by W. W. Jacobs
CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH A LOCKET IS ACCEPTED AND A RING REFUSED.
Something over a week after the events narrated in the last chapter,Banborough was lounging in the office of the Windsor Hotel at Montreal.The course of events had run more smoothly for the party since the daythey arrived in the city, weary and travel-stained with theiradventurous trip. Montreal in general, and the manager of the Windsor inparticular, were accustomed to see travellers from the States appear inall sorts of garbs and all kinds of conditions incident to a hastydeparture, so their coming occasioned little comment; and as Cecil neverdid things by halves, they were soon rehabilitated and installed in thebest apartments the hotel could offer.
The various members of the party, after the first excitement was over,had relapsed into a listless existence, which, however, was destined tobe rudely disturbed, for while the Englishman's thoughts were wanderingin anything but a practical direction, he was aroused from his reverieby a well-known voice, and, turning, found himself face to face withMarchmont.
"Well, who on earth would have thought of seeing you here?" exclaimedthe journalist. "Have you fled to Canada to escape being lionised?"
"No," said Banborough cautiously, "not exactly for that reason."
"We couldn't imagine what had become of you," continued his friend."You're the hero of the hour in New York, I can tell you, and 'ThePurple Kangaroo' is achieving the greatest success of the decade."
"Oh, confound 'The Purple Kangaroo--'!"
"That's right; run it down. Your modesty becomes you. But seriously, oldman, let me congratulate you. You must be making heaps out of it."
"Let's talk about something else," said Banborough wearily, for he washeartily sick of his unfortunate novel. "You ask me why I'm here. I'llreturn the compliment. Why are you?"
"Why," returned Marchmont, "you're partially to blame for it, you know.I'm after those Spanish conspirators. Of course you've heard the story?"
"No," said Banborough. "I haven't been in town for a fortnight. What isit?"
"Well, we arrested a lovely senorita on Fourteenth Street who was usingthe title of your novel as a password. I can tell you confidentiallythat there's no doubt that she's one of the cleverest and mostunscrupulous female spies in the Spanish secret service; and while theywere deciding where to take her, a stranger, who we're certain was oneof the Secretaries of their Legation, eloped with her, Black Maria andall, with the recklessness of a true hidalgo. They were joined by aband outside the city, where they overcame a Justice of the Peace whoarrested them, after a desperate resistance on his part. The story ofthis unequal battle was one of the finest bits of bravery we've had foryears.
"After dining at a hotel at Yonkers they held up the waiter withrevolvers and escaped. Similar audacities were perpetrated at theboundary-line between the United States and Canada, and in spite of themost intelligent and valiant efforts on the part of the police, aided byour own special corps of detectives, they've so far eluded us. Theirleader's said to be a perfect devil, who, as I tell you, is certainly aSecretary of the Spanish Legation."
"How do you know that?" asked Banborough.
"Ah," said Marchmont, looking wise and shaking his head, "the _DailyLeader_ has private sources of information. I wonder you've not heardanything of this."
"Yes," acquiesced the Englishman, "it _is_ curious, isn't it?"
"But," continued his friend, "you haven't told me yet why you came toMontreal."
"Well," said Cecil, laughing, "I can at least assure you that my triphere has been much less eventful than the one you described."
"By the way," said the journalist, "have you seen the last editorialabout your book in the _Daily Leader_?"
The Englishman shook his head.
"No? Well, here goes." And Marchmont began to read forthwith:
"'English conservatism has recently received a shock from the scion ofBlanford, and the Bishop's son, in connection with 'The PurpleKangaroo,' has caused the British lion to hump himself into the hotbedof American politics--'"
"Oh, shut up!" said Cecil, with more force than politeness.
"Don't you like it?" exclaimed the journalist. "There's a column and ahalf more. I blue-pencilled a copy and sent it over to your old man."
Banborough groaned.
"But," continued Marchmont, "this isn't anything to what we'll do whenwe've hounded the Dons out of Canada."
"What?" cried the author.
"Yes," went on his friend. "We've complained to your Foreign Office, andwithin a week every Spanish conspirator will receive notice to quit HerMajesty's North American colonies on pain of instant arrest anddeportation."
Cecil waited to hear no more, but, pleading an imperative engagement,rushed away to summon the members of his party to a hurried council ofwar in their private sitting-room. All were present with the exceptionof Miss Arminster, who had gone to spend the day at a convent in thesuburbs, where she had been brought up as a child.
After an hour of useless debating the council ended, as Banborough mighthave foreseen from the first, in the party giving up any solution of theproblem as hopeless, and putting themselves unreservedly in his hands tolead them out of their difficulties. Cecil, who felt himself illequipped for the role of a Moses, jammed his hat on his head, lit hispipe, and, thrusting his hands in his pockets, said he was going outwhere he could be quiet and think about it.
"Going to the Blue Nunnery, he means," said Smith, laughing, and nudgingSpotts.
The actor grunted. Apparently the author's attentions to the fascinatingViolet did not meet with his unqualified approval.
An hour later Banborough stood in the grey old garden of the nunnery,the sister who was his guide silently pointing out to him the figure ofthe little actress, whose bright garments were in striking contrast tothe severe simplicity of her surroundings. When the Englishman turned tothank the nun, she had disappeared, and he and Miss Arminster had thegarden to themselves.
She stood with her back to him, bending over some roses, unconscious ofhis presence, and for a few moments he remained silent, watching herunobserved. The ten days which had passed had done much to alter hisposition towards her, and he had come to fully realise that he washonestly in love with this woman. Even the fact of her having beenmarried at Ste. Anne de Beau Pre, which information he had elicited fromher on the occasion of their pilgrimage to that shrine a few daysbefore, had not served to cool his ardour. Indeed, the fact that hissuit seemed hopeless made him all the more anxious to win her for hiswife.
After he had been watching her for some minutes, a subtle intuitionseemed to tell her of his presence, and he approached her as she raisedher face from the roses to greet him.
"I came to see you--" he began, and paused, hardly knowing how tocontinue.
"Am I not then allowed even one holiday?" she asked.
"Is my presence so much of a burden?" he inquired, realising for thefirst time the full force of what her statement implied, as a hurriedmental review of the past fortnight showed him that he had scarcely everbeen absent from her side. Indeed, it no longer seemed natural not tobe with her.
"Oh, I didn't mean to be rude," she said, "but I do like a day out ofthe world occasionally. You know, when I come back here I forget for thetime that I've ever lived any other life than that which is associatedwith this dear old place."
He thought grimly that a young lady who had been married four timesbefore she was twenty-five must have to undergo a considerable amount ofmental obliteration.
"I think you'd tire of it very soon if you had to live here always," hesaid.
"I'm not sure," she replied. "I think--but of course you wouldn'tunderstand that--only, life on the stage isn't all bright and amusing,and there are times when one simply longs for a quiet, old-world placelike this."
"I believe you'd like Blanford," he suggested.
"I should love it," she assured him. "But what would your father say tome? I'd probably shock him out of his gaiters--if he wears them. Doeshe?"<
br />
"I suppose so," said Cecil. The fact was that the raiment of the Bishopof Blanford did not particularly interest him at that moment. He hadmore important things to talk about, things that had no connectionwhatsoever with the immediate future of the A. B. C. Company. Yet themention of his father caused him to stop and think, and thought, in thiscase, proved fatal to sentiment. He thrust his hands into his pocketsand addressed himself to the more prosaic topics of life, saying:
"My excuse for intruding on you is that our troubles are by no meansover. The authorities, not content with driving us out of the UnitedStates, are preparing to order us out of Canada as well, and thequestion of where we are to go is decidedly perplexing."
"Oh, dear!" said the little woman, "I think I'll go into the conventafter all."
"That settles the difficulty as far as you're concerned. Do you thinkthey'd admit me?"
"Don't talk nonsense. What do the others say?"
"Oh, they say a good many things, but nothing practical, so I came toyou for advice."
"Well, to speak frankly," she replied, "if I were you, I'd drop us alland run away home. It's much the easiest solution of the difficulty."
"Excuse me," he said. "I'm a gentleman, and besides--"
"Well, what?"
"Besides," he continued, thinking it better to be discreet, "I doubt ifI should be welcome. I've a letter from the governor in my pocket, whichI haven't yet had courage to open. I dare say it won't be pleasantreading; besides which, it's been chasing me round the country for thelast five or six weeks, and must be rather ancient history."
"Look at it and see," she advised. "They may be ready to kill the fattedcalf for you, after all."
"I'm afraid they do regard me rather in the light of a prodigal," headmitted. "However, here goes." And breaking the seal of the envelope,he read the letter aloud:
"THE PALACE, BLANFORD.
"MY DEAR SON:
"Do you realise that it is nearly a year since your Aunt Matilda and I have received news of you? This has been a source of great grief and pain to both of us, but it has not moved me to anger. It has rather caused me to devote such hours as I could spare from the preparation of my series of sermons on the miracle of Jonah to personal introspection, in the endeavour to discover, if possible, whether the cause of our estrangement lay in any defect of my own.
"It may be that you achieve a certain degree of spiritual enlightenment in producing a book entitled 'The Purple Kangaroo.' I hope so, though I have not read it. Nor do I wholly agree with your good aunt, who contends that the title savours too much of the Apocrypha, and I say nothing of the undesirable popularity you seem to have attained in the United States. I only ask you to come home.
"As a proof of her reconciliation, your aunt included a copy of your book in her last mission box to the Ojibway Indians. I shall always be glad to receive and make welcome any of your friends at the palace, no matter how different their tastes and principles may be to my own well-defined course of action.
"In the hope of better things,
"YOUR AFFECTIONATE FATHER."
"Of course you'll go," Violet said softly.
"Oh, I don't know about that," he replied.
"I do," she returned. "It's your duty. What a dear old chap he mustbe!--so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I knowjust the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of themidland counties, who was consecrated a Bishop by mistake."
Cecil paused a minute, thinking it over.
"How about the others?" he said.
"Ah, yes," she replied, "the others. But perhaps you don't class them asyour friends."
"Oh, it isn't that," he answered. "Only I was wondering--"
"What the Bishop would say?" she asked, looking at him with a roguishsmile. "Well, why not take him at his word and find out."
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "I will! I believe you've hit on the very bestpossible solution of our difficulty. The episcopal palace at Blanford isabsolutely the last place in the world where any one would think oflooking for a political conspirator, and, by some freak of fortune, thepolice are entirely ignorant that I'm in any way connected with yourflight."
"Good! then it's settled!" she cried. "And we'll all accompany you."
"Ye-es, only the governor wouldn't go within a hundred yards of atheatre, and my aunt calls actors children of--I forget whom--some onein the Old Testament."
"Belial," suggested Miss Arminster.
"That's it. How did you know?"
"You forget," she said, "I was brought up in a convent."
"It'll never do," he continued, "for them to suspect who you reallyare."
"Are we not actors?"
"Of course. We must have a dress rehearsal at once, and cast you foryour parts. But there's Friend Othniel--"
"Ah, yes," she said. "He's impossible."
"We must drop him somehow."
"That's easily managed," she replied. "Pay his hotel bill, and leave hima note with a nice little cheque in it to be delivered after we'vegone."
"Then we must get away quickly, or he'll suspect."
"The sooner the better."
"I noticed that there was a ship sailing from Montreal for England thisafternoon."
"That'll just suit our purpose," she said. "Friend Othniel told me hewas going to walk up Mount Royal after lunch and wouldn't be back beforesix."
"And you'll really come to Blanford?" he asked, taking her hand.
"Of course," she said. "Why should you doubt it?"
"Because," he replied, "it seems too good to be true. I was thinking,hoping, that perhaps I might persuade you to come there for good, andnever go away."
"Ah," she interrupted him, "you're not going to say that?"
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because we've been such friends," she answered, "and it's quiteimpossible."
"Are you sure?"
"Perfectly. And oh, I didn't want you to say it."
"But can't we be friends still?" he insisted.
"With all my heart, if you'll forget this mad dream. It would have beenimpossible, even if I were free. Your people would never have acceptedme, and I would only have been a drag on you."
"No, no!" he denied vehemently.
"There," she said, "we won't talk about it. You've been one of the bestfriends I ever had, and--what's in that locket you wear?"
"That?" he replied, touching a little blue-enamelled case that hung fromhis watch-chain. "It has nothing more interesting in it at present thana picture of myself. But I'd hoped--"
"Give it to me, will you," she asked, "in remembrance of to-day?"
He detached it silently from his chain, and, pressing it to his lips,placed it in her hand.
"I'll always wear it," she said.
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then, pulling himselftogether, he remarked brusquely:
"I suppose we'd better be starting for town."
"I'll join you later," she replied. "I want to go to mid-day service inthe little church next to this convent. Such a pretty little church. Iwas married there once."
"You were what? Are you really serious, Miss Arminster?"
"Perfectly," she answered, giving him a bewitching little smile as shetripped out of the garden.
PART II.
_ENGLAND_.
