Edith Nesbit - The Literary Sense

"But surely he didn't leave you without money."

Her little foot tapped the gravel impatiently.

"I'm coming to that," she said. "Of course he didn't. He told me to stay on at the hotel, and I did – and then one night when I was at the theatre my maid – a horrid French thing we got in Paris – packed up all my trunks and took all my money, and paid the bill, and went. The hotel folks let her go – I can't think how people can be so silly. But they wouldn't let me stay, and I wired to papa – and there was no answer, and I don't know whatever's the matter with him. I know it all sounds as if I was making it up as I go along – "

She stopped short, and looked at him through the dusk. He did not speak, but whatever she saw in his face it satisfied her. She said again: "You are kind."

"Go on," he said, "tell me all about it."

"Well, then, I went into lodgings; that wicked woman had left me one street suit – and to-day they turned me out because my money was all gone. I had a little money in my purse – and this dress had been ordered for a fancy ball – it is smart, isn't it? – and it came after that wretch had gone – and the guitar, too – and I thought I could make a little money. I really can sing, though you mightn't think it. And I've been at it since five o'clock – and I've only got one shilling and seven pence. And no one but you has ever even thought of thinking whether I was tired or hungry or anything – and papa always took such care of me. I feel as if I had been beaten."

"Let me think," he said. "Oh – how glad I am that you happened to come this way."

He reflected a moment. Then he said —

"I shall lock up all the doors and windows in the house – and then I shall give you my latch-key, and you can let yourself in and stay the night here – there is no one in the house. I will catch the night train, and bring my mother up to-morrow. Then we will see what can be done."

The only excuse for this rash young man is to be found in the fact that while he was feeding his strange guest with cake and wine she was feeding, with her beauty, the first fire of his first love. Love at first sight is all nonsense, we know – we who have come to forty year – but at twenty-one one does not somehow recognise it for the nonsense it is.

"But don't you know anyone in London?" he asked in a sensible postscript.

It was not yet so dark but that he could see the crimson flush on her face.

"Not know ," she said. "Papa wouldn't like me to spoil my chances of knowing the right people with any foolishness like this. There's no one I could let know. You see, papa's so very rich, and at home they expect me to – to get acquainted with dukes and things – and – "

She stopped.

"American heiresses are expected to marry English dukes," he said, with a distinct physical pain at his heart.

"It wasn't I who said that," said the girl, smiling; "but that's so, anyhow." And then she sighed.

"So it's your destiny to marry a duke, is it?" the young man spoke slowly. "All the same," he added irrelevantly, "you shall have the latch-key."

"You are kind," she said for the third time, and reached her hand out to him. He did not kiss it then, only took it in his, and felt how small and cold it was. Then it was taken away.

He says that he only talked to her for half an hour – but the neighbours, from whose eyes suburban hawthorns and laburnums are powerless to conceal the least of our actions, declare that he sat with the guitar player on the iron seat till well after midnight; further, that when they parted he kissed her hand, and that she then put her hands on his shoulders – "quite shamelessly, you know" – and kissed him lightly on both cheeks. It is known that he passed the night prowling in our suburban lanes, and caught the 6.25 train in the morning to the place where his people were staying.

The lady and the guitar certainly passed the night at Hill View Villa, but when his mother, very angry and very frightened, came up with him at about noon, the house looked just as usual, and no one was there but the charwoman.

"An adventuress! I told you so!" said his mother at once – and the young man sat down at his study table and looked at the title of his article on "The Decadence of Criticism." It was surely a very long time ago that he had written that. And he sat there thinking, till his mother's voice roused him.

"The silver is all right, thank goodness," she said, "but your banjo girl has taken a pair of your sister's silk stockings, and those new shoes of hers with the silver buckles – and she's left these ."

She held out a pair of little patent leather shoes, very worn and dusty – the slender silken web of a black stocking, brown with dust, hung from her hand. He answered nothing. She spent the rest of that day in searching the house for further losses, but all things were in their place, except the silver-handled button-hook – and that, as even his sister owned, had been missing for months.

Yet his family would never leave him to keep house alone again: they said he is not to be trusted. And perhaps they are right. The half dozen pairs of embroidered silk stockings and the dainty French silver-buckled shoes, which arrived a month later addressed to Miss – , Hill View Villa, only confirmed their distrust. He must have had them sent – that tambourine girl could never have afforded these – why, they were pure silk – and the quality! It was plain that his castanet girl – his mother and sister took a pleasure in crediting her daily with some fresh and unpleasing instrument – could have had neither taste, money, nor honesty to such a point as this.

As for the young man, he bore it all very meekly, only he was glad when his essays on the decadence of things in general led to a berth on the staff of a big daily, and made it possible for him to take rooms in town – because he had grown weary of living with his family, and of hearing so constantly that She played the bones and the big drum and the concertina, and that She was a twopenny adventuress who stole his sister's shoes and stockings. He prefers to sit in his quiet room in the Temple, and to remember that she played the guitar and sang sweetly – that she had a mouth like a tired child's mouth, that her eyes were like stars, and that she kissed him – on both cheeks – and that he kissed – her hand only – as the scandalised suburb knows.

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