The Cruise of the Make-Believes. Gallon Tom
neat ankles, and began to speak in an argumentative fashion, with his neat head a little on one side. "You're not complimentary, Byfield," he said; "but then you never were. I should not have found you, but for the fact that some one mentioned to me that you were living in a place called Arcadia Street, Islington; and as I wondered a little what reason you could possibly have for leaving your own natural surroundings, I decided to look you up. As for the Tant-like people of whom you speak so scornfully, I would remind you that they belong properly to that sphere to which you also belong, when you are not in your present revolutionary spirit. You are forgetting what I have endeavoured often to remind you about; you are forgetting the dividing line which must be kept between the classes and the masses. The world knows you as Mr. Gilbert Byfield – with any amount of money, and any amount of property; you are masquerading as a very ordinary person, in a very ordinary and commonplace neighbourhood. Now what, for instance, do you pay for these rooms?" He glanced round as he spoke.
"Ten shillings a week – which of course includes the use of the furniture," said Gilbert, smiling. "Meals extra."
"Horrible!" exclaimed his friend. "Where is the comfortable set of chambers in the West End; where is your place in the country – your yacht – everything of that kind? And what in the name of fortune are you doing it for?"
"I've already told you," responded the other, good-humouredly. "I wanted to see what life really was, when you didn't have someone near at hand to feed you, and clothe you, and make much of you; I wanted to look at a world where banking accounts and dividends were unknown, and stocks and shares something not to be considered. I wanted to see what people were like who had to scramble for a living – to scramble, in fact, for the crumbs that fall from tables such as mine. I had read in books of people who had a difficulty in making both ends meet – and quite nice people at that; I had dreamed of a world outside my own very ordinary one, where romance was to be found – and beauty – and love and tenderness. I was sick to death of the high voices and the gracious airs and the raised eyebrows of most of the women I knew – the time-killers, with nothing in the world to occupy them; I wanted to take off my coat, and get back to what I know my grandfather, at least, was in his time: a real hard-working citizen. A better man than ever I shall be, Jordan; a clear-headed, clear-hearted fellow, with no nonsense about him. He made a fortune – and my father trebled it; it has been my sacred mission to spend it. There" – he got to his feet, and stretched his arms above his head, and laughed – "I've done preaching; and you shall tell me all the news from the great world out of which I have dropped."
"What news can I have to give you?" demanded Mr. Tant, with an almost aggressive glance at his friend. "Oh, I know what you're going to say," he added rapidly as he raised his hand – "that that is the best comment on what you have said. But, at all events, we live respectably – not in hovels."
"Respectable is the word," said Gilbert, with something of a sigh. "And yet I'm sure that you really have news – of a sort. Come – a bargain with you: you shall give me your news, bit by bit, and item by item; and I'll see if I can match it from my experience here."
"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Jordan Tant, shifting uneasily on his chair, and finally drawing up his legs until his heels rested on the front wooden rail of it – "in the first place, Miss Enid wonders what has become of you, and is naturally somewhat troubled about you." He said it sulkily, with the air of one to whom the delivery of the message was a disagreeable task.
"Exactly. And the fair Enid is in that drawing-room which is like a hot-house, and is yawning the hours away, and glancing occasionally at the clock, to determine how long it is since she had lunch, and how best she shall get through the time before tea is announced. To match that, my item of news is of a certain little lady who has a habit of tucking up her sleeves, the better to get through hours that are all too short for the work that must fill them, who is afraid to glance at a clock, for fear it should tell her how time is flying; and who never by any chance had a best frock yet that wasn't almost too shabby to wear before it was called best at all. Go on."
"Oh – so that's the secret, is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tant, nodding his head like a smooth-plumaged young bird. "There's a woman in Arcadia Street – eh?"
"Beware how you speak of her lightly," said Gilbert. "In Arcadia Street are many women; they hang out of the windows, and they scream at their children, and they tell their husbands exactly what their opinion is concerning the characters of those husbands whenever the unfortunate men are not at work. But – mark the difference, my Tant! – there is but one woman worthy of the name, and I have found her. She lives next door."
"Then I've seen her," replied Jordan Tant. "Rather pretty, perhaps – but pale and shabby."
"Ah – she hadn't got her best frock on," said Gilbert. "You have to wait for Sundays to see the best frock; and then you have to pretend that it isn't really an old frock pretending to be best. Where did you see her?"
"Sticking a card in the window – something about apartments or – lodgings," said Mr. Tant. "I think she thought there was some chance that I might be insane enough to want to live in Arcadia Street."
"Poor little girl!" said Gilbert softly, as he seated himself on the edge of the table, and thrust some of his papers out of the way. "She dreams about lodgers – and hopes for the sort that pay. I believe she gets up in the morning, dreadfully afraid that those who owe her money have run away in the night; I believe she goes to bed at night, wondering if by any possibility she can squeeze another bedstead in somewhere to accommodate a fresh one. She would like to go out into the highways and byways, and gather in all possible lodgers, and drive them before her to the house; and keep 'em there for ever. You've only got to say 'Lodgers!' to that girl, and her eyes brighten at once."
"What an extraordinary person!" exclaimed Mr. Jordan Tant, opening his eyes very wide, and staring up at the other man. "What's she do it for?"
"For a living, Tant – for a sordid horrible grinding sweating living." Gilbert got up in his excitement, and began to bang one fist into the palm of his other hand close to the face of Mr. Jordan Tant. "You talk of life – and respectability – and what not; I tell you I've seen more life in a week in Arcadia Street than ever I saw in years before. Look out into the streets; you'll see a dozen sights that shock you – you'll see a dozen things that are unlovely. And yet I tell you that I have stepped in this place straight into the heart of Fairyland – and that I dream dreams, and see visions. And all on account of a pale-faced shabby girl, who lives next door, and lies in wait behind the parlour window to catch the lodgers who never pay her when they come!"
"Why don't you live there yourself?" demanded Mr. Tant. "You'd pay her well enough."
Gilbert shook his head a little sadly. "That wouldn't do at all," he said, "because I should take all the romance out of the thing. Besides, in Arcadia Street you mustn't pay more than a certain amount, or you bring down suspicion upon yourself. No – my method is a more subtle one: I am the mysterious man who lives next door – (which is quite a great way off in Arcadia Street, I can assure you) – and I appear to her only with a sort of halo of romance about me."
"You're in love with her, I suppose?" suggested Mr. Tant.
"That's crude – and untrue," said Gilbert. "That's the only thing you sort of people seem to think about: you look at a girl, and instantly you're in love with her. Doesn't it occur to you that it may be possible that I, from the distance of my thirty-five years, may look at this child of seventeen – or perhaps even less – and feel sorry for her, and desirous of helping her. Bah! – what do you know of romance?"
"I know this about it," said Mr. Tant, a little sullenly, "that if I go back to Miss Enid, and tell her that you take a deep interest in a very pretty girl of seventeen, who lives next door to you in a slum, and with whom you occasionally visit Fairyland, it is more than possible that the lady to whom you are supposed to be engaged – "
"I am not engaged to her," exclaimed Gilbert, almost savagely.
"May have something to say regarding romance on her own account. I state facts." Thus Mr. Jordan Tant, very virtuously, and with his head nodding in a sideways fashion at his friend.
"You pervert them, you mean," exclaimed Gilbert. "Besides, if you're so deeply interested in Miss Enid Ewart-Crane,