Meddlechip sat silently looking at the disordered supper-table and thinking deeply. The dishes were scattered about the white cloth, and some vividly red cherries had fallen down from the fruit dish in the centre, some salt was spilt near his elbow, the napkins, twisted into thin wisps, were lying among the dirty dishes, and the champagne glasses, half filled with the straw-coloured wine, were standing near the empty bottles. Meddlechip thought for a few moments, and then looked up suddenly in a cool, collected, business-like manner.
‘As I understand you,’ he said, in a steady voice, ‘the case stands thus: you know a portion, or rather, I should say, an episode of my life, I would gladly forget. I did not commit the murder.’
‘No, but you gave her the poison.’
‘Innocently I did, I confess.’
‘Bah! who will believe that?’ retorted M. Vandeloup, with a shrug; ‘but never mind this at present; let me hear what you intend to do.’
‘You know a secret,’ said Meddlechip, nervously, ‘which is dangerous to me; you want to sell it; well, I will be the buyer – name your price.’
‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Vandeloup, quietly.
‘Is that all?’ asked the other, with a start of surprise; ‘I was prepared for five thousand.’
‘I am not exorbitant in my demands,’ answered Vandeloup, smoothly; ‘and as I told you, I have a scheme on hand by which I may make a lot of money-five hundred pounds is sufficient to do what I want. If the scheme succeeds, I will be rich enough to do without any more money from you.’
‘Yes; but if it fails?’ said Meddlechip, doubtfully.
‘If it fails, I will be obliged to draw on you again,’ returned Gaston, candidly; ‘you can’t say, however, that I am behaving badly to you.’
‘No,’ answered Meddlechip, looking at him. ‘I must say you are easier to deal with than I anticipated. Well, if I give you my cheque for five hundred – ’
‘Say six hundred,’ observed Vandeloup, rising and going to a small table in the corner of the room on which were pens and ink. ‘I want an extra hundred.’
‘Six hundred then be it,’ answered Meddlechip, quietly, rising and going to his overcoat, from whence he took his cheque book. ‘For this amount you will be silent.’
M. Vandeloup bowed gracefully.
‘On my word of honour,’ he replied, gaily; ‘but, of course,’ with a sudden glance at Meddlechip, ‘you will treat me as a friend – ask me to your house, and introduce me to Madame, your wife.’
‘I don’t see the necessity,’ returned Meddlechip, angrily, going over to the small table and sitting down.
‘Pardon me, I do’ answered the Frenchman, with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
‘Well, well, I agree,’ said Meddlechip, testily, taking up a pen and opening his cheque book. ‘You, of course, can dictate your own terms.’
‘I understand that perfectly,’ replied Vandeloup, delicately, lighting a cigarette, ‘and have done so. You can’t say they are hard, as I said before.’
Meddlechip did not answer, but wrote out a cheque for six hundred pounds, and then handed it to Vandeloup, who received it with a bow and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
‘With this,’ he said, touching his pocket, ‘I hope to make nearly ten thousand in a fortnight.’
Meddlechip stared at him.
‘I hope you will,’ he answered, gruffly, ‘all the better for my purse if you do.’
‘That, of course, goes without saying,’ replied Vandeloup, lazily. ‘Have some more wine?’ touching the bell.
‘No more, thank you,’ said Meddlechip, putting on his overcoat. ‘It’s time I was off.’
‘By the way,’ said M. Vandeloup, coolly, ‘I have not any change in my pocket; you might settle for the supper.’
Meddlechip burst out laughing.
‘Confound your impudence,’ he said, quickly, ‘I thought you asked me to supper.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Vandeloup, taking his hat and stick, ‘but I intended you to pay for it.’
‘You were pretty certain of your game, then?’
‘I always am,’ answered Vandeloup, as the door opened, and Gurchy rolled slowly into the room.
Meddlechip paid the bill without making further objections, and then they both left Leslie’s with the same precautions as had attended their entry. They walked slowly down Bourke Street, and parted at the corner, Meddlechip going to Toorak, while Vandeloup got into a cab and told the man to drive to Richmond, then lit a cigarette and gave himself up to reflection as he drove along.
‘I’ve done a good stroke of business tonight,’ he said, smiling, as he felt the cheque in his pocket, ‘and I’ll venture the whole lot on this Magpie reef. If it succeeds I will be rich; if it does not – well, there is always Meddlechip as my banker.’ Then his thoughts went back to Kitty, for the reason of his going home so late was that he wanted to find out in what frame of mind she was.
‘She’ll never leave me,’ he said, with a laugh, as the cab drew up in front of Mrs Pulchop’s house; ‘if she does, so much the better for me.’
He dismissed his cab, and let himself in with the latch key; then hanging up his hat in the hall he went straight to the bedroom and lit the gas. He then crossed to the bed, expecting to find Kitty sound asleep, but to his surprise the bed was untouched, and she was not there.
‘Ah!’ he said, quietly, ‘so she has gone, after all. Poor little girl, I wonder where she is. I must really look after her to-morrow; at present,’ he said, pulling off his coat, with a yawn, ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’
He went to bed, and laying his head on the pillow was soon fast asleep, without even a thought for the girl he had ruined.
CHAPTER V. – THE KEY OF THE STREET
When Kitty left Mrs Pulchop’s residence she had no very definite idea as to what she was going to do with herself. Her sole thought was to get as far away from her former life as possible – to disappear in the crowd and never to be heard of again. Poor little soul, she never for a moment dreamed that it was a case of out of the frying pan into the fire, and that the world at large might prove more cruel to her than Vandeloup in particular. She had been cut to the heart by his harsh cold words, but notwithstanding he had spoken so bitterly she still loved him, and would have stayed beside him, but her jealous pride forbade her to do so. She who had been queen of his heart and the idol of his life could not bear to receive cold looks and careless words, and to be looked upon as an encumbrance and a trouble. So she thought if she left him altogether and never saw him again he would, perhaps, be sorry for her and cherish her memory tenderly for evermore. If she had only known Gaston’s true nature she would not thus have buoyed herself up with false hopes of his sorrow, but as she believed in him as implicitly as a woman in love with a man always does, in a spirit of self-abnegation she cut herself off from him, thinking it would be to his advantage if not to her own.
She went into town and wandered about listlessly, not knowing where to go, till nearly twelve o’clock, and the streets were gradually emptying themselves of their crowds. The coffee stalls were at all the corners, with hungry-looking people of both sexes crowded round them, and here and there in door steps could be seen some outcasts resting in huddled heaps, while the policemen every now and then would come up and make them move on.
Kitty was footsore and heart-weary, and felt inclined to cry, but was nevertheless resolved not to go back to her home in Richmond. She dragged herself along the lonely street, and round the corner came on a coffee stall with no one at it except one small boy whose head just reached up to the counter. Such a ragged boy as he was, with a broad comical-looking face – a shaggy head of red hair and a hat without any brim to it – his legs were bandy and his feet were encased in a pair of men’s boots several sizes too large for him. He had a bundle of newspapers under one arm and his other hand was in his pocket rattling some coppers together while he bargained with the coffee-stall keeper over a pie. The coffee stall had the name of Spilsby inscribed on it, so it is fair to suppose that the man therein was Spilsby himself. He had a long grey beard and a meek face, looking so like an old wether himself it appeared almost the act of a cannibal on his part to eat a mutton pie. A large placard at the back of the stall set forth the fact that ‘Spilsby’s Specials’ were sold there for the sum of one penny, and it was over ‘Spilsby’s Specials’ the ragged boy was arguing.
‘I tell you I ain’t agoin’ to eat fat,’ he said, in a hoarse voice, as if his throat was stuffed up with one of his own newspapers. ‘I want a special, I don’t want a hordinary.’
‘This are a special, I tells you,’ retorted Spilsby, ungrammatically, pushing a smoking pie towards the boy; ‘what a young wiper you are, Grattles, a-comin’ and spoilin’ my livin’ by cussin’ my wictuals.’
‘Look ‘ere,’ retorted Grattles, standing on the tips of his large boots to look more imposing, ‘my stumick’s a bit orf when it comes to fat, and I wants the vally of my penny; give us a muttony one, with lots of gravy.’
‘’Ere y’are, then,’ said Spilsby, quite out of temper with his fastidious customer; ‘’ere’s a pie as is all made of ram as ‘adn’t got more fat on it than you ‘ave.’
Grattles examined the article classed under this promising description with a critical air, and then laid down his penny and took the pie.
‘It’s a special, ain’t it?’ he asked, suspiciously smelling it.
‘It’s the specialest I’ve got, any’ow,’ answered Spilsby, testily, putting the penny in his pocket; ‘you’d eat a ‘ole sheep if you could get it for a penny, you greedy young devil, you.’
Here Kitty, who was feeling faint and ill with so much walking, came forward and asked for a cup of coffee.
‘Certainly, dear,’ said Spilsby, with a leer, pouring out the coffee; ‘I’m allays good to a pretty gal.’
‘It’s more nor your coffee is,’ growled Grattles, who had finished his special and was now licking his fingers, ‘it’s all grounds and ‘ot water.’
‘Go away, you wicious thing,’ retorted Spilsby, mildly, giving Kitty her coffee and change out of the money she handed him, ‘or I’ll set the perlice on yer.’
‘Oh, my eye!’ shrieked Grattles, executing a grimace after the fashion of a favourite comedian; ‘he ain’t a tart, oh, no – ‘es a pie, ‘e are, a special, a muttony special; ‘e don’t kill no kittings and call ‘em sheep, oh, no; ‘e don’t buy chicory and calls it coffee, blest if ‘e does; ‘e’s a corker, ‘e are, and ‘is name ain’t the same as ‘is father’s.’
‘What d’ye mean,’ asked Spilsby, fiercely – that is, as fiercely as his meek appearance would let him; ‘what do you know of my parents, you bandy-legged little devil? who’s your – progenitor, I’d like to know?’
‘A dook, in course,’ said Grattles loftily; ‘but we don’t, in consequence of ‘er Nibs bein’ mixed up with the old man’s mother, reweal the family skeletons to low piemen,’ then, with a fresh grimace, he darted along the street as quickly as his bandy legs could carry him.
Spilsby took no notice of this, but, seeing some people coming round the corner, commenced to sing out his praises of the specials.
‘’Ere yer are – all ‘ot an’ steamin’,’ he cried, in a kind of loud bleat, which added still more to his sheep-like appearance: ‘Spilsby’s Specials – oh, lovely – ain’t they nice; my eye, fine muttin pies; who ses Spilsby’s; ‘ave one, miss?’ to Kitty.
Thank you, no,’ replied Kitty, with a faint smile as she put down her empty cup; ‘I’m going now.’
Spilsby was struck by the educated manner in which she spoke and by the air of refinement about her.
‘Go home, my dear,’ he said, kindly, leaning forward; ‘this ain’t no time for a young gal like you to be out.’
‘I’ve got no home,’ said Kitty, bitterly, ‘but if you could direct me – ’
‘Here, you,’ cried a shrill female voice, as a woman dressed in a flaunting blue gown rushed up to the stall, ‘give us a pie quick; I’m starvin’; I’ve got no time to wait.’
‘No, nor manners either,’ said Spilsby, with a remonstrating bleat, pushing a pie towards her; ‘who are you, a-shovin’ your betters, Portwine Annie?’
‘My betters,’ scoffed the lady in blue, looking Kitty up and down with a disdainful smile on her painted face; ‘where are they, I’d like to know?’
‘’Ere, ‘old your tongue,’ bleated Spilsby, angrily, ‘or I’ll tell the perlice at the corner.’
‘And much I care,’ retorted the shrill-voiced female, ‘seeing he’s a particular friend of mine.’
‘For God’s sake tell me where I can find a place to stop in,’ whispered Kitty to the coffee-stall keeper.
‘Come with me, dear,’ said Portwine Annie, eagerly, having overheard what was said, but Kitty shrank back, and then gathering her cloak around her ran down the street.
‘What do you do that for, you jade?’ said Spilsby, in a vexed tone; ‘don’t you see the girl’s a lady.’
‘Of course she is,’ retorted the other, finishing her pie; ‘we’re all ladies; look at our dresses, ain’t they fine enough? Look at our houses, aren’t they swell enough?’
‘Yes, and yer morals, ain’t they bad enough?’ said Spilsby, washing up the dirty plate.
‘They’re quite as good as many ladies in society, at all events,’ replied Portwine Annie, with a toss of her head as she walked off.
‘Oh, it’s a wicked world,’ bleated Spilsby, in a soft voice, looking after the retreating figure. ‘I’m sorry for that poor gal – I am indeed – but this ain’t business,’ and once more raising his voice he cried up his wares, ‘Oh, lovely; ain’t they muttony? Spilsby’s specials, all ‘ot; one penny.’
Meanwhile Kitty was walking quickly down Elizabeth Street, and turning round the corner ran right up against a woman.
‘Hullo!’ said the woman, catching her wrist, ‘where are you off to?’
‘Let me go,’ cried Kitty, in a panting voice.
The woman was tall and handsome, but her face had a kindly expression on it, and she seemed touched with the terrified tone of the girl.
‘My poor child,’ she said, half contemptuously, releasing her, ‘I won’t hurt you. Go if you like. What are you doing out at this time of the night?’
‘Nothing,’ faltered Kitty, with quivering lips, lifting her face up to the pale moon. The other saw it in the full light and marked how pure and innocent it was.
‘Go home, dear,’ she said, in a soft tone, touching the girl kindly on the shoulder, ‘it’s not fit for you to be out at this hour. You are not one of us.’
‘My God! no,’ cried Kitty, shrinking away from her.
The other smiled bitterly.
‘Ah! you draw away from me now,’ she said, with a sneer; ‘but what are you, so pure and virtuous, doing on the streets at this hour? Go home in time, child, or you will become like me.’
‘I have no home,’ said Kitty, turning to go.
‘No home!’ echoed the other, in a softer tone; ‘poor child! I cannot take you with me – God help me; but here is some money,’ forcing a shilling into the girl’s hand, ‘go to Mrs Rawlins at Victoria Parade, Fitzroy – anyone will tell you where it is – and she will take you in.’
‘What kind of a place is it?’ said Kitty.
‘A home for fallen women, dear,’ answered the other, kindly.
‘I’m not a fallen woman!’ cried the girl, wildly, ‘I have left my home, but I will go back to it – anything better than this horrible life on the streets.’
‘Yes, dear,’ said the woman, softly, ‘go home; go home, for God’s sake, and if you have a father and mother to shield you from harm, thank heaven for that. Let me kiss you once,’ she added, bending forward, ‘it is so long since I felt a good woman’s kiss on my lips. Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye,’ sobbed Kitty, raising her face, and the other bent down and kissed the child-like face, then with a stifled cry, fled away through the moonlit night.
Kitty turned away slowly and walked up the street. She knew there was a cab starting opposite the Town Hall which went to Richmond, and determined to go home. After all, hard though her life might be in the future, it would be better than this cruel harshness of the streets.
At the top of the block, just as she was about to cross Swanston Street, a party of young men in evening dress came round the corner singing, and evidently were much exhilarated with wine. These were none other than Mr Jarper and his friends, who, having imbibed a good deal more than was good for them, were now ripe for any mischief. Bellthorp and Jarper, both quite intoxicated, were walking arm-in-arm, each trying to keep the other up, so that their walking mostly consisted of wild lurches forward, and required a good deal of balancing.
‘Hullo!’ cried Bellthorp solemnly – he was always solemn when intoxicated – ‘girl – pretty – eh!’
‘Go ‘way,’ said Barty, staggering back against the wall, ‘we’re Christian young men.’
Kitty tried to get away from this inebriated crew, but they all closed round her, and she wrung her hands in despair. ‘If you are gentlemen you will let me go,’ she cried, trying to push past.
‘Give us kiss first,’ said a handsome young fellow, with his hat very much on one side, putting his arm round her waist, ‘pay toll, dear.’
She felt his hot breath on her cheek and shrieked out wildly, trying to push him away with all her force. The young man, however, paid no attention to her cries, but was about to kiss her when he was taken by the back of the neck and thrown into the gutter.
‘Gentlemen!’ said a rich rolling voice, which proceeded from a portly man who had just appeared on the scene. ‘I am astonished,’ with the emphasis on the first person singular, as if he were a man of great note.
‘Old boy,’ translated Bellthorp to the others, ‘is ‘tonished.’
‘You have,’ said the stranger, with an airy wave of his hand, ‘the appearance of gentlemen, but, alas! you are but whited sepulchres, fair to look upon, but full of dead men’s bones within.’
‘Jarper,’ said Bellthorp, solemnly, taking Barty’s arm, ‘you’re a tombstone with skeleton inside – come along – old boy is right – set of cads ‘suiting an unprotected gal – good night, sir.’
The others picked up their companion out of the gutter, and the whole lot rolled merrily down the street.
‘And this,’ said the gentleman, lifting up his face to the sky in mute appeal to heaven, ‘this is the generation which is to carry on Australia. Oh, Father Adam, what a dissipated family you have got – ah! – good for a comedy, I think.’
‘Oh!’ cried Kitty, recognising a familiar remark, ‘it’s Mr Wopples.’
‘The same,’ said the airy Theodore, laying his hand on his heart, ‘and you, my dear – why, bless me,’ looking closely at her, ‘it is the pretty girl I met in Ballarat – dear, dear – surely you have not come to this.’
‘No, no,’ said Kitty, quickly, laying her hand on his arm, ‘I will tell you all about it, Mr Wopples; but you must be a friend to me, for I sadly need one.’
‘I will be your friend,’ said the actor, emphatically, taking her arm and walking slowly down the street; ‘tell me how I find you thus.’
‘You won’t tell anyone if I do?’ said Kitty, imploringly.
‘On the honour of a gentleman,’ answered Wopples, with grave dignity.
Kitty told him how she had left Ballarat, but suppressed the name of her lover, as she did not want any blame to fall on him. But all the rest she told freely, and when Mr Wopples heard how on that night she had left the man who had ruined her, he swore a mighty oath.
‘Oh, vile human nature,’ he said, in a sonorous tone, ‘to thus betray a confiding infant! Where,’ he continued, looking inquiringly at the serene sky, ‘where are the thunderbolts of Heaven that they fall not on such?’
No thunderbolt making its appearance to answer the question, Mr Wopples told Kitty he would take her home to the family, and as they were just starting out on tour again, she could come with them.
‘But will Mrs Wopples receive me?’ asked Kitty, timidly.
‘My dear,’ said the actor, gravely, ‘my wife is a good woman, and a mother herself, so she can feel for a poor child like you, who has been betrayed through sheer innocence.’
‘You do not despise me?’ said Kitty, in a low voice.
‘My dear,’ answered Wopples, quietly, ‘am I so pure myself that I can judge others? Who am I,’ with an oratorical wave of the hand, ‘that I should cast the first stone? – ahem! – from Holy Writ. In future I will be your father; Mrs Wopples, your mother, and you will have ten brothers and sisters – all star artistes.’
‘How kind you are,’ sobbed Kitty, clinging trustfully to him as they went along.
‘I only do unto others as I would be done by,’ said Mr Wopples, solemnly. ‘That sentiment,’ continued the actor, taking off his hat, ‘was uttered by One who, tho’ we may believe or disbelieve in His divinity as a God, will always remain the sublimest type of perfect manhood the world has ever seen.’
Kitty did not answer, and they walked quickly along; and surely this one good deed more than compensated for the rest of the actor’s failings.