They had unlinked now, and walking along together they pa.s.sed up Southampton Street and through Henrietta Street towards Leicester Square. The unknown doing all the talking, a task for which he seemed well qualified.

He talked of things, events, and people, absolutely unknown to his listener, of horses, and men, and women. He talked Jones into Bond Street, and Jones went shopping with him, a.s.sisting him in the choice of two dozen coloured socks at Beale and Inmans. Outside the hosier's, the unknown was proposing luncheon, when a carriage, an open Victoria, going slowly on account of the traffic, drew Jones' attention.

It was a very smart turn out, one horsed, but having two liveried servants on the box. A coachman, and a footman with powdered hair.

In the Victoria was seated one of the prettiest girls ever beheld by Jones. A lovely creature, dark, with deep, dreamy, vague blue-grey eyes--and a face! Ah, what pen could describe that face, so mobile, piquante, and filled with light and inexpressible charm.

She had caught Jones' eye, she was gazing at him curiously, half mirthfully, half wrathfully, it seemed to him, and now to his amazement she made a little movement of the head, as if to say, "come here." At the same moment she spoke to the coachman.

"Portman, stop please."

Jones advanced, raising his hat.

"I just want to tell you," said the Beauty, leaning a little forward, "that you are a silly old a.s.s. Venetia has told me all--It's nothing to me, but don't do it--Portman, drive on."

"Good Lord!" said Jones, as the vehicle pa.s.sed on its way, bearing off its beautiful occupant, of whom nothing could now be seen but the lace covered back of a parasol.

He rejoined the unknown.

"Well," said the latter, "what has your wife been saying to you?"

"My _wife_!" said Jones.

"Well, your late wife, though you ain't divorced yet, are you?"

"No," said Jones.

He uttered the word mechanically, scarcely knowing what he was saying.

That lovely creature his wife! Rochester's wife!

"Get in," said the unknown. He had called a taxi.

Jones got in.

Rochester's wife! The contrast between her and Lady Plinlimon suddenly arose before him, together with the folly of Rochester seen gigantically and in a new light.

The taxi drew up in a street off Piccadilly; they got out; the unknown paid and led the way into a house, whose front door presented a modest bra.s.s door plate inscribed with the words:

"MR. CARR"

They pa.s.sed along a pa.s.sage, and then down stairs to a large room, where small card tables were set out. An extraordinary room, for, occupying nearly half of one side of it stood a kitchen range, over which a cook was engaged broiling chops and kidneys, and all the other elements of a mixed grill. Old fashioned pictures of sporting celebrities hung on the walls, and opposite the range stood a dresser, laden with priceless old fashioned crockery ware. Off this room lay the dining room, and the whole place had an atmosphere of comfort and the days gone by when days were less laborious than our days, and comfort less allied to glitter and tinsel.

This was Carr's Club.

The unknown sat down before the visitor's book, and began to write his own name and the name of his guest.

Jones, looking over his shoulder, saw that his name was Spence, Patrick Spence. Sir Patrick Spence, for one of the attendants addressed him as Sir Patrick. A mixed grill, some cheese and draught beer in heavy pewter tankards, const.i.tuted the meal, during which the loquacious Spence kept up the conversation.

"I don't want to poke my nose into your affairs," said he, "but I can see there's something worrying you; you're not the same chap. Is it about the wife?"

"No," said Jones, "it's not that."

"Well, I don't want to dig into your confidences, and I don't want to give you advice. If I did, I'd say make it up with her. You know very well, Rochy, you have led her the deuce of a dance. Your sister got me on about it the other night at the Vernons'. We had a long talk about you, Rochy, and we agreed you were the best of chaps, but too much given to gaiety and promiscuous larks. You should have heard me holding forth.

But, joking apart, it's time you and I settled down, old chap. You can't put old heads on young shoulders, but our shoulders ain't so young as they used to be, Rochy. And I want to tell you this, if you don't hitch up again in harness, the other party will do a bolt. I'm dead serious.

It's not the thing to say to another man, but you and I haven't any secrets between us, and we've always been pretty plain one to the other--well, this is what I want to say, and just take it as it's meant.

Maniloff is after her. You know that chap, the _attache_ at the Russian Emba.s.sy, chap like a billiard marker, always at the other end of a cigarette--other name's Boris. Hasn't a penny to bless himself with. I know he hasn't, for I've made kind enquiries about him through Lewis, reason why--he wanted to buy one of my racers for export to Roosia.

Seven hundred down and the balance in six months. Lewis served up his past to me on a charger. The chap's rotten with debt, divorced from his wife, and a punter at Monte Carlo. That's his real profession, and card playing. He's a sleepy Slav, and if he was told his house was on fire he'd say, "nichevo," meaning it don't matter, it's well insured--if he had a house to insure, which he hasn't. But women like him, he's that sort. But Heaven help the woman that marries him. He'd take her money and herself off to Monte, and when he'd broken her heart and spoiled her life and spent her coin, he'd leave her, and go off and be Russian _attache_ in j.a.pan or somewhere. I know him. Don't let her do it, Rochy."

"But how am I to help it?" asked the perplexed Jones, who saw the meaning of the other. It did not matter in reality to him, whether a woman whom he had only seen once were to "bolt" with a Russian and find ruination at Monte Carlo, but this world is not entirely a world of reality, and he felt a surprisingly strong resentment at the idea of the girl in the Victoria "bolting" with a Russian.

It will be remembered that in Collins' office, the lawyer's talk about his "wife" had almost decided him to throw down his cards and quit. This shadowy wife, first mentioned by the bird woman, had, in fact, been the one vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight Rochester's battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or, failing that, to retire and vanish back to the States with honourable pickings.

The sight of the real thing had, however, altered the whole position.

Romance had suddenly touched Victor Jones; the gorgeous but sordid veils through which he had been pushing had split to some mystic wand, and had become the foliage of fairy land.

"I want to tell you--you are an old a.s.s."

Those words were surely enough to shatter any dream, to turn to pathos any situation. In Jones' case they had acted as a most potent spell. He could still hear the voice, wrathful, but with a tinge of mirth in it, golden, individual, entrancing.

"How are you to help it?" said Spence. "Why, go and make up with her again, kick old Nichevo. Women like chaps that kick other chaps; they pretend they don't, but they do. Either do that or take a gun and shoot her, she'd be better shot than with that fellow."

He lit a cigarette and they pa.s.sed into the card room, where Spence, looking at his watch, declared that he must be off to keep an appointment. They said good-bye in the street, and Jones returned to Carlton House Terrace.

He had plenty to think about.

The pile of letters waiting to be answered on the table in the smoking room reminded him that he had forgotten a most pressing necessity--a typist. He could sign letters all right, with a very good imitation of Rochester's signature, but a holograph letter in the same hand was beyond him. Then a bright idea came to him, why not answer these letters with sixpenny telegrams, which he could hand in himself?

He found a sheaf of telegraph forms in the bureau, and sat down before the letters, dealing with them one by one, and as relevantly as he could. It was a rather interesting and amusing game, and when he had finished he felt fairly satisfied. "Awfully sorry can't come," was the reply to the dinner invitations. The letter signed "Childersley" worried him, till he looked up the name in "Who's Who" and found a Lord answering to it at the same address as that on the note paper.

He had struck by accident on one of the alleviations of a major misery of civilized life, replying to Letters, and he felt like patenting it.

He left the house with the sheaf of telegrams, found the nearest post office--which is situated directly opposite to Charing Cross Station--and returned. Then lighting a cigar, he took the friendly and indefatigable "Who's Who" upon his knee, and began to turn the pages indolently. It is a most interesting volume for an idle moment, full of scattered romance, tales of struggle and adventure, compressed into a few lines, peeps of history, and the epitaphs of still living men.

"I want to tell you--you are an old a.s.s."

The words still sounding in his ears made him turn again to the name Plinlimon. The contrast between Lady Plinlimon and the girl, whose vision dominated his mind, rose up again sharply at sight of the printed name.

a.s.s! That name did not apply to Rochester. To fit him with an appropriate pseudonym would be impossible. Fool, idiot, sumph--Jones tried them all on the image of the defunct, but they were too small.

"Plinlimon: 3rd Baron," read Jones, "created 1831, Albert James, b.

March 10th, 1862. O. S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson of Clifton, m. Sapphira, d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately.

Address The Roost, t.i.te Street, Chelsea."

Mulhausen! He almost dropped the book. Mulhausen! Collins, his office, and that terrible family party all rose up before him. Here was the scamp who had diddled Rochester out of the coal mine, the father of the woman who had diddled him out of thousands. The paragraph in "Who's Who"

turned from printed matter to a nest of wriggling vipers. He threw the book on the table, rose up, and began to pace the floor.

The girl-wife in the Victoria, his own position--everything was forgotten, before the monstrous fact half guessed, half seen.