Apples of Gold

by Warwick Deeping

  "We have got to find her," he said.

  "Yes, and where?"

  They walked straight on down the moonlit road, conscious of all that the question suggested, and the possible horror that might have to be faced.

  "St. Croix," said Jordan suddenly, "let us have it out. Where do you think she is?"

  St. Croix gave a jerk of the head like a man struck in the throat.

  "Do you want me to tell you? Damn it, you can guess as well as I can! And it is not a pleasant guess."

  "It has to be faced."

  "All right. When a pretty girl disappears in London! Well, what next? Where do you look? Where did old Marwick's thoughts go—at once?"

  Jordan's face was grim.

  "Drury Lane, or somewhere like it!"

  "Exactly."

  "Good God, man, do you really think——"

  Again St. Croix gave that jerk of the head.

  "Didn't you say we had to face it! I—am—facing it, and be damned to you."

  They walked on, while in the dining-room of his house at Tottenham Mr. Marwick took snuff, and snapped his fingers and jigged up and down on his toes. He had fooled the fellows, and fooled them very prettily, meeting them with such an air of deep concern and of candour that he had left them nothing to do but to go away. "Damaged goods," eh? Let them send the crier round for a lost girl. "O—yes, O yes!" But they would not find her. It would be Mr. Marwick who would find her, the faithful Mr. Marwick, the shrewd Mr. Marwick who knew half the rogues within two miles of Seven Dials. Surely he would be rewarded? What a noble gesture! "My poor child, come to my heart. Your virtue shall be mended." Yes, the proper dramatic setting, with Mr. Sylvester waiting to bless them, and a certain notorious person hired for the occasion being gloriously and safely sick in a Rye fishing-boat, but with money in his pocket. Yes, everything was nicely adjusted. A stale, old trick was sometimes the best.

  Mr. Marwick was pleased. He drank a hot posset and went comfortably to bed.

  "She'll be mine," he thought, "before a month is out. Why, bless me, I'll rush her into marrying me in that rogue Rudd's house. She'll be in hysterics; she'll clutch to me. I know women. She'll play for safety, the little sleek, red-headed beauty. Lord, I am mad about her, I am that!"

  Jordan reached home a little before midnight, to find Mrs. Mary sitting up for him. He had left St. Croix knocking up constables, and worrying justices who had gone to bed. Jordan looked very grave. He knew his London well enough to realize that St. Croix's fears were likely to be justified.

  Mrs. Mary waited to hear what Jordan had to say.

  "No luck, mother."

  "O, my dear, what do you think has happened?"

  He did not tell her what he feared, but he guessed that she was as wise as he was.

  "You'll be going to bed, Jordan. You can do no more to-night."

  "No. This is just the time to begin."

  Supper had been left on the table, and he sat down and made a meal. Mrs. Mary sat and watched him with the sleepless eyes of a woman whose emotions were deeply involved, but she did not worry him with questions. He did not hurry his meal. He seemed to be thinking while he used his knife and fork, and when he had finished, he got up and put on his hat and cloak.

  "Go to bed, mother. I may be out all night."

  He knew where to go and what to do, and while Maurice was worrying at the coat-tails of the law, Jordan went straight to the underworld, for it is in the underworld that one may learn what the law-dogs do not know. He made for Teg Toplady's. He found the place just as he had known it in his Nancy Sweethaw's days. There was the same big bully of an Irishman at the door, a little redder in the face and more swollen about the body. Old Toplady was in his usual chair, mouse-coloured with little bright eyes. The room was full of noise, and heat, and drink and women.

  Jordan sat down and drank. He kept his eyes on old Toplady. And Toplady had eyes for everything and a brain that picked the very bones of life as he saw it in his night-house. He looked once or twice at Jordan, smiled a faint crinkle of a smile, and ended by nodding. He knew that Jordan wished to speak to him.

  Presently Mr. Toplady got up and went towards a door at the far end of the room. He did not look at Jordan, and Jordan waited a moment before following him.

  He found old Toplady in a little room with two very strong doors, and an iron box under a table in one corner. A candle burned on the table. Mr. Toplady was sitting on a leather-seated chair.

  "Well—Mr. March, what can I do for you?"

  Jordan told him.

  "You will be the richer by a hundred guineas, sir, and so will the person who tips me the wink."

  "I know nothing about it, Mr. March."

  "I dare say not. But you are the most likely man to put me in the way of finding it."

  Mr. Toplady passed a dry tongue across his lips.

  "It's a good fee. I'll set one or two of my ladies on the work. And one or two of my young rats. Will you be doing anything yourself, Mr. March?"

  "I think so," said Jordan; "you can give me a list of every likely place you know of."

  Mr. Toplady looked at him quickly.

  "O, come, sir, I can't do that."

  "I think you can, Mr. Toplady. I'll pay for it, and I'll not give you away."

  For three days Jordan was not seen inside the fencing-school. Sometimes he came in to his meals, sometimes he did not. He looked tired but extraordinarily determined, like a runner who had set himself some goal that might yet lie a long way ahead. He was out at nights, and no one knew where he went, but Meg saw him come in one morning with hard eyes, unshaven, and with a little red mark over one eye. He went to his room, and when Meg took up his shaving water, she heard him making a splashing like some big thing in a passion to get clean. St. Croix came and went. He would sit for a while with Mrs. Mary, a restless figure, thin lipped, fierce of nostril. He wore a sword, and was always fingering the hilt of it, even while he was talking. Then he would start up and fling out of the house, banging the doors after him, and walking as though he had lost something and could not find it.

  Mrs. Mary looked pinched and troubled. She did not know where Jordan went to search for Douce, but she could guess at his adventures, and the fact that Tom Nando knew and would not tell her what he knew, added to her feeling of fear and of horror. She was a very clean woman and in her way a very gentle one. She shrank from an ugliness which she divined, but had never experienced. It was horrible, and it haunted her.

  When Jordan came in to his rare meals she stole half-frightened glances at him, glances that shrank and yet were deeply tender. He said very little. His eyes had a hard look. Once or twice she noticed marks on his face that made her suspect that he had been fighting. He and Tom Nando seemed to understand each other, and this silent understanding of theirs hurt and exasperated her. She felt that the thing was so bad that they would not let her share it.

  Five days passed. Jordan still came and went with the same hard look in his eyes.

  And then something happened.

  Jordan had sat down to his supper when a half-grown scrag of a boy crossed the court and knocked at the Nandos' door. Meg went to it, and came in with a message.

  "A young rascal to see Mr. Jordan. He says he won't see no one else."

  Jordan got up from the table and went to the door. He returned a minute later with a little roll of paper in his hand, and bending down to one of the candles read what was scrawled on it.

  "Try No. 7, Red Alley, off Drury Lane. A man named Rudd lives there. Be careful."

  Jordan said nothing, but went to his room and slipped a brace of small pistols into the flap pockets of his coat. Mrs. Mary was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

  "Jordan—lad—must you go?"

  Jordan patted her arm.

  "Mother—you will have that room ready. It may be needed."

  "Pray God it will," said she.

  Red Alley was a narrow little street of high, pinched houses, and No. 7 lay at the farther
end of it, with its windows looking north. Jordan passed and repassed the house twice, noticing that the windows were lit up and the curtains drawn, and that the house had an air of quiet and respectable sedateness. Red Alley owed nothing to its name, being quite a dull and unadventurous haberdasher of a street, with nothing very red about it, but then, of course—as Jordan knew—a grey petticoat may hide flesh-coloured stockings. He looked up the street and down it, saw a dusting of stars between the houses, and a black cat on a roof with its back arched and its tail in the air.

  He walked to the door and knocked. It was a sleek and glistening door, but Jordan felt that he would discover more about the door and the people behind it by the way his knock was answered. For there are various ways of opening a door, a whole language in the doing of it.

  But instead of the door being opened a window was thrown up.

  "Hallo! What do you want down there?"

  It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant voice, and it sent a queer thrill through Jordan.

  "I have a message for you."

  "What is it?"

  "Come down and I'll tell you."

  He put a suggested caution into his voice, and the man up above, after looking at him suspiciously, closed the window and disappeared. Jordan heard footsteps in the passage, but the door remained shut.

  "What's your name?" asked the voice.

  "Smith."

  "And your business?"

  "I don't stand in the street to talk business, after coming all the way from Tottenham."

  Jordan heard the bolts pulled back. That one word "Tottenham" had served as an open sesame; it had made him suspect that Mr. Toplady's message had been no shot in the dark. And as he listened to the drawing of those bolts the balked rage of days seemed to rush to a head in him.

  "Come inside," said a cautious voice.

  Jordan found himself in a lighted passage. The man had closed and rebolted the door, and was standing with his back to the wall, and looking at Jordan. He had a long, narrow face, the colour of tallow, and a crooked nose that had been broken years ago by someone's fist. He stood there as though he were expecting Jordan to say something, to give him some message. His face had begun by being cunning and expectant, but suddenly it took on an expression of menace and of fear. He had seen this big man before; he knew him.

  Jordan had been watching the fellow's eyes as he would have watched the eyes of an enemy with a sword. He saw the man's mouth open as though to call for help; a hand made a dive for a coat pocket.

  "Jack—Jack!"

  Jordan struck with all his strength, and struck him so heavily that the fellow's head was dashed against the wall. He made a sobbing noise and crumpled down on the floor, and Jordan put his foot on his throat while he pulled back the door-bolts.

  There was a candlestick on the table, and he was in the act of picking it up when he heard the creaking of the stairs. He looked up and saw two men bending forward and staring at him; they had crept down in their stockings, and their scared, fierce faces seemed to strain forward out of the darkness. Instantly he was at them. One of the men had a knife, but Jordan flung the candlestick in his face, and catching him by the ankle brought him down with a crash. The other fellow sprang on him, only to be tossed over his back into the passage below. For one short minute Jordan let his madness go. He picked up the man with the knife and dashed him upon the floor, and catching the other fellow as warily he came down stairs again, he held him pinned against the wall with one hand at his throat while he battered him into senselessness. Then there was silence, save for a little groaning.

  Jordan went on. He meant to begin at the top of the house, and to work downwards. Some instinct seemed to be leading him. He reached a little landing under the roof and saw two doors, one on each side of him.

  He tried one. It opened, and an astonished wench with her hair in papers stared at him from the bed.

  Jordan pointed his pistol at her.

  "There is someone in that other room?"

  "O, sir, please, sir, there is."

  "A lady with red hair?"

  "It be red, sir, I believe, sir."

  Jordan closed the door and went to the other. It was locked, and the key had been taken away. He set the candle on the floor, put his shoulder to the door, and burst it in.

  The light from the candlestick on the floor showed him someone crouching in a corner of the room.

  "Douce," he said gently, "Douce. It is Jordan."

  It seemed to him quite a long while before the figure moved. He saw its white face, and the gleam of red in the loose hair. The eyes were two circles of blackness. And then, suddenly, it rose and came to him with quick, breathless steps, like a wounded bird fluttering.

  "O—Jordan, dear Jordan...."

  He caught her, and she clung to him, her eyes closed, her face all puckered with the anguish of her emotion.

  "There, there—I am taking you home, to my home."

  "Yes, take me away. O—this horror!"

  He took her in his arms and carried her down the stairs, over the prostrate bodies of the bullies, and out into the street, and all the while she was trembling, and he could feel the quick beating of her heart. She was but half-dressed, and his cloak had been torn off in the struggle, but he set her down for a moment and went in and recovered it from the passage, for someone had brought a lighted candle out on to the stairs. One of the bullies sat up and stared at him in a dazed way. The man's face was all blood.

  Jordan wrapped his cloak round Douce.

  "I'll carry you, dear," he said.

  XXXV

  Jordan saw the stars shining over Spaniards Court. The clocks had struck midnight, and he had been walking up and down the courtyard for more than an hour. Old Cust, who inhabited one of the other houses in the court, and who was trying to get to sleep, arose and cursed him.

  "Hallo! Who the devil?"

  "It is Jordan March, Mr. Cust."

  "Oh, it is you, March. You have mighty heavy shoes, my man. Why don't you get to bed?"

  "Am I keeping you awake?"

  "O, not at all, not at all!"

  "I'll take my shoes off," said Jordan.

  Old Cust thought he was being ironical, and banged the lattice, shaking out one of the squares, which fell tinkling on the stones; but Jordan took off his shoes, placed them on Tom Nando's doorstep, and continued his perambulations round Spaniards Court. Often his eyes lifted to a particular window which had been lit up for the last two hours. Douce and Mrs. Mary were there in that room, two women together, holding fast to each other. Jordan had heard the murmur of voices, the sound of a girl weeping, a broken, bitter sound. There had been long silences, and he had waited. He had known for two hours now that some invisible hand was pushing him towards a poignant choosing.

  And he did not wish to choose. A week ago it might have seemed so easy, the taking of a little woman by the hand, the speaking of those simple words: "Douce, I want you, will you marry me?" He realized now that his love had been the love of resignation, a shutting of the door upon a part of life that had tantalized and balked him, but now that door stood open. He looked through it and saw another world, a larger world, a little mysterious, lit by a more brilliant sun, surrounded by a more stimulating atmosphere. It was her world, Mrs. Merris's world, and she had opened the door of it to him and had beckoned. He knew now that he wanted to pass through that doorway, and to try his fortune in that larger world. He loved her, and with a love that was deep and strange and enduring. Those two hours under the stars had taught him that. Pity even could not cloud the crisis that had come upon him, the vivid memory of a trembling girl clinging to him, her little body warm and quivering in his arms. He did not wish to choose, even while he knew that the choice was being forced upon him. He wanted to stand awhile at that open door, looking through it into that other world where Mrs. Mariana walked up and down like a great lady in some very stately garden, a garden of great trees and masses of sunlight and of shadow, where broad stairways
led down to smooth lawns and fountains made a soft noise and a plumed glittering. The unknown lured him, the call of strange seas, the light beyond the hills, the deeps of untrodden forests. And she was the human figure in that more mysterious world, waiting for him, challenging him. "Come, climb, set your sails, mount your horse; I will show you greater adventures. Will you be no more than a fencing-master teaching other men to do indifferently what you do so well? Will you sit down like an old man before the fire when the great red sun is rising over the sea? Come! Gird yourself, climb, dare. I have opened the door to you."

  He leaned with his back against the wall and looked at the lighted window.

  Douce was there, a little thing who had fluttered to him like a wounded bird, and had hidden her flinching face against his shoulder. Ashamed, and shuddering with the shame of it, helplessly compromised, and yet innocent! He remembered the blows he had given those men, the pulped flesh under his fist, and he was glad. But the grim fury that spilled over in the memory of it was a mere overflow, flood-water escaping. He had to think of Douce and yet remain himself.

  It was easy and it was difficult. Jordan was aware of passionate repulsion and of an equally passionate and strange attraction. What unspeakable thing had happened to her? Good God! It provoked him most strangely. He had a sudden desire to give with tenderness all that had been given with violence. He wanted to replace the beast with the lover, to heal, to hold, to envelop her with a beautiful ardour. He felt her acceptance, her kisses, the little clinging ecstasy, her breathless cry of "Jordan, O—Jordan!" He wanted to wipe away an outrage with a sacrament.

  As he stood there he seemed drawn by two forces. They balanced; they seemed equal; they held him poised, undecided, hesitating.

  There remained—pity.

  Yes, pity which stood between him and that open door, and held the torch while those two other forces struggled together in an equal conflict, pity and the fierce emotions and generosities that it inspired. He leaned against the wall, feeling things more than knowing them, conscious of being slowly impelled towards an act of positive goodness. Douce needed him; she needed him most desperately. Mrs. Merris had the whole world at her feet.