Gilead Balm, knight errant

He gave his address poste-restante at the nearest office, and settled down to await in some trepidation, the possible reply.

Likely enough none would arrive. A berth which, though only temporary, offered itself so easy and so uncompromising, must attract hundreds of those poor out-at-elbows gentilities who were for ever prowling in search of such occupations as their respectable inexpertness could stomach. It shamed Gilead to think of his seeking to take the bread out of the mouth of any poverty so mean and forlorn; only his sense of desperate necessity urged him into competition with it. It were surely better that one pride should hunger than that a villain should go unmasked, a problematic murderer be allowed to pursue his nefarious course with impunity.

Still his application might, probably would, be unsuccessful; and in that case, what then? There would be nothing for it—an undesirable alternative—but to put the police on the track of the advertiser.

For that day and the next he lay close, not going near the Agency; and, on the third morning, there was a telegram awaiting him at the post-office. He opened it, somewhat nervously, and read:—

So, after all, he was chosen! Fervently he hoped that he would not be found wanting. And that thought had its necessary corollary in another. What was he going to do when he met Mr Winsom Wyllie face to face? Why, apparently, a thing which he had never done in his life before—chop wood.

It seemed quite paralysing, astounding. He had never until this moment thought out his course of action, and here was the problem actually squaring up to him. He had to chop wood—that was the only fact immediately plain to his comprehension. True the man had behaved vilely in intention to an unhappy young woman dependent on him; true that same young woman had, by her own confession, accused him of coercing her father into making a testament in his favour, and of afterwards tempting that parent opportunely to his doom. But that was all conjecture, and however morally irrefutable, not a particle of legal evidence existed to substantiate the charge. Legally, indeed, the heir’s position seemed unassailable. He had been left the property conditionally, and the conditions had resulted in his favour. By the provisions of the will, since the young lady had failed to marry him within the year, he was become the sole and indisputable beneficiary. And what else?

Nothing else. Vague surmises, shadowy charges—what was there in them all? Gilead was worldling enough to know that there was never yet a disappointed legatee who did not hint darkly of undue influences or mental irresponsibility. That a testator did not do what was expected of him was no ground for action in the eye of the law.

Did this chivalrous spirit, therefore, shrink at the last from its self-imposed Quest? Not for a moment. The Law to Gilead was nothing but a sifter of evidence. It took no cognizance of obscure motives, but decided on the facts before it, with which facts any clever counsel could juggle as with balls or handkerchiefs. Mr Winsom Wyllie might, legally, be altogether unassailable; the fact remained that he was enjoying a small fortune to the possession of which another was by every moral right entitled. That was enough for the Paladin.

Or was he so enjoying it? That same afternoon Gilead paid another visit to Somerset House—only to find that the will, so far as he could discover, remained yet unproved. He was puzzled; but on the whole reassured. Surely this delay argued some remorse, at least some hesitation, on the part of the legatee? Or did it imply a reluctance in him to take that step which must put his coveted victim for ever beyond the reach of his arts and solicitations? Whichever way, nothing but advantage could accrue from his ascertaining that wealth, and the power which it bestows were engaged, and sternly, on the side of the young lady. The warning, for the best of its value, should not be thrown away upon such a man, so audacious and yet so wary.

Ten o’clock the following morning found Gilead punctual to his appointment in Coldbath Lane, Brixton. It was not a prepossessing neighbourhood, nor was the day exhilarating. Under a cloudy sky brooded an atmosphere of sticky humidity. The squalor of a deep-London slum was represented by everything in the way of dreariness but its swarming life. Here were the dull dwelling-houses, the tawdry shops, the costers’ barrows, the stench of fish frying in rancid grease. Only the human congestion was less—nothing in comparison. A postman, with a flaccid bag, suggestive of a lean correspondence, over his shoulder, directed him to the yard for the unemployed—directed him dubiously, too, knowing that want often strutted in strange guises. Gilead knocked on the closed gates, and waited.

An asthmatic sound of sawing, which had been audible within, ceased, resumed itself like an arrested cough, stopped again, and, after an interval, a slow heavy footstep approached.

“Who’s there?” asked a weary voice.

“George Barnwell,” answered Gilead. “I have come punctual to your appointment, sir.”

A clock, indeed, at the moment sounded the hour. It took the strokes deliberately, yet not so deliberately as the unseen stranger took Gilead’s statement. He appeared to ponder it exhaustively. Gilead could hear him through the keyhole breathing like a man asleep and gently snoring.

“Well,” said the voice at last. “I suppose I had better let you in.”

The alternative had occurred to Gilead, but he thought it politic to remain silent. There was the sound of a bar clanking down, of a laboured sigh, and one side of the gate opened, just a jealous aperture, through which the applicant caught glimpse of a doleful yard, with a woodshed at its further end, a block or two for chopping on, as many three-legged stools, a sawyer’s trestle, and everywhere in littered confusion chips, billets and indiscriminate debris of timber.

“Come in, can’t you,” said the voice, peevishly, and Gilead, slipping through, found himself face to face with Mr Winsom Wyllie.

He was in an undress of grey flannel. His braces were discarded; his shirt, open and collarless, drooped in moist folds; his trousers sagged down over his boots, almost concealing them. Behind, he bore a much greater resemblance to an exhausted elephant than to any sinister figure of melodrama. Nor was his obverse prepossessing. A lugubrious, ponderous man, who took his fleshiness badly; a man who might have figured for an over-blown clown, seeing how his grizzled hair stood up from his scalp and his whiskers out from his jaws; a man with a ridiculous lachrymose mouth, a man whose voice had suety tears in it, a man who seemed to pity himself profoundly—such was the general impression conveyed to Gilead. The creature’s adiposity, he was no less convinced, was no local rising. It was a general upheaval, and nothing short of a change of constitution would suffice to reduce it.

The stranger, Gilead once entered, closed the gate with a fretful slam and put up the bar. Then he turned to regard his visitor—the visitor thought morosely.

“H’m!” he said at last, wearily mopping his brow. “I have committed myself, and I must go through with it, I suppose. Do you know, young man, what decided my choice of you out of—my God, I don’t dare recall the number!—myriads?”

Gilead disclaimed any consciousness of exclusive merit.

“It was the Montaigne,” said the stranger. “I want cheering, I want sympathy, I want self-forgetfulness; I do not want irresponsible chatter. The possession, in a refined mind, of qualities suitable to my needs seemed to speak from your reply, and from your reply alone. Can you chop wood?”

“I must not say I cannot,” said Gilead modestly; “because I have never tried.”

“No matter,” said the stranger dispiritedly. “So long as your presence and example stimulate me to exertion, my purpose is served. I will be frank with you. The weight upon my bones exactly symbolises another upon my conscience” (Gilead’s lips tightened). “The two are so associated, in fact, that, with every ounce of flesh I may lose, my conscience will be correspondingly and automatically lightened. A return to reasonable proportions would make me a happy man.”

Gilead regarded the speaker steadily. What despicable villainy was this, to be so cowed and humbled under the superstition that his personal bulk was directly attributable to his crimes! So he read the implication; and he could have laughed, in another mood, over the retributions exacted by self-indulgence. But that Winsom Wyllie, the sinister, the demoniac, the masterful, should have resolved himself into this! Well, all wickedness was vanity, but he had not thought to encounter a vanity quite so abject.

The stranger turned heavily, and, motioning Gilead to accompany him, slouched towards the rearward shed.

“Yes,” he said, “my thoughts weigh me down; they are too much for my single endurance; that was why I wanted a companion to distract me from them—to take me out of myself.”

There were a couple of blocks and stools standing ready, with bill-hooks and a plentiful supply of logs waiting to be split. The stranger took his seat, and Gilead, divesting himself of his coat, followed his example. The other observed him with a doleful curiosity.

“This is new to you,” he said. “I daresay you are wondering how I come to have the run of the place. It is closed, as a matter of fact, from lack of patronage by the unemployed, who nevertheless themselves declare that they are as numerous and deserving as ever. I hired it for a week, stipulating that my personal labour should be set against the rent. If you want to spare your fingers, don’t hold your billet like that. Watch me.”

For several minutes he hewed and laboured in a perfect frenzy of energy, and only desisted when he was streaming from every pore.

“Ha!” he said. “I lard the lean earth, like—like whom?”

“Falstaff, I think,” said Gilead.

The stranger looked at him with a slightly stimulated but still rueful curiosity.

“You are a reader,” he said; “you answer to your own description in other respects. Why do you call yourself George Barnwell?”

“Why not?” said Gilead stiffly.

“A common thief and highwayman?”

“I never thought of that,” said Gilead unguardedly.

“Didn’t you?” said the stranger languidly—“a pseudonym, as I thought, and not a very well-chosen one. Now, would you mind telling me—?”

“Assumed, I confess,” said Gilead.

“The guess was mine,” said the stranger. “Your clothes, your bearing—ah, well! You conceal something?”

“My name.”

“Anything else?”

“My object, perhaps.”

“Indeed? Is not this frankness, now, to be mutual?”

“It was partly,” said Gilead, “that I wished to investigate a very curious affair. I am a seeker after the truth, a—if I may so put it, a practical psychologist. My sole scruple was that, in applying for the post, I risked deposing a more deserving, because a more needy, candidate.”

“The money was no object to you then?”

“None whatever.”

The other nodded with some melancholy gratification.

“The indifference shall be reciprocal,” he said. “It shall be none to me. Indeed I could no longer think of insulting your psychology by any suggestion of payment.”

“Very well,” said Gilead. “I have no wish to tax your conscience in a fresh matter. What its sensitiveness decrees is sure to be right.”

He spoke with fathomless irony; but, at the word conscience, the stranger seized his bill-hook and set to chopping again with a violence that was simply destructive.

“‘O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!’” he gasped presently, pausing in a state of semi-collapse.

He groaned, wrung his brow, and squatting, sunk upon himself like an unbaked cottage loaf, heaved a dismal sigh and looked up.

“Since we are established on these very intimate and confidential terms,” he said, “tell me frankly, how does my size strike you?”

“All of a heap,” said Gilead shortly.

The other moaned.

“But less of a heap than when you first entered—O, yes! be candid and admit it.”

“Why, surely,” began Gilead, with some indignation, “you are not expecting—”

“When one is excruciatingly conscious of his every ounce avoirdupois,” interrupted Mr Wyllie miserably, “he knows, if it is no more than a button that has burst off his waistcoat. Something, however insignificant, has gone. The question is, how long will it take to run off the whole?”

“More than a week,” said Gilead. “You’ll have to hire another yard—several yards; or else adopt other means.”

“It is strange,” said Mr Wyllie, almost weeping, “that the canker of a corroding conscience should, instead of devouring, blow some men out!”

“It’s the case with the oak-gall,” said Gilead. “Irony is absurd in commenting on the ways of Nature.”

The stranger glanced at him rather balefully, and resumed his chopping but languidly.

“I don’t know, after all, that you’ll suit me,” he said.

“Never mind about that at present,” said Gilead. “The business of the honorarium being waived, this becomes a mere friendly accommodation.”

“But it’s just the friendliness I question,” answered the stranger, aggrieved.

He laboured for a little in a sullen silence, while Gilead, totally forgetful of his own inactivity, watched him, pursuing his thoughts the while.

“Brixton,” he said abstractedly, “is not Norwood; but it neighbours on it.”

“I perceive,” snapped the other, “that you are quite a traveller.”

Gilead hardly heard him. He was speculating as to how he could most tellingly introduce the subject of his mission.

“There are butterflies,” he said suddenly and firmly, “in the Zermatt Valley.”

“There are also, I believe,” said Mr Wyllie, “owls in Athens and coals at Newcastle.”

He paused in his labour, and glooming round, in a dismally sarcastic spirit, encountered the eyes of the young man fixed keenly on him.

“Well, sir,” he said; “what then?”

“If wood-chopping failed to reduce your fat,” said Gilead distinctly, “you might try butterfly hunting.”

“O! might I?”

“And mountain-climbing.”

“Indeed?”

“The pursuit of unprotected females is also, doubtless, conducive to an active state of body.”

“This may be pleasantry—”

“While a murderous assault or so on a few trusting old gentlemen might help to take something out of you.”

Mr Wyllie uttered an exclamation, half rose, and sank down again with a flabby smile.

“I would merely suggest St. Niklaus in the Zermatt Valley as a suitable headquarters to such operations,” said Gilead. “Do you know the place at all?”

His companion shook his head.

“This humour, young gentleman,” he said, “is, I presume, of the new order. I confess it is beyond my perhaps old-fashioned understanding.”

His tone was extremely lofty and courteous, but he appeared, in spite of it, to wax suddenly very wroth.

“What did you mean, sir,” he cried, “by your allusion to unprotected females?”

“I refer you to your own conscience, sir,” answered Gilead, as loftily.

“My conscience, sir,” said the stranger, “acquits me of any but the most consistently chivalrous attitude, the most respectful, the most diffident even towards the sex.”

“Then to what,” said Gilead, aghast before this enormous dissembling, “do you attribute its burden, which corresponds, by your own confession, with that upon your bones?”

“Now is this depravity or innocence,” cried the stranger, apostrophising space, “that can discover no pretext for self-reproach in any courses but those of libertinism?” He faced about on his stool, puffing and gasping: “I owe it to myself; I owe it more to the spotless fame of another,” he said, “that this gross slander should not pass unrefuted. You appear to be a reader, sir. Tell me, have you ever read ‘Night-Lights’?”

“No,” said Gilead, astonished.

“‘The Glow-worm in the Grass’?”

“No.”

“‘The Evanescence of Evadne’?”

“No.”

The stranger, with a supreme effort, sat up.

“A reader!” he exclaimed scornfully—“a reader! And you will be telling me next, I suppose, that you have never even heard of Cornelia Cox!”

“I am bound to confess that I never have,” said Gilead.

The stranger smacked his bill-hook into the block before him, and, with a mighty struggle, got to his feet.

“What?” he cried hoarsely: “Cornelia, the one, the peerless, the incomparable, the first novelist of her age—and he does not even know her name! O, in what nethermost depths of darkness is not the philistine of our generation capable of enclosing himself! Not to have heard of Cornelia Cox!”

“Sir,” said Gilead, rising, nettled, in his turn, and moved to an instant resolution. “I am sorry that my ignorance offends you. But though I am uninformed as to the lady’s name and works, I can claim some knowledge of another romancer which may both startle and disturb you. I allude, sir, to Mr Winsom Wyllie.”

“Well,” said the stranger, for the first time coolly—“what of him? I did not write the book, nor, I trust, are you presuming to attribute its authorship to Miss Cox?”

“Book? Authorship?” cried Gilead, staring.

“Certainly,” said the other. “You did not guess? But your ignorance was excusable in that case. Yes, sir, I confess, reciprocating your confidence, that my name also was assumed. I had particular reasons—as who would not have—for concealing my own in a public advertisement of such a character, and I signed with the first that occurred to my memory. It was taken from a popular feuilleton which I had observed in the hands of a young lady by whom I happened to sit months ago in the twopenny tube. ‘Winsom Wyllie, Ladykiller’—that was, if I remember rightly, the title of the tale, and I borrowed it haphazard in my emergency.”

Gilead, like one in a dream, put his hand to his brow.

“Would you—would you mind telling me,” he said, “what is your real name?”

“I have no reason to be ashamed of it, sir,” said the stranger. “It is Bundy—Emmanuel Bundy.”

CHAPTER XIII.
THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (continued)

Utterly dumfoundered as he was for the moment, Gilead very quickly rallied from his stupefaction, and, summoning all his native urbanity to his aid, advanced a step and seized the stranger’s right hand in both of his own.

“Mr Bundy,” he said, “I apologise to you with all my heart.”

His tone was so unmistakably sincere, that the obese gentleman descended, figuratively, from the stilts on which he was mounted and involuntarily returned the pressure of his fingers, only gasping a little in a slow and cod-like manner.

“The sarcasm, the innuendo,” said Gilead, “of which I cannot pretend to hold myself guiltless, must have appeared to you as pointless as they were impertinent. My sole excuse is that I took you for someone else.”

“O, indeed!” said Mr Bundy, heavily perplexed.

“Yes,” said Gilead—“I cannot, I must not say for whom, lest I further endanger a confidence which my rashness has already sufficiently imperilled. But when I tell you, sir, in the sole attempt at self-justification which exists to me, and in response to the noble candour which has made me acquainted with your real name, that mine is Gilead Balm—”

“What! Of Lamb’s Agency?” exclaimed the stranger.

“I entreat you, sir,” continued Gilead, “to believe that I am actuated by no spirit of empty vaunting, but, on the contrary, by one of humiliation that the business of my office should have been committed to so unintelligent a representative as myself. I can plead, sir, nothing but the excuse of good intentions. I believed you, as I say, to be someone else, and, acting upon that assumption, I answered, under a fictitious name, your advertisement, and was so happy, or so unfortunate, as to find myself engaged. My explanation can go no farther, nor be offered less lamely. Will you be generously content with it, with my reiterated apologies, and with the assurance that whatever confidences I may have surprised will remain absolutely sacred to me?”

His candour, his winning manner, not to speak of his self-revelation, won him at once and as always complete absolution. Mr Bundy, with a supreme effort to throw off the lowness of spirit into which he had again sunk, responded, as heartily as possible, in kind.

“Say no more, sir,” he said; “say no more. I congratulate myself, I positively do, on this accident.”

“We have been talking at cross-purposes,” said Gilead.

“We will do so no longer,” cried the other. “I should know, sir, of the lofty motives which actuate your Agency; and, more, of the personal reputation of its founder. I should take it as an honour, sir, if you would permit me to make bare to Mr Balm the bosom which has already, perchance unwittingly, half revealed itself to a stranger.”

“I shall be delighted,” said Gilead gravely. “You heap coals of fire on my head.”

“Then, sir,” said Mr Bundy, with a gleam of real brightness, “do me the favour—the morning is well advanced—to share with me my luncheon, which lies ready for us yonder.”

He led the way to the shed, where lay a basket well packed with pâté de foie gras sandwiches under a napkin, some Bath buns and cream cakes, a syphon of soda-water, a tumbler, and a flask of whisky.

“Sit, sir, sit,” said the stranger; “and, while we eat, I will, with your permission, make known to you that part of my story which turns upon the fortuity which has made you my honoured confidant. It is soon told.”

He offered Gilead a sandwich, took a clump of three himself, devoured two with a falling visage, and, waving the other in his hand, began:—

“My name, sir, is as I told you Emmanuel Bundy; my residence is situate in the Leigham Court Road, Streatham; my business is that of a hide-merchant, in the pursuit of which, I may say, I have amassed a considerable fortune. I am fifty-four years of age. That odious vanity which would falsify the accounts of Nature has never been mine. Years, as they accumulate gold, accumulate wisdom. Why should we boast of the lesser gain and repudiate the greater? Amongst all the possessions which they have brought to me I account none more priceless than my acquaintance with Cornelia Cox.”

He paused a moment to devour his sandwich and to help himself to three more.

“Ah, Mr Balm!” he said, “you must forgive my astonishment over your confession of ignorance as to that transcendent, that incomparable woman. Yet, in truth, my own acquaintance with her dates but from two years back.” (He took half of the three sandwiches at a bite, before he continued):—“I had always found a refuge in books from the monotony of my sordid, and none too savoury occupation. It was left to that moment to reveal to me the full inner heart and significance of literature. Such eloquence, such fire, such an intimate understanding of the deep workings of the human soul! The melting passion of ‘Night-Lights,’ the exquisite je ne sais quoi of ‘Evadne,’ the sensuous luminosity of the ‘Glow-worm’! Here was a woman, I felt, who had tasted the cup of life to its golden depths.”

He sighed, drew himself on a full tumbler of whisky and soda, drained it, sighed again profoundly, and continued, taking another handful of sandwiches:—

“I am a bachelor, sir. I had never until that gracious moment encountered a soul capable of understanding and responding to the deep sentiments within my own. Every profound expression of her feeling seemed to find an echo in my breast. Truths that I had conceived, but had failed to find utterance for, she could crystallize in a phrase. The insensate world of criticism accused her of platitude: jackasses, whose pachydermatous hides were insensible to the fine point of satire, were dull to the blows of anything less than a bludgeon. But I recognized; I understood.

“One day I came across her portrait in an illustrated paper. I will not dwell upon my emotions. It was a face—haunting, ethereal—which exactly embodied my conception of the writer. Looking into its eyes, I could fathom at a glance the unmistakable source of ‘Night-Lights’; the very ‘Evanescence of Evadne’ spoke in that ductile form. From that moment my existence became little more than a devouring hunger, a prolonged swoon of passion.”

He finished the sandwiches and started on a cream tart before he spoke again.

“One day, after a struggle with myself, I did a desperate thing—I wrote, through her publishers, to Miss Cornelia Cox. I wrote palpitating, in a delicious tremor; I pronounced myself the most faithful, the most adoring of her disciples; my pen travelled on the wings of intoxication. To my rapture she answered me.”

He stopped to take a second tumbler of whisky and soda.

“She answered me,” he said, gasping; “and I answered her answer. She wrote again. By degrees a regular correspondence was established between us. I tasted her soul in periodic budgets—a delirious experience; but those sacred, those melodious groves must remain undesecrated of the outer throng. You will understand and excuse me, Mr Balm.”

“Certainly,” said Gilead.

“O!” cried the obese gentleman, “why had I not, in those exquisite first days, the courage of my convictions! I desired, and always desired a still more intimate union of souls, and I delayed until delay became fatal. I was not then by many degrees what you see me now. Though constitutionally of a full habit of body, it had remained for the sun of passion, it appeared, to develop in me this extreme fruitiness. For two years now we have corresponded, and I have been swelling all the time; and during all the time, Mr Balm, we have never yet once met.”

“Not?” said Gilead. “Well, what then? For all Miss Cox knows, your present proportions may have been your first.”

While he spoke, Mr Bundy had finished the last of the buns and cream-cakes. He now struck his breast, and gazed up to heaven with a very full look.

“Impossible,” he said; “for—the truth must be confessed—we have latterly exchanged photographs, and the one of myself that I sent her was taken years ago when I was slim and comely.”

He rose with difficulty, and, feeling in the pocket of his coat which hung near, produced two photographs in a folding frame which he offered to Gilead.

“Look, sir,” he said hoarsely, “and consider the measure of retribution exacted for one moment of unthinking vanity. Yet surely—the views we had exchanged had been in themselves so fine, so shapely, had been uttered in so exalted a strain of poetry—the little imposition, amounting to no more than a harmless anachronism, might have been thought natural and excusable? And in succumbing to the temptation I had no thought but to resume, as quickly and as effectually as possible, the contours of the photograph. Alas! in compounding with one’s conscience Destiny always chooses the inconvenient moment for exposure. Judge of my feelings when I tell you that circumstances ruled, all in one instant, that the too-long-delayed meeting between us should be fixed, at last and inevitably, for the middle of next week!”

He stood by, quite sagging with dejection, while Gilead, with a profound face, examined the pictures. That of the lady presented a half-length in book-muslin, a little posée, the visage a little spare, but sentimental and interesting. Turning to the other, he found it hard to repress a smile. It had certainly been taken, by inference, years ago. Mr Bundy appeared in it as a comparatively slim gentleman of sedate, but not mature age, with queer clownish hair and a relatively distinguished mien. Gravely he returned the articles to their owner.

“You have honoured me, sir,” he said, “with your confidence. My advice, without presumption, is at your service.”

“I ask it; I entreat it,” cried Mr Bundy.

“Then, sir,” said Gilead, “believe me that vanity never yet cured vanity, but that truth is the universal panacea. You, and presumably the lady, genuinely desire this union?”

“A union on her part,” said the sufferer miserably, “with the subject of the photograph? I believe I can answer for her so far. As for myself, should I take such steps otherwise to make it possible? You comprehend now, Mr Balm, my position; my desperate essay, on my doctor’s advice, to abate—at a moment’s notice, so to speak—my figure; the torture of conscience which drove me to seek, in the distraction of cheerful companionship, some forgetfulness of the purpose with which I wrought, and the deceit which had necessitated it.”

“You might, with as much hope of success,” said Gilead, “seek to reduce an egg by boiling.” He spoke with a certain sternness. “No, Mr Bundy,” he said, “the proportions of the picture will not be yours within a week. How can you expect it when—I must speak plainly—you pamper your stomach with one hand while you reduce it with the other?”

Mr Bundy, with a self-conscious look, glanced down at the luncheon-basket.

“I am afraid,” he murmured, “that you have made a poor meal.”

“I have had one sandwich, sir,” answered Gilead: “and I could wish, for your sake, that I had had all. But what can it matter to you? The spiritual communion for which you crave is hardly concerned with things of the flesh.”

“It must suffer, its lustre must sink diminished in the shadow of the moral falsehood,” cried Mr Bundy, abashed and despairing.

“Then, sir,” said Gilead, “apply truth for a remedy. It is the only one. Come, be a man, Mr Bundy, and own up and ask absolution.”

“I dare not,” answered the obese gentleman, almost weeping—“I dare not. Her sensitiveness—the shock—my tongue-tied confusion! She does not even know my vocation. Sooner or later she would have to, and then—the double disillusionment!”

“I would not wrong her,” said Gilead; “but wealth, with the best of us, is a flattering recommendation.”

The other looked at him meltingly.

“Ah!” he sighed, “if I could only find one, cultured, diplomatic, who would consent to be my deputy for the truth!”

Gilead drew himself up.

“You mean me,” he said.

“I know you represent it,” faltered Mr Bundy—and stopped, casting down his eyes.

The young man considered a little.

“Very well, sir,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a certain reparation. I will undertake this delicate business, on condition that you give me a note of introduction to the lady.”

The obese gentleman laughed with glee.

“Come,” he said—“come home with me at once, and I will write it.”

THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (continued)

At three o’clock that same afternoon Gilead found himself on the door-step of a bijou residence in Maida Vale. He was very grave, and for more than a present reason. One having the power to examine into his mind would have discovered there a steadfast purpose of loyalty, a determination to ignore the slanderous whisperings of certain dark spirits which were seeking to undermine in him a rooted faith, to destroy a cherished ideal. One would have found there, also, perhaps, a little pathetic unaccountable sense of weariness, a shadowy emotion—the first in his life—of self-pity. If he had, he would have seen them dismissed as soon as realised. The emotion was essentially feminine, and Gilead had surely despised himself for even succumbing to it. He could not be such a woman as to pet a grievance before it was justified. There was no grievance at all to justify itself; with his eyes set to the truth he told himself so, and he had the will to believe it. Suspicion was a germ that once admitted destroyed the reason; only that strong will had power to keep it out.

A slattern servant admitted him into the bijou hall, and there kept him standing while she delivered the note to her mistress. She came back shortly and, breathing heavily, showed him into the bijou drawing-room and there left him. Glancing around, Gilead saw torn lace curtains, a piano with candle brackets run with grease, a dirty table-cloth, and on it the debris of a meal of biscuits and soda-water scattered among many papers. The whole house looked as if it habitually woke too late to tidy up the confusion of yesterday.

A step at the door brought him to attention, and he bowed with a feeling between chivalry and wonder. The incomparable one stood before him, and he had to admit to himself that she was gaunt, fade, and presumably in the over-prime of life. Certainly there was a resemblance to the portrait, but as certainly it was the resemblance of an unflattering copy. Miss Cox was in a negligée of soiled white serge or flannel; there was an air of transcendental slipshoddiness about her; her hair fell in unconsidered loops; her thinness amounted to emaciation; her complexion had once no doubt been ethereal, but had materialized in the course of time, mellowing to the tone of antique parchment. But the expression was all there, spiritual, ineffable—and languishing, for the utmost of its passionate soul, through a couple of large burning eyes.

“Mr Balm?” she exclaimed introductorily, in a deep agitated voice.

He bowed a second time; and she entered, closed the door, and sank into a chair. She was patently nervous and overcome—a lady whose sensitive organization was not proof against unforeseen demands upon it. In one lean long hand she held the accrediting letter; in the other a handkerchief, none too spotless, with which she perpetually fanned herself.

“I trust, Madam,” said Gilead gently, “that, in consenting to act as an intermediary in a matter of so delicate a nature, I convey with me your correspondent’s intimation as to the reasons which induced him to the choice of his representative. Let me assure you that I undertake the confidence with the profoundest sympathy with and respect for its nature. He describes me—”

She raised an entreating hand, interrupting him. “He describes you, sir,” she said, in faintly hollow tones, “as his deputy for the truth. O, believe me, I understand fully! I have long dreaded this moment.”

“Madam,” exclaimed Gilead, startled.

She leaned forward, agonised, intense.

“He has discovered it, then,” she said, “and the romance of my life is blighted in its vernal prime. The photograph—”

“I have had the privilege of seeing it,” said Gilead at a loss, observing that she stopped.

To his horror the lady, on that admission, sank back in her seat, sobbing amphorically.

“Deliver your blow, sir, in swiftest mercy,” she said. “Strike and spare not. Return to your principal and denounce the fond impostor, who sought, by an ardent subterfuge, to draw out for yet a little the linked sweetness of a correspondence which had come to form the romance and solace of her loveless days. Your mission is the truth. Speak it unpityingly. Compare for his disenchantment the portrait with the original; say that you found me spare, unattractive if you will, past my first youth; assert, what it is useless to deny, that, with the desperate purpose to retain his admiration, to evoke even a warmer, a more ecstatic communion of soul, I did that, succumbed to a temptation, whose fruits could only realise themselves in dust and vanity. Yes, sir, I confess it; the photograph represents the Cornelia of many years ago; and even if, as some say—Mr Balm! What is it!”

He was stretching up his arms, standing on his toes, in a sort of moral elevation.

“As his photograph represents the Emmanuel of many years ago!” he cried, and came flat down on his soles.

She rose, she uttered a little scream in a deep way.

“What is that you say!” she cried.

“Madam,” he said, “nothing can be gained by evasion. The Mr Bundy of the photograph was interesting and slim; the Mr Bundy of to-day is interesting and fat. It was to acquaint you of that fact—of a trifling misrepresentation, common, it appears, to you both—that I accepted my commission.”

Miss Cox rose, she clasped her hands exquisitely and craned her lean neck.

“Fat!” she whispered.

“I cannot qualify the term,” said Gilead firmly. “As fat, Madam, as butter. What then? Napoleon was fat, Horace was fat; Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon, Luther, Handel were all fat. Mr Bundy cannot be blamed for emulating the example of those great men; and if—”

“Fat!” repeated the lady, closing her eyes, and in a voice of thrilled ecstasy: “I doat, simply doat on a fat man!”

“You do?” responded Gilead, with an air of delighted relief. “Then, Madam, a fat man doats on you, and nothing remains to me but to congratulate you both on this most happy termination to a misunderstanding.”

He bowed, as if he felt his mission accomplished.

“O, stay, sir!” cried Miss Cox. She took a quick step forward; she pressed her handkerchief to her bosom. “My Bundy!” she murmured—“My own Bundy! And was it apprehension over his little roguish deceit that moved him to this step? But I fear, I shudder over my own. Will he forgive it? Will he credit that the waste, the decline—O, we starve on despond: hope is so filling! Tell him that his message has put new life into me; tell him that, repossessing him, I am already twice the woman I was. To meet him half-way, I will absorb the sustenance naturally repugnant to me—gross meats and aliments, in place of the fruits and spring water most sufficing to my needs. Tell him that, given a little time—”

She paused, breathless. “It is what he himself most craves,” said Gilead. A certain perplexity overcame him. “I confess, Madam,” he said, “that what puzzles me is the sudden inevitability of this meeting so long delayed.”

“It was due to myself,” answered the lady; and, panting, continued, with an hysterical incoherence: “A recent snap-shot—horrible, libellous, revolting—appeared in a weekly paper—I feared he would see it—urged by desperation—a travesty of the truth—reality less disenchanting—recoil from worst to something comparatively reassuring—resolved in despair to risk all—force conclusions for bliss or damnation—insisted on meeting, and having written would have withdrawn, but too late. And now—” she broke off with a gasp, and then continued: “O, sir! your appearance—the letter—I believed that he had seen, and that you—his agent—the messenger of my doom—!”

She stopped, gazing at her hearer in liquid emotion.

“You wrong me,” said Gilead gravely, “in deeming me capable of so unchivalrous a deed. No, Madam; my mission—it is unnecessary and would be unadvisable to explain how and where undertaken—was one of appeal on behalf of Mr Bundy’s conscious disabilities. That mission being now accomplished, I trust to the satisfaction of all parties, I shall beg permission to take my leave, only first charging myself with such answer as you shall deem it expedient to return to your richly endowed suitor.”

THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (concluded)

Gilead walked back to the Agency with a firm step, and that steadfast purpose of loyalty burning unquenched in his heart. On the way he stopped at a famous jeweller’s in Bond Street to make a purchase, having accomplished which he continued his journey to the office.

Something unwonted in the aspect of his private room struck him the instant he entered it. It was very orderly, like a newly-trimmed grave, and the amanuensis, though it was not yet five o’clock, was absent. He sat down at his desk a moment, and buried his face in his hands. Then suddenly he rose, and walked across to the table in the window. The typewriter was closed; the papers relating to all business, past and to come, were neatly docketed and arranged in accessible sheaves. After a moment’s strange observation he turned away, and, stepping to the bell, with a somewhat pale face, summoned a favoured employé.

“Mr Nestle,” he said, when the man appeared: “is he in?”

“Mr Nestle and Miss Halifax, sir,” was the answer, “were both unavoidably summoned away. Miss Halifax left a message begging, as a great favour, that you would call at the flat, sir, if you desired for any reason to see her.”

Gilead nodded.

“Thank you, Clement,” he said. “I think I will go round.”

He did not hesitate; he did not pause a moment to question the immutability of his faith; there and then he went forth and walked direct to his destination. The little maid at the door admitted him, smiling but abashed. She remembered, if he did not, the contretemps with the lift-porter a few nights earlier. A consciousness of concern, moreover, as to the meaning of this visit repeated at an inopportune moment, fluttered, no doubt, the heart under her spruce bib. She introduced him into the drawing-room in a scarce audible voice, and shut the door upon him hurriedly.

Gilead, parcel in hand, walked across the room, a stiff little smile on his lips. Both the secretary and the amanuensis were present before him, as he had expected to find them. The girl stood with her right arm resting on the piano-top, as if for support. Her face was very white; but she neither moved nor spoke. The man stood back, as if slunk into the shadow of the window curtains. He was by far the more dumbfoundered of the two.

“I was told I might find you both here,” said Gilead quietly, “and I accept the occasion gladly for a little private talk. I have been away these two or three days on a wild-goose chase, Miss Halifax. After whom, do you suppose? Why, an old friend of yours with an odd name. Perhaps it is right—stop me if you object—that Herbert should be made acquainted at last with the circumstances of that iniquitous persecution. Do you recall that late occasion in the office, when I spoke of an advertisement which you had overlooked?”

“I had not overlooked it, Mr Balm.”

She spoke in a steady toneless voice.

“Not?” said Gilead, with a faint effort at surprise; but his lips twitched.

“No,” she said. “Only I had not wished to call your attention to it—naturally.”

“That was wrong,” he answered, “however generously your reticence was designed to spare me; still, as it happens, the quest was a fruitless one. The advertiser was not the person I sought; and so we remain as far as ever from a solution of that problem. Yet the coincidence of the name was so strange a one as to seem to justify me in the pursuit. And, after all, it appears that he adopted it from a newspaper story which he once chanced to observe in the hands of a young lady sitting next him in the train.”

“Of mine,” said Miss Halifax, in the same unlifted voice. “So that is how it happened, is it?”

Nestle, in his shadows, uttered a little stifled ejaculation, which Gilead heard but disregarded. He had to make an effort; but he made it courageously, and, unwrapping his parcel, displayed a jewel case, which, being opened, revealed a fine pearl necklace with a diamond clasp.

“Indeed?” he said, with a show of unconcern. “Then the name is not so remarkable a one as we supposed? Or is it possible that the romancer himself adopted it from the living fact? Well, in any case, my quest having resulted in barrenness need not be discussed further. Let us turn to a more profitable matter. I am not intending to break my promise, and I will not be the first to speak. At the same time I am going to ask you, Miss Halifax, to accept provisionally this little token of my most grateful regard.”

She came away quite steadily from her support, and took the case gently from his hand. Her lips were brilliant; the lids of her eyes were flushed; she bore her shame like a fallen goddess.

“They are lovely,” she said. “How generous, how loyal, how noble you are! But you will take this away with you when you go, and keep it for someone worthier of your faith.”

“Vera!” cried Nestle hoarsely.

She took no notice of him, but, placing the jewels softly on the table, came and stood before her employer. And then he knew that the shadow he had dreaded and resisted so long was about to fall and overwhelm him.

“How can you still pretend to believe in us?” she said, in a low even voice. “How can you bear to remain so staunch against your own inner conviction? From the moment I knew that you had seen that advertisement and the name, I knew that the end was come. And it is come, though still not, in your unswerving chivalry, at your instance. The sentence shall be mine. Your great heart shall not suffer any longer this torture of a trust that dies so hard. I will tear it out with my own hands—I daresay because its pain hurts me too, and not from any moral heroism. Mr Balm, there is no such person as Winsom Wyllie; there never was such a person, except in the silly story from which I borrowed the name for my own purposes, never dreaming that the haphazard choice would recoil upon my head like this. He, and that scientific father, and the butterfly-hunting, and the will and the persecution were all pure concoctions from beginning to end. I have been in Switzerland, but only with my brother Herbert here. Yes, he is my brother, and we are liars and impostors from first to last.”

He stirred, with a suggestion of unsteadiness, and stiffening himself, walked to the window and stood looking out of it, his back turned to her. She put a hand one moment to her eyes, and, following, spoke on in her resolute self-abasement:—

“If you will listen, it is right that you should be told all. I plead, and am going to plead nothing whatever in extenuation, save that when I elaborated that wicked lie, my education of the heart had not even been begun. I have learnt much, travelled far since then. A whole continent seems to lie between my present and my past understandings, and looking across it I see the track of bleeding feet, multitudes of them, wandering this way, and I shiver and hide my face to think how, of all the deceits and hypocrisies they include, my own vile shadow, far off over the waste, figures for the first and worst.”

She put a hand to her bosom, panting a little. Her brother came creeping out of the darkness, and, standing near her, spoke for the first time.

“Not hers alone, sir. I am as much to blame, and more.”

Gilead made a movement, as if impatient of the interruption, and he shrank back.

“My own shadow,” continued the girl—“and I have no choice but to admit it. If I dare to claim that it no longer represents me, there are my footsteps among the others reaching to this very moment to give me the lie. I am what I am, not through any independent purpose of my own, but because, in common with the common impostors on that long journey, I have found my soul in the heaven of chivalry which it revealed to me. I ask you only in charity to believe the word of an adventuress that, during all these months of my redemption, my punishment has most lain in my own shameful consciousness of the lie I had doomed myself to live. To have been honoured by you, to have shared your confidence, to have acquiesced in moral condemnations, and to have known all the time that I was utterly unworthy of your trust—more guileful than the pretenders I helped to expose.”

Her voice faltered and ceased, and for a while there ensued a profound silence. But in a little she took up again, with a scarce audible sigh, the burden of her confession:—

“I ask you to believe that, and I ask you to believe that I am even less wretched in my voluntary self-exposure than I have long been in my deceit. I have learned to value the truth, and I can speak it at last.

“Mr Balm, at the time when you engaged my brother, giving him the chance of his life, we had both long been orphans. We lived together, and I was wholly dependent on him. He had been educated to the law, and was a man of brilliant, if undisciplined, talents. He was ambitious for us both; and with both of us, I think, imagination was wont to run ahead of discretion. Unfortunately for him the morale of the firm by whom he was employed, and to whom he acted as head conveyancing clerk, was none of the best. It confessed itself in speculative enterprises, which ultimately led to the collapse and bankruptcy of Broker & Borrodaile. My brother, though morally innocent, suffered through the disrepute which the firm in its transactions had brought upon itself. He found it difficult to obtain a new situation, and before very long we were in a desperate state. It was then that Mr Plover—who had always believed in Herbert and sympathised with our misfortunes—came to our assistance, and was the means of procuring my brother a post such as he had never dreamed of possessing.

“I think that its magnitude, its possibilities, the apparent ease with which he had secured it, turned both our heads. We began to imagine all sorts of brilliant sequels to that beginning—fairy-tales at first, but by and by the prospect of actually realizing on them in some daring way began to haunt us. The world of romance had always appealed to our minds, and no doubt the atmosphere of adventure in which we had both long been living had served to vitiate our moral outlook. What if we could so take advantage of golden circumstance as to assure ourselves a lasting share in the enormous interests with which Herbert was connected! What if my brother’s employer could be inveigled into—into marrying my brother’s sister!”

She had been speaking rapidly latterly; and now she stopped in an instant, as if she had surmounted at a leap the worst of the task she had set herself. And presently, breathing like one after a race, she began again:—

“It was what I had to say, and I have said it; and I am sure—yes, I am sure you will understand my purpose in saying it.

“The plot shaped itself by degrees; I think in its manufacture the mere romantic intricacies of it quite obsessed and fascinated us. Commonplace creatures as we were, without position or recommendation, we were never so presumptuous as to suppose that you could be brought to take an interest in your secretary’s sister merely for your secretary’s sake. Some story of innocence persecuted and in distress must be invented to draw your attention and captivate your imagination. Then, lured into belief, I was to take my own magnificent measures with you to bring you to my feet. It was our double misfortune that my brother had an unqualified belief in my capacity for the task.”

She paused another moment, before she went on:—

“After all it was a desperate venture, and might have miscarried at the outset. I will not even say that I wish it had, since, humiliated though I am, I would not for all the world exchange my new for my old self. But the prize to be won seemed so inestimable, the hazard so thrilling. I do not believe the hateful ingratitude of the thing even struck us. We were born storytellers, and even as children were used to write endless romances together. We have played at life since, I think; I think we have never really grown up. Among the many stories associated with my brother’s office, we thought that this might pass muster without detection. But it was first necessary for us, of course, to separate. Under the pretext of a visit to the country I left our lodgings and repaired, as privately arranged, to Norwood, where, in an assumed name, I hired by the month the little house you will recall. In the meantime, as a precaution against possible enquiries, my brother had changed his lodgings for others at a distance. And then, having prepared our ground, we opened the game. The bogus advertisement was inserted; my brother craftily engaged your interest to it, and, when he saw that the bait had been taken, despatched to me that telegram which you saw, and which was to serve its two purposes, the one to acquaint me of your soon arrival, the other to furnish imaginary proof of the persecution under which I suffered.

“I need not say more. Carried away by the dramatic character of my part, I played it with a fervour which almost made me believe in it myself, and which I sometimes found it difficult afterwards to maintain. The miserable fraud succeeded even beyond our expectations in one way. It procured me a generous means of livelihood; and if it procured me also—”

Her voice thickened and stopped; but she cleared her throat resolutely, and continued:—

“Mr Balm, you must take what measures you will for our exposure and punishment. I beg you with all my soul not to spare us. The meanness of the fraud, the ingratitude, the thoughtlessness as to its moral effect upon you to whom we owed everything—O, nothing that I can say may palliate our guilt, or express the sickness of remorse which came to us when we grew to see ourselves as we were in the light of your true nobility. Only in atonement can we ever again find relief from a misery and self-contempt which have grown to be unbearable. When I speak for myself I speak for my brother. What we have experienced, what we have learnt of you—O, the shame is killing! But don’t, don’t think that in one way we have taken the least, the most shadowy advantage of your trust. You will find everything in the most scrupulous order; and if—if in committing us to the fate we deserve, you can only find it in your heart to say once that you forgive us—”

He stopped her on the instant, facing about.

“Nestle,” he said in a commanding voice, “you will oblige me by going back to the office. I wish to have a word alone with your sister.”

The secretary started, turned, and without a word left the room.

For minutes after he was gone Gilead stood steadfastly regarding the tragic young figure before him. And at last he spoke.

“Supposing you had been successful in your purpose—what then? Were you to live the lie for ever—you, as my wife?”

She stood, the strain relaxed, mute and drooping by the little table. Once and once only had she glanced up at his face; and it had thrilled her with pride to see how the manliness, the nobility in it had suffered no disillusionment to affect them. If sorrow had entered there, will had not surrendered.

“I don’t know,” she whispered scarce audibly. “We had not—I think—got as far as considering that.”

He gave a little odd laugh.

“Typical romancers,” he said—“to end with the wedding bells!”

She put her hand upon the table for support. There a little sharp crack, and an involuntary cry from her lips. He hurried to her. The glass of a miniature on which her hand had rested had broken and scratched the ball of her thumb.

“Blood!” he said—“I must staunch it—” and he lifted the limb, though she strove to resist, and put the soft pink palm to his lips.

She gave a miserable cry—and on the instant he had his arms about her.

“Atonement!” he said hoarsely—“you speak of atonement? It must be in giving yourself to the man you have so shamefully deceived. Nothing short of your devoting your life to him can atone.”

“No, no,” she whispered; and for the first time the tears came thick to her eyes—“No—no—no—” she seemed incapable of any but that one heart-rent ejaculation.

He held her prisoner—fiercely, as though he dreaded that she would escape him.

“Do you know,” he said, “to what I was listening all the time the little miserable confession was being uttered? Why, to the chiming of the bells, the singing of the birds, the murmuring of the happy wind, that all began together the moment I heard that Herbert was your brother.”

[The End]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

I’ve included all the interior images despite the poor quality of the source material. If you can provide better copies please contact Project Gutenberg Support.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. dumbfoundered/dumfoundered, frock-coat/frock coat, moneylender/money-lender, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add illustrator’s name to title page.

Silently correct a few punctuation errors (quotation mark pairings, missing periods, etc.)

Images were moved to be nearer the scene they depict.

[Chapter I]

Change (she said, “sinct I come here.”) to since.

[Chapter VII]

“and gradually, as he proceded on his way” to proceeded.

(“You wont do it?”) to won’t.

[Chapter VIII]

“be made to recover the red morrocco handbag” to morocco.

“and had put the advertisement into the Daily Post” italicize Daily Post.

[Chapter IX]

“Was I? You are lieing, you know.” to lying.

[Chapter X]

“The Dragon-fly, sir? Name of Dangerfield,” to Dragonfly.

[Chapter XI]

(“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly—“is that her’s?”) to hers.

“it was evident, dated from other and lest righteous groves” to less.

[End of text]