""I don"t know what you are talking about," she muttered. "As far as I could see, she was very fortunate in getting her pa.s.sage out free, very fortunate. She was not neyce with Babs. Babs didn"t take to her.
Children _know_!"
""Still," I said, looking at the omniscient Babs lying back in repletion and trying to decide upon some fresh demand, "Still, I felt sorry for her, a pretty creature like that, at a dangerous age, you know..." I had to stop, for Mrs. Evans" usually pale features were a dull brick red. Her head was drawn back and she became rigid with disapproval. This is what I mean when I say such women wield enormous power. They are panoplied in prejudice and conventional purity. Mrs. Evans was like that. She was safe. She was a pure woman. I looked at her thin, peaked little features as she replaced the blanket about the kicking limbs of the angel child and thought of that girl with her bright, defiant, derisive smile challenging me to high adventure. Mrs. Evans" function in life was not to challenge but to disapprove. She could endure no discussion of the fundamentals. She could read tales of pa.s.sion and rape, and not a flicker of emotion would cross that pallid face. But there must be no spoken word. Instinctively she drew back and became rigid, protecting her immaculate soul and the angel child from the faintest breath of reality. In that flat bosom raged a hatred, a horror, of beauty and the desire of it--a conviction that it was neither good nor evil, but simply strange, foreign, unknown, unsuitable; incompatible with the semi-detached house on the Portsmouth Road whose photograph hung on the bulkhead behind her. There was something shocking in the contrast this woman presented to her environment out there. Grunbaum, living under the shadow of his mountain, claiming from the world "confidence in his dispositions"; Macedoine and his lieutenant devising fantastic skin-games to be played out among the haunts of the old Cabirian G.o.ds; Artemisia fighting her own sad little battle with the fates and steeling her soul with reckless resolutions; even old Jack, no bad prototype of the ancient ship-masters who ran their battered biremes up on yonder beach to mend their storm-strained gear--all were more or less congruous with this old Isle of Ipsilon, where Perseus grew to manhood and from whose sh.o.r.es he set out on his journey to find Medusa.
But not she. She transcended experience. To know her made one incredulous of one"s own spiritual adventures. One nursed indelicate and never-to-be-satisfied curiosities about her emotional divagations. She once confessed, in a tone of querulous austerity, that she "lived only for the child." Possibly this was the key. Beauty and Love, and even Life itself, as men understood them, were to her the shocking but inevitable conditions of attaining to an existence consecrated to her neat and toy-like ideal. I am only explaining how she impressed me. As you say, she was, and is, simply a respectable married woman. But respectable married women, when you live with them without being married to them, are sometimes very remarkable manifestations of human nature.
"Yes, I used to watch that woman on the voyage home. I was full of curiosity about her. I was loth to believe in a human being so insensitive to what we usually call human emotions. There was difficulty about getting her ash.o.r.e in Algiers. It was only when Jack said she would get smothered in coal-dust if she stayed that she consented to go at all. She came back with a very poor opinion of Africa. It appears that it was hot and they did not know at the cafe how to make tea. A mosquito had had the effrontery to bite Babs. I was informed of this momentous adventure after we had gone to sea again, though Mrs. Evans had been cultivating a certain evasion where I was concerned since our talk about Artemisia. She had sheered off from me and tried to pump Jack about the girl. He came to me, his bright brown eyes globular with the news. What did I know, eh? Missus was saying she"d heard there was something fishy about the gel. Not that he"d be surprised. It only showed, he went on, how particular a man had to be. Gel like that ought to be _married_. Mrs. Evans was very particular whom she had about.
Always had been. I knew, of course, how carefully she"d been brought up.
A lady. There was something about that gel ... no, he never could give it a name, but he didn"t like it. Bad for the kid. Children _knew_. And they were the devil for picking things up. Here was Angelina, only the other night, getting him into a regular pickle because she"d heard him say "d.a.m.n" and brought it out plump in front of Mrs. Evans. Couldn"t be too careful. Fancy a kid that age saying a thing like that--"d.a.m.n by-bye, d.a.m.n by-bye!" Jack"s eyes grew larger and more prominent. Mrs.
Evans had been very upset when he had remarked irascibly that a ship was no place for a child anyway. No more it was. "Fred"--(I could see this coming, mind you, a week before)--"Fred, my boy," said he, "I shall be glad when we get home. I can see it now. It"s a mistake. I always said so when the commander brought his wife along." It didn"t do to take a woman away from where she belonged. She saw too much, as well. What did I think she said the other day? A fact. "You and Mr. Spenlove don"t seem to me to _do_ much." Think of that! And sometimes he wondered if she didn"t pay more attention to that infernal pier-head jumper, Bloom, than to her own husband. I should hear him at the cabin table--"When _I_ was commander, Mrs. Evans, I always insisted on the junior officers overseeing the routine of the ship. When _I_ was commander, I made it a rule that engineers should keep to their own part of the ship." It was enough to make a man sick, but women didn"t know any better.... Glad to get home. Was I going to Threxford?
"Well, no, I didn"t go down to Threxford. I went to the station to see them off from Glasgow, though. Mrs. Evans held up the angel child for me to kiss. "Kiss Mr. Spenlove, Babsy, darling." The youngster favoured me with one of her bold, predatory stares as she desisted from torturing her immense teddy bear for a moment. I had a sudden and disconcerting vision of Jack"s daughter as she would be-well, as she is to-day, I expect ... a robust, self-centred, expensively attired autocrat, ruling her parents, her friends, and her adorers with the smooth efficiency of a healthy tigress. Jack once muttered to me that she"d "knock the men over" and he seemed to take a certain grim relish in contemplating the future overthrow of the love-sick swains. And I saw in the background of this vision, as one sees a pale bluish shadow of a form in the background of a bright, highly coloured portrait, I saw Mrs. Evans, shrinking as the angel child developed, and cowering before that nonchalant vampirism. A well-nourished young cannibal, I figure her, for such characters need human beings for their sustenance, if you take the trouble to observe their habits. I suppose she regarded me as indigestible, for she kissed me without rapture, and I never saw her again.
"And the next voyage we slipped back into our usual jog-trot round. Mr.
Bloom, that fine flower of professional culture, was replaced by one of our skippers who had lost his license for a year for some highly technical reason. Jack was rather perturbed by the prospect of having a brother-captain under him, but the new chief-officer was temporarily stunned by the blow fate had dealt him and was a good fellow anyhow.
Young Siddons, who was able to carry on by the time we sailed, said he was a jolly decent old sort. Young Siddons and I had a good many talks together that voyage. He was in sore need, you know, of somebody to confide in. We all need that when we are in love. It has been my lot, more than once, to be favoured with these confidences. Tactless? Oh, no.
As the Evanses said about children, these young hearts _know_. Yes, we talked, and I received fresh light upon the mysteries of pa.s.sion. As Jack had said, young Siddons was the sort to take it hard. His face grew thinner and there was a new and austere expression in his fine gray eyes. We say easily, oh, the young don"t die of love! But don"t they?
Doesn"t the youth we knew die? Don"t we discover, presently, that a firmer and more durable and perhaps slightly less lovable character has appeared? So it seems to me. Not that Siddons was less lovable. But the gay and somewhat care-free youth who had laughed so happily on the voyage out when the girl had stopped for a while to chat with him was dead. He had a memory to feed on now, a sombre-sweet reminiscence dashed with the faint bitterness of an inevitable frustration. He took it out of me, so to speak, using me as a confessor, not of sins, but of illusions.
"He enlightened me, moreover, concerning the mishap which had befallen him and thrown him so definitely out of the race. He had met M. Nikitos on his way up to keep his tryst. She was standing at the door above them, silhouetted against the light, when they met on the path below. In darkness, of course. The lieutenant of the Anglo-h.e.l.lenic Development Company had adopted an extremely truculent att.i.tude. He did not allow, he said, people from the ship to seek interviews in that clandestine manner. Ordered young Siddons to depart. Which, of course, an Englishman couldn"t tolerate from a beastly dago. Punched his head. M. Nikitos, familiar with the terrain, had flung a piece of rock, and young Siddons, stepping back quickly in the first agony of the blow, had fallen over the edge, where I had found him. This was illuminating. It explained a number of obscure points which had puzzled me. I wondered, as I heard it, whether the recital of this feat to Captain Macedoine and his daughter had made any difference in the latter"s att.i.tude toward the victor. She had not regarded him with any enthusiasm when I had talked with her on the cliff, I noticed. I wondered. For you must be prepared to hear that I was tremendously preoccupied with thoughts of her at that time. That is one of the inestimable privileges of being a mere super in the play. You haven"t much to do and you can let your mind dwell upon the destiny of the leading lady. You can almost call it a hobby of mine, to dwell upon the fortunes of the men and women who pa.s.s across the great stage on which I have an obscure coign of vantage. Some prefer to find their interest in novels. They brood in secret upon the erotic exhalations which rise from the Temple of Art. But I am not much of a reader, and I prefer the larger freedom of individual choice.
"And there was much in young Siddons which helped me to visualize the personality which had suddenly irradiated his soul. Of course he was English, with all the disabilities of his race to express emotion. But the need for sympathy triumphed over these, and he would come along to my room in the dog-watch when I learned something of the tremendous experience which had befallen him. The Second Engineer, who had apparently suffered very slightly indeed, for I saw him in Renfield Street one night with two young ladies on his way to the theatre, a.s.sumed an air of dry detachment when he noticed these visits. The Chief, I heard him growling to the Third one day when he thought I was out of earshot, was nursing the mates nowadays. I knew the Second disapproved of friendship on principle. His ideal was to be more or less at loggerheads with everybody. He would wait until you had made some ordinary human remark, when he would retire into his formidable a.r.s.enal of facts and figures, and returning with a large and hard chunk of information, throw it at you and knock you down with it. His unreasonableness lay in his failure to realize that a man cannot be your friend and your enemy at the same time, that people are never grateful for being set right. He had a dry and creaking efficiency which made him silently detested. I for one rejoiced when I heard indirectly, at a later period, that a widow of forty, with seven children, had sued him for breach-of-promise.
"Young Siddons was unaware of the Second"s disapproval, and would slip down after supper, ready to go on at eight, and smoke cigarettes on my settee. You men know how, in fine weather, when you walk to and fro on the bridge, the empty, dragging hours induce the shades of the past to come up and keep you company. We in the engine-room generally have enough to do to keep away the crowds of ghosts. We had fine weather most of the time and young Siddons would come down with a fresh set of impressions which he would try to explain to me. He had been down to see his people while we were at home and I imagine the impact of cheerful, prosperous, well-bred folk had done a lot to modify his views. It was difficult, he confided one evening, to reconcile one"s feelings for a girl with the grave problem of one"s "people." Some chaps had such thundering luck. There was his brother, articled to a solicitor, who had been engaged for three years to a doctor"s daughter. They were just waiting until he was admitted. Now, what luck that was! Everything in good taste. She lived in the same road. He saw her every day. Her people were well off. When the time came the brother would have the usual wedding, go to Cromer for a honeymoon, and--start life. Young Siddons was puzzled by the fact that he himself had been bowled over by a girl who, he couldn"t help admitting, would not have been approved by the "people" down in Herefordshire. He saw that! I could perceive in his air a rather amusing amazement that love was apparently the ant.i.thesis instead of the complement of happiness. Now how could that be? And yet he admitted he had never seen his brother display any rapture over his love affair with the doctor"s daughter. Took it very much as a matter of course. Oh, a very nice girl, very nice. But ... he would fall silent, his chin on his hand, recalling the memory of Artemisia as she had seemed to him, an alluring and unattainable desire.
"Yes, it was interesting, and it fed my interest in her. I was too experienced, I suppose, to expect to see her again, but it amused me to brood upon her destiny. And it was a wish to learn something about that strange trio that took me up to Grunbaum"s one afternoon when we arrived, and I had the privilege of an interview with the concessionaire himself. Surrounded by attentive minions, who had full "confidence in his dispositions" he reposed, with the urbane placidity of a corpulent idol, in the curve of his great horseshoe desk. The yellow blinds were down over the tall windows against the westering sun, and the statue with the arm broken short gleamed like old ivory. It was startling to see a student"s sword and long German pipe hanging crossed on the wall beside that ancient piece of statuary. Grunbaum confessed, when I spoke of them, to being "largely cosmopolitan," though loyal of course to the h.e.l.lenic Government and his consular obligations to Great Britain. When I made mention of Macedoine, he frowned heavily and admitted that he had "taken the necessary steps." The concessions in the Saloniki hinterland would be dealt with by the Paris House "with a view to safe-guarding our interests." No doubt the railroad to Uskub would in time render such concessions extremely valuable. M. Nikitos doubtless obtained this information surrept.i.tiously from the official archives. But it was necessary that these financial dispositions should be in the hands of Western Europeans, since western capital was inevitably attracted to such enterprises. He himself was a man of western ideas. Educated in Berlin and Paris, he had been trained in affairs in Lombard Street. Our banking system was sound and our climate ferocious--so he summed us up more or less adequately. As regards the future of M. Macedoine he could tell me nothing. No doubt that gentleman would be fully occupied in setting his new venture on its feet. Oh, of course, these things occasionally prospered; but in the long run, stability of credit was essential. This, M. Macedoine, as far as could be ascertained, did not command.
"The harsh, guttural, cultured voice rolled on--the voice of established authority, of resistless financial power. To the simple and insular intelligences of the islanders his potency must have seemed G.o.d-like indeed. In this forgotten island of the sea he had a.s.sumed the role of arbiter of their humble destinies, the source of their happiness, and the omnipotent guardian of their fortunes. He was the head of what is deprecatingly called in these days a Servile State. We are warned that democracy is advancing to sweep up all such anachronisms and cast them into the fire. I am not so sure. None of us, who have seen the new liberty stalking through the old lands like a pestilence, are altogether sure. After all, there is something to be said for the theory of a Golden Age....
"The guttural voice rolled on. The business of the day was nearly over, and he spoke in general terms of the tendencies of the day. It was a mistake, he thought, to a.s.sume that all men were equal. He had not found it so. The Anglo-Saxon race had a genius for misgovernment on the democratic principle. He was not convinced that this could be applied to Southeastern Europe. Democracy was an illusion founded on a misconception. The power must be in one hand. Otherwise, chaos. Observe these works of supreme art about me--these exquisite examples of ancient craftsmanship--the products of a simple monarchic age. A man might be a slave, unlettered and unenfranchised, yet fashion works of imperishable beauty. Of course, the exponents of democracy denied this, but he himself was in a position to know. He had studied the past glories of the Cyclades. And he had failed to observe any striking improvement in human life when the fanatics of liberty a.s.sumed command. Liberty! It was a phantom, a _Lorelei_, singing to foolish idle men, luring them to destruction. All things, all men, are bound. This was a restless age. He regarded the future with some misgiving. We lacked men of strong character, animated by sound ideals, an aristocracy of intellect, with financial control.... These, of course, were large questions....
"That is the memory I have of him, the reactionary whom the romantic votaries of liberty set up against a wall and shot full of holes the other day. I don"t offer any opinion. I am only puzzled. I recall the man as I saw him that afternoon, in the midst of his prosperity and his life"s work, the embodiment of a cultured despotism.
"But of the girl he could tell me nothing, and it was of the girl I wished to hear. Grunbaum would not have noticed her. His own divagations, his emotional odyssies, his mistresses, would be dim memories now, and he would not have noticed her. And as young Siddons gradually developed an air of gentle and resigned melancholy, one of those moods which are the aromatic cerements of a dead love, I discovered in myself an increasingly active desire to know what had happened to her. Because I didn"t even know for certain whether she had married M. Nikitos. And when we got home once more and young Siddons bade us farewell to go up to sit for his examination, I was disappointed that, as far as I could see, the longing I had to follow the Macedoines in their strange career was not to be gratified. But this so often happens in my life that I am grown resigned. We sailed again, for Venice this time, and I admit that among the ca.n.a.ls and palaces, with the extraordinary moods which that fair city evokes, I found my thoughts retiring from Ipsilon. We went to Spain to load that voyage, moreover, and that brought its own sheaf of alien impressions. Loaded in Cartagena, and in due course arrived at our old berth in the Queens Dock. All that is of no moment just now. What I was going to say was that I found among my few letters on arrival an envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand and with the crest of a great London hotel on the back. I opened it with only mild curiosity, saw it was addressed to "Dear Mr. Chief," and turning the page, saw it was signed "A. M."
"Yes, it was from her. It was a short, hurried scrawl in a rambling yet firm style, the down strokes heavy and black, half a dozen lines to the sheet. She wanted to see me. I turned it over and saw the date on the envelope was a week old. She wanted to see me if I was able to come to London. I was to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. She would be in London for two or three weeks. She did hope I could come. She had found out from the Company that the _Manola_ was due soon. And she was "mine very sincerely."
"I admit I was, as they say, intrigued. I had given up all hope of hearing any more of her. And I was astonished. She was in London! I was to ask for Madame Kinaitsky. Was she married then, after all? I told Jack I had to go to London on family business, and took train that night, wiring to her that I would see her next day. I needed a spell from the ship, anyhow.
"I did not, of course, put up at the immense and famous caravanserai from which she wrote. It was in the Strand, however, and the ancient and supposedly very inconvenient hotel which I usually patronize when in the metropolis was, as we say, just off the Strand. I took a room at Mason"s Hotel, climbed up the dusky old staircase, and had a bath and a sleep after my night journey from the north. When I woke it was a sunny afternoon, in late September, the sort of day London sometimes gets after a summer of continuous cold rain and wind. I lunched and then I stepped across the Strand to call on Madame Kinaitsky. They say adventures are to the adventurous. Yet here was I, the least adventurous of mortals, travelling several hundred miles to meet an adventuress! I pa.s.sed under the great arch into the courtyard where commissionaires of imperial magnificence were receiving and despatching motor cars that were like kings" palaces. One of these august beings deigned to direct me within. I sent up my name--Mr. Spenlove to see Madame Kinaitsky by appointment. I sat down, watching the staircase, wondering if she was in, if she would descend to see me, wondering what it was all about, anyhow. A page in blue and silver approached me and commanded me to follow him into the elevator. We flew to the third floor and we stepped out into a corridor with thick carpets on the floor and dim masterpieces on the walls. The page led me along and knocked at one of the many doors. I remember his small, piping voice saying "Mr. Spenlove to see you," and the door closing. She was before me, still holding the door-k.n.o.b with both hands and looking at me over her shoulder with that bright, derisive, critical smile. An exquisite pose, girlish, fascinating, yet carrying with it an adumbration of power.
""Well," she said, "are you surprised?"
"She took me into another room, a room with wide windows and a great balcony overlooking the river. It was a suite. Beyond I saw a bedroom, bathroom, dressing rooms. All around were boxes with the lids lying askew, and bearing the names of the famous modistes of London and Paris.
There were hats, and coats, and lines of shoes, piles of silken stuffs, parasols in long pasteboard boxes; heaps of dresses breaking into a foam of white tissue paper. And on the tables were cases of perfume, satin-lined caskets of brushes and toilet articles, silver picture-frames, gold-chain bags, gloves, cigarette boxes. As I stood there taking this all in she came up and laughed, holding her lower lip between her teeth, as though challenging my criticism, and waiting with a certain amount of gallant trepidation for my verdict. She was enjoying my astonishment I dare say.
""I"m surprised," I said, "that you wanted to see me."
"She beckoned me to pa.s.s out on the balcony where were wicker chairs and tables. We sat down, and she told me, briefly, what had happened to her.
"No, there was no regret that I could perceive. "I had to get something to do," she remarked, navely. Her father and the lieutenant, M.
Nikitos, found themselves up against mysterious and unsuspected difficulties. The boiler of the _Osmanli_ collapsed and needed extended repair. The proposal that she should marry M. Nikitos was never seriously raised again. "No, she had never had any intention ... that little shrimp!" They took a house and lived a while on credit. She had to do something. Her father lived in a sort of trance, dealing with the difficulties which beset his schemes like a child playing with bricks continually falling down. She had to do something, she reiterated, moving her gold bracelets to and fro on her wrist. And yet she was unable to do anything--at first. She was in the _Jardin de la Tour Blanche_ when Kinaitsky spoke to her. He, a man of wealth, of the world, a vigorous connoisseur of life, was at that time emotionally at large.
He had had a furious row with a Syrian dancer ... so on and so forth.
And he understood in a flash. It was plain that Artemisia would develop into one of those women who waste no time over dunderheads. When I said, reasonably enough, for she wore a wedding ring, "Then you are not really married?" she clicked her tongue against her teeth and shrugged her shoulders. Oh, she was practising on me! I could see that. She thought, I suppose, that I was proof against her; but how she would have tortured young Siddons, for example, in love with her, young, sensitive, chivalrous, full of faith in the n.o.bility of womanhood. Yes, Kinaitsky understood. He knew women. Fortunate man! He sent her a large sum of money, and told her to write to him when she was free. He had a big house fronting the Gulf. She turned Nikitos out to shift for himself, took charge of the house he had taken for them in the _Rue Paleologue_, and "got through somehow," as she put it. She was vague about this episode, which was not surprising. There was a certain art in the way she broke off with "Mr. Chief, you can understand I was glad...." and rose to ring for tea. "Yes," she said, when she came back, "and then I found myself free to--to do something."
""Something, as you told me, I would not approve of?" I suggested. She broke into a smile and put her hand caressingly on my arm.
""Don"t be cross," she whispered, sweetly. "I"ve had a rotten time, Mr.
Chief. You know everything"s been against me from the first."
"And while I sat there looking out over the golden mist of the river and succ.u.mbing to the magic of her voice, her presence, and the romantic glamour of her destiny, she began to hum an old air, watching me with a faint, derisive smile. "Do you know that song?" she asked, and began to sing the words.
""_Ah! Toncouton!
Mo connin toi; To semble Morico: Y "a pas savon Qui a.s.sez blanc Pour laver to la peau._""
""Where did you hear that?" I asked, for I knew it, a Creole song.
""My mother," she said, quietly and sadly. "Now do you understand? I could never be like other girls, Mr. Chief." And she began again:
""_Quand blancs la yo donne yo bal To pas capable aller Comment t "a vaillant giabal Toi qui l"aime briller!_""
""That"s me, now," she said. "I"m Toucouton after all. Well, I must make the best of it." And she sat there, musing, with her hand on my arm.
""And your father--how is he?" I asked, to change the subject, for I was moved. An expression came into her face which reminded me of him, an expression of grave exaltation and secular raptness.
""Oh," she said, "he is developing his properties. There are many difficulties he did not expect. M. Kinaitsky has promised his a.s.sistance. They are having trouble with another company. And the _Osmanli_ needs overhauling. They are talking of building a dry-dock."
"The tea was brought out on the balcony by a menial in blue and silver livery with white silk stockings, his beautifully manicured hands arranging the service in front of her. Artemisia did not reply for a moment as she busied herself with pouring out the tea. She had put on a _peignoir_ of raw yellow silk covered with heavy gold thread embroidery, a barbaric thing that must have cost a hundred pounds at least. Round her neck was a fine chain of platinum holding a large sapphire. Her soft dark hair was fastened with a ma.s.sive comb of silver. On her arm were a dozen bracelets of heavy gold. There was no need to ask about Kinaitsky.
Infatuated! She nodded as much. Very rich. Tobacco estates. Selling his crop in London now. She rose and came back with a photograph in a large silver frame.
"Well, he was an improvement upon M. Nikitos. Not old either, as I had for some reason imagined. Forty-five, I suppose; a solid, hook-nosed individual with the expensive, well-groomed air we a.s.sociate with art-dealers. Fine eyes. I put down the picture and sipped my tea. This was all very well, but she had not asked me to come and see her simply to show off, surely.
""And you"ve called me all the way from Glasgow to see some pretty clothes?" I asked. She looked hard at me for a moment and then dropped her eyes and smiled. She spoke, and in her voice there was the peculiar bell-like resonance I remarked the first time I heard her p.r.o.nounce her name.
""No, Mr. Chief," she said, "I have a favour to ask. A great favour.
Will you do something for me? You did like me a little, you know."
""Oh, are you sure of that?" I enquired, coldly, and she nodded with a sudden rapturous vivacity. I dare say she was. Very little of that nature escapes a woman who exists chiefly by her temperament. I had been sentimental on the cliff and begged her to use me. Well, I was still young enough to feel a thrill because a pretty woman appealed to me, because I had been singled out for that delicate honour. I did what any of you would have done. I consented. And then she told me hurriedly what she wanted me to do. I was ... yes, this was the man. I understood, eh? She had written him from Saloniki. No answer. He did not know she was in London. She could not go, did not want to go for that matter. It was all over for ever. But it was his child. If I went to him, told him I had come from out there and had seen her ... eh? She wanted him to take the child, later, and bring him up. As an Englishman. And I was to come back and tell her what he said.
"And there I was, a respectable, sea-faring person, flying through London in a taxi-cab on a wild-goose chase at the behest of a girl who was rapturously sure I had liked her a little! It was an adventure which disproves the old proverb again. I found myself being carried northward, along streets of an intolerable meanness, past huge vulgar stores, among clanging street-cars and plunging motor-buses. I looked at the address--"Mr. Florian Kelly, 6 Kentish Studios, Kentish Town N. E." This was Kentish Town. We swung round a corner by a huge terra-cotta subway station, shot up a drab street, turned into a narrow lane, and stopped opposite a tall green wooden wall. I got out, rather dazed, and telling the man to wait, looked about for an entrance. There was a door in the wall with the words "Kentish Studios" over a bell handle. But the bell handle hung slack and I ventured to open the door. Evidently the taxi-driver had been there before, for he said: "You"ll find Number Six on the right, Sir." I went in.
"It was a long garden surrounded by high black buildings and very quiet.
The wet summer had encouraged everything to grow, and the whole place was a rank green jungle. In the centre stood a statue, a nymph stained green and brown with the rain pouring through the foliage overhead. The rank gra.s.ses hung over the path and there was a damp smell. I walked along until I came to Number Six. It was one of a number of apartments in a long, low building with large skylights in the roof, a large window and a transom over each door. A fly-blown card over the bell-push announced Mr. Florian Kelly. As I pressed the b.u.t.ton I heard a shrill laugh from one of the other studios. I was not surprised to find that the bell did not ring. I rapped with my stick, a fine manly voice remarked "Oh, d.a.m.n!" and there was a sound of footsteps. And then the door opened about six inches and a young man with a keen dark face and wearing a calico overall put his head out.
""Is it very important?" he asked, impatiently. "I"ve got a model, you know."
""Yes, very important," I said. "I have a cab waiting."
"He opened the door and I went in. It was one large room with a little scullery behind, a studio with a four-post bed in one corner, an easel in another, and a young woman in extreme deshabille, hastily covered with a travelling rug, seated on a dais near the window. On the walls were the usual studies, of street scenes mostly, and trees reflected in still water. On the easel was a half-finished poster for some theatrical announcement, a woman in a tragic att.i.tude holding a knife and clutching her throat. Mr. Florian Kelly looked hard at me. I said: