Between the Dark and the Daylight

by Richard Marsh

  His only answer was to take her in his arms again, and to kiss her.

  Mr. Gibbs provided his new-found lost love with money. With that money she renewed her wardrobe. He found her other lodgings in a more savoury neighbourhood at Putney. In those lodgings he once more courted her.

  He told himself during those courtship days, that, after all, the years had changed her. She was a little hard. He did not remember the Nelly of the old time as being hard. But, then, what had happened during the years which had come between! Father and mother both had died. She had been thrown out into the world without a friend, without a penny! His letters had gone astray. In those early days he had been continually wandering hither and thither. Her letters had strayed as well as his. Struggling for existence, when she saw that no letters reached her, she told herself either that he too had died, or that he had forgotten her. Her heart hardened. It was with her a bitter striving for daily bread. She had tried everything. Teaching, domestic service, chorus singing, needlework, acting as an artist's model—she had failed in everything alike. At the best she had only been able to keep body and soul together. It had come to the worst at last. On the morning on which he found her, she had been two days without food. She had decided that, that night, if things did not mend during the intervening hours—of which she had no hope—that she would seek for better fortune—in the Thames.

  She told her story, not all at once, but at different times, and in answer to her lover's urgent solicitations. She herself at first evinced a desire for reticence. The theme seemed too painful a theme for her to dwell upon. But the man's hungry heart poured forth such copious stores of uncritical sympathy that, after a while, it seemed to do her good to pour into his listening ears a particular record of her woes. She certainly had suffered. But now that the days of suffering were ended, it began almost to be a pleasure to recall the sorrows which were past.

  In the sunshine of prosperity the woman's heart became young again, and softer. It was not only that she became plumper—which she certainly did—but she became, inwardly and outwardly, more beautiful. Her lover told himself, and her, that she was more beautiful even than she had been as a girl. He declared that she was far prettier than she appeared in the old-time photograph. She smiled, and she charmed him with an infinite charm.

  The days drew near to the wedding. Had he had his way he would have married her, off-hand, when he found her in the top attic in that Chelsea slum. But she said no. Then she would not even talk of marriage. To hear her, one would have thought that the trials she had undergone had unfitted her for wedded life. He laughed her out of that—a day was fixed. She postponed it once, and then again. She had it that she needed time to recuperate—that she would not marry with the shadow of that grisly past still haunting her at night. He argued that the royal road to recuperation was in his arms. He declared that she would be troubled by no haunting shadows as his dear wife. And, at last, she yielded. A final date was fixed. That day drew near.

  As the day drew near, she grew more tender. On the night before the wedding-day her tenderness reached, as it were, its culminating point. Never before had she been so sweet—so softly caressing. They were but to part for a few short hours. In the morning they were to meet, never, perhaps, to part again. But it seemed as if he could not tear himself away, and as if she could not let him go.

  Just before he left her a little dialogue took place between them, which if lover-like, none the less was curious.

  "Tom" she said, "suppose, after we are married, you should find out that I have not been so good as you thought, what would you say?"

  "Say?—nothing."

  "Oh yes, you would, else you would be less than man. Suppose, for instance, that you found out I had deceived you."

  "I decline to suppose impossibilities."

  She had been circled by his arms. Now she drew herself away from him. She stood where the gaslight fell right on her.

  "Tom, look at me carefully! Are you sure you know me?"

  "Nelly!"

  "Are you quite sure you are not mistaking me for some one else? Are you quite sure, Tom?"

  "My own!"

  He took her in his arms again. As he did so, she looked him steadfastly in the face.

  "Tom, I think it possible that, some day, you may think less of me than you do now. But"—she put her hand over his mouth to stop his speaking—"whatever you may think of me, I shall always love you"—there was an appreciable pause, and an appreciable catching of her breath—"better than my life."

  She kissed him, with unusual abandonment, long and fervently, upon the lips.

  The morning of the following day came with the promise of fine weather. Theirs had been an unfashionable courtship—it was to be an unfashionable wedding. Mr. Gibbs was to call for his bride, at her lodgings. They were to drive together, in a single hired brougham, to the church.

  Even before the appointed hour, the expectant bridegroom drew up to the door of the house in which his lady-love resided. His knock was answered with an instant readiness which showed that his arrival had been watched and waited for. The landlady herself opened the door, her countenance big with tidings.

  "Miss Brock has gone, sir."

  "Gone!" Mr. Gibbs was puzzled by the woman's tone. "Gone where? For a walk?"

  "No, sir, she's gone away. She's left this letter, sir, for you."

  The landlady thrust an envelope into his hand. It was addressed simply, "Thomas Gibbs, Esq." With the envelope in his hand, and an odd something clutching at his heart, he went into the empty sitting-room. He took the letter out of its enclosure, and this is what he read:

  "My own, own Tom,—You never were mine, and it is the last time I shall ever call you so. I am going back, I have only too good reason to fear, to the life from which you took me, because—I am not your Nelly."

  The words were doubly underlined, they were unmistakable, yet he had to read them over and over again before he was able to grasp their meaning. What did they mean? Had his darling suddenly gone mad? The written sheet swam before his eyes. It was with an effort he read on.

  "How you ever came to mistake me for her I cannot understand. The more I have thought of it, the stranger it has seemed. I suppose there must be a resemblance between us—between your Nelly and me. Though I expect the resemblance is more to the face in Mr. Bodenham's picture than it is to mine. I never did think the woman in Mr. Bodenham's picture was like me—though I was his model. I never could have been the original of your photograph of Nelly—it is not in the least like me. I think that you came to England with your heart and mind and eyes so full of Nelly, and so eager for a sight of her, that, in your great hunger of love, you grasped at the first chance resemblance you encountered. That is the only explanation I can think of, Tom, of how you can have mistaken me for her.

  "My part is easier to explain. It is quite true, as I told you, that I was starving when you came to me. I was so weak and faint, and sick at heart, that your sudden appearance and strange behaviour—in a perfect stranger, for you were a perfect stranger, Tom—drove from me the few senses I had left. When I recovered I found myself in the arms of a man who seemed to know me, and who spoke to me words of love—words which I had never heard from the lips of a man before. I sent you to buy me food. While you were gone I told myself—wickedly! I know, Tom it was wickedly!—what a chance had come at last, which would save me from the river, at least for a time, and I should be a fool to let it slip. I perceived that you were mistaking me for some one else. I resolved to allow you to continue under your misapprehension. I did not doubt that you would soon discover your mistake. What would happen then I did not pause to think. But events marched quicker than I, in that first moment of mad impulse, had bargained for. You never did discover your mistake. How that was, even now I do not understand. But you began to talk of marriage. That was a prospect I dared not face.

  "For one thing—forgive me for writing it, but I must write it, now that I am writing to you for the first and f
or the last time—I began to love you. Not for the man I supposed you to be, but for the man I knew you were. I loved you—and I love you! I shall never cease to love you, with a love of which I did not think I was capable. As I told you, Tom, last night—when I kissed you!—I love you better than my own life. Better, far better, for my life is worthless, and you—you are not worthless, Tom! And I would not—even had I dared!—allow you to marry me; not for myself, but for another; not for the present, but for the past; not for the thing I was, but for the thing which you supposed I had been, once. I would have married you for your own sake; you would not have married me for mine. And so, since I dared not undeceive you—I feared to see the look which would come in your face and your eyes—I am going to steal back, like a thief, to the life from which you took me. I have had a greater happiness than ever I expected. I have enjoyed those stolen kisses which they say are sweetest. Your happiness is still to come. You will find Nelly. Such love as yours will not go unrewarded. I have been but an incident, a chapter in your life, which now is closed. God bless you, Tom! I am yours, although you are not mine—not yours, Nelly Brock—but yours, Helen Reeves."

  Mr. Gibbs read this letter once, then twice, and then again. Then he rang the bell. The landlady appeared with a suspicious promptitude which suggested the possibility of her having been a spectator of his proceedings through the keyhole.

  "When did Miss Brock go out?"

  "Quite early, sir. I'm sure, sir, I was quite taken aback when she said that she was going—on her wedding-day and all."

  "Did she say where she was going?"

  "Not a word, sir. She said: 'Mrs. Horner, I am going away. Give this letter to Mr. Gibbs when he comes.' That was every word she says, sir; then she goes right out of the front door."

  "Did she take any luggage?"

  "Just the merest mite of a bag, sir—not another thing."

  Mr. Gibbs asked no other questions. He left the room and went out into the street. The driver of the brougham was instructed to drive, not to church, but—to his evident and unconcealed surprise—to that slum in Chelsea. She had written that she was returning to the old life. The old life was connected with that top attic. He thought it might be worth his while to inquire if anything had been seen or heard of her. Nothing had. He left his card, with instructions to write him should any tidings come that way. Then, since it was unadvisable to drive about all day under the ægis of a Jehu, whose button-hole was adorned with a monstrous wedding favour, he dismissed the carriage and sent it home.

  He turned into the King's Road. He was walking in the direction of Sloane Square, when a voice addressed him from behind.

  "Tom!"

  It was a woman's voice. He turned. A woman was standing close behind him, looking and smiling at him—a stout and a dowdy woman. Cheaply and flashily dressed in faded finery—not the sort of woman whose recognition one would be over-anxious to compel. Mr. Gibbs looked at her. There was something in her face and in her voice which struck faintly some forgotten chord in his memory.

  "Tom! don't you know me? I am Nelly."

  He looked at her intently for some instants. Then it all flashed over him. This was Nelly, the real Nelly, the Nelly of his younger days, the Nelly he had come to find. This dandy sloven, whose shrill voice proclaimed her little vulgar soul—so different from that other Nelly, whose soft, musical tones had not been among the least of her charms. The recognition came on him with the force of a sudden shock. He reeled, so that he had to clutch at a railing to help him stand.

  "Tom! what's the matter? Aren't you well? Or is it the joy of seeing me has sent you silly?"

  She laughed, the dissonant laughter of the female Cockney of a certain class. Mr. Gibbs recovered his balance and his civility.

  "Thank you, I am very well. And you?"

  "Oh, I'm all right. There's never much the matter with me. I can't afford the time to be ill." She laughed again. "Well, this is a start my meeting you. Come and have a bit o' dinner along with us."

  "Who is us? Your father and your mother?"

  "Why, father, he's been dead these five years, and mother, she's been dead these three. I don't want you to have a bit of dinner along with them—not hardly." Again she laughed. "It's my old man I mean. Why, you don't mean to say you don't know I'm married! Why, I'm the mother of five."

  He had fallen in at her side. They were walking on together—he like a man in a dream.

  "We're doing pretty well considering, we manage to live, you know." She laughed again. She seemed filled with laughter, which was more than Mr. Gibbs was then. "We're fishmongers, that's what we are. William he's got a very tidy trade, as good as any in the road. There, here's our shop!" She paused in front of a fishmonger's shop. "And there's our name"—she pointed up at it. "Nelly Brock I used to be, and now I'm Mrs. William Morgan."

  She laughed again. She led the way through the shop to a little room beyond. A man was seated on the table, reading a newspaper, a man without a coat on, and with a blue apron tied about his waist.

  "William, who do you think I've brought to see you? You'll never guess in a month of Sundays. This is Tom Gibbs, of whom you've heard me speak dozens of times."

  Mr. Morgan wiped his hand upon his apron.

  Then he held it out to Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs was conscious, as he grasped it, that it reeked of fish.

  "How are you, Gibbs? Glad to see you!" Mr. Morgan turned to his wife. "Where's that George? There's a pair of soles got to be sent up to Sydney Street, and there's not a soul about the place to take 'em."

  "That George is a dratted nuisance, that's what he is. He never is anywhere to be found when you want him. You remember, William, me telling you about Tom Gibbs? My old sweetheart, you know, he was. He went away to make his fortune, and I was to wait for him till he came back, and I daresay I should have waited if you hadn't just happened to come along."

  "I wish I hadn't just happened, then. I wish she'd waited for you, Gibbs. It'd have been better for me, and worse for you, old man."

  "That's what they all say, you know, after a time."

  Mrs. Morgan laughed. But Mr. Morgan did not seem to be in a particularly jovial frame of mind.

  "It's all very well for you to talk, you know, but I don't like the way things are managed in this house, and so I tell you. There's your new lodger come while you've been out, and her room's like a regular pig-sty, and I had to show her upstairs myself, with the shop chock-full of customers." Mr. Morgan drew his hand across his nose. "See you directly, Gibbs; some one must attend to business."

  Mr. Morgan withdrew to the shop. Mr. Gibbs and his old love were left alone.

  "Never you mind, William. He's all right; but he's a bit huffy—men will get huffy when things don't go just as they want 'em. I'll just run upstairs and send the lodger down here, while I tidy up her room. The children slept in it last night. I never expected her till this afternoon; she's took me unawares. You wait here; I shan't be half a minute. Then we'll have a bit of dinner."

  Mr. Gibbs, left alone, sat in a sort of waking dream. Could this be Nelly—the Nelly of whom he had dreamed, for whom he had striven, whom he had come to find—this mother of five? Why, she must have begun to play him false almost as soon as his back was turned. She must have already been almost standing at the altar steps with William Morgan while writing the last of her letters to him. And had his imagination, or his memory, tricked him? Had youth, or distance, lent enchantment to the view? Had she gone back, or had he advanced? Could she have been the vulgar drab which she now appeared to be, in the days of long ago?

  As he sat there, endeavouring to resolve these riddles which had been so suddenly presented for solution, the door opened and some one entered.

  "I beg your pardon," said the voice of the intruder, on perceiving that the room was already provided with an occupant.

  Mr. Gibbs glanced up. The voice fell like the voice of a magician on his ear. He rose to his feet, all trembling. In the doorway was standing the other Nelly—the
false, and yet the true one. The Nelly of his imagination. The Nelly to whom he was to have been married that day. He went to her with a sudden cry.

  "Nelly!"

  "Tom!" She shrank away. But in spite of her shrinking, he took her in his arms.

  "My own, own darling."

  "Tom," she moaned, "don't you understand—I'm not Nelly!"

  "I know it, and I thank God, my darling, you are not."

  "Tom! What do you mean?"

  "I mean that I have found Nelly, and I mean that, thank Heaven! I have found you too—never, my darling, please Heaven! to lose sight of you again."

  They had only just time to withdraw from a too suspicious neighbourhood, before the door opened again to admit Mrs. Morgan.

  "Tom, this is our new lodger. I just asked her if she'd mind stepping downstairs while I tidied up her room a bit. Miss Reeves, this is an old sweetheart of mine—Mr. Gibbs."

  Mr. Gibbs turned to the "new lodger."

  "Miss Reeves and I are already acquainted. Miss Reeves, you have heard me speak of Mrs. Morgan, though not by that name. This is Nelly."

  Miss Reeves turned and looked at Mrs. Morgan, and as she looked—she gasped.

  La Haute Finance - A Tale of the Biggest Coup on Record

  *

  Chapter I

  "By Jove! I believe it could be done!"

  Mr. Rodney Railton took the cigarette out of his mouth and sent a puff of smoke into the air.

  "I believe it could, by Jove!"

  Another puff of smoke.

  "I'll write to Mac."

  He drew a sheet of paper towards him and penned the following:—

  "DEAR ALEC,—Can you give me some dinner to-night? Wire me if you have a crowd. I shall be in the House till four. Have something to propose which will make your hair stand up.