"You"re in luck," he said to his friend; "she"s a charming little woman--acts in burlesques, you know."

Mrs. Holmes rose to meet them. With a keen sense of the comic side of the situation, Gobion noticed that Sturtevant had been there, his gloves were left on the table. The room was evidently arranged by a master mind. An inviting lounge shaded by a screen was placed by the red glow of the fire, the lights were carefully shaded so as not to shine too fully on the artificial beauties of the lady"s face. The cushions and chairs exhaled an odour of patchouli (Sturtevant had been round with a spray-diffuser half an hour before), and _Nana_ lay open on the table at the page where Georges is drying by the kitchen fire.

Indeed, so far had the thing been carried out, Gobion could not help thinking that something was wrong. No. 999, Queer Street was a little too visible, but the champagne had exhilarated Calvert, and he noticed nothing, and became on confidential terms with "Mrs. Holmes" in no time.

Absinthe was produced, the sickly smell irritating Gobion, who was longing to get out of the hot rooms and the _poudre d"amour_ atmosphere.

At last the telegram came. He said, "Awf"ly sorry, old man, but I must go out for half an hour; they want me to do a leaderette for to-morrow"s _Happy Despatch_ on the "spinning-house" row. I"ll be back very shortly."

He went out in a hurry to the Temple, where he found Sturtevant in evening dress, white and haggard, walking up and down the room.

They got the cheque, and Sturtevant cashed it before lunch next morning, and at one o"clock they met in Gobion"s rooms to divide the spoil. Over the meal--a dainty repast, ordered to celebrate their achievement--they were in the highest spirits. To-morrow they resolved that they would go to Cannes, or perhaps further still.

"We might do Madeira," said Sturtevant. "Think of the heat, the quivering air, the hum of the insects, ah-h!" He took a deep antic.i.p.atory breath, and as he did so the door opened and an elderly gentleman came in.

"I don"t think I have the pleasure," said Gobion, rising from his chair.

"My name is Ringwood," said the stranger quietly. Gobion flinched as if he had been struck in the face. There was a strained, tense silence, only broken by the gurgling of the champagne in Sturtevant"s gla.s.s as he raised it to his lips. Then he sneered, "Ah!" his lips curling away from his teeth.

Lord Ringwood struggled desperately to control himself. "Good G.o.d! what a d.a.m.ned couple of rascals you are!" he cried.

Gobion laughed a little sickly, pitiable laugh. "Fine day," he said.

The peer got up. "I see now what to do," he said. "I was a fool to come here. I"ll have you both in gaol this afternoon."

When he had gone, and they had heard the front door bang, Gobion jumped up and packed a portmanteau.

"Go back to the Temple," he said; "no one knows your address. I"m going to get rooms somewhere in Pimlico--till we can get further away. I"ll come to the Temple to-night."

He got into a cab and drove away. As he turned into the Embankment a piano-organ burst out with "The Dandy Coloured c.o.o.n," and the tune throbbed in his brain, keeping time to the monotonous beat of the horse"s feet on the macadam.

CHAPTER VII.

_THE CONSOLATIONS OF MRS. EBBAGE; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE REV. PETER BELPER_.

In the Vauxhall Bridge Road Gobion found a room in a lodging-house kept by a Mrs. Ebbage. In the evening of the same day he went to the Temple, but found Sturtevant"s door shut, and he received no answer to his knocks. As he was turning away he saw that something was written on a piece of paper pinned to the door.

"To Y. G.,--Note for you at the "Grecian" bar.

"M. S."

He went to the bar and got the letter, which ran:--

"MIDDLE TEMPLE.

"DEAR GOBION,--I have gone to the southern heat as we proposed, and shall soon be sailing over the siren-haunted Mediterranean. I enclose a ten-pound note in the hope that a period of enforced sobriety may tend to a worthier life for you.

"Even a wise man is sometimes happy, and I should recommend philosophy to you at this present juncture. As a matter of fact, you may be quite sure that Ringwood won"t make any move; but still, as I intend, as you know, to practise at the bar, it may be as well to go away for a time.

"If I were you I should stick to journalism; it will pay for bread and b.u.t.ter. You might even write on subjects that you know something about!

"With your appreciation of "master-strokes" you cannot but admire this my last move. To you, I am sure, the ill.u.s.trious will now become the august.

"MORDAUNT STURTEVANT."

"Yes," muttered Gobion, "he is cleverer than I am--ten pounds, out of a thousand! d.a.m.n the scoundrel!" He swore under his breath for a minute or two, but his quick wit soon grasped the humour of the situation. Though it told against him, the joke was too good to be lost, and he could not help a somewhat bitter laugh.

He went to bed when he got back, and, having nothing particular to do, lay far into the morning, listening lazily to the sounds of the house.

He heard Mrs. Ebbage shouting angrily at her children, while in the distance a tinkling piano spun out "Belle Mahone," and every half-hour or so someone on the other side of the wall knocked his pipe out against the mantelpiece.

A smell of steak and onions floated into the room.

He looked round. It was what is known as a "bed-sitter" on the ground-floor at the end of the main pa.s.sage. He got up and looked out of the window, making the discovery that the landlady and her family lived below him. Opposite the window, some four yards away, was the straight wall of the next house, while below he looked down into a deep yard into which the back door opened. It was entirely enclosed by the two houses, forming a sort of pit or well. Some children were playing in the dirt, while just below his window a rope was fastened, with some socks and a flannel shirt drying on it.

His room was furnished with the bed, a jug and basin standing on an old sugar-box painted green, an old armchair, a table, a wooden chair, and a mirror over the fire, in which a crack down the middle was repaired by a strip of paper gilded to match the frame. The walls were decorated with a black j.a.panned pipe-rack studded with pink and green stars, a medallion of the Queen stamped in bronze cardboard, and a photograph of the new Scotland Yard framed in shiny yellow wood.

For this he was to pay five-and-sixpence a week. Strangely enough the utter sordidness of the place did not strike a jarring note. He felt that he had dropped out of everything, that from henceforth he belonged to this world of Mrs. Ebbage, this Vauxhall-Bridge-Road world. After another lazy half-hour he got up and dressed, calling for the landlady when he was ready. The woman came in, carrying a tray with his breakfast. She was dirty and unkempt. Her face, where it was not black, was yellow, and stray wisps of grizzled hair blew round it--a face lined and shrewd.

"Thort you"d like an "errin"," she said. "Ebbage "ad one before "e went out. "E"s a pliceman, is Ebbage; "as "is beat down Kennington way."

"Oh, thanks very much; very nice," said Gobion, amused to see her making the bed and lighting the fire while he ate.

"Better "ave the window open," she said. "Gets a bit smelly in the mornin", don"t it?" She opened the window, breaking off her conversation to shout at one of the children in the yard. "Leave off playin" with Mr.

Belper"s socks, little nosey wretch yer; always nosin" about, little devil."

"Ah, you don"t know what kids are, you don"t. Ebbage gets cussing at them sometimes. I sez to "im, "Touch the "arp lightly, my deah! You want yer ugly "edd tappin"," I sez. It makes "im fairly med. "c.u.mmere," I sez, "call _your_self a man? c.u.mmere if you want to knock anyone about.

I could make a better yuman man than you, art of a lump o" coal." Ah, "e isn"t what "Olmes was, my first man. "E _was_ a man--big, fat, fleshy devil, makin" "is three quid a week regular. "E was always good to me; "e was fond of women. I"ve "eard "im say as a man ort to ave as many women as "e could keep."

Gobion soon got used to the woman, and even began to like her. She was kind to him in her way, saying she"d "had many a toff down on his luck with her," and she "noo the brand." He made friends with the husband--a big, black-haired man, stolid and obscene in his conversation, and they used to go to the public-house at the corner for a "drop of Scotch." Mr.

Ebbage always called it "a drop," though it would have been better for him if he had never exceeded the twopennorth that did duty for the aforesaid generic name.

After a fortnight Gobion settled down to a dull cheerless time, sordid and dreadful; and it was but rarely that a pain-flash disturbed his torpor. He used to play the old cracked piano in the evenings to the family. Mrs. Ebbage"s nieces--giggling shop girls--would come in from College Street, and he would sit, with no tie and a dirty shirt, making vulgar love to "Trot" and "f.a.n.n.y," while Ebbage read the football _Star_, and his wife cooked the sausages for supper. Sometimes in the long dull afternoons Lucy Ebbage, a girl of sixteen, used to come into his room and sit on his knee. He took a diseased pleasure in lowering himself to their level.

He was a man with a keen eye for beauty, a deep appreciation of the poetry of things, and yet for a week or two, with a strange morbid insensibility, he revelled in the manners of the vulgarest cla.s.s in London. "Human nature is much of a muchness," he said to himself. "Why give myself airs? I should make Lucy a capital husband; we could keep a fried-fish shop and be happy."

This went on for three weeks; then one evening--somewhat of the suddenest--came the reaction.

He was sitting alone on the one comfortable chair drawn up close to the fire. The dancing flames lit up the unmade bed, the remains of a chop, a heap of clothes scattered over a chair, and a pair of muddy boots drying in the fender.

It was again the after-dinner hour--an hour with the monopoly of some effects. He sat lazily smoking a pipe, half dozing, when he became conscious of a banjo playing a comic song: "And her golden hair was hanging down her back." Gradually the air took greater hold of him. The distant tw.a.n.ging seemed fraught with an undercurrent of sadness, a sub-tone of regret.

Gradually the sordid message dispelled la.s.situde, and his vivid mind began to preen itself, waking from its long sleep. First pa.s.sed away with the swing of the first line the dull December London. His mind put on wings, flying through confused memories to the first night of term, the little Oxford theatre crammed with men--all the old set, Fleming, Taylor, Robertson, Raymond, Young, "Weggie" Dibb, Scott, even Condamine.