Secret Bread Part 18

They were--though Killigrew lost so much money that he was afraid to come home and spent the night imbibing champagne and repentance at the Hummums, and Ishmael bought Indian corn and a kind of yam which he thought could be induced to flourish in West Penwith, which incidentally it did so far as foliage went, though it always obstinately refused to bear fruit. The following mid-day Joe sent for Ishmael to the Hummums, and from that comfortable if somewhat dingy hostelry set out, in the gayest spirits, to track down a money-lender who would oblige on no better security than his a.s.surance that the Guv'nor would pay up when he had got over the shock.

Success in this put Killigrew into the wildest spirits, and he forthwith took unto himself a young man whom he ran into as he and Ishmael were going into the Blue Posts for a before-dinner drink. The young man was none other than Carminow, grown very tall and melancholy-looking, with an extravagantly high collar, much swathed with a voluminous black silk cravat and a fancy waistcoat. Carminow, who under a manner of deepest gloom concealed a nature as kind and as disconcertingly morbid as of yore, was unaffectedly charmed to see his old schoolfellows, and said so. He had better control over the letter "r" than in his boyhood, but his employment of it was still uncertain and quite irrational. He linked an arm in each and said gravely: "Will you come with me to see the execution at Newgate to-mowwow morning? They are twying new experiments with the dwop, and it should be intewesting."

"No--are you serious?" demanded Killigrew. "I say, I've half a mind to.... It might make a jolly fine sketch, mightn't it? Kept quite rough and suggestive, you know."

"It'd be suggestive all right," remarked Ishmael. Within him a wish to accept warred with horror, besides which he could not quite make up his mind whether Carminow were joking or no.

"Splendid," said Carminow; "there's just one moment, when the hangman pulls on the legs, to make sure, you understand--and the face swells till it looks as though it would burst the white cap pulled over it, for all the world like a boiling pudding.... And you see the cawotid artewy become suffused with a blue bwuise--"

"Cobalt and a touch of _garance_," threw in Killigrew.

"Shut up, Carminow," said Ishmael; "we've not had our drinks yet if you have." He was rather proud of this, which sounded to him to have quite a man-about-town tw.a.n.g, and he knew it must have been successful when he saw his companions pa.s.s it without ribald comment.

"Let's all have dinner," said Killigrew exuberantly, "and then go on to see the new ballet. What d'you say, Carminow?"

Carminow was quite willing, his appointment not being till early next morning, and the three went off to the "Ches.h.i.+re Cheese," where Killigrew drew portraits of Dr. Johnson on the tablecloth and placated the head-waiter by telling him how famous he, Killigrew, was going to be and how valuable the tablecloth would consequently be in fifty years'

time. Ishmael enjoyed that dinner. He was unused to stimulants, but having a naturally good head was delightfully sharpened in sense and appreciation by them, while his stronger stomach did not pay him back next day as Killigrew's invariably did. Carminow was full of stories, all, needless to say, of a sanguinary nature; Killigrew capped them, or tried to, by would-be immoral tales of Paris; and Ishmael said very little, but, with his deadly clarity of vision for once working beneficently, sat there aware how young and somehow rather lovable they were through it all, while he himself, whom they were obviously treating as so so much younger in the ways of the world, felt old compared with them. The only thing he did not fully realise was just how young that feeling itself was.

After dinner they went, as Killigrew had suggested, to the theatre--a shabby little place to look at, though the resort of all the bloods, who crowded stalls and stage door. Killigrew laughingly informed Carminow that Ishmael had never met an actress in his life, and in reply to Carminow's half-mocking commiseration, Ishmael answered gaily that he had never even been to the theatre, except to a penny gaff that once visited Penzance. It was indeed with a secret tingling that he now found himself seated in a box. He brought to the theatre the freshness of the child who goes to his first pantomime, and was unashamedly aware of the fact. The smell of the place, the heat--for the gas made the air vibrant--the very tawdriness of the hangings and gilding, all thrilled him, because they were, as Killigrew would have said, so "in the picture." When the curtain went up he settled himself to enjoyment.

Killigrew, more interested by the performers than what they represented, leant back in the box and kept up a running commentary in a low voice.

"There never was a more Oriental thing invented than the crinoline," he observed, nodding towards a group of dancers blowing as lightly as b.a.l.l.s of thistledown over the stage, slim ankles twinkling below their inflated skirts of misty whiteness; "I'm not trying to be epigrammatic, I mean it. Watch those girls there ... did you ever see such sway, such slope--I can't find the exact word for it? Each little movement--a raised eyebrow seems almost enough--and the crinoline sways this way and that, divinely true at the waist alone.... But it's not just their grace; it's what they suggest. That feeling of a cage, of something protective, which is what I mean by Oriental. So defined down to the waist, and then this thing that makes a parade of not following nature.... D'you know, I never watch a pretty woman in a crinoline but the thought doesn't strike me?"

"It's the sort of thought that would, my son," opined Carminow.

"But you can't deny I'm right. No clinging drapery has ever been so suggestive, so much the refinement of sensuality, as the crinoline."

Ishmael said nothing; but inwardly he too felt what Killigrew meant, which he would not have done a week earlier. As he sat there, warm and pleasantly stung by the wine he had drunk, the brightness of the scene and the colour of the music and the thoughts they conjured up, as well as the gowns and head-dresses of the pretty women, all awaked in him the glow a child feels at its first pantomime. The dancers were to him not flesh-and-blood women, but magical creatures, and yet he was stirred to a new excitement too. As he sat there all the sense of poise with which he usually so confidently faced the affairs of life, and which, far from failing him, generally served him only too well, began to sway and grow many-coloured.

When they went out into the street again he agreed with Carminow that the night was yet too young to abandon it in mid-air. He did not, however, feel like more drinks; the exhilaration of the play, of his own youth, now for the first time tingling unrestrainedly in his veins, the glamour of the gaily-lit night--they had wandered as far as the Haymarket, which was ablaze till dawn--were all enough for him, and he felt that anything more would have blurred their keenness. Suddenly Carminow had an inspiration.

"Come back with me, you two," he suggested. "I've got quite decent digs in Cecil Stweet, off the Stwand. And I've a little collection that might intewest you...."

"I know, monstrosities in bottles and side elevations of premature babies," surmised Killigrew; "you're a foul old thing! But we'll come and have a yarn over 'em anyway. I'm not in a hurry to face my revered parents and I daren't take this good little boy to some places you and I know of. I'm responsible for him."

Carminow turned a pessimistic eye on Ishmael. "Are you still pure?" he shot at him in his deepest ba.s.s. "I see you are; your look answers for you." And he strode on again. He turned to add over his shoulder: "I cannot in the intewests of my pwofession emulate you; it is inc.u.mbent on me to know first hand all that is possible, but I consider it an excellent thing for the layman. Keep it up. Don't let Killigrew, who is a commonplace sinner, laugh you out of it."

Ishmael forced himself to reply that he did not intend to forego his own ideas on the subject for Killigrew or anyone else; and, indeed, he was not so outraged by anything Carminow had said as by Killigrew's whispered communication that for his part he believed Carminow was boasting.... "Don't believe he knows the way," added Killigrew, "or only theoretically. He's like a lot of doctors--all theories and no practice." He was so pleased with this joke he had to repeat it aloud to Carminow, who bore it quite unruffled.

They had now reached the house, one of the many little lodging-houses that stood where the Hotel Cecil is to-day, and Carminow let himself in with a large key and, turning up the gas, revealed the usual lodging-house hall that is and was and always shall be eternally the same as long as lodgings and landladies exist. It had a yellowish paper blotted with large blurred flowers of a reddish hue, a steel engraving of the "Derby Day" hung by the hat-stand, and the woodwork was of bright yellow graining.

Carminow's rooms were on the second floor; after the first landing had been pa.s.sed the stairs suddenly altered in character, and from being carpeted and fairly wide took onto themselves linoleum and a steep straightness that said plainly: "Up to here two guineas a week; above here only thirty s.h.i.+llings, with half-a-crown for extras." Higher still bare boards advertised the fact that only "bed-sitters" or even plain bedrooms were to be found.

Carminow's rooms ran the depth of the house, the front one, his sitting-room, being separated from the bedroom by folding doors of the same bright yellow as the doors in the hall. Into the sitting-room he ushered his guests, and they knocked helplessly up against sharp angles while Carminow pawed and patted round the room for matches, obstinately refusing the offers of their boxes because he said he was trying to train his landlady to keep his in the same place. Killigrew, uninterested in the education of landladies, finally insisted on striking one of his own, and uttered a shriek of joy when the faint gleam revealed a gla.s.s jar in which a greenish-white fragment of a body floated forlornly. Finally the gas was lit, the table cleared of papers and books, and bottles of beer placed upon it instead. They had just settled down to villainously strong cigars and the beer when a sound very unexpected to two of them floated out upon the air--the sound of a girl singing. The voice was a rather deep mezzo; it was singing very softly an old ballad, to the accompaniment of a few notes very gently struck now and again on a piano.

Carminow said nothing, but lay back in his chair and puffed out clouds of smoke over his face. Killigrew looked at him and whistled.

"I say ..." he said.... "Own up, Carminow! Who is it?"

"If you mean who is the lady singing," said Carminow with sudden stiffness, "she is Miss Grey, who has the room above this. She is a young lady about whom I think even you would not make your obscene jokes if you knew her."

"Sits the wind in that quarter?..." thought Killigrew, highly amused.

"I'll roast him...." Aloud he said: "And may I not know her, then, Carminow? If Miss Grey is a friend of yours, perhaps--"

"I am vewy particular about whom I intwoduce to Miss Grey," said Carminow unflatteringly; "that is to say, I should first have to find out whether she wished it. She is quite alone, poor girl."

"Dear me! How is that? Is she some romantic governess out of a place or a lady who through no fault of her own has come down in the world?"

"Miss Grey is on the stage."

Killigrew roared with laughter. "You hear, Ishmael; here's your chance.

You were saying you didn't know any actresses, and now here's Carminow with one up his sleeve all ready for you. Tell us all about it, old chap!"

"I will, if only to stop your stupid little mind from wunning along its accustomed dirty gwoove," answered Carminow sententiously. "Miss Grey is the daughter of a clergyman--"

"They all are."

"She is an orphan, that is to say, as good as one, for her mother is dead and her father too poor to support her. She works very hard when she can get any work, which I am sowwy to say is not often, and she is as good as she is clever. I should be vewy glad if I could put her in the way of more work when the play she is in is taken off, and I thought you, Killigrew, who know so many people--"

"Artful old bird! So that's what you'd got in your mind, is it? Well I can't do anything till I've seen the lady, can I? Even an angel in a poke--"

The singing had ceased, and in the little silence there came a knock at the sitting-room door. Carminow had called out "Come in" automatically before a sudden idea sent him to his feet. He was too late; the door had opened and a young lady in grey stood hesitating on the threshold.

CHAPTER IX

HIDDEN SPRINGS

She stood still, dismayed, her hand still on the doork.n.o.b, obviously distressed at the unexpected company in which she found herself.

"Miss Grey ... do please come in ... is there anything I can do ...?"

mumbled Carminow in great agitation, pus.h.i.+ng a chair forward and then pulling it back again indeterminedly.

"I'm so sorry--" began the low full voice, richer in speech than in song. "I'd no idea--I only wondered whether you could--but it's nothing."

"Anything," Carminow a.s.sured her distractedly; "but please permit me to introduce my friends ... Mr. Killigrew, Mr. Ruan--Miss Grey."

Everyone bowed, and then Miss Grey said simply: "It was only that my lamp has gone out; you know there isn't any gas on my floor, and I remembered you had paraffin for your reading lamp.... I'm so afraid of the dark. I know it's very silly...."

"Not at all, very natural, I'm sure. You can have the whole lamp, Miss Grey, but you must let me clean it. It might smell. Yes, please, I insist. You must sit down here in the light while I do it. I'm afraid it's dweadfully smoky. Killigrew, do open the window--"

So he fussed, while Miss Grey, with a murmured thanks, sank into the chair Ishmael shyly offered her and waited very simply, her hands folded on her lap. There was a simplicity, a lack of any self-consciousness, in her whole manner, so Ishmael, used to Phoebe and Va.s.sie--neither of whom was the same in men's company that she was out of it--told himself. This girl seemed divinely unaware even of any strangeness in the position in which she now found herself--the unawareness of an angel.... When Killigrew talked to her she answered frankly and freely, almost with the confidence of a child. She could not be more than twenty, Ishmael decided, and with all her maturity of build had a childish air. The fas.h.i.+ons of the day were not conducive to youthfulness of appearance; but not even the long full skirts trimmed with bands of black velvet or the close-fitting bodice could make her seem other than a schoolgirl, while the hair worn brushed loosely back from the forehead instead of brought down in sleek waves gave her a look that reminded him of someone, though he could not remember whom. Then with a sudden flash he remembered it was Hilaria, little Hilaria Eliot--she too had that look which, being in the middle of the period himself, he did not recognise as alien to its stamp, but which was so conspicuously so that women might have called it dowdy and men individual. But this girl was feminine, that was obvious in the timid shyness even of her trusting att.i.tude.

Oddly enough--or oddly as if seemed to Ishmael, who was wont to be in the background when out with Killigrew--it was to him that she chiefly addressed herself. Killigrew sat watching as from general remarks of great propriety about the weather and Ishmael's opinions of London as a place to visit they pa.s.sed to her views on it as a place in which to live. These were, apparently, not over favourable.