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A Prince of Sinners, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Part 2 - Chapter 5. Brooks Enlists A Recruit |
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_ PART II CHAPTER V. BROOKS ENLISTS A RECRUIT Brooks had found a small restaurant in the heart of fashionable London, where the appointments and decorations were French, and the waiters were not disposed to patronize. Of the cooking neither he nor Mary Scott in those days was a critic. Nevertheless she protested against the length of the dinner which he ordered. "I want an excuse," he declared, laying down the carte, "for a good long chat. We shall be too late for the theatre, so we may as well resign ourselves to an hour or so of one another's society." She shook her head. "A very apt excuse for unwarrantable greediness," she declared. "Surely we can talk without eating?" He shook his head. "You do not smoke, and you do not drink liqueurs," he remarked. "Now I have noticed that it is simply impossible for one to sit before an empty table after dinner and not feel that one ought to go. Let the waiter take your cape. You will find the room warm. "Do you remember," she asked him, "the first night we dined together?" He looked at her with twinkling eyes. "Rather! It was my introduction to your uncle's household. Selina sat on my left, and Louise on my right. You sat opposite, tired and disagreeable." "I was tired--and I am always disagreeable." "I have noticed it," he agreed, equably. "I hope you like oysters." "If Selina were to see us now," she remarked, with a sudden humorous smile, "how shocked she would be." "What a little far-away world it seems down there," he said thoughtfully. "After all, I am glad that I have not to live in Medchester all my life." "You have been there this afternoon, haven't you?" "Yes. Henslow is giving us a lot of trouble. I am afraid we shall lose the seat next election." "Do you mind?" "Not much. I am no party politician. I want to see Medchester represented by a man who will go there with a sense of political proportion, and I don't care whether he calls himself Liberal, or Radical, or Conservative, or Unionist." "Please explain what you mean by that," she begged. "Why, yes. I mean a man who will understand how enormously more important is the welfare of our own people, the people of whom we are making slaves, than this feverish Imperialism and war cant. Mind, I think our patriotism should be a thing wholly understood. It needn't be talked about. It makes showy fireworks for the platform, but it's all unnecessary and to my mind very undignified. If only people would take that for granted and go on to something worth while." "Are things any better in Medchester just now?" she asked. "On the surface, yes, but on the surface only. More factories are running half-time, but after all what does that mean? It's slow starvation. A man can't live and keep a family on fifteen shillings a week, even if his wife earns a little. He can't do it in a dignified manner, and with cleanliness and health. That is what he has a right to. That is what the next generation will demand. He should have room to expand. Cleanliness, air, fresh food. Every man and woman who is born into the world has a God-given right to these, and there are millions in Medchester, Manchester, and all the great cities who are denied all three." "So all Henslow's great schemes, his Royal Commissions, his Protection Duties, his great Housing Bill, have come to nothing then?" she remarked. "To less than nothing," he answered, gloomily. "The man was a fraud. He is not worth attempting to bully. He is a puppet politician of a type that ought to have been dead and buried generations ago. Enoch Stone is our only hope in the House now. He is a strong man, and he has hold of the truth." "Have they decided upon Henslow's successor?" she asked. "Not yet," he answered. She looked up at him. "I heard from uncle this morning," she said, smiling meaningly. He shook his head. "Well, it was mentioned," he said, "but I would not hear of it. I am altogether too young and inexperienced. I want to live with the people for a year or two first. That is why I am glad to get to London." "With the people?" she asked, "in Jermyn Street?" He laughed good-humouredly. "I have also lodgings in the Bethnal Green Road," he said. "I took possession of them last week." "Anywhere near Merry's Corner?" she asked. "What do you know about Merry's Corner?" he exclaimed, with uplifted eyebrows. "Yes, my rooms are nearly opposite, at the corner of the next street." "I've been down there once or twice lately," she said. "There's a mission-hall just there, and a girl named Kate Stuart gave me a letter to go three times a week." He nodded. "I know the place. Week-night services and hymn-singing and preaching. A cold, desolate affair altogether. I'm thankful I went in there, though, for it's given me an idea." Yes? "I'm going to start a mission myself." "Go on." "On a new principle. The first thing will be that there will be no religious services whatever. I won't have a clergyman connected with it. It will be intended solely for the benefit of the people from a temporal point of view." "You are going a long way," she said. "What about Sundays?" "There will be a very short service for the mission helpers only. No one will be asked from outside at all. If they come it will be as a favour. Directly it is over the usual week-day procedure will go on. "And what is that to be?" Brooks smiled a little doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I've got the main idea in my head, but all the details want thinking out. I want the place to be a sort of help bureau, to give the people living in a certain street or couple of streets somewhere to go for advice and help in cases of emergency. There will be no money given away, under any consideration--only food, clothing, and, if they are asked for, books. I shall have half-a-dozen bathrooms, and the people who come regularly for advice and help will have to use them and to keep their houses clean. There will be no distinction as to character. We shall help the drunkards and the very worst of them just the same as the others if they apply. If we get enough helpers there will be plenty of branches we can open. I should like to have a children's branch, for instance--one or two women will take the children of the neighbourhood in hand and bathe them every day. As we get to know the people better and appreciate their special needs other things will suggest themselves. But I want them to feel that they have some place to fail back upon. We shall be frightfully humbugged, robbed, cheated, and deceived--at first. I fancy that after a time that will wear itself out." "It is a fascinating idea," she said, thoughtfully, "but to carry it out in any way thoroughly you want a great many helpers and a great deal of money." "I have enough to start it," he said, "and when it is really going and improving itself I shall go out and ask for subscriptions-big ones, you know, from the right sort of people. You can always get money if you can show that it is to be well spent." "And what about the helpers?" "Well, I know of a few," he said, "who I think would come in, and there is one to whom I would have to pay a small salary." "I could come in the afternoons," she said. "Capital! But are you sure," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "that it is quite fair to yourself? "Oh, I can manage with my morning's salary," she answered, laughing. "I shan't starve. Besides, I can always burn a little midnight oil." A waiter stood at their table for a moment, deftly carving some new dish, and Brooks, leaning back in his chair, glanced critically at his companion. In his judgment she represented something in womankind essentially of the durable type. He appreciated her good looks, the air with which she wore her simple clothes, her large full eyes, her wide, gently-humorous mouth, and the hair parted in the middle, and rippling away towards her ears. A frank companionable woman, whose eyes had never failed to look into his, in whom he had never at any time seen a single shadow of embarrassment. It occurred to him just at that moment that never since he had known her had he seen her interested to the slightest degree in any man. He looked back at her thoughtfully. She was young, good-looking, too catholic in her views of life and its possibilities to refuse in any way to recognize its inevitable tendencies. Yet he told himself complacently as he sipped his wine and watched her gazing with amused interest at the little groups of people about the place, that there must be in her composition a lack of sentiment. Never for a second in their intercourse had she varied from her usual good-natured cheerfulness. If there had been a shadow she had brushed it away ruthlessly. Even on that terrible afternoon at Enton she had sat in the cab white and silent--she had appealed to him in no way for sympathy. The waiter retreated with a bow. She shot a swift glance across at him. "I object to being scrutinized," she declared. "Is it the plainness of my hat or the depth of my wrinkles to which you object?" "Object!" he repeated. "Yes. You were looking for something which you did not find. You were distinctly disappointed. Don't deny it. It isn't worth while." "I won't plead guilty to the disappointment," he answered, "but I'll tell you the truth. I was thinking what a delightfully companionable girl you were, and yet how different from any other girl I have ever met in my life." "That sounds hackneyed--the latter part of it," she remarked, "but in my case I see that it is not intended to be a compliment. What do I lack that other girls have? "You are putting me in a tight corner," he declared. "It isn't that you lack anything, but nearly all the girls one meets some time or other seem to expect from one nice little speeches or compliments, just a little sentiment now and then. Now you seem so entirely superior to that sort of thing altogether. It is a ridiculously lame explanation. The thing's in my head all right, but I can't get it out. I can only express it when I say that you are the only girl I have ever known, or known of, in my life with whom sex would never interfere with companionship." She stirred her coffee absently. At first he thought that she might be offended, for she did not look up for several moments. "I'm afraid I failed altogether to make you understand what I meant," he said, humbly. "It is the result of an attempt at too great candour." Then she looked up and smiled at him graciously enough, though it seemed to him that she was a little pale. "I am sure you were delightfully lucid," she said. "I quite understood, and on the whole I think I agree with you. I don't think that the sentimental side of me has been properly developed. By the bye, you were going to tell me about that pretty girl I saw at Enton--Lady Caroom's daughter, wasn't she?" His face lit up--she saw his thoughts go flitting away, and the corner of his lips curl in a retrospective smile of pleasure. "Sybil Caroom," he said, softly. "She is a very charming girl. You would like her, I am sure. Of course she's been brought up in rather a frivolous world, but she's quite unspoilt, very sympathetic, and very intelligent. Isn't that a good character?" "Very," she answered, with a suspicion of dryness in her tone. "Is this paragon engaged to be married yet?" He looked at her, keenly surprised by the infusion of something foreign in her tone. "I--I think not," he answered. "I should like you to meet her very much. She will be coming to London soon, and I know that she will be interested in our new scheme if it comes to anything. We will take her down and give her a few practical lessons in philanthropy." "Will she be interested?" Mary asked. "Immensely," he answered, with confidence. "Lady Caroom is an awfully good sort, too." Mary remembered the well-bred insolence of Lady Caroom's stare, the contemplative incredulity which found militant expression in her beautiful eyes and shapely curving lips, and for a moment half closed her eyes. "Ah, well," she said, "that afternoon was rather a terrible one to me. Let us talk of something else." He was profuse at once in apologies for his own thoughtlessness. But she checked him almost at the outset. "It is I who am to blame for an unusual weakness," she said. "Let us both forget it. And don't you find this place hot? Let us get outside and walk." They found a soft misty rain falling. The commissionaire called a hansom. She moved her skirts to make room for him. "I am going down to Stepney to see a man who I think will be interested in my scheme," he said. "When may I come down again and have tea with you?" "Any afternoon, if you will drop me a line the night before," she said, "but I am not very likely to be out, in any case. Thank you so much for my dinner. My aunt seemed to think that I was coming to London to starve. I think I feel fairly safe this evening, at any rate." The cab drove off, skirting the gaily-lit crescent of Regent Street. The smile almost at once died away from her lips. She leaned forward and looked at herself in one of the oblong mirrors. Her face was almost colourless, the skin seemed drawn closely round her eyes, giving her almost a strained look. For the rest, her hair, smoothly brushed away from her face, was in perfect order, her prim little hat was at exactly the right angle, her little white tie alone relieved the sombreness of her black jacket. She sighed and suddenly felt a moistening of her hot eyes. She leaned far back into the corner of the cab. _ |
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