The Hypocrite

"Good-bye," she said, "good-bye. If only I'd met you first."

The man bowed his head, and they left the room hand in hand. When they reached the lane she turned, and in the dim light of the flickering lamp she saw that his face was wet.

He took her little ungloved hand, raising it to his lips, still with bowed head, and turning, left her without a word.

When Sturtevant came in an hour afterwards he found him lying on the floor dead drunk, with a little pool of whiskey dripping from the table on to his hair.

"We must do highly moral articles for those papers which are calculated not to bring a blush to the face of the purest girl (except in the advertisements of waterproof rouge), or you might try The Spy. They can hardly refuse your copy now," said Sturtevant, about three weeks after the exposure.

Gobion had found the girl spoke truly. Not a paper in London was open to him. He was barred at the "copy shop," and was living on money borrowed from Scott in a piteous appeal full of lies. He forwarded an article to Picton, but it was sent back by return of post, with a sarcastic little note, saying that Mr. Picton could not find himself sufficiently bold to accept any further contributions. Things were getting rather desperate. Oxford bills were coming in by every post to both of them. They were nearly at their wits' end for money.

At this juncture came a letter from Condamine.

"Oxford Union Society

"Dear Gobion, – The game is played almost to an end. Only one more move, and that not till next June, to be taken. Then will be peace at last. My latest has been of its kind a master-stroke, that is, to disappear. Things were getting too hot for me, so I have gone down to read. Everybody was getting suspicious, and eyed me askance. Drage was sent down (another disappearance!) for lying drunk with a friend from Oriel in the fellows' quad, and for reviling the buck priest most blasphemously in that he had awakened him. My tutor waxed very wroth with me. I was troubled with frightful insomnia every afternoon, and often in the morning – often finding it necessary to go to bed at midnight, rise at two a.m. and work till five or so, and again retire. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I had to sleep off certain matters of no importance, and then awake early, which is a way of mine. Drage's last moments in Oxford I soothed by fetching Father Gray at ten p.m. Tommy had all sorts of ideas, Stage, Germany, Colonies, every manner of starvation, so I applied his Reverence as a last remedy, which succeeded. Many things I could tell you of this, but not now. He (the Gray father) has got a rich young cub with him, Lord Frederick Staines Calvert, and they are going to town for a time to-day. The boy is without understanding – very oofy – so if you are still èpris with the worthy parson you may be able to make something out of it.

    "Farewell. Thine,
    "Arthur Condamine.

"To Caradoc Yardly Gobion."

Gobion showed this to Sturtevant. "Do you think there's anything in it?" he said.

"Yes, I certainly do; you must make every effort to get hold of the boy. We must think out a plan; I hope he's an ass. At present he's a problem."

"I'll find him out if I can get hold of him, but I don't quite see how we're going to make any money out of it."

"Do you remember," said Sturtevant slowly, "that dear lady I took to your rooms when I first came up?"

"Little beast! yes."

"I've seen her since then; she lives in Bear Street off Leicester Square, just behind the Alhambra. Now doesn't the diffused white light of your intelligence supply the rest?"

"No, I confess – "

"Listen then. You must tell Father Gray that you are supporting yourself by coaching, and that you are working in the East End. He knows about those defence articles in the Church Chimes. Somehow or other he must be got to think you're steady and trustworthy. Then you go about with this young lord he's got and get well hold of him: you can be very charming when you like. From what I have heard of his father, Lord Ringwood, he's been brought up strictly. You must, therefore, take him about a little – Empire, Jimmies, that sort of thing; show him life, till he begins to long to go a little further, and to make sheep's-eyes at the painted ladies in the stalls. Meanwhile I shall get hold of the Bear Street girl and promise her a fiver if she'll help us. One night you and Calvert dine out (give fizz and Benedictine after, it's exciting), and when you get back to your rooms you find Marie as "Mrs. Holmes" waiting to see you. Then I send you a telegram, and you apologise and go out, promising to be back in half an hour. Come round to the Temple, where I shall be waiting. We'll arrange with Marie that she shall have half an hour to make Calvert cuddle her. Then I come in – the outraged husband! – and kick up the devil's own row, swearing I'll get a divorce. In the middle enter Mr. Gobion again. You persuade Marie and me to leave. Then you soothe the ruffled boy, promising to try and arrange the matter. You go out, consult with me, and touch him for a cheque to square matters. I should think we might work a 'thou' almost."

Gobion lay back in his chair, overwhelmed by the brilliancy of the idea. "Won-der-ful! you're a master simply. It ought to be put on the market in one pound shares; and I thought you a mere decadent story writer."

Sturtevant smiled. "Don't say decadent," he said, "it's a misnomer now. The public thinks decadence is the state of being different from Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, while the æsthete – "

"Please don't begin to lecture on the utter."

"Do you object to the utter then?"

"I object to the utterer."

"I am silent. The surly word makes the curst squirm."

"That's worthy of Condamine."

Very soon they both got bored again, when the excitement of the plotting had evanesced. It was a consequence of their diseased mental state, this constant overpowering ennui. Sturtevant went to the piano and began to chant —

"There was a young fellow of Magdalen
Whose tutor accused him of dagdalen,
And of stretching his credit;
He wouldn't have said it
Had the youth been a peer or a lagdalen."

"I hope our lagdalen will be profitable; if we do well we might go down to the Riviera for a week or two."

"That wouldn't be bad at all, the sunny South! I think I'll go west now to the War Office and get Bobby Burness to come out for some lunch. Do you remember him? little Pemmy man. He got a clerkship by interest. Spends his time round the west now looking out for a moneyed female. Jolly berth he's got, just puts his name in the south-east corner of a few papers, and trots off to the park for the rest of the mornin'."

As he went down the Strand he thought over Sturtevant's plan. It was a good deal nearer the wind than he had dared to go before; however, the thing was certain, something had to be done to raise money. He was not a man who could live on thirty shillings a week, for, even though they failed to amuse him, he could not go without the "extras" of life. He did not, for instance, particularly care for Kümmell with his coffee, but it was as much a necessity to him as a clean shirt.

The morality of Sturtevant's scheme did not trouble him in the least; the danger was the thing he thought of. His head bubbled with details and scenic arrangements, rapidly falling into order as he thought. His mind was masterly in its grasp of salient points, in its suggestions of detail. Naturally, as he plotted and studied his part, this orderly marshalling of ideas induced a sense of freedom from danger. With a clearer view of incident came a confusion of outline.

He had just got to Trafalgar Square when he started to feel a hand placed on his shoulder, and looking round saw Father Gray and his victim. In the first shock of surprise he reeled as if struck, and a flash of deadly fear passed over his face, but so instantaneously that it would have been almost impossible for a stranger to have seen it. Though he had recovered this first feeling of terror in a moment, hard as he was, he could never have prevented it. It was the inevitable cowardice of evil, the most horrid kind of fear. Then almost immediately came a great flood of exaltation dominating all other sensation.

"This is jolly," said Father Gray, "we were just coming to see you. This is my friend, Lord Frederick Calvert. How are you getting on? Well! Oh, I'm so glad. You did excellent service for us in the Church Chimes; that Protestant paper was dreadfully venomous. Now, what do you say to the hotel and lunch?"

"I should like it of all things. Where are you staying?"

"At the Charing Cross, just over the road."

"Right you are. If you will go on I will join you in a moment; I just want to go to the post."

He went to the office at the corner, and sent off a wire to Sturtevant, not being able to resist elevenpence-halfpennyworth of epigram.

"Everything comes to him who can't wait. Keep away from my rooms, have met our worthy friends. – G."

The lunch party was bright and enjoyable. Lord Frederick did not talk much, but Gobion did, and the clergyman treated him most affectionately, paying the greatest attention to his remarks. The young fellow, who was aching to see a little life, and taste some of the joys hitherto forbidden, looked on Gobion as a being from another world, charmed and fascinated by his manner and conversation. He hoped that perhaps he might be able to make him the excuse for a little more freedom.

At the end of the meal a waiter came up with a telegram in his hand, "Rrreverrend Grray, sir?" he said. The clergyman read the flimsy pink paper, his face growing very serious as he did so.

"My dear Lord Frederick," he said, "I am so very sorry. My great friend Stanley, of the C.B.S., is dying up in Scotland and asking for me. I must leave you for a day or two, I fear. Do you mind? Gobion, perhaps, would not mind keeping you company a little."

Both men showed the deepest sympathy, saying that they could manage very well, while both were inwardly rejoicing. There were the elements of farce in the situation.

They got him off late in the afternoon. "God proposes, and man is disposed of," said Gobion as the train left the station. Lord Frederick laughed. "And now, my dear sir," he said, "I place myself entirely in your hands. To speak quite frankly, I've never had such a chance of a rag before, and I want to make the most of it."

"I too should like a rag," said Gobion. "We will rag, and take no thought for the morrow beyond staying up to welcome its arrival. We'd better go and dress first; I'll call at the hotel when I'm ready."

When he had put the other down at Charing Cross he went on in the hansom to the "Temple," bursting in on Sturtevant, whom he found with the female conspirator sitting on his knee. "Arrange the coup for to-morrow evening at nine," he said; "I'm off now to take him round the halls."

He rushed out again and dressed as quickly as he could, putting two or three sovereigns in his pocket for emergencies, though he intended his friend should pay all expenses.