The stranger laughed. “Surely you are not old.”
“I'm thirty-nine,” snapped out Miss Kite. “You don't call it young?”
“I think it a beautiful age,” insisted the stranger; “young enough not to have lost the joy of youth, old enough to have learnt sympathy.”
“Oh, I daresay,” returned Miss Kite, “any age you'd think beautiful. I'm going to bed.” Miss Kite rose. The paper fan had somehow got itself broken. She threw the fragments into the fire.
“It is early yet,” pleaded the stranger, “I was looking forward to a talk with you.”
“Well, you'll be able to look forward to it,” retorted Miss Kite. “Good-night.”
The truth was, Miss Kite was impatient to have a look at herself in the glass, in her own room with the door shut. The vision of that other Miss Kite—the clean-looking lady of the pale face and the brown hair had been so vivid, Miss Kite wondered whether temporary forgetfulness might not have fallen upon her while dressing for dinner that evening.
The stranger, left to his own devices, strolled towards the loo table, seeking something to read.
“You seem to have frightened away Miss Kite,” remarked the lady who was cousin to a baronet.
“It seems so,” admitted the stranger.
“My cousin, Sir William Bosster,” observed the crocheting lady, “who married old Lord Egham's niece—you never met the Eghams?”
“Hitherto,” replied the stranger, “I have not had that pleasure.”
“A charming family. Cannot understand—my cousin Sir William, I mean, cannot understand my remaining here. 'My dear Emily'—he says the same thing every time he sees me: 'My dear Emily, how can you exist among the sort of people one meets with in a boarding-house.' But they amuse me.”
A sense of humour, agreed the stranger, was always of advantage.
“Our family on my mother's side,” continued Sir William's cousin in her placid monotone, “was connected with the Tatton-Joneses, who when King George the Fourth—” Sir William's cousin, needing another reel of cotton, glanced up, and met the stranger's gaze.
“I'm sure I don't know why I'm telling you all this,” said Sir William's cousin in an irritable tone. “It can't possibly interest you.”
“Everything connected with you interests me,” gravely the stranger assured her.
“It is very kind of you to say so,” sighed Sir William's cousin, but without conviction; “I am afraid sometimes I bore people.”
The polite stranger refrained from contradiction.
“You see,” continued the poor lady, “I really am of good family.”
“Dear lady,” said the stranger, “your gentle face, your gentle voice, your gentle bearing, all proclaim it.”
She looked without flinching into the stranger's eyes, and gradually a smile banished the reigning dulness of her features.
“How foolish of me.” She spoke rather to herself than to the stranger. “Why, of course, people—people whose opinion is worth troubling about—judge of you by what you are, not by what you go about saying you are.”
The stranger remained silent.
“I am the widow of a provincial doctor, with an income of just two hundred and thirty pounds per annum,” she argued. “The sensible thing for me to do is to make the best of it, and to worry myself about these high and mighty relations of mine as little as they have ever worried themselves about me.”
The stranger appeared unable to think of anything worth saying.
“I have other connections,” remembered Sir William's cousin; “those of my poor husband, to whom instead of being the 'poor relation' I could be the fairy god-mama. They are my people—or would be,” added Sir William's cousin tartly, “if I wasn't a vulgar snob.”
She flushed the instant she had said the words and, rising, commenced preparations for a hurried departure.
“Now it seems I am driving you away,” sighed the stranger.
“Having been called a 'vulgar snob,'” retorted the lady with some heat, “I think it about time I went.”
“The words were your own,” the stranger reminded her.
“Whatever I may have thought,” remarked the indignant dame, “no lady—least of all in the presence of a total stranger—would have called herself—” The poor dame paused, bewildered. “There is something very curious the matter with me this evening, that I cannot understand,” she explained, “I seem quite unable to avoid insulting myself.”
Still surrounded by bewilderment, she wished the stranger good-night, hoping that when next they met she would be more herself. The stranger, hoping so also, opened the door and closed it again behind her.
“Tell me,” laughed Miss Devine, who by sheer force of talent was contriving to wring harmony from the reluctant piano, “how did you manage to do it? I should like to know.”
“How did I do what?” inquired the stranger.
“Contrive to get rid so quickly of those two old frumps?”
“How well you play!” observed the stranger. “I knew you had genius for music the moment I saw you.”
“How could you tell?”
“It is written so clearly in your face.”
The girl laughed, well pleased. “You seem to have lost no time in studying my face.”
“It is a beautiful and interesting face,” observed the stranger.
She swung round sharply on the stool and their eyes met.
“You can read faces?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, what else do you read in mine?”
“Frankness, courage—”
“Ah, yes, all the virtues. Perhaps. We will take them for granted.” It was odd how serious the girl had suddenly become. “Tell me the reverse side.”
“I see no reverse side,” replied the stranger. “I see but a fair girl, bursting into noble womanhood.”
“And nothing else? You read no trace of greed, of vanity, of sordidness, of—” An angry laugh escaped her lips. “And you are a reader of faces!”
“A reader of faces.” The stranger smiled. “Do you know what is written upon yours at this very moment? A love of truth that is almost fierce, scorn of lies, scorn of hypocrisy, the desire for all things pure, contempt of all things that are contemptible—especially of such things as are contemptible in woman. Tell me, do I not read aright?”
I wonder, thought the girl, is that why those two others both hurried from the room? Does everyone feel ashamed of the littleness that is in them when looked at by those clear, believing eyes of yours?
The idea occurred to her: “Papa seemed to have a good deal to say to you during dinner. Tell me, what were you talking about?”
“The military looking gentleman upon my left? We talked about your mother principally.”
“I am sorry,” returned the girl, wishful now she had not asked the question. “I was hoping he might have chosen another topic for the first evening!”
“He did try one or two,” admitted the stranger; “but I have been about the world so little, I was glad when he talked to me about himself. I feel we shall be friends. He spoke so nicely, too, about Mrs. Devine.”
“Indeed,” commented the girl.
“He told me he had been married for twenty years and had never regretted it but once!”
Her black eyes flashed upon him, but meeting his, the suspicion died from them. She turned aside to hide her smile.
“So he regretted it—once.”
“Only once,” explained the stranger, “in a passing irritable mood. It was so frank of him to admit it. He told me—I think he has taken a liking to me. Indeed he hinted as much. He said he did not often get an opportunity of talking to a man like myself—he told me that he and your mother, when they travel together, are always mistaken for a honeymoon couple. Some of the experiences he related to me were really quite amusing.” The stranger laughed at recollection of them—“that even here, in this place, they are generally referred to as 'Darby and Joan.'”
“Yes,” said the girl, “that is true. Mr. Longcord gave them that name, the second evening after our arrival. It was considered clever—but rather obvious I thought myself.”
“Nothing—so it seems to me,” said the stranger, “is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The sweet, tender blossom that flowers in the heart of the young—in hearts such as yours—that, too, is beautiful. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer.”
“You seem to find all things beautiful,” the girl grumbled.
“But are not all things beautiful?” demanded the stranger.
The Colonel had finished his paper. “You two are engaged in a very absorbing conversation,” observed the Colonel, approaching them.
“We were discussing Darbies and Joans,” explained his daughter. “How beautiful is the love that has weathered the storms of life!”
“Ah!” smiled the Colonel, “that is hardly fair. My friend has been repeating to cynical youth the confessions of an amorous husband's affection for his middle-aged and somewhat—” The Colonel in playful mood laid his hand upon the stranger's shoulder, an action that necessitated his looking straight into the stranger's eyes. The Colonel drew himself up stiffly and turned scarlet.
Somebody was calling the Colonel a cad. Not only that, but was explaining quite clearly, so that the Colonel could see it for himself, why he was a cad.
“That you and your wife lead a cat and dog existence is a disgrace to both of you. At least you might have the decency to try and hide it from the world—not make a jest of your shame to every passing stranger. You are a cad, sir, a cad!”
Who was daring to say these things? Not the stranger, his lips had not moved. Besides, it was not his voice. Indeed it sounded much more like the voice of the Colonel himself. The Colonel looked from the stranger to his daughter, from his daughter back to the stranger. Clearly they had not heard the voice—a mere hallucination. The Colonel breathed again.
Yet the impression remaining was not to be shaken off. Undoubtedly it was bad taste to have joked to the stranger upon such a subject. No gentleman would have done so.
But then no gentleman would have permitted such a jest to be possible. No gentleman would be forever wrangling with his wife—certainly never in public. However irritating the woman, a gentleman would have exercised self-control.
Mrs. Devine had risen, was coming slowly across the room. Fear laid hold of the Colonel. She was going to address some aggravating remark to him—he could see it in her eye—which would irritate him into savage retort.
Even this prize idiot of a stranger would understand why boarding-house wits had dubbed them “Darby and Joan,” would grasp the fact that the gallant Colonel had thought it amusing, in conversation with a table acquaintance, to hold his own wife up to ridicule.
“My dear,” cried the Colonel, hurrying to speak first, “does not this room strike you as cold? Let me fetch you a shawl.”
It was useless: the Colonel felt it. It had been too long the custom of both of them to preface with politeness their deadliest insults to each other. She came on, thinking of a suitable reply: suitable from her point of view, that is. In another moment the truth would be out. A wild, fantastic possibility flashed through the Colonel's brain: If to him, why not to her?
“Letitia,” cried the Colonel, and the tone of his voice surprised her into silence, “I want you to look closely at our friend. Does he not remind you of someone?”
Mrs. Devine, so urged, looked at the stranger long and hard. “Yes,” she murmured, turning to her husband, “he does, who is it?”
“I cannot fix it,” replied the Colonel; “I thought that maybe you would remember.”
“It will come to me,” mused Mrs. Devine. “It is someone—years ago, when I was a girl—in Devonshire. Thank you, if it isn't troubling you, Harry. I left it in the dining-room.”
It was, as Mr. Augustus Longcord explained to his partner Isidore, the colossal foolishness of the stranger that was the cause of all the trouble. “Give me a man, who can take care of himself—or thinks he can,” declared Augustus Longcord, “and I am prepared to give a good account of myself. But when a helpless baby refuses even to look at what you call your figures, tells you that your mere word is sufficient for him, and hands you over his cheque-book to fill up for yourself—well, it isn't playing the game.”
“Auguthuth,” was the curt comment of his partner, “you're a fool.”
“All right, my boy, you try,” suggested Augustus.
“Jutht what I mean to do,” asserted his partner.
“Well,” demanded Augustus one evening later, meeting Isidore ascending the stairs after a long talk with the stranger in the dining-room with the door shut.
“Oh, don't arth me,” retorted Isidore, “thilly ath, thath what he ith.”
“What did he say?”
“What did he thay! talked about the Jewth: what a grand rathe they were—how people mithjudged them: all that thort of rot.”
“Thaid thome of the motht honorable men he had ever met had been Jewth. Thought I wath one of 'em!”
“Well, did you get anything out of him?”
“Get anything out of him. Of courthe not. Couldn't very well thell the whole rathe, ath it were, for a couple of hundred poundth, after that. Didn't theem worth it.”
There were many things Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square came gradually to the conclusion were not worth the doing—Snatching at the gravy; pouncing out of one's turn upon the vegetables and helping oneself to more than one's fair share; manoeuvering for the easy-chair; sitting on the evening paper while pretending not to have seen it—all such-like tiresome bits of business. For the little one made out of it, really it was not worth the bother. Grumbling everlastingly at one's food; grumbling everlastingly at most things; abusing Pennycherry behind her back; abusing, for a change, one's fellow-boarders; squabbling with one's fellow-boarders about nothing in particular; sneering at one's fellow-boarders; talking scandal of one's fellow-boarders; making senseless jokes about one's fellow-boarders; talking big about oneself, nobody believing one—all such-like vulgarities. Other boarding-houses might indulge in them: Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square had its dignity to consider.
The truth is, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming to a very good opinion of itself: for the which not Bloomsbury Square so much as the stranger must be blamed. The stranger had arrived at Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square with the preconceived idea—where obtained from Heaven knows—that its seemingly commonplace, mean-minded, coarse-fibred occupants were in reality ladies and gentlemen of the first water; and time and observation had apparently only strengthened this absurd idea. The natural result was, Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square was coming round to the stranger's opinion of itself.
Mrs. Pennycherry, the stranger would persist in regarding as a lady born and bred, compelled by circumstances over which she had no control to fill an arduous but honorable position of middle-class society—a sort of foster-mother, to whom were due the thanks and gratitude of her promiscuous family; and this view of herself Mrs. Pennycherry now clung to with obstinate conviction. There were disadvantages attaching, but these Mrs. Pennycherry appeared prepared to suffer cheerfully. A lady born and bred cannot charge other ladies and gentlemen for coals and candles they have never burnt; a foster-mother cannot palm off upon her children New Zealand mutton for Southdown. A mere lodging-house-keeper can play these tricks, and pocket the profits. But a lady feels she cannot: Mrs. Pennycherry felt she no longer could.
To the stranger Miss Kite was a witty and delightful conversationalist of most attractive personality. Miss Kite had one failing: it was lack of vanity. She was unaware of her own delicate and refined beauty. If Miss Kite could only see herself with his, the stranger's eyes, the modesty that rendered her distrustful of her natural charms would fall from her. The stranger was so sure of it Miss Kite determined to put
it to the test. One evening, an hour before dinner, there entered the drawing-room, when the stranger only was there and before the gas was lighted, a pleasant, good-looking lady, somewhat pale, with neatly-arranged brown hair, who demanded of the stranger if he knew her. All her body was trembling, and her voice seemed inclined to run away from her and become a sob. But when the stranger, looking straight into her eyes, told her that from the likeness he thought she must be Miss Kite's younger sister, but much prettier, it became a laugh instead: and that evening the golden-haired Miss Kite disappeared never to show her high-coloured face again; and what perhaps, more than all else, might have impressed some former habitue of Forty-eight Bloomsbury Square with awe, it was that no one in the house made even a passing inquiry concerning her.
Sir William's cousin the stranger thought an acquisition to any boarding-house. A lady of high-class family! There was nothing outward or visible perhaps to tell you that she was of high-class family. She herself, naturally, would not mention the fact, yet somehow you felt it. Unconsciously she set a high-class tone, diffused an atmosphere of gentle manners. Not that the stranger had said this in so many words; Sir William's cousin gathered that he thought it, and felt herself in agreement with him.
For Mr. Longcord and his partner, as representatives of the best type of business men, the stranger had a great respect. With what unfortunate results to themselves has been noted. The curious thing is that the Firm appeared content with the price they had paid for the stranger's good opinion—had even, it was rumoured, acquired a taste for honest men's respect—that in the long run was likely to cost them dear. But we all have our pet extravagance.
The Colonel and Mrs. Devine both suffered a good deal at first from the necessity imposed upon them of learning, somewhat late in life, new tricks. In the privacy of their own apartment they condoled with one another.
“Tomfool nonsense,” grumbled the Colonel, “you and I starting billing and cooing at our age!”
“What I object to,” said Mrs. Devine, “is the feeling that somehow I am being made to do it.”
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