Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  It was a dingy place, poorly furnished, but some one had dusted the table, the mantelpiece, and the small bookcase, and the fire was laid in the grate, while a bright copper kettle stood on a movable hob. Mr. Van Torp struck a match and lighted the kindling before he took off his overcoat, and in a few minutes a cheerful blaze dispelled the gathering gloom. He went to a small old-fashioned cupboard in a corner and brought from it a chipped cup and saucer, a brown teapot, and a cheap japanned tea-caddy, all of which he set on the table; and as soon as the fire burned brightly, he pushed the movable hob round with his foot till the kettle was over the flame of the coals. Then he took off his overcoat and sat down in the shabby easy-chair by the hearth, to wait till the water boiled.

  His proceedings, his manner, and his expression would have surprised the people who had been his fellow-passengers on the Leofric, and who imagined Mr. Van Torp driving to an Olympian mansion, somewhere between Constitution Hill and Sloane Square, to be received at his own door by gravely obsequious footmen in plush, and to drink Imperial Chinese tea from cups of Old Saxe, or Bleu du Roi, or Capo di Monte.

  Paul Griggs, having tea and a pipe in a quiet little hotel in Clarges Street, would have been much surprised if he could have seen Rufus Van Torp lighting a fire for himself in that dingy room in Hare Court. Madame Margarita da Cordova, waiting for an expected visitor in her own sitting-room, in her own pretty house in Norfolk Crescent, would have been very much surprised indeed. The sight would have plunged her into even greater uncertainty as to the man’s real character, and it is not unlikely that she would have taken his mysterious retreat to be another link in the chain of evidence against him which already seemed so convincing. She might naturally have wondered, too, what he had felt when he had seen that board beside the door, and she could hardly have believed that he had gone in without so much as glancing at the yellowish letters that formed the name of Bamberger.

  But he seemed quite at home where he was, and not at all uncomfortable as he sat before the fire, watching the spout of the kettle, his elbows on the arms of the easy-chair and his hands raised before him, with the finger-tips pressed against each other, in the attitude which, with most men, means that they are considering the two sides of a question that is interesting without being very important.

  Perhaps a thoughtful observer would have noticed at once that there had been no letters waiting for him when he had arrived, and would have inferred either that he did not mean to stay at the rooms twenty-four hours, or that, if he did, he had not chosen to let any one know where he was.

  Presently it occurred to him that there was no longer any light in the room except from the fire, and he rose and lit the gas. The incandescent light sent a raw glare into the farthest corners of the large room, and just then a tiny wreath of white steam issued from the spout of the kettle. This did not escape Mr. Van Torp’s watchful eye, but instead of making tea at once he looked at his watch, after which he crossed the room to the window and stood thoughtfully gazing through the panes at the fast disappearing outlines of the roofs and chimney-pots which made up the view when there was daylight outside. He did not pull down the shade before he turned back to the fire, perhaps because no one could possibly look in.

  But he poured a little hot water into the teapot, to scald it, and went to the cupboard and got another cup and saucer, and an old tobacco-tin of which the dingy label was half torn off, and which betrayed by a rattling noise that it contained lumps of sugar. The imaginary thoughtful observer already mentioned would have inferred from all this that Mr. Van Torp had resolved to put off making tea until some one came to share it with him, and that the some one might take sugar, though he himself did not; and further, as it was extremely improbable, on the face of it, that an afternoon visitor should look in by a mere chance, in the hope of finding some one in Mr. Isidore Bamberger’s usually deserted rooms, on the fourth floor of a dark building in Hare Court, the observer would suppose that Mr. Van Torp was expecting some one to come and see him just at that hour, though he had only landed in Liverpool that day, and would have been still at sea if the weather had been rough or foggy.

  All this might have still further interested Paul Griggs, and would certainly have seemed suspicious to Margaret, if she could have known about it.

  Five minutes passed, and ten, and the kettle was boiling furiously, and sending out a long jet of steam over the not very shapely toes of Mr. Van Torp’s boots, as he leaned back with his feet on the fender. He looked at his watch again and apparently gave up the idea of waiting any longer, for he rose and poured out the hot water from the teapot into one of the cups, as a preparatory measure, and took off the lid to put in the tea. But just as he had opened the caddy, he paused and listened. The door of the room leading to the entry was ajar, and as he stood by the table he had heard footsteps on the stairs, still far down, but mounting steadily.

  He went to the outer door and listened. There was no doubt that somebody was coming up; any one not deaf could have heard the sound. It was more strange that Mr. Van Torp should recognise the step, for the rooms on the other side of the landing were occupied, and a stranger would have thought it quite possible that the person who was coming up should be going there. But Mr. Van Torp evidently knew better, for he opened his door noiselessly and stood waiting to receive the visitor. The staircase below was dimly lighted by gas, but there was none at the upper landing, and in a few seconds a dark form appeared, casting a tall shadow upwards against the dingy white paint of the wall. The figure mounted steadily and came directly to the open door — a lady in a long black cloak that quite hid her dress. She wore no hat, but her head was altogether covered by one of those things which are neither hoods nor mantillas nor veils, but which serve women for any of the three, according to weather and circumstances. The peculiarity of the one the lady wore was that it cast a deep shadow over her face.

  ‘Come in,’ said Mr. Van Torp, withdrawing into the entry to make way.

  She entered and went on directly to the sitting-room, while he shut the outer door. Then he followed her, and shut the second door behind him. She was standing before the fire spreading her gloved hands to the blaze, as if she were cold. The gloves were white, and they fitted very perfectly. As he came near, she turned and held out one hand.

  ‘All right?’ he inquired, shaking it heartily, as if it had been a man’s.

  A sweet low voice answered him.

  ‘Yes — all right,’ it said, as if nothing could ever be wrong with its possessor. ‘But you?’ it asked directly afterwards, in a tone of sympathetic anxiety.

  ‘I? Oh — well—’ Mr. Van Torp’s incomplete answer might have meant anything, except that he too was ‘all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the lady gravely. ‘I read the telegram the next day. Did you get my cable? I did not think you would sail.’

  ‘Yes, I got your cable. Thank you. Well — I did sail, you see. Take off your things. The water’s boiling and we’ll have tea in a minute.’

  The lady undid the fastening at her throat so that the fur-lined cloak opened and slipped a little on her white shoulders. She held it in place with one hand, and with the other she carefully turned back the lace hood from her face, so as not to disarrange her hair. Mr. Van Torp was making tea, and he looked up at her over the teapot.

  ‘I dressed for dinner,’ she said, explaining.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Van Torp, looking at her, ‘I should think you did!’

  There was real admiration in his tone, though it was distinctly reluctant.

  ‘I thought it would save half an hour and give us more time together,’ said the lady simply.

  She sat down in the shabby easy-chair, and as she did so the cloak slipped and lay about her waist, and she gathered one side of it over her knees. Her gown was of black velvet, without so much as a bit of lace, except at the sleeves, and the only ornament she wore was a short string of very perfect pearls clasped round her handsome young throat.

  She was handsome,
to say the least. If tired ghosts of departed barristers were haunting the dingy room in Hare Court that night, they must have blinked and quivered for sheer pleasure at what they saw, for Mr. Van Torp’s visitor was a very fine creature to look at; and if ghosts can hear, they heard that her voice was sweet and low, like an evening breeze and flowing water in a garden, even in the Garden of Eden.

  She was handsome, and she was young; and above all she had the freshness, the uncontaminated bloom, the subdued brilliancy of nature’s most perfect growing things. It was in the deep clear eyes, in the satin sheen of her bare shoulders under the sordid gaslight; it was in the strong smooth lips, delicately shaded from salmon colour to the faintest peach-blossom; it was in the firm oval of her face, in the well-modelled ear, the straight throat and the curving neck; it was in her graceful attitude; it was everywhere. ‘No doubt,’ the ghosts might have said, ‘there are more beautiful women in England than this one, but surely there is none more like a thoroughbred and a Derby winner!’

  ‘You take sugar, don’t you?’ asked Mr. Van Torp, having got the lid off the old tobacco-tin with some difficulty, for it had developed an inclination to rust since it had last been moved.

  ‘One lump, please,’ said the thoroughbred, looking at the fire.

  ‘I thought I remembered,’ observed the millionaire. ‘The tea’s good,’ he added, ‘and you’ll have to excuse the cup. And there’s no cream.’

  ‘I’ll excuse anything,’ said the lady, ‘I’m so glad to be here!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to see you too,’ said Mr. Van Torp, giving her the cup. ‘Crackers? I’ll see if there’re any in the cupboard. I forgot.’

  He went to the corner again and found a small tin of biscuits, which he opened and examined under gaslight.

  ‘Mouldy,’ he observed. ‘Weevils in them, too. Sorry. Does it matter much?’

  ‘Nothing matters,’ answered the lady, sweet and low. ‘But why do you put them away if they are bad? It would be better to burn them and be done with it.’

  He was taking the box back to the cupboard.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But it always seems wicked to burn bread, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not when it’s weevilly,’ replied the thoroughbred, after sipping the hot tea.

  He emptied the contents of the tin upon the coal fire, and the room presently began to smell of mouldy toast.

  ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it’s cruel to burn weevils, I suppose. If I’d thought of that, I’d have left them alone. It’s too late now. They’re done for, poor beasts! I’m sorry. I don’t like to kill things.’

  He stared thoughtfully at the already charred remains of the holocaust, and shook his head a little. The lady sipped her tea and looked at him quietly, perhaps affectionately, but he did not see her.

  ‘You think I’m rather silly sometimes, don’t you?’ he asked, still gazing at the fire.

  ‘No,’ she answered at once. ‘It’s never silly to be kind, even to weevils.’

  ‘Thank you for thinking so,’ said Mr. Van Torp, in an oddly humble tone, and he began to drink his own tea.

  If Margaret Donne could have suddenly found herself perched among the chimney-pots on the opposite roof, and if she had then looked at his face through the window, she would have wondered why she had ever felt a perfectly irrational terror of him. It was quite plain that the lady in black velvet had no such impression.

  ‘You need not be so meek,’ she said, smiling.

  She did not laugh often, but sometimes there was a ripple in her fresh voice that would turn a man’s head. Mr. Van Torp looked at her in a rather dull way.

  ‘I believe I feel meek when I’m with you. Especially just now.’

  He swallowed the rest of his tea at a gulp, set the cup on the table, and folded his hands loosely together, his elbows resting on his knees; in this attitude he leaned forward and looked at the burning coals. Again his companion watched his hard face with affectionate interest.

  ‘Tell me just how it happened,’ she said. ‘I mean, if it will help you at all to talk about it.’

  ‘Yes. You always help me,’ he answered, and then paused. ‘I think I should like to tell you the whole thing,’ he added after an instant. ‘Somehow, I never tell anybody much about myself.’

  ‘I know.’

  She bent her handsome head in assent. Just then it would have been very hard to guess what the relations were between the oddly assorted pair, as they sat a little apart from each other before the grate. Mr. Van Torp was silent now, as if he were making up his mind how to begin.

  In the pause, the lady quietly held out her hand towards him. He saw without turning further, and he stretched out his own. She took it gently, and then, without warning, she leaned very far forward, bent over it and touched it with her lips. He started and drew it back hastily. It was as if the leaf of a flower had settled upon it, and had hovered an instant, and fluttered away in a breath of soft air.

  ‘Please don’t!’ he cried, almost roughly. ‘There’s nothing to thank me for. I’ve often told you so.’

  But the lady was already leaning back in the old easy-chair again as if she had done nothing at all unusual.

  ‘It wasn’t for myself,’ she said. ‘It was for all the others, who will never know.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather not,’ he answered. ‘It’s not worth all that. Now, see here! I’m going to tell you as near as I can what happened, and when you know you can make up your mind. You never saw but one side of me anyhow, but you’ve got to see the other sooner or later. No, I know what you’re going to say — all that about a dual nature, and Jekyll and Hyde, and all the rest of it. That may be true for nervous people, but I’m not nervous. Not at all. I never was. What I know is, there are two sides to everybody, and one’s always the business side. The other may be anything. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it cares for a woman, sometimes it’s a collector of art things, Babylonian glass, and Etruscan toys and prehistoric dolls. It may gamble, or drink, or teach a Sunday school, or read Dante, or shoot, or fish, or anything that’s of no use. But one side’s always the business side. That’s certain.’

  Mr. Van Torp paused, and looked at his companion’s empty cup. Seeing that he was going to get up in order to give her more, she herself rose quickly and did it for herself. He sat still and watched her, probably because the business side of his nature judged that he could be of no use. The fur-lined cloak was now lying in the easy-chair, and there was nothing to break the sweeping lines of the black velvet from her dazzling shoulders to her waist, to her knee, to her feet. Mr. Van Torp watched her in silence, till she sat down again.

  ‘You know me well enough to understand that,’ he said, going on. ‘My outside’s my business side, and that’s what matters most. Now the plain truth is this. My engagement to Miss Bamberger was just a business affair. Bamberger thought of it first, and suggested it to me, and he asked her if she’d mind being engaged to me for a few weeks; and she said she wouldn’t provided she wasn’t expected to marry me. That was fair and square, anyway, on both sides. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘It depends on why you did it,’ said the lady, going to the point directly.

  ‘That was the business side,’ answered her companion. ‘You see, a big thing like the Nickel Trust always has a lot of enemies, besides a heap of people who want to get some of it cheap. This time they put their heads together and got up one of the usual stories. You see, Isidore H. Bamberger is the president and I only appear as a director, though most of it’s mine. So they got up a story that he was operating on his own account to get behind me, and that we were going to quarrel over it, and there was going to be a slump, and people began to believe it. It wasn’t any use talking to the papers. We soon found that out. Sometimes the public won’t believe anything it’s told, and sometimes it swallows faster than you can feed to it. I don’t know why, though I’ve had a pretty long experience, but I generally do know which state it’s in. I feel i
t. That’s what’s called business ability. It’s like fishing. Any old fisherman can judge in half an hour whether the fish are going to bite all day or not. If he’s wrong once, he’ll be right a hundred times. Well, I felt talking was no good, and so did Bamberger, and the shares began to go down before the storm. If the big slump had come there’d have been a heap of money lost. I don’t say we didn’t let the shares drop a couple of points further than they needed to, and Bamberger bought any of it that happened to be lying around, and the more he bought the quicker it wanted to go down, because people said there was going to be trouble and an investigation. But if we’d gone on, lots of people would have been ruined, and yet we didn’t just see how to stop it sharp, till Bamberger started his scheme. Do you understand all that?’

  The lady nodded gravely.

  ‘You make it clear,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I thought it was a good scheme,’ continued her companion, ‘and as the girl said she didn’t mind, we told we were engaged. That settled things pretty quick. The shares went up again in forty-eight hours, and as we’d bought for cash we made the points, and the other people were short and lost. But when everything was all right again we got tired of being engaged, Miss Bamberger and I; and besides, there was a young fellow she’d a fancy for, and he kept writing to her that he’d kill himself, and that made her nervous, you see, and she said if it went on another day she knew she’d have appendicitis or something. So we were going to announce that the engagement was broken. And the very night before—’

  He paused. Not a muscle of the hard face moved, there was not a change in the expression of the tremendous mouth, there was not a tremor in the tone; but the man kept his eyes steadily on the fire.

  ‘Oh, well, she’s dead now, poor thing,’ he said presently. ‘And that’s what I wanted to tell you. I suppose it’s not a very pretty story, is it? But I’ll tell you one thing. Though we made a little by the turn of the market, we saved a heap of small fry from losing all they’d put in. If we’d let the slump come and then bought we should have made a pile; but then we might have had difficulty in getting the stock up to anywhere near par again for some time.’