The Tempting of Tavernake Part 63

"I have been in a country where one forgets," he answered. "I think that I have thrown the knapsack of my follies away. I think that it is buried. There are some things which I do not forget, but they are scarcely to be spoken of."

"You are a strange young man," she said. "Was I wrong, or were you not once in love with me?"

"I was terribly in love with you," Tavernake confessed.

"Yet you tore up my cheque and flung yourself away when you found out that my standard of morals was not quite what you had expected," she murmured. "Haven't you got over that quixoticism a little, Leonard?"

He drew a deep sigh.

"I am thankful to say," he declared, earnestly, "that I have not got over it, that, if anything, my prejudices are stronger than ever."

She sat for a moment quite still, and her face had become hard and expressionless. She was looking past him, past the line of lights, out into the blue darkness.

"Somehow," she said, softly, "I always prayed that you might remember.

You were the one true thing I had ever met, you were in earnest. It is past, then?"

"It is past," Tavernake answered, bravely.

The music of a Hungarian waltz came floating down to them. She half closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with the melody. Tavernake looked away.

"Will you come and see me just once?" she asked, suddenly. "I am staying at the Delvedere, in Forty-Second Street."

"Thank you very much," Tavernake replied. "I do not know how long I shall be in New York. If I am here for a few days, I shall take my chance at finding you at home."

He bowed, and returned to Pritchard, who welcomed him with a quiet smile.

"You're wise, Tavernake," he said, softly. "I could hear no words, but I know that you have been wise. Between you and me," he added, in a lower tone, "she is going downhill. She is in with the wrong lot here. She can't seem to keep away from them. They are on the very fringe of Bohemia, a great deal nearer the arm of the law than makes for respectable society. The man to whom I saw you introduced is a millionaire one day and a thief the next. They're none of them any good.

Did you notice, too, that she is wearing sham jewelry? That always looks bad."

"No, I didn't notice," Tavernake answered.

He was silent for a moment. Then he leaned a little forward.

"I wonder," he asked, "do you know anything about her sister?"

Pritchard finished his wine and knocked the ash from his cigar.

"Not much," he replied. "I believe she had a very hard time. She took on the father, you know, the old professor, and did her best to keep him straight. He died about a year ago and Miss Beatrice tried to get back into the theatre, but she'd missed her chance. Theatrical business has been shocking in London. I heard she'd come out here. Wherever she is, she keeps right away from that sort of set," he wound up, moving his head towards Elizabeth's friends.

"I wonder if she is in New York," Tavernake said, with a strange thrill at his heart.

Pritchard made no reply. His eyes were fixed upon the little group at the next table. Elizabeth was leaning back in her chair. She seemed to have abandoned the conversation. Her eyes were always seeking Tavernake's. Pritchard rose to his feet abruptly.

"It's time we were in bed," he declared. "Remember the meeting to-morrow."

Tavernake rose to his feet. As they pa.s.sed the next table, Elizabeth leaned over to him. Her eyes pleaded with his almost pa.s.sionately.

"Dear Leonard," she whispered, "you must--you must come and see me.

I shall stay in between four and six every evening this week. The Delvedere, remember."

"Thank you very much," Tavernake answered. "I shall not forget."

CHAPTER IX. FOR ALWAYS

Once again it seemed to Beatrice that history was repeating itself.

The dingy, oblong dining-room, with its mosquito netting, stained tablecloth, and hard cane chairs, expanded until she fancied herself in the drawing-room of Blenheim House. Between the landladies there was little enough to choose. Mrs. Raithby Lawrence, notwithstanding her caustic tongue and suspicious nature, had at least made some pretense at gentility. The woman who faced her now--hard-featured, with narrow, suspicious eyes and a ma.s.s of florid hair--was unmistakably and brutally vulgar.

"What's the good of your keeping on saying you hope to get an engagement next week?" she demanded, with a sneer. "Who's likely to engage you?

Why, you've lost your color and your looks and your weight since you came to stay here. They don't want such as you in the chorus. And for the rest, you're too high and mighty, that's my opinion of you. Take what you can get, and how you can get it, and be thankful,--that's my motto. Day after day you tramp about the streets with your head in the air, and won't take this and won't take that, and meanwhile my bill gets bigger and bigger. Now where have you been to this morning, I should like to know?"

Beatrice, who was faint and tired, shaking in every limb, tried to pa.s.s out of the room, but her questioner barred the way.

"I have been up town," she answered, nervously.

"Hear of anything?"

Beatrice shook her head.

"Not yet. Please let me go upstairs and lie down. I am tired and I need to rest."

"And I need my money," Mrs. Selina P. Watkins declared, without quitting her position, "and it's no good your going up to your room because the door's locked."

"What do you mean?" Beatrice faltered.

"I mean that I've done with you," the lodging-house keeper announced.

"Your room's locked up and the key's in my pocket, and the sooner you get out of this, the better I shall be pleased."

"But my box--my clothes," Beatrice cried.

"I'll keep 'em a week for you," the woman answered. "Bring me the money by then and you shall have them. If I don't hear anything of you, they'll go to the auction mart."

Something of her old spirit fired the girl for a moment. She was angry, and she forgot that her knees were trembling with fatigue, that she was weak and aching with hunger.

"How dare you talk like that!" she exclaimed. "You shall have your money shortly, but I must have my clothes. I cannot go anywhere without them."

The woman laughed harshly.

"Look here, my young lady," she said, "you'll see your box again when I see the color of your money, and not before. And now out you go, please,--out you go! If you're going to make any trouble, Solly will have to show you the way down the steps."

The woman had opened the door, and a colored servant, half dressed, with a broom in her hand, came slouching down the pa.s.sage. Beatrice turned and fled out of the greasy, noisome atmosphere, down the wooden, uneven steps, out into the ugly street. She turned toward the nearest elevated as though by instinct, but when she came to the bottom of the stairs she stopped short with a little groan. She knew very well that she had not a nickel to pay the fare. Her pockets were empty. All day she had eaten nothing, and her last coin had gone for the car which had brought her back from Broadway. And here she was on the other side of New York, in the region of low-cla.s.s lodging houses, with the Bowery between her and Broadway. She had neither the strength nor the courage to walk. With a half-stifled sob she took off her one remaining ornament, a cheap enameled brooch, and entered a p.a.w.nbroker's shop close to where she had been standing.

"Will you give me something on this, please?" she asked, desperately.

A man who seemed to be sorting a pile of ready-made coats, paused in his task for a moment, took the ornament into his hand, and threw it contemptuously upon the counter.