The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ himself in the domestic’s livery, and had driven off with the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town. What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine did the following before my own eyes. We were walking down Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost, agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out matches for sale. His hideous red toes protruded through his boots. “My God, my God!” cried Pasquale, “I can’t stand this!” He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore off his own boots, flung them to the petrified beggar and drove home in his stocking-feet. I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings, watched the recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck the boots under his arm and march away with them to the nearest pawnbroker. If Pasquale had been an equally compassionate Briton, he would have stopped to think, and have tossed the man a sovereign. But he didn’t stop to think. That was my cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved him for it.

      I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle on my consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The sun shone. A thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my bedroom windows. The tree, laughed and shook out its finery at me like a woman, saying: “See how green I am, after Sunday’s rain.” Antoinette’s one eyed black cat (a hideous beast) met me in the hall and arching its back welcomed me affably to its new residence. And on my breakfast-table I found a copy of the first edition of Cristoforo da Costa’s “Elogi delle Donne Illustri,” a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord Carnforth, a perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting in his library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar’s splendid courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.

      Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a personification of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers. I reached them at three o’clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls and lunched on the road. I signed their unintelligible document, and wandered through the Temple Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had passed under Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little leg-weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the National Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable bench. The only other occupant was a female in black. As I take no interest in females in black, I disregarded her presence, and gave myself up to the contemplation, of the trim lawns and flower-beds, the green trees masking the unsightly Surrey side of the river, and the back of the statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A continued survey of the last not making for edification (a statue that turns its back on you being one of the dullest objects made by man), I took from my pocket a brown leather-covered volume which I had fished out of a penny box: “Suite de l’Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise ou L’Histoire des Uscoques, par le Sieur Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV.” A whole complete scholarly history of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the most pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth century Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured their acrid musty smell. How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart’s-blood, how many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind nowadays but as an odour, an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and there a casual student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna. As men, their achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but their name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance may be found in the penny scent fountains of to-day. I was smiling over this quaint olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie’s book, when a tug at my arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to the workaday world. I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown, piteous, imploring dog’s eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to the disregarded female in black.

      “Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do.”

      I stared. She was not in the least like what my half-conscious glance at the female in black had taken her to be. She was quite young, remarkably good looking. Even at the first instant I was struck by her eyes and the mass of bronze hair and the twitching of a childish mouth. But she had an untidy, touzled, raffish appearance, due to I knew not what investiture of disrepute. Her hands—for she wore no gloves—wanted washing.

      “What a young girl like yourself must not do,” said I, “is to enter into conversation with men in public places.”

      “Then I shall have to die,” she said, forlornly, edging away from my side.

      She had the oddest little foreign accent. I looked at her again more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so disreputable. She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for her. Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration—black velvet and bugles—on the bodice. Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged, fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago for synagogue wear. On the girlish figure it looked preposterous. Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed in black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.

      Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again. Then she shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. My mother had a housemaid once who always sniffed like that before beginning to cry. My position was untenable. I could not remain stonily on the seat while this grotesquely attired damsel wept; and for the life of me I could not get up and leave her. She looked at me again. Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely human. I capitulated.

      “Don’t cry. Tell me what I can do for you,” I said.

      She moved a few inches nearer.

      “I want to find Harry,” she said; “I have lost him.”

      “Who’s Harry?” I naturally inquired.

      “He is to be my husband.”

      “What’s his other name?”

      “I have forgotten,” she said, spreading out her hands.

      “Don’t you know any one else in London?” I asked.

      She shook her head mournfully. “And I am getting so hungry.”

      I suggested that there were restaurants in London.

      “But I have no money,” she objected. “No money and nothing at all but this.” She designated her dress. “Isn’t it ugly?”

      “It is decidedly not becoming,” I admitted.

      “Well, what must I do? You tell me and I do it. If you don’t tell me, I must die.”

      She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the responsibility of her existence. I did not know which to admire more, her cool assurance or the stoic fortitude with which she faced dissolution.

      “I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two,” said I, “but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name—”

      “After all I don’t want so very much to find him,” said this amazing young person. “He made me stay in my cabin all the time I was in the steamer. At first I was glad, for it went up and down, side to side, and I thought I would die, for I was so sick; but afterwards I got better—”

      “But where did you come from?” I asked.

      “From Alexandretta.”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ