see that they are any the worse for it. After a little reflection I wrote to say that I believed I should be able to assist him if he could wait for about a fortnight. And I had a reply on the following day to say that he would wait with pleasure.

I was not, decidedly not, thirty-seven, and I was as pretty as I thought he had any right to expect. I was not the creature of steel that he required, but, none the less, my nerves were in fairly good order, and I thought that I could get through, at any rate, any of the preliminary tests to which he might subject me. Two hundred pounds are better than one hundred. Possibly I might marry this man. I did not know, and did not want to marry anybody. But he might take his chance and, in case of failure, fall in line with the doctor at Castel-on-Weld and the young Hindoo in the boarding-house. It is wonderful how many excuses one can find for an action which brings in two hundred pounds.

At the end of the fortnight I wrote and gave him an appointment for the afternoon of two days later, outside the Stores in Victoria Street, when I said that the young lady whom I had selected as likely to meet his requirements would meet him. I suggested that there should be some sign by which he might be known. Next day I received a telegram in these words:--

“I shall come dashing up. The red rose is, and always has been, my sign.”

I thought over that telegram for a long time, and I did not quite like it. It was altogether too queer. But I meant to see the thing through. After all, I had given him no sign by which he could recognise me, and I could always back out at the last moment if I thought it necessary. So, at the time appointed, which was at three in the afternoon, I was in Victoria Street at some little distance from the Stores, waiting to see what might happen.

What actually happened was rather grotesque. A four-wheeled cab drove up, and an old gentleman got out. He wore a red rose in his button-hole and another in his hat. He took four rosebushes in pots from the interior of the cab and placed them on the pavement; dived back into his cab once more, and came out with a large florist’s box. This was packed with red roses which he proceeded to scatter broadcast. His cabman laughed till he nearly fell off the box, and a large crowd quickly gathered round. The crowd seemed to annoy the old gentleman. I heard him shouting in a querulous voice, “I am here for a special purpose. Kindly go away. I require this street for the afternoon.” A small boy knocked over one of the little rose-bushes, and this exasperated the old gentleman still further. In a moment he had whipped a revolver out of his pocket, and began firing it up into the air in an indiscriminate manner. The police very promptly got him. And I said nothing to anybody and went home.

Naturally the case was reported in all the papers. The old man had been strange in his manner for some time, but his relations had not apprehended anything serious. This afternoon he had been particularly enraged because he could not get a four-wheeler, and he was too nervous to ride in hansoms.

I never heard any more of the case, but it gave me a dislike of the business which I was engaged upon and the dislike was increased a few days later. I was looking out of my windows when I saw a woman of common appearance give an almost imperceptible nod to a passing policeman. She then came on to my flat and knocked. I let her in.

“You are the lady who advertises as ‘Irma’?” she said.

“I am. How did you know that I lived here?”

“They told me at the tobacconist’s where your letters are sent. Now, I want you to give me some help. I have got the money here, and I can pay well.”

“What is it you want?” I asked.

“Well, I’m told that you are a wise woman and know the future. A man, rather younger than myself, has every appearance of being attracted by me, but I don’t know whether he means anything serious or not. I thought perhaps you’d look at my hand and tell me what was destined.”

I sent her away at once. It was a police trap, of course. When you receive many letters, containing many postal orders, and you cash those orders all at one office, I suppose the police become interested. It seemed degrading, and I hated it. Also I had reflected that this was not really work that would lead to anything.

I sat down there and then and wrote letters withdrawing the “Irma” advertisements. My total profit, after all expenses were paid, amounted to a little over twenty pounds.

IV

THE MAN BEHIND THE DOOR

Being still young and passably beautiful, I had no wish to become a cynic. But the events of the next fortnight tended to make me so. I reverted to my old idea of making a conquest of some big business firm in my belief that I had ideas and could make suggestions and that these were worth money.

I still believe that ideas and suggestions are worth money--pots of money. I also believe that it is extremely difficult to get a guinea for the best of them.

I tried an inflated and gigantic shop, one of the stores where you buy everything, and I asked to see the manager. I do not suppose I did see the manager, but I saw someone who was more or less in authority in a back office. There was a clerk at work in that office, and the clerk made me nervous. If I could have rung and had him removed I might have got on better. As I was pretty and well dressed and did not look poor, and might have called to complain of the quality of the bacon supplied, the managerial person was at first extremely polite, and asked in what way he could serve me.

“I believe,” I said, “that this is a business in which new ideas are of value.”

“Yes,” he said suavely, “in fact, we’ve already noticed it.” He was still polite, but one could detect a slight shade of irony.

“Well,” I said blunderingly, “I am a woman with ideas--heaps of ideas. I have thought about your business particularly, and I am full of suggestions. I believe them to be valuable, but before I hand them over to you I should like to come to some business arrangement; either in the way of a cash payment, or, where practicable, a percentage on profits. In the latter case, of course, I should expect permission to inspect your books and----”

At this moment the clerk, who had been writing at a side table, with his back to me, went off like a soda-water bottle. I am inclined to think now that for some moments he must have been suffering severely.

“Shut up, or get out!” said the manager to the clerk.

The clerk, being unable to shut up, got out at once. Then the manager turned to me.

“Extraordinary!” he said seriously. “Most extraordinary. And yet you don’t look as if you’d been drinking.”

Then I got up. “My proposal seems to you very silly,” I said. “And, because I was nervous, I put it all very badly. But I do not think that justifies you in behaving like a cad.”

He gave a jump in his chair. Being a person in authority, he did not get a chance to hear the plain truth about himself often.

“Nor do I,” he said reflectively. “I beg your pardon. Still, the thing was so outrageous; you must see, my dear young lady, that we could not dream for one moment----”

“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t trouble you any further.”

If I had stuck to that man and given him one or two of my ideas in advance, reserving the question of terms, I am not sure that I might not have done something. He would have liked to compensate for his rudeness, if he could have done it. But, being proud and angry and an idiot, I walked out. My one idea was to get out of the awful place.