This House to Let Part 19

For a few days he thought a great deal about the subject, and during those few days he kept away from Elsinore Gardens and denied himself the pleasure of listening to a further instalment of Miss Keane's reminiscences of her unhappy history.

If he were going to fall in love, he told himself sternly, he would fall in love with a woman of his own world, not with a girl, however beautiful and interesting she might be, who was only a hanger-on of a woman well-born, but evidently _decla.s.see_, a woman no longer moving in the sphere to which she had been accustomed. In these reflections, he showed sound sense.

But for a certain event that happened in the course of the next few days, he might have adhered to his good resolutions and have finally dismissed Miss Keane from his serious thoughts. And, in that case, this story would not have been written.

And then the event happened. Returning home to his rooms one night, about twelve o'clock, his man told him that Mr Esmond was waiting for him in the sitting-room.

He found the little rotund man sitting in an easy-chair, white-faced, the marks of agitation written all over his countenance.

Wondering at this unusual spectacle--Tommy was frequently fussy, but always self-contained--Spencer advanced, and held out his hand.

"What's up, Tommy? You're a late visitor, but always welcome." He pointed to the decanters standing on the sideboard. "I hope you have helped yourself?"

To Spencer's great surprise, the little man did not take the proffered hand. He spoke in a hoa.r.s.e, choking voice, his lips twitching.

"I've helped myself once too often, Spencer. And I can't take the hand of an honest man, for reasons. You've got it at once."

Spencer had average brains, but he was not very quick to realise the meaning of unexpected situations. At first, he thought the little man had been drinking.

"Sit down, Tommy, and get it off your chest. What in the name of wonder is the matter?" he said kindly. He was rather fond of Tommy in a casual sort of way.

Esmond did not sit down at once, but went over to the sideboard, and mixed himself a stiff tumbler of whisky-and-soda. He gulped it down at a draught, and then took an armchair.

"You won't begrudge me that, I know," he said, speaking in the same strained, hoa.r.s.e voice. "It's the last drink I'll have in your rooms, the last drink in any house in England, I should say. I'm done for, old man, to-morrow I clear out, eat my heart away in some beastly foreign hole."

No, Spencer's first surmise had been incorrect. The man was not drunk, not even elevated. His face was chalk-white, and he was trembling all over as if he had been stricken with palsy. But he was perfectly sober.

Spencer took a chair himself, and spoke a little sternly. "Pull yourself together, old man, and speak out. At first I thought you had had a drop too much. But I see that's not the case. Out with it.

You've been waiting some time, my man informs me. You want to tell me something. Tell it."

Tommy Esmond moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and spoke.

"I don't quite know what instinct prompted me to come to you. We haven't known each other so very intimately, after all, but I always felt you were a bit more of a Christian than the other chaps I have known, less of a Pharisee--that you would be more likely to find excuses for a poor devil who had yielded to temptation."

"Do get on," said Spencer a little impatiently. He did not at all like the turn the conversation was taking.

Tommy spoke brokenly, he could not put his words together very coherently, it appeared. But his halting utterance was simply due to emotion.

"I was at Elsinore Gardens to-night, playing cards. You know Elsinore Gardens, Mrs L'Estrange's flat?"

He was quite sober, but his agitation made him wander a bit, or he would not have put the question.

"Of course I know Mrs L'Estrange's flat. It was you who took me there," said Spencer.

"Yes, we went there on the night of the raid, but I was not playing at your table. I remember you lost, and I won. Well, somebody has to lose, and somebody else has to win."

Spencer made no comment on this obvious truism. Tommy Esmond again moistened his dry lips with his tongue. He was a long time in coming to the point, but he came to it at last.

"Well, old man, I was playing with an old pal of mine, with whom I have been in business for years. We had a nice code of signals arranged. I was as cautious as I could be, but my partner had been dining out, and he was a bit indiscreet. There were three or four men watching us, they caught us both, although, as I tell you, I was cautious. But I made one slip, and they were down on me like a knife. You don't know my partner.

It is the end of him. But it is the end of Tommy Esmond also."

To say that Spencer was disgusted would be to convey a faint idea of his feelings. And yet, as he looked at the huddled, trembling form in the chair, his sentiment was rather one of compa.s.sion than loathing. What was there behind? What tragedy of circ.u.mstance had driven this apparently light-hearted, b.u.t.terfly little creature to such crooked ways?

"You're an old hand, then? It's not the first time you've cheated?"

Tommy Esmond smiled wanly. He did not answer the question at once.

"What age do you guess me, Spencer?"

"At a casual glance, a little over fifty. You may be older. Looking at you closely, you do seem a bit made up, dye and all that sort of thing."

"My dear sir, I am old enough to be your father. I shall never see sixty again."

"And when did you take to this game?" Esmond thought a little before he replied, he was evidently counting the years.

"When I was twenty-two I got an _entree_ into society. I was then enjoying an income of two pounds a week, I was a clerk in an insurance office. At twenty-four I left the insurance business and started cheating for a living."

Spencer uttered a horrified e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. He had never come across anything quite like this, at any rate, in actual experience.

"Would you like to know something of my history, or would you like to kick me out at once, and have done with it?" asked Esmond quietly.

But there were still some remnants of compa.s.sion in Spencer. And he was also a little curious. He was dealing, after all, with a human doc.u.ment. Tommy's revelations would add to his experience of life.

"Tell me all you would like to say," he said.

"It will be a relief to unbosom myself, after the years I have led this life," was Esmond's answer. "When I left Elsinore Gardens with my life in ruins, I felt I could have shrieked it all out to the policeman standing at the corner. I came on here, because I thought you would listen to me, because I felt sure you were not a Pharisee."

Spencer motioned him to the sideboard. "Mix yourself another stiff peg, and steady your nerves. Then tell me as much as you like."

Esmond went over and helped himself. After a few seconds the ague-like trembling ceased, and he was able to speak in a fairly steady voice.

"My father was a solicitor in a small way of business in an obscure town in the west of England. There were three children--an elder brother, myself, and a sister. My elder brother succeeded to the practice and is still in the same place, making both ends meet on a microscopic income.

My sister is dead.

"My father was a G.o.d-fearing, deeply religious man, and did more than his duty by his family. He sc.r.a.ped and pinched to give us a good education, that being the only capital he could leave us. I was placed in an insurance office, the head of which was a distant connection of my mother's.

"If I had chosen to be content with my lot I daresay in time I might have done fairly well, as I had more than average abilities, and gave complete satisfaction in the performance of my duties.

"Unfortunately, I ran across, by the purest accident, a young man some couple of years my senior. His father, a man of very good family, had died a short time previously and left him a very decent income of about two thousand a year. He had been at a private school with me when we were boys.

"This young man took a violent fancy to me, I was slim and not bad looking in those days. He had the _entree_ to some of the best houses in London through his aristocratic connections. He took me with him everywhere, as his bosom friend. I had certain social instincts, derived from Heaven knows where, and I soon found my feet. In twelve months I was able to run alone, sometimes I was able to get into houses where even he could not gain a footing. He laughingly declared that I had beaten him in the social race, but he was a good-natured fellow, without a particle of envy or meanness in his nature, and he was rather proud than otherwise that the pupil had outstripped the master."

He paused for a moment. It was evident, that having kept silence for so many years, it was an enormous relief to unbosom himself.

In spite of his disgust, Spencer could not but feel interested in this bit of life-history. He had often felt curious as to Tommy Esmond's past, and now that curiosity was going to be satisfied. He understood now why the little man had never made any but the most distant allusions to his home or his relatives.

"The life suited me down to the ground, but there was always the terrible problem of ways and means, good clothes, travelling, expensive flowers, etc, etc. I had got to three pounds a week, but that doesn't go far in the circles to which I had been transplanted. It began to dawn upon me that, delightful as the life was, I was playing the fool, and neglecting the substance for the shadow. People asked me to their big parties, often to their dinners and to week-ends, but there was no money in it. In fact, I was getting out of my depth. I had already been obliged to borrow small sums from money-lenders to cover my expenses.