The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 5

"I have forgotten," she said, spreading out her hands.

"Don't you know any one else in London?" I asked.

She shook her head mournfully. "And I am getting so hungry."

I suggested that there were restaurants in London.

"But I have no money," she objected. "No money and nothing at all but this." She designated her dress. "Isn't it ugly?"

"It is decidedly not becoming," I admitted.

"Well, what must I do? You tell me and I do it. If you don't tell me, I must die."

She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the responsibility of her existence. I did not know which to admire more, her cool a.s.surance or the stoic fort.i.tude with which she faced dissolution.

"I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two," said I, "but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name--"

"After all I don't want so very much to find him," said this amazing young person. "He made me stay in my cabin all the time I was in the steamer. At first I was glad, for it went up and down, side to side, and I thought I would die, for I was so sick; but afterwards I got better--"

"But where did you come from?" I asked.

"From Alexandretta."

"What were you doing there?"

"I used to sit in a tree and look over the wall--"

"What wall?"

"The wall of my house-my father's house. He was not my father, but he married my mother. I am English." She announced the fact with a little air of finality.

"Indeed?" said I.

"Yes. Father, mother--both English. He was Vice-Consul. He died before I was born. Then his friend Hamdi Effendi took my mother and married her.

You see?"

I confessed I did not. "Where does Harry come in?" I inquired.

She looked puzzled. "Come in?" she echoed.

I perceived her knowledge of the English vernacular was limited. I turned my question differently.

"Oh," she said with more animation. "He used to pa.s.s by the wall, and I talked to him when there was no one looking. He was so pretty--prettier than you," she paused.

"Is it possible?" I said, ironically.

"Oh, yes," she replied with profound gravity. "He had a moustache, but he was not so long."

"Well? You talked to Harry. What then?"

In her artless way she told me. A refreshing story, as old as the crusades, with the accessories of orthodox tradition; a European disguise, purchased at a slop dealer's by the precious Harry, a rope, a midnight flitting, a pa.s.sage taken on board an English ship; the anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main. A most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a question at her like a bullet.

"Are you making all this up, young woman?"

She started-looked quite scared.

"You mean I tell lies? But no. It is all true. Why shouldn't it be true?

How else could I have come here?"

The question was unanswerable. Her story was as preposterous as her garments. But her garments were real enough. I looked long into her great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth. She babbled on for a little. I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a Turkish official. She had spent all her life in the harem from which she had eloped with this pretty young Englishman.

"And what must I do?" she reiterated.

I told her to give me time. One is not in the habit of meeting abducted Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National Liberal Club. It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence. I looked around me. Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes. A pale young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was reading a dirty pink newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about unconcernedly. On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless att.i.tudes. Sir Bartle Frere stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert a Becket story. I always thought something was wrong with that man's character.

What on earth could I tell her to do? The best course was to find the infernal Harry. I asked her how she came to lose him. It appears he escorted her ash.o.r.e at Southampton, after having scarcely set eyes on her during the voyage, put her into a railway carriage with strict injunctions not to stir until he claimed her, and then disappeared into s.p.a.ce.

"Did he give you your ticket?"

"No."

"What a young blackguard!" I exclaimed.

"I don't like him at all," she said.

How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could not exactly discover. Apparently she told him, in her confiding manner, that Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the train and came back to say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes on him and the sentimental varlet melted. At Waterloo a man had told her she must get out of the carriage--she had travelled alone in it--and she had meekly obeyed. She had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the resemblance was that she did not know the creature's surname.

"By the way," said I, "what is your name?"

"Carlotta."

"Carlotta what?" I asked.

"I have no other name."

"Your father--the Vice-Consul--had one."

She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.

"Ramsbotham," she said at last, triumphantly.

"Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham--no," I broke off. "Such an appellation is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd. I can't use it. I must take the liberty of addressing you as Carlotta."

"But I've told you that Carlotta is my name," she said, in uncomprehending innocence.

"And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne. People call me 'Sir Marcus.'"

"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta.