The Cruise of the Make-Believes. Gallon Tom
corner, with the houses in a sort of half-circle, and the little bit of green in front; only somehow I knew it couldn't be quite like that; all I understood was that it was out of doors. So then I understood the best thing I could do was to make the most of the garden; and it really isn't half bad – is it?"
"It's a pity it isn't better appreciated," he said.
"Father said he didn't understand what I was driving at; and then he always seemed to find the hole in the carpet and to trip over it. And Amelia doesn't really make very good coffee; it's the sort you dare not stir too much."
"Poor little Miss Make-Believe!" he said, a little sorrowfully. "I wonder what you would do if the time came when some of your dreams came true, when you didn't have to make-believe any more; when you walked out of this place, and left behind all the shabby pretences of it. I wonder what you would say then?"
"That's never likely to happen," she said, with a shake of the head. "Father doesn't seem to belong to the rich side of the family. His sister, who was here to-night – Aunt Julia, you know – has lots of money; she owns houses, you know, and lives in Clapham."
"Wonderful Aunt Julia!" he said.
"Father has said over and over again that if he had what he deserves he would be a rich man. I don't quite know what he means; he's never very explicit about it. But sometimes at night, when he comes home from – from his club, he cries a little, poor dear, and tells me what he would give me if only he had what he ought to have. And I know he would, too; he is really very generous by nature."
Gilbert Byfield knew enough of the girl's story by that time not to need to ask questions. Ever since that first meeting with her, when he had carefully gained her confidence over the wall, he had been able, by the simple process of piecing together her innocent answers to his questions, to understand what she did, and what sort of struggle she was constantly engaged in. He summed up the shiftless father and the shiftless son easily enough; understood, from the type of lodgers that came to the house, how difficult it must be for this girl to make both ends meet. Most he admired her unflinching courage, and above all that curious fanciful child-like nature that nothing had been able to crush or stamp out of her. With the most innocent feeling in the world, he had fostered that, and encouraged it.
It had been hard at times to remember that she was not a child, and that he had no right to treat her as such; it had, above all things, been difficult for him to tell himself, over and over again, that the life he lived in Arcadia Street was a sham, and that he was not the poor man he seemed to be to her. She had been frankness itself with him, and he should have been with her in return. Only of course he knew that, once she understood that he was playing a part, her confidence in him, as someone as poor as herself and as struggling, would be gone. For a period not yet defined in any way he intended to keep that fiction alive, and remain near her. And in that again there was no real motive, save one of pity for the girl.
He asked a question now that had been on his lips many and many a time, and yet that he had not uttered before. They were standing together near the table, and she had one hand resting upon it; he noticed how short the sleeve was, and guessed that she must long since have outgrown this dress, and many others she possessed. He remembered suddenly that her dresses had always seemed short. "How old are you, little Make-Believe?" he asked.
"More than eighteen," she said; and laughed and blushed.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the house, and a man stood there. Gilbert Byfield stood quite still, watching; for his presence there would need explanation. The girl had drawn away from him, and was peering at the man in the doorway; she spoke his name hesitatingly at last – almost apologetically.
"Mr. Quarle?" she asked. "Do you want me?"
The man who stepped out from the doorway was a thickly-set man of between fifty and sixty years of age, with thin grey hair and with a somewhat sour-looking face. His shoulders were very broad, and he had the appearance almost of a man whose head has been set too far forward; the sharp clean-shaven face was thrust well out, as though the man spent his time in peering into everything about him. He carried his hands locked behind him; his voice was rather harsh. Certainly there was nothing amiable-looking about him.
"I don't want you – but your father's asking for you," said the man.
"I'll go in at once," said Bessie. "Oh – Mr. Quarle," she added nervously, slipping her hand through the arm of the man, and drawing him forward a little – "this is Mr. Byfield – a friend of mine."
"Pleased to know you, sir," said Quarle, with a face that belied his words. "New lodger?"
"I live – next door," said Gilbert, a little lamely. For the girl had run into the house, and the situation was an absurd one. The only fashion in which he could leave this man, whose appearance he did not like, was by an undignified exit over the wall; and he had no wish for that. He could have gone out into the little alley behind, but he knew that the door at the end of his own particular garden was always kept bolted. So he stood somewhat awkwardly looking at the newcomer, and wondering whether he had better say something about the moon, or the warmth of the night. The man relieved him of the difficulty by speaking first.
"My name is Simon Quarle," he said, coming a step or two nearer to the younger man, and lowering his voice. "You're not likely to have heard of me; very few people have, because I keep myself to myself. It's a habit of mine."
"And a very excellent habit too, I should imagine," said Gilbert with meaning.
"I could wish it was a more general habit," retorted Quarle, with a quick glance at the house. "Now, sir – I'm old enough to be your father – old enough, under happier circumstances, to be the father of that girl who has just left us. And the Lord knows she needs a father badly."
"I believe she has one already," said Gilbert coldly.
"She supports a drunken reprobate who has that title," retorted the man, with a snarl. "Perhaps, if he were worthy of the name, he might have something to say to a man who sneaks over a back wall at night to talk to his daughter."
Gilbert made a quick movement towards the man; Quarle did not flinch, nor did he take his eyes from the face of the younger man. Again the absurdity of his position was borne in upon Byfield; more than that, he seemed to see in this strange creature someone who had a greater right to say that he was the friend of Bessie – a friend of an older standing.
"You simply don't understand," said Gilbert. "From a younger man I shouldn't stand it – but – "
"Never mind my years," said the other. "I'll do you the justice to believe that yours has simply been the thoughtlessness of youth – the carelessness of a man to whom women are all alike – "
"I see that you don't understand," broke in Gilbert hotly. "I have been genuinely sorry to see this child slaving for those who should really be supporting her; I have seen in her something purer and sweeter than in any woman I have met yet."
"You're right there," said Simon Quarle, with a nod. "But you'd best leave her alone to her garden, as she calls it, and to her dreams, and to the hard workaday world she knows. You belong to another world; go back to it."
"How do you know I belong to another world?" demanded Gilbert.
"Because I haven't lived in this one for nearly sixty years without watching men, and growing to understand them. You don't belong to Arcadia Street; you haven't the true stamp of it."
Gilbert took an impatient turn or two about the garden, and then came back to this strange man, who had not moved. "But if I tell you that I'm interested in her – that I want to help her – "
"Then I tell you that no help you can give her is of the sort she wants or deserves," said Quarle steadily. "At the present time, you stand to her doubtless as someone wonderful, who can talk to her as no man has talked to her yet – understand her with the understanding of youth. And presently, when the mood seizes you, you will turn your back on Arcadia Street, and go off to the world you know and understand. But you will leave her behind."
Again there was a pause between the two men, and again the younger one strode about impatiently, and again the elder one stood still, watching him. At last Gilbert came back to where Simon Quarle was