Tom Gallon - The Cruise of the Make-Believes

It had been hard at times to remember that she was not a child, and that he had no right to treat her as such; it had, above all things, been difficult for him to tell himself, over and over again, that the life he lived in Arcadia Street was a sham, and that he was not the poor man he seemed to be to her. She had been frankness itself with him, and he should have been with her in return. Only of course he knew that, once she understood that he was playing a part, her confidence in him, as someone as poor as herself and as struggling, would be gone. For a period not yet defined in any way he intended to keep that fiction alive, and remain near her. And in that again there was no real motive, save one of pity for the girl.

He asked a question now that had been on his lips many and many a time, and yet that he had not uttered before. They were standing together near the table, and she had one hand resting upon it; he noticed how short the sleeve was, and guessed that she must long since have outgrown this dress, and many others she possessed. He remembered suddenly that her dresses had always seemed short. "How old are you, little Make-Believe?" he asked.

"More than eighteen," she said; and laughed and blushed.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the house, and a man stood there. Gilbert Byfield stood quite still, watching; for his presence there would need explanation. The girl had drawn away from him, and was peering at the man in the doorway; she spoke his name hesitatingly at last – almost apologetically.

"Mr. Quarle?" she asked. "Do you want me?"

The man who stepped out from the doorway was a thickly-set man of between fifty and sixty years of age, with thin grey hair and with a somewhat sour-looking face. His shoulders were very broad, and he had the appearance almost of a man whose head has been set too far forward; the sharp clean-shaven face was thrust well out, as though the man spent his time in peering into everything about him. He carried his hands locked behind him; his voice was rather harsh. Certainly there was nothing amiable-looking about him.

"I don't want you – but your father's asking for you," said the man.

"I'll go in at once," said Bessie. "Oh – Mr. Quarle," she added nervously, slipping her hand through the arm of the man, and drawing him forward a little – "this is Mr. Byfield – a friend of mine."

"Pleased to know you, sir," said Quarle, with a face that belied his words. "New lodger?"

"I live – next door," said Gilbert, a little lamely. For the girl had run into the house, and the situation was an absurd one. The only fashion in which he could leave this man, whose appearance he did not like, was by an undignified exit over the wall; and he had no wish for that. He could have gone out into the little alley behind, but he knew that the door at the end of his own particular garden was always kept bolted. So he stood somewhat awkwardly looking at the newcomer, and wondering whether he had better say something about the moon, or the warmth of the night. The man relieved him of the difficulty by speaking first.

"My name is Simon Quarle," he said, coming a step or two nearer to the younger man, and lowering his voice. "You're not likely to have heard of me; very few people have, because I keep myself to myself. It's a habit of mine."

"And a very excellent habit too, I should imagine," said Gilbert with meaning.

"I could wish it was a more general habit," retorted Quarle, with a quick glance at the house. "Now, sir – I'm old enough to be your father – old enough, under happier circumstances, to be the father of that girl who has just left us. And the Lord knows she needs a father badly."

"I believe she has one already," said Gilbert coldly.

"She supports a drunken reprobate who has that title," retorted the man, with a snarl. "Perhaps, if he were worthy of the name, he might have something to say to a man who sneaks over a back wall at night to talk to his daughter."

Gilbert made a quick movement towards the man; Quarle did not flinch, nor did he take his eyes from the face of the younger man. Again the absurdity of his position was borne in upon Byfield; more than that, he seemed to see in this strange creature someone who had a greater right to say that he was the friend of Bessie – a friend of an older standing.

"You simply don't understand," said Gilbert. "From a younger man I shouldn't stand it – but – "

"Never mind my years," said the other. "I'll do you the justice to believe that yours has simply been the thoughtlessness of youth – the carelessness of a man to whom women are all alike – "

"I see that you don't understand," broke in Gilbert hotly. "I have been genuinely sorry to see this child slaving for those who should really be supporting her; I have seen in her something purer and sweeter than in any woman I have met yet."

"You're right there," said Simon Quarle, with a nod. "But you'd best leave her alone to her garden, as she calls it, and to her dreams, and to the hard workaday world she knows. You belong to another world; go back to it."

"How do you know I belong to another world?" demanded Gilbert.

"Because I haven't lived in this one for nearly sixty years without watching men, and growing to understand them. You don't belong to Arcadia Street; you haven't the true stamp of it."

Gilbert took an impatient turn or two about the garden, and then came back to this strange man, who had not moved. "But if I tell you that I'm interested in her – that I want to help her – "

"Then I tell you that no help you can give her is of the sort she wants or deserves," said Quarle steadily. "At the present time, you stand to her doubtless as someone wonderful, who can talk to her as no man has talked to her yet – understand her with the understanding of youth. And presently, when the mood seizes you, you will turn your back on Arcadia Street, and go off to the world you know and understand. But you will leave her behind."

Again there was a pause between the two men, and again the younger one strode about impatiently, and again the elder one stood still, watching him. At last Gilbert came back to where Simon Quarle was standing.

"I beg your pardon if I spoke hastily just now," he said. "I had no right to do that, because no man would speak as you have done unless he was her friend."

"Thank you," said the other simply. "Anything else?"

"I want to help her – I want to lift her out of this slum in which she lives – make some of her dreams come true. I am rich; I can do many things secretly without her knowledge."

"You are young; would you marry her?"

"My dear sir – she's a child. Besides – I – "

"Besides – you belong to another world," broke in Quarle mockingly. "Get back over your wall, my friend, and leave her alone. Much better leave her to her dreams and her fancies, even if they are never to be realized, than shatter them as you would shatter them. Get back over your wall."

"You don't understand, and I don't suppose you ever will," exclaimed Gilbert quickly. "But I shall find a way to help her yet."

"Perhaps – perhaps," said Simon Quarle, nodding his head slowly. "But for the present get back over your wall!"

THAT absurd business of climbing the wall again had to be got over, and was safely accomplished; to do him justice, Mr. Simon Quarle refrained from watching Gilbert's departure, and so took away one pang at least. The last vision Gilbert had of him was as he dropped over into the other garden, and, looking back, saw the old man standing with his hands clasped behind his back, and his bent shoulders turned towards where Gilbert had disappeared, and his eyes fixed upon the opposite wall.

But whatever resolution Gilbert Byfield may have formed to help the girl, and to lift her out from the sordid life in which he had found her, for the present he did nothing. Indeed, for the moment he decided after a restless night to abandon Arcadia Street altogether, and to touch again that life to which he most properly belonged. He would go back into that artificial existence, and, looking on this picture and on that, would decide clearly which was the most worthy. Which is to say in other words that the old life still drew him, and that this quixotic thing about which he had concerned himself could be easily laid aside, for a time at least.