Morals of Marcus Ordeyne — Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
May 24th.
Something has happened.
Something fantastic, inconceivable.
I am in a condition to be surprised at nothing.
If a witch on a broomstick rode in through my open window and lectured me on quaternions, I should accept her visit as a normal occurrence.
I have spent hours walking up and down this book-lined room, wondering whether the universe or I were mad.
Sometimes I laughed, for the thing is sheerly ridiculous.
Sometimes I cursed at the impertinence of the thing in happening at all.
Once I stumbled over a volume of Muratori lying on the floor, and I kicked it across the room.
Then I took it up, and wept over the loosened binding.
The question is: What on earth am I to do?
Why has Judith chosen this particular time to shut up her flat and sequester herself in Paris?
Why did my lawyers appoint this particular morning for me to sign their silly documents?
Why did I turn up three hours late?
Why did I walk down the Thames Embankment?
And why, oh, why, did I seat myself on a bench in the gardens below the terrace of the National Liberal Club?
Yesterday was one of the most peaceful and happy days of my existence.
I
worked contentedly at my history; I gossiped with Antoinette who came to demand permission to keep a cat.
“What kind of a cat?
” I asked.
“Perhaps Monsieur does not like cats?
” she inquired, anxiously.
“The cat was worshipped as a god by the ancient Egyptians,” I remarked.
“But this one, Monsieur,” she said in breathless reassurance, “has only one eye.
” I would sooner talk to Antoinette than the tutorial staff of Girton.
If she woke up one morning and found she had a mind she would think it a disease.
In the afternoon I strolled into Regent’s Park and meeting the McMurray’s nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around whom seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat, I took him off to the Zoological Gardens.
On the way he told me, with great glee, that his German governess was in bed with an awful sore throat; that he wasn’t doing any lessons; that the sheepish hoverer was Milly’s young man, and that the silly way they went on was enough to make one sick.
When he had fed everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I drove him to the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents.
I
love a couple of hours with a child when it is thoroughly happy and on its best behaviour.
And the enjoyment is enhanced by the feeling of utter thankfulness that he is not my child, but somebody else’s. In the evening I read and meditated on the happiness of my lot.
The years of school drudgery have already lost their sharp edge of remembered definition, and sometimes I wonder whether it is I who lived through them.
I had not a care in the world, not a want that I could not gratify.
I thought of Judith.
I thought of Sebastian Pasquale.
I
amused myself by seeking a Renaissance type of which he must be the reincarnation.
I fixed upon young Olgiati, one of the assassins of Gian Galeazzo Sforza.
Of the many hundreds of British youths who passed before my eyes during my slavery, he is the only one who has sought me out in his manhood.
And strange to say we had only a few months together, during my first year’s apprenticeship to the dismal craft, he being in the sixth form, and but three or four years younger than I. He was the maddest, oddest, most diabolical and most unpopular boy in the school.
The staff, to whom the conventional must of necessity be always the Divine, loathed him.
I alone took to the creature.
I think now that my quaint passion for the cinquecento Italian must have had something to do with my attraction.
In externals he is as English as I am, having been brought up in England by an English mother, but there are thousands of Hindoos who are more British than he.
The McMurrays were telling me dreadful stories about him this afternoon.
Sighing after an obdurate Viennese dancer, he had lured her coachman into helpless intoxication, had invested himself in the domestic’s livery, and had driven off with the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town.
What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was the devil to pay in Vienna.
And yet this inconsequent libertine did the following before my own eyes.
We were walking down Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost, agonizingly cold.
A shivering wretch held out matches for sale.
His hideous red toes protruded through his boots.
“My God, my God!
” cried Pasquale, “I can’t stand this!
” He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore off his own boots, flung them to the petrified beggar and drove home in his stocking-feet.
I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings, watched the recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck the boots under his arm and march away with them to the nearest pawnbroker.
If Pasquale had been an equally compassionate Briton, he would have stopped to think, and have tossed the man a sovereign.
_But he didn’t stop to think.
_ That was my cinquecento Pasquale.
And I loved him for it.
I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented of created beings.
I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle on my consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers.
The sun shone.
A
thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my bedroom windows.
The tree, laughed and shook out its finery at me like a woman, saying: “See how green I am, after Sunday’s rain.
” Antoinette’s one eyed black cat (a hideous beast) met me in the hall and arching its back welcomed me affably to its new residence.
And on my breakfast-table I found a copy of the first edition of Cristoforo da Costa’s “_Elogi delle Donne Illustri_,” a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord Carnforth, a perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting in his library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar’s splendid courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.
Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers.
I
reached them at three o’clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road.
I signed their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple Gardens and along the Embankment.
When I had passed under Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg-weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation to repose.
I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable bench.
The only other occupant was a female in black.
As I take no interest in females in black, I disregarded her presence, and gave myself up to the contemplation, of the trim lawns and flower-beds, the green trees masking the unsightly Surrey side of the river, and the back of the statue of Sir Bartle Frere.
A continued survey of the last not making for edification (a statue that turns its back on you being one of the dullest objects made by man), I took from my pocket a brown leather-covered volume which I had fished out of a penny box: “_Suite de l’Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise ou L’Histoire des Uscoques, par le Sieur Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV.
_” A whole complete scholarly history of a forgotten people for a penny.
The Uscoques were originally Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the most pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth century Europe.
I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured their acrid musty smell.
How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart’s-blood, how many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an odour, an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and there a casual student.
I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna.
As men, their achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but their name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance may be found in the penny scent fountains of to-day.
I was smiling over this quaint olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie’s book, when a tug at my arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to the workaday world.
I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown, piteous, imploring dog’s eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to the disregarded female in black.
“Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do.
” I stared.
She was not in the least like what my half-conscious glance at the female in black had taken her to be.
She was quite young, remarkably good looking.
Even at the first instant I was struck by her eyes and the mass of bronze hair and the twitching of a childish mouth.
But she had an untidy, touzled, raffish appearance, due to I knew not what investiture of disrepute.
Her hands--for she wore no gloves--wanted washing.
“What a young girl like yourself must not do,” said I, “is to enter into conversation with men in public places.
” “Then I shall have to die,” she said, forlornly, edging away from my side.
She had the oddest little foreign accent.
I looked at her again more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so disreputable.
She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for her.
Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration--black velvet and bugles--on the bodice.
Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged, fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago for synagogue wear.
On the girlish figure it looked preposterous.
Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed in black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.
Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again.
Then she shrugged her shoulders and sniffed.
My mother had a housemaid once who always sniffed like that before beginning to cry.
My position was untenable.
I could not remain stonily on the seat while this grotesquely attired damsel wept; and for the life of me I could not get up and leave her.
She looked at me again.
Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely human.
I capitulated.
“Don’t cry.
Tell me what I can do for you,” I said.
She moved a few inches nearer.
“I want to find Harry,” she said; “I have lost him.
” “Who’s Harry?
” I naturally inquired.
“He is to be my husband.
” “What’s his other name?
” “I have forgotten,” she said, spreading out her hands.
“Don’t you know any one else in London?
” I asked.
She shook her head mournfully.
“And I am getting so hungry.
” I suggested that there were restaurants in London.
“But I have no money,” she objected.
“No money and nothing at all but this.
” She designated her dress.
“Isn’t it ugly?
” “It is decidedly not becoming,” I admitted.
“Well, what must I do?
You tell me and I do it.
If you don’t tell me, I must die.
” She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the responsibility of her existence.
I did not know which to admire more, her cool assurance or the stoic fortitude with which she faced dissolution.
“I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two,” said I, “but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name--” “After all I don’t want so very much to find him,” said this amazing young person.
“He made me stay in my cabin all the time I was in the steamer.
At first I was glad, for it went up and down, side to side, and I thought I would die, for I was so sick; but afterwards I got better--” “But where did you come from?
” I asked.
“From Alexandretta.
” “What were you doing there?
” “I used to sit in a tree and look over the wall--” “What wall?
” “The wall of my house-my father’s house.
He was not my father, but he married my mother.
I am English.
” She announced the fact with a little air of finality.
“Indeed?
” said I. “Yes.
Father, mother--both English.
He was Vice-Consul.
He died before I was born.
Then his friend Hamdi Effendi took my mother and married her.
You see?
” I confessed I did not.
“Where does Harry come in?
” I inquired.
She looked puzzled.
“Come in?
” she echoed.
I perceived her knowledge of the English vernacular was limited.
I
turned my question differently.
“Oh,” she said with more animation.
“He used to pass by the wall, and I talked to him when there was no one looking.
He was so pretty--prettier than you,” she paused.
“Is it possible?
” I said, ironically.
“Oh, yes,” she replied with profound gravity.
“He had a moustache, but he was not so long.
” “Well?
You talked to Harry.
What then?
” In her artless way she told me.
A refreshing story, as old as the crusades, with the accessories of orthodox tradition; a European disguise, purchased at a slop dealer’s by the precious Harry, a rope, a midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an English ship; the anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main.
A
most refreshing story!
I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a question at her like a bullet.
“Are you making all this up, young woman?
” She started-looked quite scared.
“You mean I tell lies?
But no. It is all true.
Why shouldn’t it be true?
How else could I have come here?
” The question was unanswerable.
Her story was as preposterous as her garments.
But her garments were real enough.
I looked long into her great innocent eyes.
Yes, she was telling me the truth.
She babbled on for a little.
I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a Turkish official.
She had spent all her life in the harem from which she had eloped with this pretty young Englishman.
“And what must I do?
” she reiterated.
I told her to give me time.
One is not in the habit of meeting abducted Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National Liberal Club.
It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence.
I looked around me.
Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes.
A pale young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was reading a dirty pink newspaper.
Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly.
On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes.
Sir Bartle Frere stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a Becket story.
I always thought something was wrong with that man’s character.
What on earth could I tell her to do?
The best course was to find the infernal Harry.
I asked her how she came to lose him.
It appears he escorted her ashore at Southampton, after having scarcely set eyes on her during the voyage, put her into a railway carriage with strict injunctions not to stir until he claimed her, and then disappeared into space.
“Did he give you your ticket?
” “No. ” “What a young blackguard!
” I exclaimed.
“I don’t like him at all,” she said.
How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could not exactly discover.
Apparently she told him, in her confiding manner, that Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the train and came back to say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes on him and the sentimental varlet melted.
At Waterloo a man had told her she must get out of the carriage--she had travelled alone in it--and she had meekly obeyed.
She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens.
Then she had asked me how to find Harry.
Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket’s Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert.
And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know the creature’s surname.
“By the way,” said I, “what is your name?
” “Carlotta.
” “Carlotta what?
” I asked.
“I have no other name.
” “Your father--the Vice-Consul--had one.
” She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.
“Ramsbotham,” she said at last, triumphantly.
“Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham--no,” I broke off.
“Such an appellation is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd.
I can’t use it.
I
must take the liberty of addressing you as Carlotta.
” “But I’ve told you that Carlotta is my name,” she said, in uncomprehending innocence.
“And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne.
People call me ‘Sir Marcus.
’” “Seer Marcous,” said Carlotta.
She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was talking to a member of the baronetage.
“Quite so,” said I. “Now, Carlotta,” I resumed, “our first plan is to set out in search of Harry.
He may have missed his train, and have followed by a later one, and be even now rampaging about Waterloo station.
If we hear nothing of him, I will drive you to the Turkish Consulate, give you in charge there, and they will see you safely home to Alexandretta.
The good Hamdi Effendi is doubtless distracted, and will welcome you back with open arms.
” I meant to be urbane and friendly.
She rose to her feet, grew as white as paper, opened her great eyes, opened her baby mouth, and in the middle of the Embankment Gardens plumped on her knees before me and clasped her hands above her head.
“For God’s sake get up!
” I shrieked, wrenching her back acrobatically to the bench beside me.
“You mustn’t do things like that.
You’ll have the whole of London running to look at us.
” Indeed the sight had so far roused the pale young man from his lethargy that he laid his dirty pink paper on his knees.
I kept hold of Carlotta’s wrists.
She began to moan incoherently.
“You mustn’t send me back--Hamdi will kill me--oh please don’t send me back--he will make me marry his friend Mustapha--Mustapha has only two teeth--and he is seventy years old--and he has a wife already--I only went with Harry to avoid Mustapha.
Hamdi would kill me, he would beat me, he would make me marry Mustapha.
” That is what I gathered from her utterances.
She was frightened out of her wits, even into anticlimax.
“But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector,” said I. “You wouldn’t be so cruel,” she sobbed.
The guttural sonority with which she rolled the “r” in “cruel” made the epithet appear one of revolting barbarity.
She fixed those confounded eyes upon me.
I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.
I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish consulate.
I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and drove her to Waterloo.
On the way she reminded me that she was hungry.
I gave her food at the buffet.
It appears she has a passion for hard-boiled eggs and lemonade.
She did not seem very much concerned about finding Harry, but chattered to me about the appointments of the bar.
The beer-pulls amused her particularly.
She made me order a glass of bitter (a beverage which I loathe) in order to see again how it was done, and broke into gleeful laughter.
The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in bewilderment.
The two or three bar-loafers also stared.
I was glad to escape to the platform.
There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in a ring round us when we stopped to interview a railway official.
The beautiful, bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her disreputable attire--I have never seen a broken black feather waggle more shamelessly--was a sight indeed to strike wonderment into the cockney mind.
And perhaps her association with myself added to the incongruity.
I am long and lean and unlovely, I know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably respectable.
Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by the public attention.
“Calm and unembarrassed as a fate” she returned the popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my efforts to find Harry.
In the midst of an earnest discussion with the station-master she begged me for a penny to put into an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had seen a small boy work successfully.
I refused, curtly, and turned to the station-master.
A roar of laughter interrupted me again.
Carlotta, with outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an organ-grinder’s monkey, had induced the boy to part with the sticky bit of toffee, and was in the act of conveying it to her mouth.
“I’ll call to-morrow morning,” said I hurriedly to the station-master.
“If the gentleman should come meanwhile, tell him to leave his name and address.
” Then I took Carlotta by the arm and, accompanied by my train of satellites, I thrust her into the first hansom-cab I could see.
There was no sign or token of Harry.
No pretty young man was hanging dejectedly about the station.
None had torn his hair before the officials asking for news of a lost female in frowsy black.
There was no Harry.
There was no further need therefore to afford the British public a gratuitous entertainment.
“Drive,” said I to the cabman.
“Drive like the devil.
” “Where to, sir?
” I gasped.
Where should I drive?
I lost my head.
“Go on driving round and round till I tell you to stop.
” The philosophic cabman did not regard me as eccentric, for he whipped up his horse cheerfully.
When we had slid down the steep incline and got free of the precincts of that hateful station, I breathed more freely and collected my wits.
Carlotta sucked her sticky thumbs and wiped them on her dress.
“Where are we going?
” she asked.
“Across Waterloo Bridge,” said I. “What to do?
” “To dispose of you somehow,” I replied, grimly.
