The other ran through the three names, with a short biography of each.
Frank nodded, rea.s.sured at the end.
"That"s all right," he said. "All before my time, I expect. They might come in, you know."
"Oh, no!" said the clergyman. "I told them not, and--"
"Well, let"s come to business," said Frank. "It"s about a girl. You saw that man to-day? You saw his sort, did you? Well, he"s a bad hat. And he"s got a girl going about with him who isn"t his wife. I want to get her home again to her people."
"Yes?"
"Can you do anything? (Don"t say you can if you can"t, please....) She comes from Chiswick. I"ll give you her address before I go. But I don"t want it muddled, you know."
The clergyman swallowed in his throat. He had only been ordained eighteen months, and the extreme abruptness and reality of the situation took him a little aback.
"I can try," he said. "And I can put the ladies on to her. But, of course, I can"t undertake--"
"Of course. But do you think there"s a reasonable chance? If not, I"d better have another try myself."
"Have you tried, then?"
"Oh, yes, half a dozen times. A fortnight ago was the last, and I really thought--"
"But I don"t understand. Are these people your friends, or what?"
"I"ve been traveling with them off and on since June. They belong to you, so far as they belong to anyone. I"m a Catholic, you know--"
"Really? But--"
"Convert. Last June. Don"t let"s argue, my dear chap. There isn"t time."
Mr. Parham-Carter drew a breath.
There is no other phrase so adequate for describing his condition of mind as the old one concerning head and heels. There had rushed on him, not out of the blue, but, what was even more surprising, out of the very dingy sky of Hackney Wick (and Turner Road, at that!), this astonishing young man, keen-eyed, brown-faced, muscular, who had turned out to be a school-fellow of his own, and a school-fellow whose reputation, during the three hours since they had parted, he had swiftly remembered point by point--Guiseley of Drew"s--the boy who had thrown off his coat in early school and displayed himself shirtless; who had stolen four out of the six birches on a certain winter morning, and had conversed affably with the Head in school yard with the ends of the birches sticking out below the skirts of his overcoat; who had been discovered on the fourth of June, with an air of reverential innocence, dressing the bronze statue of King Henry VI. in a surplice in honor of the day. And now here he was, and from his dress and the situation of his lodging-house to be reckoned among the worst of the loafing cla.s.s, and yet talking, with an air of complete confidence and equality of a disreputable young woman--his companion--who was to be rescued from a yet more disreputable companion and restored to her parents in Chiswick.
And this was not all--for, as Mr. Parham-Carter informed me himself--there was being impressed upon him during this interview a very curious sensation, which he was hardly able, even after consideration, to put into words--a sensation concerning the personality and presence of this young man which he could only describe as making him feel "beastly queer."
It seems to have been about this point that he first perceived it clearly--distinguished it, that is to say, from the whole atmosphere of startling and suggesting mystery that surrounded him.
He looked at Frank in silence a moment or two....
There Guiseley sat--leaning back in the red leather chair, his cocoa still untouched. He was in a villainous suit that once, probably, had been dark blue. The jacket was b.u.t.toned up to his chin, and a grimy m.u.f.fler surrounded his neck. His trousers were a great deal too short, and disclosed above a yellow sock, on the leg nearest to him, about four inches of dark-looking skin. His boots were heavy, patched, and entirely uncleaned, and the upper toe-cap of one of them gaped from the leather over the instep. His hands were deep in his pockets, as if even in this warm room, he felt the cold.
There was nothing remarkable there. It was the kind of figure presented by unsatisfactory candidates for the men"s club. And yet there was about him this air, arresting and rather disconcerting....
It was a sort of electric serenity, if I understand Mr. Parham-Carter aright--a zone of perfectly still energy, like warmth or biting cold, as of a charged force: it was like a real person standing motionless in the middle of a picture. (Mr. Parham-Carter did not, of course, use such beautiful similes as these; he employed the kind of language customary to men who have received a public school and university education, half slang and half childishness; but he waved his hands at me and distorted his features, and conveyed, on the whole, the kind of impression I have just attempted to set down.)
Frank, then, seemed as much out of place in this perfectly correct and suitable little room as an Indian prince in Buckingham Palace; or, if you prefer it, an English n.o.bleman (with spats) in Delhi. He was just entirely different from it all; he had nothing whatever to do with it; he was wholly out of place, not exactly as regarded his manner (for he was quite at his ease), but with regard to his significance. He was as a foreign symbol in a familiar language.
Its effect upon Mr. Parham-Carter was quite clear and strong. He instanced to me the fact that he said nothing to Frank about his soul: he honestly confessed that he scarcely even wished to press him to come to Evensong on Sunday. Of course, he did not like Frank"s being a Roman Catholic; and his whole intellectual being informed him that it was because Frank had never really known the Church of England that he had left it. (Mr. Parham-Carter had himself learned the real nature of the Church of England at the Pusey House at Oxford.) But there are certain atmospheres in which the intellectual convictions are not very important, and this was one of them. So here the two young men sat and stared at one another, or, rather, Mr. Parham-Carter stared at Frank, and Frank looked at nothing in particular.
"You haven"t drunk your cocoa," said the clergyman suddenly.
Frank turned abruptly, took up the cup and drank the contents straight off at one draught.
"And a cigarette?"
Frank took up a cigarette and put in his mouth.
"By the way," he said, taking it out again, "when"ll you send your ladies round? The morning"s best, when the rest of us are out of the way."
"All right."
"Well, I don"t think there"s anything else?"
"My dear chap," said the other, "I wish you"d tell me what it"s all about--why you"re in this sort of life, you know. I don"t want to pry, but--"
Frank smiled suddenly and vividly.
"Oh, there"s nothing to say. That"s not the point. It"s by my own choice practically. I a.s.sure you I haven"t disgraced anybody."
"But your people--"
"Oh! they"re all right. There"s nothing the matter with them.... Look here! I really must be going."
He stood up, and something seemed to snap in the atmosphere as he did so.
"Besides, I"ve got to be at work early--"
"I say, what did you do then?"
"Do then? What do you mean?"
"When you stood up--Did you say anything?..."
Frank looked at him bewildered.
"I don"t know what you"re talking about."
Mr. Parham-Carter did not quite know what he had meant himself. It was a sensation come and gone, in an instant, as Frank had moved ... a sensation which I suppose some people would call "psychical"--a sensation as if a shock had vibrated for one moment through every part of his own being, and of the pleasant little warm room where he was sitting. He looked at the other, dazed for a second or two, but there was nothing. Those two steady black eyes looked at him in a humorous kind of concern....
He stood up himself.
"It was nothing," he said. "I think I must be getting sleepy."
He put out his hand.
"Good-night," he said. "Oh! I"ll come and see you as far as the gate."