The Cruise of the Make-Believes

"Because I haven't lived in this one for nearly sixty years without watching men, and growing to understand them. You don't belong to Arcadia Street; you haven't the true stamp of it."

Gilbert took an impatient turn or two about the garden, and then came back to this strange man, who had not moved. "But if I tell you that I'm interested in her – that I want to help her – "

"Then I tell you that no help you can give her is of the sort she wants or deserves," said Quarle steadily. "At the present time, you stand to her doubtless as someone wonderful, who can talk to her as no man has talked to her yet – understand her with the understanding of youth. And presently, when the mood seizes you, you will turn your back on Arcadia Street, and go off to the world you know and understand. But you will leave her behind."

Again there was a pause between the two men, and again the younger one strode about impatiently, and again the elder one stood still, watching him. At last Gilbert came back to where Simon Quarle was standing.

"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily just now," he said. "I had no right to do that, because no man would speak as you have done unless he was her friend."

"Thank you," said the other simply. "Anything else?"

"I want to help her – I want to lift her out of this slum in which she lives – make some of her dreams come true. I am rich; I can do many things secretly without her knowledge."

"You are young; would you marry her?"

"My dear sir – she's a child. Besides – I – "

"Besides – you belong to another world," broke in Quarle mockingly. "Get back over your wall, my friend, and leave her alone. Much better leave her to her dreams and her fancies, even if they are never to be realized, than shatter them as you would shatter them. Get back over your wall."

"You don't understand, and I don't suppose you ever will," exclaimed Gilbert quickly. "But I shall find a way to help her yet."

"Perhaps – perhaps," said Simon Quarle, nodding his head slowly. "But for the present get back over your wall!"

CHAPTER IV

THE PRINCESS GOES TO DINNER

THAT absurd business of climbing the wall again had to be got over, and was safely accomplished; to do him justice, Mr. Simon Quarle refrained from watching Gilbert's departure, and so took away one pang at least. The last vision Gilbert had of him was as he dropped over into the other garden, and, looking back, saw the old man standing with his hands clasped behind his back, and his bent shoulders turned towards where Gilbert had disappeared, and his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall.

But whatever resolution Gilbert Byfield may have formed to help the girl, and to lift her out from the sordid life in which he had found her, for the present he did nothing. Indeed, for the moment he decided after a restless night to abandon Arcadia Street altogether, and to touch again that life to which he most properly belonged. He would go back into that artificial existence, and, looking on this picture and on that, would decide clearly which was the most worthy. Which is to say in other words that the old life still drew him, and that this quixotic thing about which he had concerned himself could be easily laid aside, for a time at least.

Thus it happened that Mr. Jordan Tant, in his extremely neat and trim chambers, was informed by his extremely neat and trim man-servant one morning that Mr. Byfield had arrived. At the same moment the man-servant was thrust aside, and Gilbert strode in.

"Now, I don't want a lot of fuss, or a lot of talk," said Gilbert, a little impatiently; "you've just got to accept me as I am, and not talk about what I have been, or what I have done. You should know by this time that I cut up my life into slices; and when one slice is done with I go on to the next with a new appetite. Arcadia Street is gone – lost somewhere in the wilds of Islington. I am back again in civilization. What's the news?"

"There's no news that I'm aware of," said Mr. Tant, a little sulkily. "What news should there be?"

"Something's upset you, Tant," said Gilbert, with a laugh. "Come, now – I'm sure to hear about it sooner or later; why not tell me now?"

Jordan Tant stood with his arms folded, and his head a little on one side, and with an aggressive shoulder turned towards the other man. When he began to speak he shook himself almost in the fashion of a spoilt child that resents an injury.

"It isn't fair," he said, in his thin voice; "it really isn't fair. You go away for an unlimited time, and in a sense you leave the field to me. I cultivate that field; I'm careful about it; I am attentive and anxious – in fact, I work very hard. Then suddenly you step in, and if I may use such a term in so delicate a matter – you gather the crop."

"My dear Tant, you are really more Tant-like than ever," said Gilbert. "Why won't you tell me what you really mean in half a dozen words?"

"One word will suffice," said Jordan, turning upon him, and speaking with a sort of mild fierceness. "And that one word is – 'Enid.' While you've been living in your blessed Arcadia Street, on bread and cheese and moonshine, I've been seeing much of Miss Ewart-Crane; and there has been a gradually increasing respect for me in the family. You have shamefully neglected the lady; I have given her companionship. Now you turn up again, and will doubtless be welcomed with open arms, as having returned to the fold. For you will the fatted calf be prepared; I shall be lucky if I'm invited to the feast at all."

"My dear Tant," said Gilbert, laughing, "you are jumping at conclusions. Because I walk out of Arcadia Street, and come back here, is it to be said that I am about to take up the old life again in the old way? Am I going to call on the fair Enid, and stay to lunch – or perhaps drop in, in immaculate garments, for afternoon tea; or dine with her and her esteemed mother in a state of hopeless boredom; and take them afterwards to a theatre where the play's something I don't want to see? Perish the thought! I'm going to leave all that sort of thing to you."

Mr. Jordan Tant shook his head sadly. "It's quite impossible," he said. "I'm a useful man when there's no one else about; there you have me in a nutshell. If you had persisted in your folly, and had remained in Arcadia Street, it might have happened that some fine morning, or some fine evening, when Enid was more bored than usual, she would have said that she would put up with me for the rest of her life; and we should have got on very well. But about you always," he went on petulantly, "is a species of storm-cloud – a very whirlwind of romantic excitement. Now there's no whirlwind about me – and it's really the whirlwind fellows that attract the girls. One never knows what you're going to do; while, on the other hand, everyone knows what I'm going to do every hour of the day. I'm a sort of damp squib, that just fizzles about on its bit of ground, and does no harm to anybody; you're a gorgeous sort of rocket, that might even set fire to a town if you felt that way inclined. At all events, while I'm fizzing about down below, you'll be illuminating your bit of sky."

"You're really most complimentary," said Gilbert Byfield. "But suppose I tell you that I've no intention of stepping into the place you have so laboriously made for yourself – what then?"

"It wouldn't make the least difference," said Tant, shaking his head. "Mrs. Ewart-Crane is all for you; she never ceases to speak of you. I think she knows that one of these days you'll go back and settle down comfortably with Enid. You see, the thing is really arranged."

"Oh – nonsense!" exclaimed Gilbert impatiently. "That was a boy and girl affair – a sort of arrangement made between our people, years and years ago. Besides, suppose I don't want to settle down – what then?"

"They'll make you; they'll persuade you," said Mr. Tant gloomily. "Mrs. Ewart-Crane is a mother, and has one thought in her mind, and one only – Enid's future. You'll simply be told that you've got to get married. After that, perhaps, they'll let you run about as much as you like – that is, within limits."

"We shall see about that," said his friend. "By the way, what are you doing to-night? We might dine together."

"I am taking Enid and her mother to dinner and to the theatre," said Mr. Tant with dignity. "Perhaps you'd like to suggest that you will go too?"

"Certainly," said Gilbert, with alacrity. "Most kind of you; I'll join you with pleasure."

"I knew it!" Mr. Jordan Tant threw up his hands in a sort of comical despair. "I can see myself escorting Mrs. Ewart-Crane all the evening, and compelled to be polite while inwardly boiling. It's a very unfair world."

Just as Gilbert was going Mr. Tant called him back, to deliver a word of warning. "Understand me clearly, Byfield," he said, "I will not have you springing in suddenly in any dramatic fashion. You shall be announced in a commonplace way – your return referred to as something quite of an ordinary kind. I will fetch the ladies this evening, but I shall tell them that you await us at the restaurant. There shall be no surprises."

"I don't want any surprises," said Gilbert, laughing.

Despite all his precautions, Mr. Tant found himself as usual very much in the background when it came to that moment of meeting between the gentleman from Arcadia Street and Mrs. Ewart-Crane and her daughter. Mr. Tant had made all arrangements for a very excellent dinner; and he endeavoured, with what dignity he might, to take the head of affairs. But Enid was anxious to know everything concerning a certain Arcadia Street that had been spoken of, and she leaned eagerly towards Gilbert, demanding to know what he had been doing, and if it was really true that he had lived among people who were a sort of savages – and what he had had to eat, and how he had managed to live at all.

"There's nothing remarkable about it at all," said Mr. Tant savagely. "Anyone would think that he had been exploring some wild region where the foot of man had never trod; instead of which, he's simply been living in a very thickly populated part of London, within a cab fare of his own home – and all for a whim! Besides, slumming's out of date."

"It wasn't exactly slumming – and besides, he really went to study the people – didn't you, Gilbert?" asked Enid, in her high voice. She was a tall, handsome girl, with a good carriage, and an abundance of good health and spirits; this evening she was particularly glad to see her old friend back again in his place among men.

"What I never can understand," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane, adjusting a bracelet on a very well-formed arm, "is why we need study men at all – or women, for the matter of that. I grant you that in your own sphere you are naturally interested in the people about you; but beyond that I decline to go."

"Exactly, my dear Mrs. Ewart-Crane," broke in Tant. "Just what I always say: let us remember always the dividing line, and stick to it. We should get jumbled up in the most horrible way if we didn't remember the dividing line always, and above all, if we didn't remember that the people who live in the Arcadia Streets of the world are very right and proper in their own places, and very wrong and improper elsewhere. The people of position in this world are those who have come by right to the top; it's fellows like Byfield that put wrong notions into their heads, by mixing with 'em, and coming down, in a sense, to their level. I assure you that when I discovered him he was living in a perfectly shocking place."

Mrs. Ewart-Crane closed her eyes, and shivered. "Then I'm very glad to think that he's left it," she said. "For my part, I wish to hear no more about it; let us regard it as something happily done with and forgotten."

"But I want to hear about it, mamma," persisted Enid, laughing good-humouredly. "I'm quite sure there was an attraction down there – wasn't there?" She turned to Gilbert with a smile.

"Many attractions," he replied evasively. "All sorts of poor people, toiling cheerfully, and having rather a good time in their own way, in spite of poverty."

"Don't let him put you off, Miss Enid," said Tant, a little maliciously. "There was an attraction – I saw her, and I heard about her. And I don't mind saying that she was very pretty."

"Gilbert!" The girl was looking at him quizzically. "I want to hear all about this. What was she like? Big and rather brazen – quite a child of nature, with what they call a heart of gold – eh? I know the sort."

"I beg again, Enid, that the subject may be dropped," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane icily. But no one took the least notice of her.

"I'm afraid you don't know the sort," said Gilbert. He was annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken – annoyed, too, at Jordan Tant for his breach of faith. He hated the thought of discussing the girl with these people; he knew that the more he tried to explain his feeling about the matter, the less they would be able to understand. But the rather haughty eyes of Enid were upon him, and he had to go on, against his will. "The girl Tant is talking about is a little hard-working thing, who lived in the next house to that in which I stayed; and she keeps a drunken father and a reprobate brother by the simple process of letting lodgings. Now you know all about it."

"How touching – and how romantic!" exclaimed the girl. "And the great man from the great world took a deep interest in her, and stayed perhaps a little longer in his slum on her account – eh?"

"For my part," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane stiffly, "since the subject must be discussed, I have never been able to understand what people let lodgings for. If they've got a house, why not live in it, and not give over bits of it to other people?"