Chapter Nineteen. The Man who Loved.

A few nights later Max Barclay was seated in the stalls of the Empire Theatre with Marion.

They never went to the legitimate theatre because she had no evening-dress. Even to be seen in one would have caused comment among her fellow employés at Cunnington’s. The girls were never very charitable to each other, for in the pernicious system of “living-in” there is no privacy or home life, no sense of responsibility or of freedom.

The average London shop girl has but little leisure and little rest. Chronically over-tired, she cares little to go out of an evening after the long shop hours, and looks forward to Sunday as the day when she can read in bed till noon if she chooses, snooze again in the afternoon, and perhaps go to a café in the evening. It was so with Marion. The sales were on, and there were “spiffs,” or premiums, placed by Mr Warner upon some out-of-date goods which it was every girl’s object to sell and thus earn the commission. So she was working very hard, and already held quite a respectable number of tickets representing “spiffs.”

In a dark blue skirt, white silk blouse and black hat, she looked extremely pretty and modest as she sat beside her lover in the second row of the stalls, watching the ballet with its tuneful music, clever groupings, and phantasmagoria of colour. She glanced at the watch upon her wrist, and saw that it was nearly ten o’clock. In half an hour she would have to be “in.”

The bondage of his well-beloved galled Max, yet he could say nothing. Her life was the same as that of a hundred thousand other girls in London. Indeed, was she not far better off that those poor girls who came up from their country homes to serve a year or two’s drudgery without payment in order to learn the art and mystery of “serving a customer”—girls who were orphans and without funds, and who very soon found the actual necessity of having a little pocket-money for dress and for something with which to relish the stale bread and butter doled out to them.

The public have never yet adequately realised the hardships and tyranny of shop-life, where man is but a mere machine, liable to get the “sack” at a moment’s notice, and where woman is but an ill-fed, overworked drudge, liable at any moment to be thrown out penniless upon the great world of London.

Some day ere long the revelation will come. There are certain big houses in London with pious shareholders and go-to-meeting directors which will earn the opprobrium of the whole British public when the naked truth regarding their female assistants is exposed. In “the trade” it is known, and one day there will arise a man bolder and more fearless than the rest, who will speak the truth, and, moreover, prove it.

If in the meantime you want to know the truth concerning shop-life, ask the director of any of the numerous rescue societies in London. What you will be told will, I assure you, open your eyes.

The couple of hours Max had spent with Marion proved delightful ones, as they always were. Promenading in the lounge above were many men-about-town whom he knew, and who, seeing him with the modest-looking girl, smiled knowingly. They never guessed the truth—that he loved her and intended to make her his wife.

“Charlie is back from Glasgow,” she was saying. “He came to the shop this afternoon to ask if I had seen you, and to explain how the other night he, by a most fortunate circumstance, missed the Continental train, for next morning Mr Statham wanted him to do some very important business, and was delighted to find that he had not left. Another man has gone out to the East.”

“If he wanted to know my movements he might have called at Dover Street,” Max remarked thoughtfully, the recollection of that night in Cromwell Road arising within him.

“He seemed very busy, and said he had not a moment to spare. He was probably going north again. They have, he told me, some big order from Italy at the locomotive works.”

“I thought Statham couldn’t do without him,” remarked Max. “Nowadays, however, he seems always travelling.”

“He’s awfully kind to me—gave me a five-pound note this afternoon.”

“What did he say about me?” inquired Max.

“Oh! nothing very much. He asked me, among other things, whether I knew where you were on the night of the disappearance of the Doctor and his daughter.”

Max started.

“And what did you reply?”

“That I hadn’t the slightest idea. I never saw you that evening,” was the girl’s frank response.

Her lover nodded thoughtfully. It was now plain that Charlie suspected that he had detected him leaving the house and was endeavouring to either confirm his suspicion or dismiss it.

“Did he tell you to-day where he was going?”

“Back to Glasgow, I believe—but only for two days.”

Max was seated at the end of the second row of the stalls, and beyond Marion were three or four vacant seats. At this juncture their conversation was interrupted by a man in well-cut evening-dress, his crush hat beneath his arms, advancing down the gangway and putting his hand out heartily to Max, exclaiming—

“My dear Barclay! Excuse me, but I want very much a few words with you to-night, on a matter of great importance.” Then, glancing at Marion, he added: “I trust that Mademoiselle will forgive this intrusion?”

The girl glanced at the new-comer, while her lover, taking the man’s hand, said—

“My dear Adam, I, too, wanted to see you, and intended to call to-morrow. You are not intruding in the least. Here’s a seat. Allow me to introduce Miss Rolfe—Mr Jean Adam.”

The man of double personality bowed again, and passing Marion and her lover, seated himself at her side, commencing to chat merrily, and explaining that he had recognised Max from the circle above. He had, it appeared, been to Dover Street an hour before, and Max’s man had told him where his master was spending the evening.

Marion rather liked him. Max had already told her of this Frenchman who spoke English so well, and with whom he was doing business. In his speech he had the air and polish of the true cosmopolitan, and he also possessed a keen sense of humour.

Presently Marion, glancing again at her watch, declared that she must leave. Max scarcely ever took her home. He always put her into a cab, and she descended at the corner of the street off Oxford Street, where Cunnington’s assistants had their big barrack-like dwelling, and walked home alone. It was her wish to do so, and he respected it.

Therefore all three rose, and Max went outside with her and put her into a cab, promising to meet her on the following evening. In the bustle of Leicester Square at that hour, he could not kiss her; but as their hands grasped, their eyes met in a glance which both knew was one of trust and mutual affection.

And so they parted, Max returning to the lounge where the Frenchman, Jean Adam, alias the Englishman John Adams, awaited him.

They had a drink at the American bar, and then promenaded up and down in the gay crowd that nightly assembles in that popular resort. Max nodded to one or two men he knew—clubmen and habitués like himself, and then, after the show was over, they took a cab down to the Savoy to supper.

The gay restaurant, with its crimson carpet and white decorations was crowded. To Gustave, who allotted the tables, Max was well-known, therefore a table for two in the left-hand corner of the big room—the table he usually occupied—was instantly secured, and the couple who had engaged were moved elsewhere. In the season Max had supper there on an average three nights a week, for at the Savoy one meets all one’s friends, and there is always music, life, and brightness after the theatre, until the licensing regulations cut off the merriment so abruptly.

That night was no exception. The place was filled to overflowing with the smart world, together with many American visitors, the latest musical-comedy actresses and their male appendages, country cousins, men whose names were household words, and women whose pasts had appeared in black and white in the newspapers. A strange crowd, surely. Half the people were known to each other by sight, if not personally, and the other half were mere onlookers, filled with curiosity when Lord This or Dolly That were pointed out to them.

Max and Jean Adam were seated with a bottle of Krug between them when the former exclaimed—

“Well, how does our business go?”

“That’s the reason I wanted to see you to-night,” was his companion’s reply with just a slight French accent. “I had some news from Constantinople to-day—confidential news from the Palace,” he added in an undertone, bending across the table. “I want you to read it and give your opinion.” And producing an envelope and letter on thin paper closely written in French, he handed it across to Barclay, as he added: “Now what is written there is the bed-rock fact, I know from independent inquiries I have made in an entirely different quarter.”

Between mouthfuls of the perfectly-cooked filet de sole placed before him Max read the letter carefully. It was signed “your devoted friend Osman,” and was evidently from a Turkish official at the Yildiz Kiosk. Briefly, it was to the effect that the iradé of the Sultan for the construction of the railway from Nisch in Servia to San Giovanni di Medua, on the Adriatic, was in the hands of Muhil Pasha, one of his Majesty’s most intimate officials, and had been granted to him for services rendered in the Asiatic provinces.

Muhil had offered to part with it for twelve thousand pounds sterling, and that the agent of a French Company had arrived in Constantinople in order to treat with him. Muhil, however, had no love for the French, since he was Ottoman Ambassador in Paris a few years ago, and got into disgrace there, hence he would be much more ready to sell to an English syndicate.

The letter of Osman concluded by urging Adam to send instructions at once to a certain box at the British post-office in Constantinople, and to if possible secure the valuable document which would enable a line of railway to be built which would pay its shareholders enormously.

“Well,” exclaimed Max, as he replaced the letter in its envelope, noting the surcharge in black—“1 piastre”—upon the blue English stamp. “What shall you do?”

“Do? Why we must get the twelve thousand, of course. It’s a mere bagatelle compared with the magnitude of the business. I’ve got some reports in my overcoat pocket which I’ll show you after supper. We must get the thing through, my dear Barclay. There’s a big fortune in it for both of us—a huge fortune. Why, for the past ten years every diplomat at the Sublime Porte has been at work to get it through, but has been unsuccessful. The Sultan has always refused to let the line run through Turkish territory, fearing lest it should be used for military transport in the event of another war. His Majesty is not particularly partial to Austria, Servia, or Bulgaria, you know,” he laughed.

“And hardly surprising, in view of past events, eh?” exclaimed Max, entirely ignorant of the real character of this man, who seemed a smart man of business combined with a genial companion. Adam was a past-master in the art of fraud. He did not press the point, but merely went on with his supper, swallowed a glass of champagne, and turned the conversation by admiring the graceful carriage of the head of a girl sitting near with a wreath of forget-me-nots across her fluffy fair hair.

“Yes,” replied Max. “The poise of her head is full of grace, but—well, her face is like the carved handle of an umbrella!” Whereat his companion laughed heartily. Barclay was full of quaint expressions, and of a quiet but biting sarcasm. Some of his bons mots had been repeated from month to mouth in the clubs until they became almost popular sayings. He was now in love entirely and devotedly with Marion, and no other woman of the thousand who passed before his eyes and smiled into his face had the least attraction for him.

A moment later a pretty girl in pink, the Honourable Eva Townley, who was at supper with her mother and same friends, bowed to him and laughed, while another woman, the rather go-ahead wife of a leader at the Chancery Bar, waved a menu at him.

Society knew Max, and many a woman had set her cap at him, hoping to capture the tall, well-set-up and easy-going young fellow, together with the ease and comfort which his substantial estates would afford.

Max, however, had done a few years of town life. He had become blasé and nauseated. Since he had met Marion Rolfe the quiet, modest, unassuming and hard-working shop-assistant, the haute monde bored him more than ever. He went only where he was compelled, yet he nowadays preferred the cheap Italian restaurant and Marion’s society to the tables of the rich with their ugly women striving to fascinate, and their small-talk of scandal, gossip and cruel innuendo.

There is surely no world in the world like that of London—nothing so complex, so tragic, and yet so grimly humorous, so soul-killing, and yet so reckless as our little, lax world of vanity and display that calls itself Society, the world which the nouveau riche are ever seeking to enter by the back-door, and which the suburbs rush to see portrayed upon the stage of the theatre.

Everywhere the manner and morals of Mayfair are aped nowadays. Mrs Browne-Smythe, the City clerk’s wife of tattling Tooting, has her “day,” and gives her bridge-parties just as does the Duchess of Dorsetshire in Grosvenor Square; and Mrs Claude Greene, the wife of the wholesale butcher, who was once a barmaid near the Meat Market, and now lives in matrimonial felicity in cliquey Clapham, “requests the company of” upon the self-same cards and with the self-same formula as the wife of Jimmy James the South African magnate in Park Lane.

Max, glad that supper was over, rose and walked with his friend out into the big lounge where the Roumanian band were playing weird gipsy melodies, and sat at one of the little tables to smoke and sip Grand Marnier cordon rouge, being joined a few moments later by a couple of men whom he knew at the club, and who appeared to be at a loose end.

At last the lights were turned down as signal that in five minutes it would be closing time, and then rifling, Max, ignorant of the ingenious plot, invited his friend Adam round to Dover Street for a final smoke.