Cashel turned upon him curtly, and said, "Don"t you make so free with other people"s names, or perhaps you may get into trouble yourself."
The little man retreated hastily; but the crowd responded with three cheers as Cashel, with Lydia on his arm, withdrew through a lane of disreputable-looking girls, roughs of Teddy"s cla.s.s, white-ap.r.o.ned shopmen who had left their counters to see the fight, and a few pale clerks, who looked with awe at the prize-fighter, and with wonder at the refined appearance of his companion. The two were followed by a double file of boys, who, with their eyes fixed earnestly on Cashel, walked on the footways while he conducted Lydia down the middle of the narrow street. Not one of them turned a somersault or uttered a shout. Intent on their hero, they pattered along, coming into collision with every object that lay in their path. At last Cashel stopped. They instantly stopped too. He took some bronze coin from his pocket, rattled it in his hand, and addressed them.
"Boys!" Dead silence. "Do you know what I have to do to keep up my strength?" The hitherto steadfast eyes wandered uneasily. "I have to eat a little boy for supper every night, the last thing before to bed. Now, I haven"t quite made up my mind which of you would be the most to my taste; but if one of you comes a step further, I"ll eat HIM. So, away with you." And he jerked the coin to a considerable distance. There was a yell and a scramble; and Cashel and Lydia pursued their way unattended.
Lydia had taken advantage of the dispersion of the boys to detach herself from Cashel"s arm. She now said, speaking to him for the first time since she had interceded for Teddy,
"I am sorry to have given you so much trouble, Mr. Cashel Byron. Thank you for interfering to protect me; but I was in no real danger. I would gladly have borne with a few rough words for the sake of avoiding a disturbance."
"There!" cried Cashel. "I knew it. You"d a deal rather I had minded my own business and not interfered. You"re sorry for the poor fellow I treated so badly; ain"t you now? That"s a woman all over."
"I have not said one of these things."
"Well, I don"t see what else you mean. It"s no pleasure to me to fight chance men in the streets for nothing: I don"t get my living that way.
And now that I have done it for your sake, you as good as tell me I ought to have kept myself quiet."
"Perhaps I am wrong. I hardly understand what pa.s.sed. You seemed to drop from the clouds."
"Aha! You were glad when you found me at your elbow, in spite of your talk. Come now; weren"t you glad to see me?"
"I was--very glad indeed. But by what magic did you so suddenly subdue that man? And was it necessary to sully your hands by throttling him?"
"It was a satisfaction to me; and it served him right."
"Surely a very poor satisfaction! Did you notice that some one in the crowd called out your name, and that it seemed to frighten the man terribly?"
"Indeed? Odd, wasn"t it? But you were saying that you thought I dropped from the sky. Why, I had been following you for five minutes before!
What do you think of that? If I may take the liberty of asking, how did you come to be walking round Soho at such an hour with a little ragged boy?"
Lydia explained. When she finished, it was nearly dark, and they had reached Oxford Street, where, like Lucian in Regent"s Park that afternoon, she became conscious that her companion was an object of curiosity to many of the young men who were lounging in that thoroughfare.
"Alice will think that I am lost," she said, making a signal to a cabman. "Good-bye; and many thanks. I am always at home on Fridays, and shall be very happy to see you."
She handed him a card. He took it, read it, looked at the back to see if there was anything written there, and then said, dubiously,
"I suppose there will be a lot of people."
"Yes; you will meet plenty of people."
"Hm! I wish you"d let me see you home now. I won"t ask to go any further than the gate."
Lydia laughed. "You should be very welcome," she said; "but I am quite safe, thank you. I need not trouble you."
"But suppose the cabman bullies you for double fare," persisted Cashel.
"I have business up in Finchley; and your place is right in any way there. Upon my soul I have," he added, suspecting that she doubted him.
"I go every Tuesday evening to the St. John"s Wood Cestus Club."
"I am hungry and in a hurry to got home," said Lydia. ""I must be gone and live, or stay and die." Come if you will; but in any case let us go at once."
She got into the cab, and Cashel followed, making some remark which she did not quite catch about its being too dark for any one to recognize him. They spoke little during the drive, which was soon over. Bashville was standing at the open door as they came to the house. When Cashel got out the footman looked at him with interest and some surprise, But when Lydia alighted he was so startled that he stood open-mouthed, although he was trained to simulate insensibility to everything except his own business, and to do that as automatically as possible. Cashel bade Lydia good-bye, and shook hands with her. As she went into the house, she asked Bashville whether Miss Goff was within. To her surprise, he paid no attention to her, but stared after the retreating cab. She repeated the question.
"Madam," he said, recovering himself with a start, "she has asked for you four times."
Lydia, relieved of a disagreeable suspicion that her usually faultless footman must be drunk, thanked him and went up-stairs.
CHAPTER VIII
One morning a handsome young man, elegantly dressed, presented himself at Downing Street, and asked to see Mr. Lucian Webber. He declined to send in a card, and desired to be announced simply as "Bashville."
Lucian ordered him to be admitted at once, and, when he entered, nodded amiably to him and invited him to sit down.
"I thank you, sir," said Bashville, seating himself. It struck Lucian then, from a certain strung-up resolution in his visitor"s manner, that he had come on some business of his own, and not, as he had taken for granted, with a message from his mistress.
"I have come, sir, on my own responsibility this morning. I hope you will excuse the liberty."
"Certainly. If I can do anything for you, Bashville, don"t be afraid to ask. But be as brief as you can. I am so busy that every second I give you will probably be subtracted from my night"s rest. Will ten minutes be enough?"
"More than enough, sir, thank you. I only wish to ask one question.
I own that I am stepping out of my place to ask it; but I"ll risk all that. Does Miss Carew know what the Mr. Cashel Byron is that she receives every Friday with her other friends?"
"No doubt she does," said Lucian, at once becoming cold in his manner, and looking severely at Bashville. "What business is that of yours?"
"Do YOU know what he is, sir?" said Bashville, returning Lucian"s gaze steadily.
Lucian changed countenance, and replaced a pen that had slipped from a rack on his desk. "He is not an acquaintance of mine," he said. "I only know him as a friend of Lord Worthington"s."
"Sir," said Bashville, with sudden vehemence, "he is no more to Lord Worthington than the racehorse his lordship bets on. _I_ might as well set up to be a friend of his lordship because I, after a manner of speaking, know him. Byron is in the ring, sir. A common prize-fighter!"
Lucian, recalling what had pa.s.sed at Mrs. Hoskyn"s, and Lord Worthington"s sporting habits, believed the a.s.sertion at once. But he made a faint effort to resist conviction. "Are you sure of this, Bashville?" he said. "Do you know that your statement is a very serious one?"
"There is no doubt at all about it, sir. Go to any sporting public-house in London and ask who is the best-known fighting man of the day, and they"ll tell you, Cashel Byron. I know all about him, sir. Perhaps you have heard tell of Ned Skene, who was champion, belike, when you were at school."
"I believe I have heard the name."
"Just so, sir. Ned Skene picked up this Cashel Byron in the streets of Melbourne, where he was a common sailor-boy, and trained him for the ring. You may have seen his name in the papers, sir. The sporting ones are full of him; and he was mentioned in the Times a month ago."
"I never read articles on such subjects. I have hardly time to glance through the ones that concern me."
"That"s the way it is with everybody, sir. Miss Carew never thinks of reading the sporting intelligence in the papers; and so he pa.s.ses himself off on her for her equal. He"s well known for his wish to be thought a gentleman, sir, I a.s.sure you."
"I have noticed his manner as being odd, certainly."
"Odd, sir! Why, a child might see through him; for he has not the sense to keep his own secret. Last Friday he was in the library, and he got looking at the new biographical dictionary that Miss Carew contributed the article on Spinoza to. And what do you think he said, sir? "This is a blessed book," he says. "Here"s ten pages about Napoleon Bonaparte, and not one about Jack Randall; as if one fighting man wasn"t as good as another!" I knew by the way the mistress took up that saying, and drew him out, so to speak, on the subject, that she didn"t know who she had in her house; and then I determined to tell you, sir. I hope you won"t think that I come here behind his back out of malice against him. All I want is fair play. If I pa.s.sed myself off on Miss Carew as a gentleman, I should deserve to be exposed as a cheat; and when he tries to take advantages that don"t belong to him, I think I have a right to expose him."
"Quite right, quite right," said Lucian, who cared nothing for Bashville"s motives. "I suppose this Byron is a dangerous man to have any personal unpleasantness with."