The Crime and the Criminal Part 38

As she brushed them off I thanked her, murmuring something about my having been sitting on the gra.s.s.

Going out on to the platform I all but came into collision with the man who had stood staring at me from the other side of the railing. The sight of him fairly took my breath away. He was going from me or he could scarcely have failed to notice the singularity of my demeanour.

It was he--there could be no mistake about that. But, lest I might be in error, I resolved to have another glimpse at him. Before I could put my resolution into force he had vanished, into what I discovered to be, as I strolled slowly past it, a refreshment-room.

I should not wonder if he did stand in need of refreshment!

There did not appear to be a seat in the place. English people talk about the discomfort of the American depots but my experience is that, from the discomfort point of view, the average English station runs the American depot hard. I sat on one of those square trollies which the porters use for baggage. There I watched and waited for my gentleman to emerge, refreshed. The trolley was close to the refreshment-room. I could see him at the bar. He was not content with one drink. He disposed of two.

Probably he needed them!

Presently he came out. He had had his back towards me while he had been drinking. As he came out of the buffet, turning, he walked in the direction of the trolley on which I was sitting. He moved right past, so close to me that by putting out my foot, I could have tripped him up.

It was he. My first impression had not been wrong. That he had got cured of his fright was plain--certainly he showed no signs of it. He seemed quite at his ease. His hands were in the pockets of his overcoat, an umbrella was under his arm, a cigarette was between his teeth. There might not have been such a thing as a ghost--or the shadow of the shade of a ghost--in all the world.

Back he came. He sailed up to a porter. I heard him asking him when there was a train to town. As the man, having given the information, was making off, I cut in. I put to my gentleman the question which he had put to the porter.

"Can you tell me when the next train starts for London?"

He told me what I asked, adding a word or two on his own account, as I had expected and desired. I responded. He seemed disposed for sociability. Why should I object? We began to talk. The end of it was that we travelled in the same compartment up to town.

It was so funny!

He was that most remarkable product--an English gentleman. Given the real article--and there is no mistaking it when once encountered--there is nothing in the world which can be compared to it. I speak who know.

He was tall. He was perfectly dressed. He was handsome--I never saw a more handsome man. And he had that air of infinite, yet unconscious, condescension which the English gentleman, alone of all the creatures of the world, is born with, and which, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, he carries with him from the cradle to the grave.

They tell you in the different countries of the world that the Englishman is awkward, shy, ungraceful, seldom at his ease. May be; but not the English gentleman. He is the only man I have known who is always at his ease in every possible situation. But he is not to be found on every bush. Even in his own country he is the rarest of rare birds. Being born a peer, even though he can trace his tree to Noah, does not make a man a gentleman--you bet that it does not. I believe that an English gentleman is a caprice, an accident. He is not to be accounted for by natural laws. And though, for all I know, he may be trusted by his fellows, he is not to be trusted by a woman. He has one code of honour for his own s.e.x and another for ours.

That is so, though it may not be according to the copybooks.

My friend the gentleman was a real smart man. As he lolled back in his seat, enjoying his tobacco, it did you good to see him smile. His voice was typical of his kind, it fell like music on your ears. As you looked at him and listened, you could have sworn that he had not a care upon his mind. He was at peace with himself, and all the world. And it was all so natural; he was to the manner born.

I found him quite delightful. I could see what he was doing--he was reckoning me up. And he was puzzled where to place me. I took him into my real confidence, for reasons of my own, and that puzzled him still more. I told him nothing but the truth. How I had gone out to America, and met poor dear Daniel, and married him. And how he had died and left me a widow, and his pile to comfort me. And how I had come back to England childless and forlorn and all alone. I laid stress upon my loneliness. I think that touched him. When a woman tells a man that she is lonely he takes it that she means that there is not a man anywhere in sight, and that the coast is clear for him, and that does touch him. His manner became quite sympathetic. He was as nice as could be--allusive, as a real smart man can be, with a delicate, intangible directness almost equal to a woman's.

We were almost like old friends by the time that we reached town. He put me into a hansom at Victoria station. I asked him to come and see me, to have consideration for my loneliness. He promised that he would.

All the way home, as the cab bore me through the streets, I kept thinking of Mr. Reginald Townsend--that was the name which he had given me--and of the woman he had left, lying by the line, amidst that clump of bushes.

I believe I have written that I like a man to be thorough. It seemed probable that Mr. Townsend was that.

CHAPTER XXII.

LOUISE O'DONNEL'S FATHER.

Next day Jack Haines came to see me. Mr. Haines promised to be a nuisance.

Jack Haines and Daniel J. Carruth had been partners. I might have married either of them, for the matter of that. I might have married any one in Strikehigh City. Of two evils I chose what seemed to me to be the lesser, which was Daniel. For one thing, he was the boss partner and had the larger share, and for another, he was the older man. I could have twisted either of them round my finger, but it occurred to me that I might manage best with Daniel. So I became Mrs. Daniel J.

Carruth, and poor dear Daniel lived just long enough to capitalize his share--he made a better thing of it than we had either of us expected--and then he died. Hardly was he buried than the chief mourner at his funeral, Mr. Haines, wanted me to marry him. He hinted that it would be just as well to keep the partners.h.i.+p alive, which struck me as absurd. Anyhow, I did not seem to see it. I came straight away to England, instead of marrying him, with the intention of getting as much fun out of Daniel's dollars as I possibly could.

What I had not bargained for was his coming after me.

The folks in Strikehigh City had all lived queer lives, but I rather guess that, in some ways, Jack Haines had lived one of the queerest. He had told me about it over and over again, and, whatever I might think of him, I knew that he had told me the truth.

He had been married. He and his wife had lived like cat and dog. She had died. She had left a daughter. He had brought the daughter up--trying to rule her with a heavy hand. There came a time when she objected. There was a disturbance--she left him. That was just before he came to Strikehigh City--in fact, her going sent him there, and he had never seen her since. I could see plainly that he had been more in the wrong than she had. In his way, he loved her. His conscience p.r.i.c.ked him all the time. When Daniel died, it began to p.r.i.c.k him worse than ever. Finding that I would not have him, he set himself to look for her.

This I learned from his own lips when I met him again in London.

It seemed that, when she had left him the girl had gone on to the stage--attaching herself to a variety show. From that she had pa.s.sed to a burlesque troupe. The burlesque troupe had gone to England--she went with it. The burlesque troupe returned--she had stayed behind. No doubt for reasons of her own. Jack Haines wanted very much to know what those reasons were, because, no sooner had the troupe gone, and left her, than she vanished. No one seemed to have the faintest notion what had become of her. She had simply disappeared--gone clean out of sight.

The old man had come over to see if he could not succeed where others had failed; if he could not light on the clue which others had missed.

The desire to find the girl had become with him a regular mania. It was like a bee in his bonnet. It occupied his thoughts, to the exclusion of all else, both by night and day. As I have said, the man was becoming a nuisance. I did not want to quarrel with him, but I saw that, without a quarrel, I never should be rid of him. He insisted on making me his confidant. And, although I took care never to give him a chance to say a word outright, I knew that, as soon as he had found the girl, he would renew that hint about the desirability of keeping the partners.h.i.+p alive.

On the day after that little trip to Brighton, he turned up in my drawing-room. I had run over to Kensington High Street for something.

When I came back, there he was--and I was not by any means best pleased to see him there.

I should have disliked him for one thing if I had disliked him for nothing else--he was so deadly serious. I do not think I ever saw him smile. Indeed, I doubt if he had a smile left in him. He had no sense of humour, and, to him, a joke was as meaningless as double Dutch. He was bald at the top of his head, his face was as long as one's arm, his eyes generally had an expressionless, fishlike sort of stare, and, since he had a.s.sumed the garb of respectability, he was always attired in funeral black. He seemed to be under the impression that that was the only hue in which respectability could appear. As for his temper, it varied from doubtful to bad, and from bad to worse, and when he was in a rage, which he quickly was, he was by no means an agreeable person to have to deal with. He and Daniel were always falling out, and, until I came upon the scene, he used to ride over poor dear Daniel roughshod.

But, when I did I let him understand that whoever fell out with Daniel fell out with me.

For my part, I did not wonder so much at his daughter's having run away as at her having lived with him as long as she did.

His hat was on one chair, his umbrella on another, he himself sat, with his hands clasped in front of him, on a little centre table, in an att.i.tude which suggested that he was about to offer prayer. He did not rise as I entered--respectability has not yet worked such havoc with him as that. He stared at me as I went in, solemnly speechless, as if he wondered how I could venture to interrupt the meeting.

"Well, Mr. Haines, any news?"

I did not care if there was any news, but I did object to his sitting and staring at me like that.

"She is dead."

"Dead!--You don't mean it!--How do you know?"

"It was told me last night in a dream."

Among the rest of his little peculiarities, he was one of the most superst.i.tious creatures breathing. In religion, I believe, he called himself a spiritualist. Anyhow, he was always seeing things, and hearing things, and having things revealed to him. Talking to him in some of his moods reminded one of that scene in Richard II. where the poor dear king wants to sit upon a gravestone and talk of epitaphs.

"Is that the only reason why you know that she is dead--because it was told you in a dream?"

"Do not mock at me. The voice which speaks to me in visions does not lie. I saw a coffin lying in an open grave, and 'Louise O'Donnel' was on the coffin-lid."

"You did not happen to see in which particular graveyard that grave might be located."

"I did not. But I know that she is dead. My daughter, oh, my daughter!"

I had to turn aside to smile. I grant that it was not a subject for laughter--but he was so funny!

"And as I looked the coffin-lid was lifted. And, on her breast, there was an open wound."