Aladdin of London Part 11

Anna hardly knew what to say. When she consented finally to risk the money, she did not know that w.i.l.l.y Forrest was the man who laid against her horse, and that if she lost it would be to him.

"The boss is good enough," he told himself, "but the near-off is d.i.c.ky or I never saw one. She'll lose the money and the old boy will pay up--if I compel her to ask him. That depends on the kid. She couldn't help making eyes at him if her life depended on it. Well--she's going to marry me, and that's the long and short of it. Fancy pa.s.sing a certainty at my time of life. Do I see it--eh, what?"

And so they went their ways: Anna back to London to the solemn routine of the big house; w.i.l.l.y Forrest to Epsom to try, as he said, "and pick up the nimble with a pencil."

CHAPTER XII

ALBAN SEES LIFE

Alban had been five weeks at Hampstead when he met w.i.l.l.y Forrest for the first time, and was able to gratify his curiosity concerning one whom he believed to be Anna's lover.

The occasion was Richard Gessner's absence in Paris upon a business of great urgency and the immediate appearance of the dashing captain at "Five Gables." True, Anna behaved with great discretion, but, none the less, Alban understood that this man was more to her than others, and he did not fail to judge him with that shrewd scrutiny even youth may command.

w.i.l.l.y Forrest, to give him his due, took an instinctive liking to the new intruder and was not to be put off, however much his attentions were displeasing to Anna. A cunning foresight, added to a fecund imagination and a fine taste for all _chroniques scandaleuses_, led him to determine that Alban Kennedy might yet inherit the bulk of Gessner's fortune and become the plumpest of all possible pigeons. Should this be the case, those who had been the young man's friends in the beginning might well remain so to the end. He resolved instantly to cultivate an acquaintance so desirable, and lost not a moment in the pursuit of his aims.

"My dear chap," he said on the third day of their a.s.sociation, "you are positively growing gra.s.s in this place. Do you never go anywhere? Has no one taught you how to amuse yourself?"

Alban replied that everything was so new to him that he desired no other amus.e.m.e.nt than its enjoyment.

"It was almost years since I saw a tree that was not black," he said; "the water used to drip through the roof of my garret, and there was a family in the room on the opposite side of the landing. I don't think you can understand what this house means to me. Perhaps I don't understand myself. I'm almost afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I should wake up in Union Street and find it all a fairy story. Mr.

Gessner says I am to stop with them always--but he might change his mind and then it would be Commercial Road again--if I had the courage to go back there."

Forrest had known evil times himself, and he could honestly appreciate the possibility.

"Stick by the old horse while he sticks by you," was his candid advice.

"I expect he's under a pretty stiff obligation to some of your people who are gone, and this is how he's paying it. You take all the corn you can get and put it in your nose-bag. Anna herself tells me that the old man is only happy while you are in the house. Play up to it, old chap, and grease your wheels while the can's going round."

This very worldy advice fell upon ears strikingly deficient in understanding subtleties. Alban could not dislike Forrest, though he tried his best to do so. There was something sympathetic about the fellow, rogue that he was, and even shrewd men admitted his fascination. When the Captain proposed that they should go down to the West End of London and see a little of life together, Alban consented gladly. New experiences set him hungering after those supposed delights which were made so much of in the newspapers. He reflected how very little he really knew of the world and its people.

It was a day of early June when they set off in that very single brougham which had carried Silas Geary to Whitechapel. The Captain, having first ascertained the amount of money in his friend's possession, proposed a light lunch in the restaurant of the Savoy, and there, to do him justice, he was amusing enough.

"People are all giving up houses and living in restaurants nowadays," he said as they sat at table. "I don't blame 'em either. Just think of the number of nags in those big stables, all eating their heads off and smoking your best cigars--eh, what? Why, I kept myself in weeds a few years ago--got 'em for twopence halfpenny from a butler in Curzon Street and never smoked better. You don't want to do that, for you can bottle old Bluebeard's and try 'em on the dog--eh, what? When you marry, don't you take a house. A man who lives in a hotel doesn't seem as though he were married and that's good for the filly. Look at these angels here.

Why, half of them sold the family oak tree a generation ago, and Attenborough down the street will tell you what their Tiffanies are worth. They live in hotels because it's cheaper, and they wear French paste because the other is at uncle's. That's the truth, my boy, and all the world knows it."

Alban listened with an odd cynical smile upon his face, but he did not immediately reply. This famous hotel had seemed a cavern of all the wonders when first he entered it, and he would not willingly abandon his illusions. The beautifully dressed women, the rustling gowns, the chiffon, the lace, the feathers, the diamonds--might he not have thought that they stood for all that pomp and circ.u.mstance of life which the East End denounced so vehemently and the West End as persistently demanded? Of the inner lives of these people he knew absolutely nothing.

And, after all, he remembered, men and women are much the same whatever the circ.u.mstance.

"I like to be in beautiful places," he confessed in his turn, "and this place seems to me very beautiful. Does it really matter to us, Forrest, what the people do or what they are so long as they don't ask us to be the same? Jimmy Dale, a parson in Whitechapel, used to say that a man was just what his conscience made him. I don't see how the fact of living in or out of a hotel would matter anyway--unless you leave your conscience in a cab. The rest is mostly talk, and untrue at that, they say. You yourself know that you don't believe half of it."

"My dear man, what would life be if one were incredulous? How would the newspaper proprietors buy bread and cheese, to say nothing of pate de foie gras and ninety-two Pommery if the world desired the truth? This crowd is mostly on the brink of a precipice, and a man or a woman goes over every day. Then you have the law report and old Righteousness in a white wig, who has not been found out, to p.r.o.nounce a judgment. I'd like to wager that not one in three of these people ever did an honest day's work in a lifetime. One half is rank idle--the other half is trying to live on the remainder. Work it out and pa.s.s me the wine--and mind you don't get setting up any images for time to knock down--eh, what?"

Alban would not wrangle with him, and for a little while he ate in silence, watching the sparkling throng and listening to such sc.r.a.ps of conversation as floated to him from merry tables. Down in Union Street it had been the fashion to decry idleness and the crimes of the rich--the orators having it that leisure was criminal and ease a heinous sin. Alban had never believed in any such fallacy. "We are all born lazy," he had said, "and few of us would work unless we had to. Vanity is at the bottom of all that we do. If no one were vain, the world would stand still." In the Savoy, his arguments seemed to be justified a hundredfold. A sense of both content and dignity came to him. He began almost to believe that money could enn.o.ble as well as satisfy.

w.i.l.l.y Forrest, of course, knew nothing whatever of thoughts such as these. He was a past master in the art of killing time and he boasted that he rarely knew an "idle hour." His programme for this day seemed altogether beyond criticism.

"We'll look in at the club afterwards and play a game of bridge--you can stand by me and see me win--or perhaps you'd like a side bet. Then we might turn into the park to give the girls a treat--eh, what?--and go on to the New Bridge Club to dress. After that there's the old sporting shanty and a bit of a mill between Neddy Tinker and Marsh Hill. You never saw a fight, I suppose? Man, but your education has been neglected."

Alban smiled and admitted his deficiencies.

"I've seen many a set-to in Commercial Road and taken a hand sometimes.

Is it really quite necessary to my education?"

"Absolutely indispensable. You must do everything and be seen everywhere. If I had time, I'd give you the personal history of half the light-weights in this room. Look at that black crow in the corner there.

He's a Jew parson from Ess.e.x--as rich as bottled beer and always stops here. Last time I rode a welter down his way they told me his favorite text was "Blessed are the poor." He's a pretty figurehead for a bean-feast, isn't he? That chirpy barrister next door has a practice of fifteen thou. The blighter once cross-examined me in a card-sharping case and made me look the biggest d.a.m.ned fool in Europe. Did I rest on my laurels--eh, what? Why, sir, he can't cross a race-course now without having his pocket picked. My doing, my immortal achievement. The little Countess next door used to do stunts at the _Nouveau Cirque_. Lord Saxe-Holt married her when he was hazy and is taming her. That old chap, who eats like a mule, is Lord Whippingham. He hasn't got a sixpence, and if you ask me how he lives--well, there are ways and means foreign to your young and virgin mind. The old geezer used to run after little Betty Sine at the Apollo--but she put an ice down his back at supper here one night and then there were partings. Some day I'll take you to the Blenheim and show you England's aristocracy in arm-chairs--we haven't time to-day and here's the coffee coming. Pay up and be thankful that your new pa isn't overdrawn, and has still a shekel or two in his milk jug. My G.o.dfather!--but you are a lucky young man, and so you are beginning to think, I suppose."

Alban did not condescend to answer a question so direct. He was still quite uncertain as to his future, and he would not discuss it with this irresponsible, who had undertaken to be his worldly mentor. When they left the Savoy it was to visit a club in Trafalgar Square and there discover the rec.u.mbent figures of aged gentlemen who had lunched not wisely but too well. Of all that he had seen in the kingdoms of money, Alban found this club least to his liking. The darkness of its great rooms, the insolence of its members toward the servants who waited upon them, the gross idleness, the trivial excitements of the card-room, the secret drinking in remote corners--he had never imagined that men of brains could so abase themselves, and he escaped ultimately to Hyde Park with a measure of thankfulness he would not conceal.

"Why do people go to places like that, Forrest?" he asked as they went.

"What enjoyment do they get out of them?"

w.i.l.l.y Forrest, who had taken a "mahogany one" in the club and was getting mighty confidential, answered him as candidly.

"Half of 'em go to get away from their wives, the other half to win money--eh, what?"

"But why do they never speak to each other?"

"Put two game-c.o.c.ks in a pen and then ask again. It's a club, my boy, and so they think every other man a rogue or a fool."

"And do they pay much for the privilege?"

"That depends on the airs they give themselves. I've been pilled for half the clubs in town and so, I suppose, I'm rather a decent sort of chap. It used to be a kind of hall-mark to get in a good club, but we live at hotels nowadays and don't care a dump for them. That's why half of 'em are on the verge of bankruptcy. Don't you trouble about them, unless you get a filly that bolts. I shall have to give up clubs altogether, I suppose, when I marry Anna--eh, what?"

He laughed at the idea, and Alban remaining silent, he whistled a hansom in a way that would have done credit to a railway porter, and continued affably.

"You knew that I was going to marry Anna, didn't you? She told you on the strict q.t., didn't she? Oh, my stars, how she can talk! I shall buy an ear-trumpet when we're in double harness. But Anna told you, now didn't she?"

"I have only once heard her mention your name--she certainly did not speak of being engaged."

"They never do when the old man bucks--eh, what? Gessner don't like me, and I'd poison him for a shilling. Why shouldn't I marry her? I can ride a horse and point a gun and throw a fly better than most. Can Old Bluebeard go better--eh, what? The old pot-hook, I'd play him any game you like to name for a pony aside and back myself to the Day of Judgment. And he's the man who talks about bagging a Duke for his girl!

Pshaw, Anna would kick the coronet downstairs in three days and the owner after it. You must know that for yourself--she's a little devil to rear and you can't touch her on the curb--eh, what, you've noticed it yourself?"

Alban declared quite frankly that he had noticed nothing whatever. Not for a fortune would he have declared his heart to this man, the hopes, the perplexities, and the self-reproach which had attended ever these early weeks in wonderland. Just as Anna's shrewdness had perceived, so was it the truth that an image of perfect womanhood dazzled his imagination and left him without any clear perception whatever. For little Lois of the slums he had a sterling affection, begotten of long a.s.sociation and of mutual sympathy--but the vision of Anna had been the beatification of his love dream, so to speak, deceiving him by its immense promise and leading him to credit Gessner's daughter with all those qualities of womanhood which stood nearest to his heart's desire.

Here was a Lois become instantly more beautiful, more refined, more winning. If he remained true to the little friend of his boyish years, his faith had been obscured for a moment by this superb apparition of a young girl's beauty, enshrined upon the altar of riches and endowed with those qualities which wealth alone could purchase. Anna, indeed, held him for a little while spellbound, and now he listened to Forrest as though a heresy against all women were spoken.

"I did not know you were engaged," he said quite frankly. "Anna certainly has never told me. Of course, I congratulate you. She is a very beautiful girl, Forrest."

"That's true, old chap. You might see her in the paddock and pick her at a glance--eh, what? But it's mum at present--not a whistle to the old man until the south wind blows. And don't you tell Anna either. She'd marry somebody else if she thought I was really in love with her--eh, what?"

Alban shrugged his shoulders but had nothing to say. They had now come to the famous Achilles Statue in Hyde Park, and there they walked for half an hour amidst the showily dressed women on the lawn. w.i.l.l.y Forrest was known to many of these and everywhere appeared sure of a familiar welcome. The very men, who would tell you aside that he was a "wrong 'un," nodded affably to him and sometimes stopped to ask him what was going to win the Oaks. He patronized a few pretty girls with condescending recognition and immediately afterwards would relate to Alban the more intimate and often scandalous stories of their families.

At a later moment they espied Anna herself in a superb victoria drawn by two strawberry roans. And to their intense astonishment they perceived that she had the Reverend Silas Geary in the carriage by her side.

"A clever little devil, upon my soul," said the Captain, ecstatically, "to cart that fire-escape round and show him to the crowd. She must have done it to annoy me--eh, what? She thinks I'm not so much an angel as I look and is going to make me good. Oh, my stars--let's get. I shall be saying the catechism if I stop here any longer."