CHAPTER I

In Which Silken Ladies Ascend One Stairway, and a Lonely Wayfarer Ascends Another and Comes Face to Face with Old Friends.

CHAPTER II

In Which Rose-Leaves and Old Slippers Speed a Happy Pair; and in Which Sweet and Twenty Speaks a New and Modern Language, and Gives a Reason for Renting a Gentleman's Library.

CHAPTER III

In Which a Lonely Wayfarer Becomes Monarch of All He Surveys; and in Which One Who Might Have Been Presented as the Hero of this Tale is Forced, Through No Fault of His Own, to Take His Chances with the Rest.

CHAPTER IV

In Which a Little Bronze Boy Grins in the Dark; and in Which Mary Forgets that There is Any One Else in the House.

CHAPTER V

In Which Roger Remembers a Face and Delilah Remembers a Voice; and in Which a Poem and a Pussy Cat Play an Important Part.

CHAPTER VI

In Which Mary Brings Christmas to the Tower Rooms, and in Which Roger Declines a Privilege for Which Porter Pleads.

CHAPTER VII

In Which Aunt Frances Speaks of Matrimony as a Fixed Institution and is Met by Flaming Arguments; and in Which a Strange Voice Sings Upon the Stairs.

CHAPTER VIII

In Which Little-Lovely Leila Sees a Picture in an Unexpected Place; and in Which Perfect Faith Speaks Triumphantly Over the Telephone.

CHAPTER IX

In Which Roger Sallies Forth in the Service of a Damsel in Distress; and in Which He Meets Dragons Along the Way.

CHAPTER X

In Which a Scarlet Flower Blooms in the Garden; and in Which a Light Flares Later in the Tower.

CHAPTER XI

In Which Roger Writes a Letter; and in Which a Rose Blooms Upon the Pages of a Book.

CHAPTER XII

In Which Mary and Roger Have Their Hour; and in Which a Tea-Drinking Ends in What Might Have Been a Tragedy.

CHAPTER XIII

In Which the Whole World is at Sixes and Sevens; and in Which Life is Looked Upon as a Great Adventure.

CHAPTER XIV

In Which Mary Writes from the Tower Rooms; and in Which Roger Answers from Among the Pines.

CHAPTER XV

In Which Barry and Leila Go Over the Hills and Far Away; and in Which a March Moon Becomes a Honeymoon.

CHAPTER XVI

In Which a Long Name is Bestowed Upon a Beautiful Baby; and in Which a Letter in a Long Envelope Brings Freedom to Mary.

CHAPTER XVII

In Which an Artist Finds What All His Life He Has Been Looking For; and in Which He Speaks of a Little Saint in Red.

CHAPTER XVIII

In Which Mary Writes of the Workaday World; and in Which Roger Writes of the Dreams of a Boy.

CHAPTER XIX

In Which Porter Plants an Evil Seed Which Grows and Flourishes, and in Which Ghosts Rise and Confront Mary.

CHAPTER XX

In Which Mary Faces the Winter of Her Discontent; and in Which Delilah Sees Things in a Crystal Ball.

CHAPTER XXI

In Which a Little Lady in Black Comes to Washington to Witness the Swearing-in of a Gentleman and a Scholar.

CHAPTER XXII

In Which the Garden Begins to Bloom; and in Which Roger Dreamt.

CHAPTER XXIII

In Which Little-Lovely Leila Looks Forward to the Month of May; and in Which Barry Rides Into a Town With Narrow Streets.

CHAPTER XXIV

In Which Roger Comes Once More to the Tower Rooms; and in Which a Duel is Fought in Modern Fashion.

CHAPTER XXV

In Which Mary Bids Farewell to the Old Life, and in Which She Finds Happiness on the High Seas.

CHAPTER XXVI

In Which a Strange Craft Anchors in a Sea of Emerald Light; and in Which Mocking-Birds Sing in the Moonlight.

220;What need for you to go?” I says.

“No need,” he says; “it’s a fancy o’ mine. You see, me gone, there’s nothing to ’amper ’er—nothing to interfere with ’er settling down as a quiet, respectable toff. With a ’alf-brother, who’s always got to be spry with some fake about ’is lineage and ’is ancestral estates, and who drops ’is ‘h’s,’ complications are sooner or later bound to a-rise. Me out of it—everything’s simple. Savey?”

Well, that’s just how it happened. Of course, there was a big row when the family heard of it, and a smart lawyer was put up to try and undo the thing. No expense was spared, you bet; but it was all no go. Nothing could be found out against her. She just sat tight and said nothing. So the thing had to stand. They went and lived quietly in the country and abroad for a year or two, and then folks forgot a bit, and they came back to London. I often used to see her name in print, and then the papers always said as how she was charming and graceful and beautiful, so I suppose the family had made up its mind to get used to her.

One evening in she comes to the Savoy. My wife put me up to getting that job, and a good job it is, mind you, when you know your way about. I’d never have had the cheek to try for it, if it hadn’t been for the missis. She’s a clever one—she is. I did a good day’s work when I married her.

“You shave off that moustache of yours—it ain’t an ornament,” she says to me, “and chance it. Don’t get attempting the lingo. Keep to the broken English, and put in a shrug or two. You can manage that all right.”

I followed her tip. Of course the manager saw through me, but I got in a “Oui, monsieur” now and again, and they, being short handed at the time, could not afford to be strict, I suppose. Anyhow I got took on, and there I stopped for the whole season, and that was the making of me.

Well, as I was saying, in she comes to the supper rooms, and toffy enough she looked in her diamonds and furs, and as for haughtiness there wasn’t a born Marchioness she couldn’t have given points to. She comes straight up to my table and sits down. Her husband was with her, but he didn’t seem to have much to say, except to repeat her orders. Of course I looked as if I’d never set eyes on her before in all my life, though all the time she was a-pecking at the mayonnaise and a-sipping at the Giessler, I was thinking of the coffee-shop and of the ninepenny haddick and the pint of cocoa.

“Go and fetch my cloak,” she says to him after a while. “I am cold.”

And up he gets and goes out.

She never moved her head, and spoke as though she was merely giving me some order, and I stands behind her chair, respectful like, and answers according to the same tip,

“Ever hear from ‘Kipper’?” she says to me.

“I have had one or two letters from him, your ladyship,” I answers.

“Oh, stow that,” she says. “I am sick of ‘your ladyship.’ Talk English; I don’t hear much of it. How’s he getting on?”

“Seems to be doing himself well,” I says. “He’s started an hotel, and is regular raking it in, he tells me.”

“Wish I was behind the bar with him!” says she.

“Why, don’t it work then?” I asks.

“It’s just like a funeral with the corpse left out,” says she. “Serves me jolly well right for being a fool!”

The Marquis, he comes back with her cloak at that moment, and I says: “Certainement, madame,” and gets clear.

I often used to see her there, and when a chance occurred she would talk to me. It seemed to be a relief to her to use her own tongue, but it made me nervous at times for fear someone would hear her.

Then one day I got a letter from “Kipper” to say he was over for a holiday and was stopping at Morley’s, and asking me to look him up.

He had not changed much except to get a bit fatter and more prosperous-looking. Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I told him what she said.

“Rum things, women,” he says; “never know their own minds.”

“Oh, they know them all right when they get there,” I says. “How could she tell what being a Marchioness was like till she’d tried it?”

“Pity,” he says, musing like. “I reckoned it the very thing she’d tumble to. I only come over to get a sight of ’er, and to satisfy myself as she was getting along all right. Seems I’d better a’ stopped away.”

“You ain’t ever thought of marrying yourself?” I asks.

“Yes, I have,” he says. “It’s slow for a man over thirty with no wife and kids to bustle him, you take it from me, and I ain’t the talent for the Don Juan fake.”

“You’re like me,” I says, “a day’s work, and then a pipe by your own fireside with your slippers on. That’s my swarry. You’ll find someone as will suit you before long.”

“No I shan’t,” says he. “I’ve come across a few as might, if it ’adn’t been for ’er. It’s like the toffs as come out our way. They’ve been brought up on ‘ris de veau À la financier,’ and sich like, and it just spoils ’em for the bacon and greens.”

I give her the office the next time I see her, and they met accidental like in Kensington Gardens early one morning. What they said to one another I don’t know, for he sailed that same evening, and, it being the end of the season, I didn’t see her ladyship again for a long while.

When I did it was at the HÔtel Bristol in Paris, and she was in widow’s weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. He never dropped into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier than was expected, and hanging on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and her fortune, though tidy, was nothing very big—not as that class reckons. By luck I was told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could speak English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.

“Well,” I says, “I suppose you’ll be bossing that bar in Capetown now before long?”

“Talk sense,” she answers. “How can the Marchioness of Appleford marry a hotel keeper?”

“Why not,” I says, “if she fancies him? What’s the good of being a Marchioness if you can’t do what you like?”

“That’s just it,” she snaps out; “you can’t. It would not be doing the straight thing by the family. No,” she says, “I’ve spent their money, and I’m spending it now. They don’t love me, but they shan’t say as I have disgraced them. They’ve got their feelings same as I’ve got mine.”

“Why not chuck the money?” I says. “They’ll be glad enough to get it back,” they being a poor lot, as I heard her say.

“How can I?” she says. “It’s a life interest. As long as I live I’ve got to have it, and as long as I live I’ve got to remain the Marchioness of Appleford.”

She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. “As long as I live,” she says, talking to herself.

“By Jove!” she says, starting up “why not?”

“Why not what?” I says.

“Nothing,” she answers. “Get me an African telegraph form, and be quick about it!”

I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter then and there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her dinner.

She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to keep my own place.

In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her, and that afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a paragraph in the newspaper, headed—“Death of the Marchioness of Appleford. Sad accident.” It seemed she had gone for a row on one of the Italian lakes with no one but a boatman. A squall had come on, and the boat had capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but he had been unable to save his passenger, and her body had never been recovered. The paper reminded its readers that she had formerly been the celebrated tragic actress, Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of the well-known Indian judge of that name.

It gave me the blues for a day or two—that bit of news. I had known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her come into one again.

I went from Paris to one of the smaller hotels in Venice. The missis thought I’d do well to pick up a bit of Italian, and perhaps she fancied Venice for herself. That’s one of the advantages of our profession. You can go about. It was a second-rate sort of place, and one evening, just before lighting-up time, I had the salle-À-manger all to myself, and had just taken up a paper when I hears the door open, and I turns round.

I saw “her” coming down the room. There was no mistaking her. She wasn’t that sort.

I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me, and then I says:

“Carrots!” I says, in a whisper like. That was the name that come to me.

“‘Carrots’ it is,” she says, and down she sits just opposite to me, and then she laughs.

I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and the more frightened I looked the more she laughed till “Kipper” comes into the room. There was nothing ghostly about him. I never see a man look more as if he had backed the winner.

“Why, it’s ’Enery,” he says; and he gives me a slap on the back, as knocks the life into me again.

“I heard you was dead,” I says, still staring at her. “I read it in the paper—‘death of the Marchioness of Appleford.’”

“That’s all right,” she says. “The Marchioness of Appleford is as dead as a door-nail, and a good job too. Mrs. Captain Kit’s my name, nÉe ‘Carrots.’”

“You said as ’ow I’d find someone to suit me ’fore long,” says “Kipper” to me, “and, by Jove! you were right; I ’ave. I was waiting till I found something equal to her ladyship, and I’d ’ave ’ad to wait a long time, I’m thinking, if I ’adn’t come across this one ’ere”; and he tucks her up under his arm just as I remember his doing that day he first brought her into the coffee-shop, and Lord, what a long time ago that was!

* * * * *

That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I have, at his request, substituted artificial names for real ones. For Henry tells me that at Capetown Captain Kit’s First-class Family and Commercial Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is still a beautiful woman with fine eyes and red hair, who might almost be taken for a duchess—until she opens her mouth, when her accent is found to be still slightly reminiscent of the Mile-End Road.