Here and Hereafter Part 26

"I see," said the girl, thoughtfully. "Would you mind very much if we left this disgusting, vulgar little pier and walked along by the sands?

They begin to make music of sorts here directly, and it will be quieter out of the crowd."

The thought flashed into his mind that it was hardly worth while to pay a penny for the pier and leave it at the end of five minutes, for his mind was perforce economical. But money questions at the moment seemed too sordid.

"All right," he said. "Considering the way I've carried on--I may say the rotten way I've carried on--it's pretty decent of you to hear the story out. I suppose I could kick up some sort of an excuse."

"Perhaps I could find the excuses for you," said the girl, as they went down together on to the beach. "You are not really stopping at the Grand, then?"

"No, I'm not. I've been stopping at the cheapest and muckiest boarding-house in the place, and in a mortal funk all the time lest you should see me going in and out. Well, that's all over, at any rate. You know the worst now. The way it started was that I wanted to impress you a bit. I wanted to make myself out one of the lucky ones. I wanted to seem a superior cla.s.s to you altogether. And that's the d.a.m.ned funny thing about it, if you'll excuse my swearing. All the time that I was bragging about motor-cars, and you were talking about the stuffy workrooms, you were the superior cla.s.s to me, and I was the dirt under your feet. Looking back on it, I can't think how I came to make such a fool of myself. Your superior, indeed! Why, even on the outside facts I'm not that, for I only make twenty-eight bob to your thirty, and I haven't got your chance of a rise."

"I think I see how it all happened," said the girl. "It was all very natural. I was sorry you told me those fibs, but I was not half as sorry then as I am glad now when you've taken them back again."

"Hold on," said the man. "I mean, just half a moment, if you don't mind.

You said you were sorry when I began blowing about my position and all that. You knew, then?"

"Yes," said the girl. "I knew all the time. And all the time I was rather thinking that you wouldn't go on with it."

The young man stared at her hard. "You beat me altogether," he said. "I can't make head or tail of it. Of course, you've had opportunities of picking up style in your work, and there's no manner of doubt that you've got it. Well, I've known other girls who worked at a milliner's who have done the same. What beats me is that you've got that way of thinking. That's where they slip up. They say it all right, but what they say is all wrong. It's the same here, for the matter of that," he added gloomily.

"Now I want to talk to you," said the girl. "We are out of the crowd here. Let's sit down. I've got to apologise to you too, you know. I've told you lies, too. I never worked for a milliner in my life. I've got a motor-car and more money than I want, and I am stopping at the very hotel where you said you were."

"I take it," said the young man, quietly, "that this is about the last straw. If you'll permit one question, miss, that being the case, why on earth did you ever let me speak to you?"

"We will both be honest now," said the girl. "I saw you several times, and always alone. You did not seem to be having a particularly happy holiday. I saw that you wanted to talk to me. The book that I left on the seat gave you your chance, but I did not leave my book there on purpose. I had not even made up my mind at the moment when you brought it to me what I would do. When you began to talk, I saw that right at the back of all the talk you were quite a good young man. You always treated me properly and with respect."

"The man's not been born yet who would dare do anything else."

The girl laughed. "Well, I was inclined to like you. I don't value what you call the outside facts so very, very much. I rather like doing something unconventional, if it is not actually wrong. I thought it would please you if I let you meet me sometimes."

"That's rather a mild way of putting it."

"It pleased me too. At the back of everything that was wrong in you there were such lots and lots of good. I don't want you to look on it as simply an idle experiment on my part. Perhaps there was a slight shade of that in it, and I am rather ashamed of it. But it was chiefly that I wanted you to have a rather happier time here."

"I believe all that," said Mr Porter, "and I did have a happier time here. But think how I've got to pay for it afterwards. There's the contempt you must have felt for me--that's a nice sort of thing to have in your mind when you can't sleep at night! By G.o.d!" he burst out with sudden ferocity, "you lied worse than I did. You did more harm."

"Now you talk like a man," she said. "But you're mistaken on one point.

There was never any contempt. All the time I was thinking that in your circ.u.mstances I should probably have been sorely tempted to do exactly as you did. Think of that when you can't sleep."

"That isn't everything," said the young man, jabbing holes in the sand with his stick.

"Isn't it?" said the girl. "What's the rest?"

"Thanks," said the young man, bitterly, "but I'm not going to make a fool of myself again. You go and become what you pretended to be. Come to me as a thirty-bob-a-week girl, working for a milliner, then I'll tell you the rest fast enough. Now I'm going to say 'Good-bye' to you."

"I think I see," said the girl. "That could never have been in any circ.u.mstances. But because I want you to know that I'm a friend to you, good-bye." She held out both her hands to him. "And remember this." Then she put her face up to his and kissed him.

In a moment she was gone.

The young man remained standing there. "And," he said to himself, "one ought to go straight up to heaven in a chariot of golden fire."

THE MAGIC RINGS

PART I.--NETTA, THE MAKE-BELIEVER

Netta's father one day picked her up, swung her into the air, and put her down on the top of the high Italian cabinet in the hall. "There, you little s.l.u.t," he said, "what does the world look like from up there?"

"Quite different; you wouldn't know it. The pictures look so queer--upside down; and the staircase isn't the same--or anything. Can't you come up too?"

"No; I'm afraid."

"Did you know there were two--no, three--big rings up here on the top of the cabinet? You can't see them from down below. May I bring them down?"

"If you like."

They were three disused wooden curtain rings, very dusty.

"How did they get there?" asked Netta.

"That," said her father, "is one of the things that I do not know; ask somebody else."

So she asked her mother, her governess, her nurse, and all the servants.

They also did not know. They supposed that somebody must have put them there some time. Netta went back to her father and obtained permission to have those rings for her own. She carried them out into the garden into a secluded place under a weeping ash. There she examined the rings very carefully, and thought about the mystery which surrounded them.

When she took them upstairs she showed them to her nurse.

"These are the magic rings," she said.

"Are they, indeed, now?" said the nurse, used to being interested, fict.i.tiously, but at the shortest notice, in anything childish.

On the next day Netta felt the need of a temple. The romance of the rings was growing rapidly. Invested with a mysterious origin and properties not yet fully defined, but vaguely magical, they required to be enshrined in a temple. For one night they had put up with the shelter of the toy-cupboard. But in view of their character they were now to have a place apart. Netta went to her father and asked him if he had an empty box that he could spare.

"Would a cardboard box do?"

"Yes. It ought to be pure white, though."

The pure white cardboard box was found and given to her. This became the temple. Netta placed the three magic rings in it, and called her brother, who was a year older than she, and at that time rather a pious little prig.

"Would you like to see what's in that box, Jimmy?"

"I don't much mind."

"It's a temple, and I don't think I shall let you. I certainly shan't let _everybody_."

"You ought to let me see, because I'm your brother."

"Well, first of all I must write your name inside the lid. Everyone who is allowed to see into the temple is going to be written down there.