The Lone Hand (Pain)/Chapter 6

OR a time things went very badly. My luck was right out. A point was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe. I was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies. I was quite willing to economise on food and firing, and—yes, even on dress. But I did not want to make my own bed any more. I had to get the more sordid part of the work of living done for me. Naturally I was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my luck and the lowness of my exchequer. She accepted without comment my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast if one were going to work in the morning. She said nothing when I found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room. When she came in unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather rude. Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all my kindness to her. I went into my own room to cry, and then came back and had a kipper for breakfast They were remarkably good kippers, fat and well-liking.

An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the imagination. The editors at this time sent my work back with commendable promptitude, but I did get one little story placed in Tomlinson's Magazine, which I had considered to be altogether too high for me and had only attempted in desperation. I had a mutton chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of serial that Tomlinson's Magazine would like. I planned it all out that night. Next morning I took a 'bus to the City to see the editor of Tomlinson's Magazine and tell him all about my idea.

He consented to see me. He seemed to be a very young man and very tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette smoker. An older and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and was handing him some proof-sheets for inspection.

“Cut out 'A Mother's Prayer,' and fill up with small jokes. Otherwise all right.” The fat man went out and the editor turned to me. I began to tell him my business.

“About a serial story!” he said. “All right, send it in and we'll read it.” He rose from his chair and glanced at a large, framed notice on the wall. The notice said:

I followed the glance and looked back at him. “So I can,” I said, “and I don't want to waste my time over a long story unless ] know that it has, at any rate, a chance.”

“Certainly,” he said. “Quite natural. The first few chapters and a synopsis will be enough.” He was opening the door and shaking hands with me. The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to him that after all he would let that Mother's Prayer stand. Some people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.

I got on a 'bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless. I rode on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil notes. In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that he had a strong face, full of character. A moment later I noticed that he had left his pocket-book behind him. I picked it up and dashed after him.

“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on the 'bus.” He took off his hat and looked at me keenly, with deep-set, blazing eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “My house is quite near, in the square here. I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few minutes.”

“I don't want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don't see what there is to say.”

“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.” He grinned pleasantly. “You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the blunder. But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you to understand how great it is. I shall wish very probably to speak to you on quite a different matter. We cannot talk here. Come, my name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in Berkeley-square.”

“Very well,” I said. “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable. I will come. I know your name, of course. In fact, I once met an agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”

He looked at me sharply. “Were you the honest medium?” he said.

“I was.”

“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially his wife.” I certainly had not thought so at the time. “He couldn't make out how you got mixed up with that crew. You will have to tell me that, for I can't make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”

I laughed. “Oh, I'll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.

The library of his house was on the ground floor. Every available inch of wall-space was covered with bookshelves, and when I sat down I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism. He remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.

“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance. These pages of memoranda are worth more. At any rate, there are people in the City who would have given you a good deal more for them. If you had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding your market. Don't you think you had better have slipped the book into your pocket and said nothing?”

I hated this kind of thing. “No,” I said bluntly. “Why say these things?”

He looked at me long and seriously. “You are,” he said, “in many respects exactly like Charles. Charles,” he added, “is my son. He is a singularly Quixotic young man, and at present he's in the deuce of a mess.”

What on earth was I to say to that? As I did not know, I said nothing.

“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”

“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other things—taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”

“You live alone?”

“Quite alone.”

He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do not ask from idle curiosity and, if you wish it, nothing that you say will be repeated.”

“I don't think, I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life. At the same time, I don't know why I should tell you anything.”

“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who could do it for me properly.”

“That's all right,” I said. “I want work. I'll tell you.”

I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a smile.

“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”

“He was—but I don't let you say so. You can speak quite plainly about myself.”

“Certainly,” he said. “We will begin, then, with you. You have a decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition. For the rest, you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire confidence, and you have tact. You are not, perhaps, the most perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done; but the work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better. The work concerns my son Charles. Do you know him?”

“No,” I said.

“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man. He is quixotically good. I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it. He has none. He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing. He buys cheap clothes, and, when I get angry in consequence, he tells me that these are not the things which matter. He might marry brilliantly, but he will not. He has decided to marry a poor girl who has worked for her living. I don't mind that in the least, but, if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“What's the matter with her?”

“Matter with her! Haven't I said the name—Sibyl Norton?”

“Yes, but I don't know it.”

“You don't want to know it. It's a name that gives itself away. It's obviously not a real name. It's dishonest; it's stagy; it makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”

I laughed. “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant. Is that all you've got against her?”

“No. I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance. She is quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a cart-load of monkeys. She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main chance. She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life. It is with the greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can manage to remember that she is there at all. To come to business, the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“How?”

“Any way you like. That's your affair. When I tell a clerk to get me out a statement he does not say 'How?' He knows how to do it, and he knows that I don't.”

I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don't think I care about his kind of thing.”

“Do, for Heaven's sake, sit down! I am quite serious about this. Look here; I'll give you all the help I can. Why do you suppose I had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning? It is not like a millionaire; it is especially not like me. Often and often I have had to borrow my 'bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because I have no money whatever in my pocket. I had that money with me this morning because I wanted an argument. A thousand pounds is as good an argument as I know, except more thousands. I had been down to Dingleton's, the private detective's. I meant to go in there and tell them to buy this girl off. A thousand pounds was to be the first instalment of her price. When I came there I couldn't do it. I couldn't go inside their beastly office. It was too low down on Charles. Their under-bred and under-educated agents would have made some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me. But I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy her. A discreditable past would be of very little assistance, because Charles is a quixotic fool. The more he learned that she was the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate chivalry would drive him to marry her.”

“Why should one be able to buy her off? I presume your only son is your heir?”

“He is, at present. But I can disinherit him to-morrow. That point might be made clear to Miss Norton. I think a woman of her astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”

“I don't know your son, and I don't know her.”

“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day. You can meet Miss Sibyl Norton whenever you like. For, at present, she is getting a precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist. Pretty combination, isn't it?—takes the mystery out of your hand first and then cuts your nails.”

“Very well,” I said. “I am going to see these two people. Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”

I lunched at the house that day. There were about twenty at the luncheon party, and my clothes were all wrong for it and I did not care a bit. I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that he answered fairly well to his father's description. He was noble, but vacuous. A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have been good-looking. I would have trusted him better in temptation than in a street riot. He had a great admiration for Lovelace and was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite poems. Would I permit him to send me one? I would. He scribbled my address on his shirt-cuff.

I got away from the house about three in the afternoon. Mr. Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising for not being able to let me have his carriage. “You see,” he said, “you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she knows my horses and liveries,”

I had not intended to go at once. I wanted to get home and think over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure. But, after all, it did not much matter. A hansom took me to Miss Norton's dingy lodgings in Northumberland-street. The tow-coloured aunt received me in a dusty room, and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry. “Both,” I said.

“Miss Norton's fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please. I will give you a receipt.” Then she faded out of the room, saying that Miss Norton would be down in a minute.

Miss Norton was down in a minute. She wore a theatrical tea-gown, had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to be a fairly hard case. I talked to her the whole time that she was polishing my nails. When it came to the other section of her weird business, I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.

“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said. “But I can tell you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present engaged. The second is, that you will have no success whatever in the attempt.” She broke off laughing. “I did not read that in your hand, of course. I saw you in Berkeley-square conversing earnestly with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning. The rest was easy enough to guess. Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”

I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I made a very fine figure. “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly, “why you would refuse?”

“I will tell you, but you won't believe it. Money has nothing what ever to do with the matter. If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper, it would be all the same to me. If it were necessary, I could earn enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”

“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me personally. Will you go on reading my hand, please?”

She took her revenge by giving me a remarkably bad character.

I took a hansom back to my rooms. “Take cabs everywhere when you are on my business,” Mr. Holding had said, though he seemed to prefer the 'bus himself. The bothering thing was that everybody was quite right. Mr. Holding had not exaggerated the bad points of Miss Norton's character or the weaknesses of his son. But Miss Norton, dishonest money-grubber though she was, was perfectly sincere in her attachment to Charles Holding and was not to be influenced by money in that particular. The position was impossible of solution, and I decided that I had nothing to do but to call on Mr. Wentworth Holding on the following day and tell him so.

I did not find the volume of poems awaiting me, and had not expected to find it; but there was a letter in my letter-box which began by explaining why it had not arrived. Mr. Charles Holding had wished to have it put into a rather more suitable dress before it was presented to me. His letter went on to say that his meeting with me had been a revelation to him. It had compelled him to break off his engagement. It was not a time to hesitate. Whatever might be the attractions of the woman whom he had once meant to marry, she had not the high ideals, the quixotic spirit, the chivalrous devotion to all that is best, which he had found in me. (Naturally, in talking to him, I had humoured him a little in what I knew to be his bent. I even saw that I had made some impression on him, but this was too astounding.) The letter went on in rather enraptured terms to speak of the loveliness of my hair, and to propose marriage to me.

So the game had, of its own accord, dropped neatly into my hand. I refused Mr. Charles Holding in writing, and immediately by the same post transmitted to his father Charles Holding's letter to me. The queer thing about the whole business in the eyes of Mr. Wentworth Holding was that Miss Sibyl Norton did not bring an action for breach of promise and scornfully refused the extremely handsome solatium which was suggested to her. But this did not surprise me.

I had to show a certain amount of conscience myself, or I should have been made rich and unhappy, for Mr. Wentworth Holding's gratitude was extreme. Even as it was, I was enabled to feel myself out of all danger of such privations as I had recently suffered for the next year or two.