She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was talking to a member of the baronetage.
"Quite so," said I. "Now, Carlotta," I resumed, "our first plan is to set out in search of Harry. He may have missed his train, and have followed by a later one, and be even now rampaging about Waterloo station. If we hear nothing of him, I will drive you to the Turkish Consulate, give you in charge there, and they will see you safely home to Alexandretta. The good Hamdi Effendi is doubtless distracted, and will welcome you back with open arms."
I meant to be urbane and friendly.
She rose to her feet, grew as white as paper, opened her great eyes, opened her baby mouth, and in the middle of the Embankment Gardens plumped on her knees before me and clasped her hands above her head.
"For G.o.d"s sake get up!" I shrieked, wrenching her back acrobatically to the bench beside me. "You mustn"t do things like that. You"ll have the whole of London running to look at us."
Indeed the sight had so far roused the pale young man from his lethargy that he laid his dirty pink paper on his knees. I kept hold of Carlotta"s wrists. She began to moan incoherently.
"You mustn"t send me back--Hamdi will kill me--oh please don"t send me back--he will make me marry his friend Mustapha--Mustapha has only two teeth--and he is seventy years old--and he has a wife already--I only went with Harry to avoid Mustapha. Hamdi would kill me, he would beat me, he would make me marry Mustapha."
That is what I gathered from her utterances. She was frightened out of her wits, even into anticlimax.
"But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector," said I.
"You wouldn"t be so cruel," she sobbed. The guttural sonority with which she rolled the "r" in "cruel" made the epithet appear one of revolting barbarity. She fixed those confounded eyes upon me.
I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.
I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish consulate.
I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and drove her to Waterloo. On the way she reminded me that she was hungry. I gave her food at the buffet. It appears she has a pa.s.sion for hard-boiled eggs and lemonade. She did not seem very much concerned about finding Harry, but chattered to me about the appointments of the bar. The beer-pulls amused her particularly. She made me order a gla.s.s of bitter (a beverage which I loathe) in order to see again how it was done, and broke into gleeful laughter. The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in bewilderment. The two or three bar-loafers also stared. I was glad to escape to the platform.
There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in a ring round us when we stopped to interview a railway official. The beautiful, bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her disreputable attire--I have never seen a broken black feather waggle more shamelessly--was a sight indeed to strike wonderment into the c.o.c.kney mind. And perhaps her a.s.sociation with myself added to the incongruity. I am long and lean and unlovely, I know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably respectable. Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by the public attention. "Calm and unembarra.s.sed as a fate" she returned the popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my efforts to find Harry.
In the midst of an earnest discussion with the station-master she begged me for a penny to put into an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had seen a small boy work successfully. I refused, curtly, and turned to the station-master. A roar of laughter interrupted me again. Carlotta, with outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an organ-grinder"s monkey, had induced the boy to part with the sticky bit of toffee, and was in the act of conveying it to her mouth.
"I"ll call to-morrow morning," said I hurriedly to the station-master.
"If the gentleman should come meanwhile, tell him to leave his name and address."
Then I took Carlotta by the arm and, accompanied by my train of satellites, I thrust her into the first hansom-cab I could see.
There was no sign or token of Harry. No pretty young man was hanging dejectedly about the station. None had torn his hair before the officials asking for news of a lost female in frowsy black. There was no Harry. There was no further need therefore to afford the British public a gratuitous entertainment.
"Drive," said I to the cabman. "Drive like the devil."
"Where to, sir?"
I gasped. Where should I drive? I lost my head.
"Go on driving round and round till I tell you to stop." The philosophic cabman did not regard me as eccentric, for he whipped up his horse cheerfully. When we had slid down the steep incline and got free of the precincts of that hateful station, I breathed more freely and collected my wits. Carlotta sucked her sticky thumbs and wiped them on her dress.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Across Waterloo Bridge," said I.
"What to do?"
"To dispose of you somehow," I replied, grimly. "But how, I haven"t a notion. There"s a Home for Lost Dogs and a Home for Stray Cats, and a Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard, but as you are neither a dog nor a cat nor an umbrella, these refuges are unavailable."
The cab reached the Strand.
"East or west, sir?" inquired the driver.
"West," said I, at random.
We drove down the Strand at a leisurely pace. I pa.s.sed through a phase of agonised thought. By my side was a helpless, homeless, friendless, penniless young woman, as beautiful as a G.o.ddess and as empty-minded as a baby. What in the world could I do with her? I looked at her in despair. She met my glance with a contented smile; just as if we were old acquaintances and I were taking her out to dinner. The unfamiliar roar and bustle of London impressed her no more than it would have impressed a little dog who had found a kind master.
"Suppose I gave you some money and put you down here and left you?" I inquired.
"I should die," she answered, fatalistically. "Or, perhaps, I should find another kind gentleman."
"I wonder if you have such a thing as a soul," said I.
She plucked at her gown. "I have only this--and it is very ugly," she remarked again. "I should like a pink dress."
We crossed Trafalgar Square, and I saw by Big Ben that it was a quarter to six. I could not drive through London with her for an indefinite period. Besides, my half past seven dinner awaited me.
Why, oh, why has Judith gone to Paris? Had she been in town I could have shot Carlotta into Tottenham Mansions, and gone home to my dinner and Cristoforo da Costa with a light heart. Judith would have found Carlotta vastly entertaining. She would have washed her body and a.n.a.lysed her temperament. But Judith was in retreat with Delphine Carrere, and has left me alone to bear the responsibilities of life--and Carlotta.
The cab slowly mounted Waterloo Place. I had thought of my aunts as possible helpers, and rejected the idea. I had thought of a police station, a hotel, my lawyers (too late), a furnished lodging, a hospital. My mind was an aching blank.
"Where do you live?" asked Carlotta.
I looked at her and groaned. It was the only solution. "Up Regent"s Park way," I replied, aware that she was none the wiser for the information.
I gave the address to the cabman through the trap-door in the roof.
"I"m going to take you home with me for to-night," I said, severely. "I have an excellent French housekeeper who will look after your comfort.
And to-morrow if that infernal young scoundrel of a lover of yours is not found, it will not be the fault of the police force of Great Britain."
She laid her grubby little hand on mine. It was very soft and cool.
"You are cross with me. Why?"
I removed her hand.
"You mustn"t do that again," said I. "No; I am not in the least cross with you. But I hope you are aware that this event is of an unprecedented character."
"What is an unprecedented character?" she asked, stumbling over the long words.
"A thing that has never happened before and I devoutly hope will not happen again."
Her face was turned to me. The lower lip trembled a little. The dog-look came into those wonderful eyes.
"You will be kind to me?" she said, in her childish monosyllables, each word carefully articulated with a long pause between.
I felt I had behaved like a heartless brute, ever since I thrust her into the cab at Waterloo. I relented and laughed.