by Edith Nesbit
Then suddenly the girl looked from one to another of the group and smiled. She looked at the mud on the handkerchiefs they held, and smiled a little more. Then she said —
“I thank you infinitely, Messieurs. Good morning!” and was gone. And then they all were on the pavement saying, “ If n’y a pas de quoi, Mademoiselle” and “De rien, Mademoiselle” with their hats in their hands, and their cigarettes nowhere.
Achille had won his bet. He had spoken to her. He had said, “ Pas de quoi, Mademoiselle,” with the others. But Sebastien promised his patron a little candle for next Sunday, all the same. He paid his centimes like a man, and Achille took them.
“All the same, it is to thee the psychologic victory,” he said handsomely. “Thou hadst reason. She is a queen. I add my fifty, and we have all a bock, and drink to the Reine Inconnue.”
This toast they drank, by the sticky marble tables of Cellini near to hand, with intense seriousness and their hands on their hearts. They were only boys after all, even the large yellow Achille, and one does not see a goddess every day.
So the smile that conquered the little East End hooligans served as a protecting halo in Fitzroy Street, and illustrates the sort of effect Rose Royal had on people, and tells you more about her than you would learn by a complete catalogue of her more habitual conquests.
Rose had been the reigning beauty of the Slade, but then quite ugly girls have been that. She was the leader in her set, but then charm is not always of the essence of a leader. She had received from two to five offers of marriage every year since she was seventeen, and at least twice as many offers of platonic friendship; declarations of impermanent adoration at various temperatures were to her common incidents of life, to be laughed at or to despise, according to the circumstances of the declaration and the nature of the declarer. She had girl friends by dozens, who worshipped and obeyed, and she had not more than half-a-dozen enemies, and all of these were women, and none of them whole-hearted foes. She was poor, proud, and energetic; had versatility and initiative, a good temper and perfect health. It was always she who said, “Let’s! “ and her friends who said, “ Yes, do let’s.” As for her faults, I fear they stick out of this catalogue of her endowments.
She walked on. Her arms were now uncomfortably full of parcels, and one more purchase remained to be made, the gift for her tenant. The parcels she already had, had cost her all the money left of her month’s income, save and except the four shillings which were the price of a birthday present not yet bought. The paper of the parcels was getting wet; corners of their insides protruded through the softened wrappings. One saw the gleam of a sardine tin, the spring tint of a lettuce.
“Oh, bother!” she said, and let the parcels fall from her arms on the mat of an open doorway. Then she made an apron of her dress, lifting it with one hand and dropping the parcels in it, and so carried the load along Goodge Street, brave in crimson petticoat and lifted skirt.
In Tottenham Court Road she saw a taximeter cab. The driver caught her eye and raised his hand. Quite without meaning to nod, she nodded, and the taxi slid to the edge of the pavement and stopped in front of her.
“Oh, bother!” she said, tumbling the parcels on to the floor of the cab. “Two thousand St. Martin’s Lane.”
She leaned back against the air cushions enjoying the luxury of such soft rest, for she was tired, and the parcels had been many and awkward, and while her body luxuriated, her mind scowled.
“Just like you,” it said, “ to tire yourself out grubbing round, so as to save eighteenpence; and just when the whole beastly business is nearly over, you weaken, hail a taxi, and throw everything away. You might as well have taken one to begin with, and saved yourself all this fag. For you can’t buy the book now.” This theme, with the interminable variations on it so familiar to all of us who are not millionaires or consistent economists, occupied her till the cab set her down before the second-hand-bookshop in face of whose window she always spent, in passing, a few covetous moments.
“It’s no good,” she said, “but one might as well try it on.”
And she went in. The stout, black-bearded, black-skullcapped man turned keen eyes on her behind his large spectacles.
“Oh, Mr. Abrahamson, good morning!” she said. “ May I look at that book again? You know, the one about precious stones and things, with the pages written in at the end? I want to buy it to give to a friend for a birthday present.”
He stretched a hand to a dusty shelf.
“I do like the smell of your shop,” she said, reaching out her hand for the book he now held; “ it’s not only the old leather, it’s something that’s like a dream of a dream.”
“It is perhaps the fragrance of the past, Miss Royal,” said he.
“Of course it is,” she said, and flashed her smile at him. “ I wish I could interest you in the fragrance of the future.”
She always interested him, as she interested most men. He would not have said so. What he said was, “Proceed, Lady Sybilla.”
“Yes, I know I’m mysterious,” she said, “but the fact behind the mystery is that I want this book most awfully — and it’s four shillings.”
“And what is four shillings,” Mr. Abrahamson asked, “to one with the Princess’s chariot awaiting her? He glanced through the light-lines between the brown prints wafered against the window, at the waiting taxi-cab.
“That’s just it,” said the girl, yielding to an inspiration of truth-telling: “I had got just four shillings left, and I had such a heap of parcels, and the insides were worming out of them because of their getting wet. Perhaps you haven’t noticed how it’s raining, Mr. Abrahamson?”
“It is the inclement weather,” he said, “which is usual in this land of melancholy liberty. And so...”
“And then the taxi hailed me, and before I knew where I was I said, ‘Yes.’ And that means, will you take two shillings for the book, because really and truly that’s all I’ve got.”
The old man raised his eyebrows slowly.
“So,” he said, and paused on the word.
“What do you say?” said Rose, consciously and unconsciously using all her power, all her charm, on this old dry-as-dust.
“I say not ‘No,”’ said Mr. Abrahamson.
“Ah! “ said Rose, and he raised a hand.
“Also I say not ‘Yes.’ I have other books, very good books, at the two shilling price. The friend will be very pleased with the book at two shillings that I shall sell you.”
“It’s that book I want,” the girl told him.
“But why that book? Is it by chance very rare and valuable, and I do not know it? And Miss Royal knows it, and seeks to make her profit of old Abrahamson.”
“Of course, it isn’t!” she impetuously answered; “and there’s the taxi eating its head off at twopence a second, or whatever it is. It’s only that it’s got my friend’s name in it — the friend I want to give it to for a birthday present — and the bookplate and all. Perhaps it belonged to an ancestor or something. Will you take two shillings?”
He took, for the moment, not two shillings, but the book from her hand, and, looking down obliquely through his spectacles, read aloud, “Ex Libris Antonii Drelincourt.”
Then he looked at her.
The same lack of self-control that had driven her into her taxi drove her now on the mercy of the second-hand-bookseller. A flash of crimson illumined the face whose eyes brightened and drooped suddenly.
“So!” said Mr. Abrahamson, and Miss Royal understood that her secret was not any longer her secret.
“You fool, you born-blind idiot,” she silently called herself.
“My dear young lady,” said the bookseller, dandling the brown octavo in his hand, as a grandmother dandles her first grandchild; “I love all books, and this I very much love, because I do not understand it. It was my son, Gideon, who price it four shillings. For me forty, I should have said, or perhaps forty pounds. Who knows? There are in this book secrets, old secret
s, precious to men a long time dead.”
He whirred the leaves with accustomed thumb, and ended with an open gesture which displayed pages of twisted characters in faded brown ink. “It is the manuscriptum,” he said, “and the finest works they are, the ones that never were printed.”
“But if I’ve only got two shillings left,” said Miss Royal, her eyes on the book.
“You come another time. I keep it for you,” said Mr. Abrahamson, his eyes on hers.
“But it’s his birthday to-day,” she said.
“The same name and arms?” he said.
“Yes; of course, that’s just it,” she said.
“I see,” said he. And there was a pause. Outside, the blurred sound of London traffic swept by.
“Well?” said Miss Royal.
“Well,” said Nathan Abrahamson.
And again London’s voices spoke.
“His name — it is just the same, Antonio?”
“Antony, yes.”
“He is an artist like Miss Royal?”
“He’s a chemist. An experimental chemist. And physics and physiology, all those sort of scientific things. He’s always trying to find out secrets, secrets of Nature, you know.”
“This book also, it deals with the experimental chemistry and secret ways. If once it belonged to one of your friend’s family, that shows the taste for the experimental and the secret is inherited.”
“Yes,” she said. His tone when he said, “Your friend,” brushed softly and kindly on the quivering surface of her revealed secret. She looked at him with eyes whose deep appeal was no longer conscious.
“Et in arcadio ego,” he murmured.
“What did you say? “ said she.
“I said that I could not abate the price,” Mr. Abrahamson answered; “but I know Miss Royal. Take it, and pay me when you can.”
“I’ve got two shillings,” she said, showing them.
“Those you keep,” said the bookseller; “who knows, you may need another taxi!”
“It’s awfully good of you,” said the girl. “Of course, you know... you know I shall pay you all right.”
“I know,” he said; “ at the same time I think the little accommodation I give you deserves a bonus. If this book is of service to your friend Antonio, if by it the secret he searches for reveal itself and he grows rich, you give me one hundred pounds. He give me one hundred pounds. Is it so?”
“A hundred pounds! “ Rose Royal said, leaning her elbows on the counter, rubbed smooth by so many elbows of persons who desired — or despaired of — various items of Mr. Abrahamson’s stock.
“If he get two thousand, I get one hundred. Only a little five per cent, is it not?”
She saw that he smiled, and she also smiled.
“A hundred pounds,” she said, “if he gets two thousand out of the book? Rather!”
“The notes,” said the bookseller, fluttering the leaves, “the marginal notes and the manuscriptum! It is these that your friend should study.”
The intonation of “ your friend “ brought the blood to her face again.
“Thank you,” she said, “I’ll bring the money early in April — the four shillings, I mean.”
“I know you will,” he said, “and for the friend... hide everything. I am an old man, and I know. I also in Arcadia have been. Reveal nothing. Let nothing be shown. Keep your secret, my young Lady Royal. Can he read this?”
“I don’t know,” she said; “can anybody?”
“If I were a beautiful young lady who gave a present,” said he, “I would learn first to read what I gave. There are those who teach such things.”
“But I’ve got to give the present to-day,” she said; “ it’s his birthday. There isn’t time to learn anything. Oh! what are we talking about? It’s just a book like any other book! It’s a birthday present for him.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Abrahamson, “just a book like any other book; just a birthday present to a friend.”
“Thank you so very much,” she said conventionally, all the unconventionality of the interview suddenly coming home to her.
“Not at all, Miss Royal,” he said, matching her mood.
She went back to the taxi-cab with its burden of little parcels, bearing with her the old brown leather-covered book, and the knowledge that her heart’s most intimate secret was given away to an old second-hand-bookseller in St. Martin’s Lane.
The old man followed her across the pavement to her cab door, “Courage!” he said; “with courage, all is well. Some day I read the beautiful Miss Royal’s fortune? I lay out the cards for her? No? Some day when it is not the friend’s birthday, and your heart is free for new things. Abrahamson knows the cards. I could make much money in Bond Street telling the fortunes of the ladies with dyed hair who are no longer young and desire the heritage of youth. But I only lay out the cards for hope and beauty and youth and the strength of youth. You come again for that?”
“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you very much! But I think people make their own fortunes, don’t they?”
“So say always the beloved of the gods,” the old man answered, “but the Fates decree otherwise.”
Some impulse, for ever unexplained, brought Rose Royal’s hand out to the seller of second-hand books.
“Thank you,” she said, not knowing why, “thank you.”
“Ah! “ said Mr. Abrahamson, taking it carefully. “You have one gift, the greatest; you know your friends.”
CHAPTER III. THE SEPTET
IF you mount the steps of the Falstaffe Theatre under the glass roof where the pink geraniums and white daisies make a light that you can see from the end of the street, you will find between the box office and the pit entrance a door, and beside it the legend “ Falstaffe Chambers.” When the theatre is closed, as it quite often is, the ragged children of Soho play about the entrance, and on the lower steps of that staircase elderly little girls sit nursing heavy babies and scolding their little brothers, and the door of Falstaffe Chambers serves them as shelter, ambush, and hiding-place. It is an untidy doorway, through whose door, mostly open, the wind blows dust and straws and scraps of paper. If, picking your way through the clusters of infants, you go up a flight of stone steps, you pass, on your right, the fine rooms where the Management does its business, when it has any. Still ascending, you pass another plate on the door of Mr. Ben Burt, where to his name are added the significant words “Correspondence only.” On the floor above you find a brown door on which is whitely painted the word Monolith, and below it “William Bats, Editor.”
If you knock at the door and ask for a copy of the Monolith, Mr. Bats, if he be at home, will tell you that the paper has ceased to appear. If you are annoyed at this, you ask him why he has not taken the name off the door, and he will smile and say he is sorry you should have been disappointed. But he will not tell you the truth, which is that he is too lazy to send a postcard to Mr. Musto of Great Ormond Street, asking him to come and paint out the name of that unfortunate journal. Nor will he tell you — as indeed why should he? — that even Mr. Musto’s moderate charges are charges which are beyond his means.
As your boots echo down the uncarpeted stair, Mr. William Bats will close the door and return to his books.
And Mr. Bats’ books are worth going back to. They line that large, low, upper room from floor to ceiling, and their bindings are old and brown and smell of the past. He is known to every second-hand-bookseller in London, and to many provincial ones beside. His morning post brings him those pleasant catalogues which spin out breakfast to somewhere too near lunch, as one turns their pages and wishes one were rich enough to buy this Elzevir or that first edition of Montaigne. Mr. Bats is a friend of Mr. Abrahamson’s in St. Martin’s Lane. He is also the friend of Rose Royal.
The room is the last room you would expect to find in that house. It is, as I said, brown with books, and but for those it might be a room in a farmhouse. For all its furniture is old and solid and heavy, from the settle that
stands out from the wall at right angles to the fireplace, the gate-legged table, the oak church-table on which Mr. Bats keeps his pens and inks and papers. A tall clock ticks near the door. It has a silver face, and a painted moon and sun mark the hours of day and night. There is a round mirror over the mantelpiece, and there are some comfortable roundbodied Windsor chairs, shaped cunningly to support the back. The divan with the leopard skin looks like a happy accident. The windows are curtained with cotton fabric of a pleasant green colour, and on one window-ledge a blue-lustre mug stands, and in it, all the year round, a few cheap flowers. On the floor is a Persian carpet. A door opens from this room into a dining-room, white walled and furnished with beautiful simplicity. A dark dresser holds pleasant red and blue crockery and Nuremberg glass; the chairs are of apple-wood, rush-seated and ladder-backed; the floor is covered with a pale India matting. On the mantelshelf are brass candlesticks and crockery greyhounds with crockery hares in their mouths. This room, with the small bedroom and the smaller kitchen, makes up the home of Mr. William Bats. It is the neatest home in the world. Everything has its place, and is in it, from the stick of sealing-wax and the ball of string displayed in the silver snuffer-tray on the writing-table, to the ties and shirts concealed in the tall-boys beyond the closed bedroom door.
The only things that are out of place are the books with which Mr. Bats is always surrounded.
“Another half-hour,” said Mr. William Bats, glancing at the silver-faced clock—”another half-hour before I need even begin to think of putting them away.”
And even as he thought it, a step came up the stair, past the gorgeous rooms of the Management, past the mysterious rooms where business was done by correspondence only, up the last flight of stairs.
The little brass lion-headed knocker sounded on his outer door, and he got up. You would have said that something very pleasant had happened, pleasant and unforeseen. Yet when he opened the door all he said was —
“You? You’re nearly an hour too early!”
And Rose Royal stood before him with her skirt full of parcels. “ I know I’m early. Don’t be cross. How jolly your wallflowers smell. And the tobacco and the old books! They ought to sell it in bottles. I’m so tired, and I’ve spent all my money, and it’s raining like mad and—”