The Opal Serpent. Hume Fergus
looks. "I thought I was right."
The voice, if not the face, awoke old memories.
"Hay – Grexon Hay!" cried the struggling genius. "Well, I am glad to see you," and he shook hands with the frank grip of an honest man.
"And I you." Hay drew his friend up the side street and out of the human tide which deluged the pavement. "But you seem – "
"It's a long story," interrupted Paul flushing. "Come to my castle and I'll tell you all about it, old boy. You'll stay to supper, won't you? See here" – Paul displayed a parcel – "a pound of sausages. You loved 'em at school, and I'm a superfine cook."
Grexon Hay always used expression and word to hide his feelings. But with Paul – whom he had always considered a generous ass at Torrington school – a trifle of self-betrayal didn't matter much. Beecot was too dense, and, it may be added, too honest to turn any opportunity to advantage. "It's a most surprising thing," said Hay, in his calm way, "really a most surprising thing, that a Torrington public school boy, my friend, and the son of wealthy parents, should be buying sausages."
"Come now," said Paul, with great spirit and towing Hay homeward, "I haven't asked you for money."
"If you do you shall have it," said Hay, but the offer was not so generous a one as would appear. That was Hay all over. He always said what he did not mean, and knew well that Beecot's uneasy pride shied at loans however small.
Paul, the unsophisticated, took the shadow of generosity for its substance, and his dark face lighted up. "You're a brick, Hay," he declared, "but I don't want money. No!" – this in reply to an eloquent glance from the well-to-do – "I have sufficient for my needs, and besides," with a look at the resplendent dress of the fashion-plate dandy, "I don't glitter in the West End."
"Which hints that those who do, are rich," said Grexon, with an arctic smile. "Wrong, Beecot. I'm poor. Only paupers can afford to dress well."
"In that case I must be a millionaire," laughed Beecot, glancing downward at his well-worn garb. "But mount these stairs; we have much to say to one another."
"Much that is pleasant," said the courtly Grexon.
Paul shrugged his square shoulders and stepped heavenward. "On your part, I hope," he sang back; "certainly not on mine. Come to Poverty Castle," and the fashionable visitor found his host lighting the fire in an apartment such as he had read about but had never seen.
It was quite the proper garret for starving genius – small, bleak, bare, but scrupulously clean. The floor was partially covered with scraps of old carpet, faded and worn; the walls were entirely papered with pictures from illustrated journals. One window, revealing endless rows of dingy chimney-pots, was draped with shabby rep curtains of a dull red. In one corner, behind an Indian screen, stood a narrow camp bedstead, covered with a gaudy Eastern shawl, and also a large tin bath, with a can of water beside it. Against the wall leaned a clumsy deal bookcase filled with volumes well-thumbed and in old bindings. On one side of the tiny fireplace was a horse-hair sofa, rendered less slippery by an expensive fur rug thrown over its bareness; on the other was a cupboard, whence Beecot rapidly produced crockery, knives, forks, a cruet, napkins and other table accessories, all of the cheapest description. A deal table in the centre of the room, an antique mahogany desk, heaped high with papers, under the window, completed the furnishing of Poverty Castle. And it was up four flights of stairs like that celebrated attic in Thackeray's poem.
"As near heaven as I am likely to get," rattled on Beecot, deftly frying the sausages, after placing his visitor on the sofa. "The grub will soon be ready. I'm a first-class cook, bless you, old chap. Housemaid too. Clean, eh?" He waved the fork proudly round the ill-furnished room. "I'd dismiss myself if it wasn't."
"But – but," stammered Hay, much amazed, and surveying things through an eye-glass. "What are you doing here?"
"Trying to get my foot on the first rung of Fame's ladder."
"But I don't quite see – "
"Read Balzac's life and you will. His people gave him an attic and a starvation allowance in the hope of disgusting him. Bar the allowance, my pater has done the same. Here's the attic, and here's my starvation" – Paul gaily popped the frizzling sausages on a chipped hot plate – "and here's your aspiring servant hoping to be novelist, dramatist, and what not – to say nothing of why not? Mustard, there you are. Wait a bit. I'll brew you tea or cocoa."
"I never take those things with meals, Beecot."
"Your kit assures me of that. Champagne's more in your line. I say, Grexon, what are you doing now?"
"What other West-End men do," said Grexon, attacking a sausage.
"That means nothing. Well, you never did work at Torrington, so how can I expect the leopard to change his saucy spots."
Hay laughed, and, during the meal, explained his position. "On leaving school I was adopted by a rich uncle," he said. "When he went the way of all flesh he left me a thousand a year, which is enough to live on with strict economy. I have rooms in Alexander Street, Camden Hill, a circle of friends, and a good appetite, as you will perceive. With these I get through life very comfortably."
"Ha!" said Paul, darting a keen glance at his visitor, "you have the strong digestion necessary to happiness. Have you the hard heart also? If I remember at school – "
"Oh, hang school!" said Grexon, flushing all over his cold face. "I never think of school. I was glad when I got away from it. But we were great friends at school, Paul."
"Something after the style of Steerforth and David Copperfield," was Paul's reply as he pushed back his plate; "you were my hero, and I was your slave. But the other boys – " He looked again.
"They hated me, because they did not understand me, as you did."
"If that is so, Grexon, why did you let me slip out of your life? It is ten years since we parted. I was fifteen and you twenty."
"Which now makes us twenty-five and thirty respectively," said Hay, dryly; "you left school before I did."
"Yes; I had scarlet fever, and was taken home to be nursed. I never went back, and since then I have never met an old Torrington boy – "
"Have you not?" asked Hay, eagerly.
"No. My parents took me abroad, and I sampled a German university. I returned to idle about my father's place, till I grew sick of doing nothing, and, having ambitions, I came to try my luck in town." He looked round and laughed. "You see my luck."
"Well," said Hay, lighting a dainty cigarette produced from a gold case, "my uncle, who died, sent me to Oxford and then I travelled. I am now on my own, as I told you, and haven't a relative in the world."
"Why don't you marry?" asked Paul, with a flush.
Hay, wary man-about-town as he was, noted the flush, and guessed its cause. He could put two and two together as well as most people.
"I might ask you the same question," said he.
The two friends looked at one another, and each thought of the difference in his companion since the old school-days. Hay was clean-shaven, fair-haired, and calm, almost icy, in manner. His eyes were blue and cold. No one could tell what was passing in his mind from the expression of his face. As a matter of fact he usually wore a mask, but at the present moment, better feelings having the upper hand, the mask had slipped a trifle. But as a rule he kept command of expression, and words, and actions. An admirable example of self-control was Grexon Hay.
On the other hand, Beecot was slight, tall and dark, with an eager manner and a face which revealed his thoughts. His complexion was swart; he had large black eyes, a sensitive mouth, and a small moustache smartly twisted upward. He carried his head well, and looked rather military in appearance, probably because many of his forebears had been Army men. While Hay was smartly dressed in a Bond Street kit, Paul wore a well-cut, shabby blue serge. He looked perfectly well-bred, but his clothes were woefully threadbare.
From these and the garret and the lean meal of sausages Hay drew his conclusions and put them into words.
"Your father has cut you off," said he, calmly, "and yet you propose to