Tales of two people

“Once more a thousand congratulations – a thousand hopes for your success,” she said, giving him her hand, as I suppose – my eyes were on the atlas.

“After that, I shall feel I’m working for you,” he replied gallantly. No doubt his very fine eyes pointed the remark.

“Shall you?” she said, and laughed a little. “Oh, you’ll – I’ll write you a note quite soon – to-morrow or Tuesday. I won’t forget. And – good-bye!”

“To-morrow or Tuesday? That’s certain?” His voice had an eagerness in it now.

“Yes, certain. I won’t forget. And – good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” he said, and I heard the door open.

“A thousand hopes!” she said again.

I suppose he made some response, but in words he made none. The door closed behind him.

I put the atlas on the sofa by me, got up, and went to her.

“I suppose I may go now, too?” I said.

“How clever you’re growing, Mr Wynne! But just let him get out of the house. We mustn’t give it away.”

A moment or two we stood in silence. Then she said: “You understand things. You shall have a note too – and a thousand hopes. And – good-bye!”

Not a suspicion of the meaning of this afternoon’s scene crossed my mind, which fact proved me, I daresay, to be very stupid. But Val was hardly likely to see more clearly, and I can’t altogether justify the play she made with the atlas and Assiniboia. As an exercise in irony, however, it had its point.

VIII

I DO not know what was in Val’s note: more of good-bye, and more than a thousand hopes, I imagine. Is it fanciful to mark that she had always said “hope” and never “confidence”? Mine bade me be at a certain corner of a certain street at eleven-thirty. “Where you will find me. Say nothing about it.” It was a little hard to say nothing whatever to Jane.

I went and met them at the corner – Mrs Something Simpson, Kirby, and Miss Constantine. Thence we repaired to a registry office, and they (I do not include Mrs Simpson) were married. They were to sail from Liverpool that afternoon, and we went straight from the office to Euston. I think it was only when the question of luggage arose that I gasped out, “Where are you going?”

“To Canada,” said Kirby briskly.

“For your trip?”

“For good and all,” he answered. “I’ve got leave – and sent in my resignation.”

“And I’ve sent in my resignation too,” she said. “Mr Wynne, try to think of me as only half a coward.”

“I – I don’t understand,” I stammered.

“But it’s your own doing,” he said. “Over there she won’t be a failure all her life!”

“Not because I’ve married him, at any rate,” Katharine said, looking very happy.

“I told you I should settle it – and so I did,” Kirby added. “And I’m grateful to you. I’m always grateful to a fellow who makes me understand.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “You’re not making me responsible?”

“For all that follows!” she answered, with a merry laugh. “Yes!”

That’s all very well, but suppose he gets to the top of the tree, as the fellow will, and issues a Declaration of Independence? At least he’ll be Premier, and come over to a conference some day. Val will be Secretary for the Colonies, probably (unless he has come that cropper). There’s a situation for you! Well, I shall just leave town. I daresay I sha’n’t be missed.

Lady Lexington carried it off well. She said that, from a strain of romance she had observed in the girl, the marriage was just what was to be expected of Katharine Constantine.

SLIM-FINGERED JIM

I

“WHAT did he get? “I asked. I had been working in my own room all the morning and had not seen the papers – they arrived from London about half-past eleven.

“Seven years’ penal servitude,” said our host the Major with grim satisfaction.

“Stiff!” I commented.

“Not a bit too much,” asserted the Major, helping himself to game pie again – he is a good luncher. “He’s a thoroughly bad lot – a professional thief, and a deuced clever one. It’s his first conviction, but it ought to have been his tenth, I should say.”

“He was certainly in that big American bond robbery,” said Crookes, “though he got off that time. Oxford man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. In fact, I believe I was up one term with him,” said Millington. “I must have seen him, I think, but I can’t remember him.”

“Dear, dear!” our hostess observed, shocked apparently at this close proximity to the criminal classes.

“Rather good what the chap said when he’d been sentenced,” drawled Charlie Pryce. “See it? Well, he bowed to the judge, and then he bowed to the jury, and smiled, and shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘The risks of the profession, gentlemen! Au revoir!’ Jolly good cheek!” Charlie’s round red face – he is very well nourished, as they say at inquests – beamed almost sympathetically.

“I suppose he owes his nickname to his professional dexterity?” said I.

“Suppose so,” agreed Charlie.

“No,” said Mrs Pryce, who was at the other end of the table. “His name is James – ”

“Yes, James Painter Walsh,” interposed the Major, accurate always.

“But he was called ‘Slim-Fingered’ because he had beautiful hands with very slender tapering fingers.”

“Hallo, Minnie!” cried Pryce. “How do you know that?”

“He told me himself,” she answered with a smile and the hint of a blush. “I crossed from America with him the time he was arrested at Queenstown for the bond robbery, and – well, we got acquainted. Of course, nobody knew who he was.”

A torrent of questions overwhelmed Mrs Pryce. She had achieved fame – she had known the hero of the last great jewel robbery. She spoke of him from first-hand knowledge. The unrivalled attraction of crime – crime in the grand manner – fascinates us all. But she wouldn’t say much.

“He was just an acquaintance for the voyage,” she told us; “though, of course, it was rather a shock when he was arrested at Queenstown.”

“Oh, what a surprise!” exclaimed Charlie Pryce jovially.

“A surprise?” She seemed to me to start ever so little. “Oh yes, of course – terrible!” she went on the next instant.

“Was he nice?” asked our hostess.