Book: In Luck at Last

W >> Walter Besant >> In Luck at Last




"Who is your new singer?" he asked.

"She calls herself Miss Carlotta Claradine. She's a woman, let me tell
you, Mr. Chalker, who will get along. Fine figure, plenty of cheek,
loud voice, flings herself about, and don't mind a bit when the words
are a leetle strong. That's the kind of singer the people like. That's
her husband, at the far end of the room--the big, good-looking chap
with the light mustache and the cigarette in his mouth."

"Whew!" Mr. Chalker whistled the low note which indicates Surprise.
"That's her husband, is it? The husband of Miss Carlotta Claradine, is
it? Oho! oho! Her husband! Are you sure he is her husband?"

"Do you know him, then?"

"Yes, I know him. What was the real name of the girl?"

"Charlotte Smithers. This is her first appearance on any stage--and we
made up the name for her when we first put her on the posters. I made
it myself--out of Chlorodyne, you know, which is in the
advertisements. Sounds well, don't it? Carlotta Claradine."

"Very well, indeed. By Jove! Her husband, is he?"

"And, I suppose," said the chairman, "lives on his wife's salary.
Bless you, Mr. Chalker, there's a whole gang about every theater and
music hall trying to get hold of the promising girls. It's a regular
profession. Them as have nothing but their good looks may do for the
mashers, but these chaps look out for the girls who'll bring in the
money. What's a pretty face to them compared with the handling of a
big salary every week? That's the sort Carlotta's husband belongs to."

"Well, the life will suit him down to the ground."

"And jealous with it, if you please. He comes here every night to
applaud and takes her home himself. Keeps himself sober on purpose."

And then the lady appeared again in a wonderful costume of blue silk
and tights, personating the Lion Masher. It was her third and last
song.

In the applause which followed, Mr. Chalker could discern plainly the
stick as well as the voice of his old friend. And he thought how
beautiful is the love of husband unto wife, and he smiled, thinking
that when Joe came next to see him, he might, perhaps, hear truths
which he had thought unknown, and, for certain reasons, wished to
remain unknown.

Presently he saw the singer pass down the hall, and join her husband,
who now, his labors ended, was seeking refreshment at the bar. She was
a good-looking girl--still only a girl, and apparently under
twenty--quietly dressed, yet looking anything but quiet. But that
might have been due to her fringe, which was, so to speak, a
prominent-feature in her face. She was tall and well-made, with large
features, an ample cheek, a full eye, and a wide mouth. A
good-natured-looking girl, and though her mouth was wide, it suggested
smiles. The husband was exchanging a little graceful badinage with the
barmaid when she joined him, and perhaps this made her look a little
cross. "She's jealous, too," said Mr. Chalker, observant; "all the
better." Yet a face which, on the whole, was prepossessing and good
natured, and betokened a disposition to make the best of the world.

"How long has she been married?" Mr. Chalker asked the proprietor.

"Only about a month or so."

"Ah!"

Mr. Chalker proceeded to talk business, and gave no further hint of
any interest in the newly-married pair.

"Now, Joe," said the singer, with a freezing glance at the barmaid,
"are you going to stand here all night?"

Joe drank off his glass and followed his wife into the street. They
walked side by side in silence, until they reached their lodgings.
Then she threw off her hat and jacket, and sat down on the horsehair
sofa and said abruptly:

"I can't do it, Joe; and I won't. So don't ask me."

"Wait a bit--wait a bit, Lotty, my love. Don't be in a hurry, now.
Don't say rash things, there's a good girl." Joe spoke quite softly,
as if he were not the least angry, but, perhaps, a little hurt.
"There's not a bit of a hurry. You needn't decide to-day, nor yet
to-morrow."

"I couldn't do it," she said. "Oh, it's a dreadful, wicked thing even
to ask me. And only five weeks to-morrow since we married!"

"Lotty, my dear, let us be reasonable." He still spoke quite softly.
"If we are not to go on like other people; if we are to be continually
bothering our heads about honesty, and that rubbish, we shall be
always down in the world. How do other people make money and get on?
By humbug, my dear. By humbug. As for you, a little play-acting is
nothing."

"But I am not the man's daughter, and my own father's alive and well."

"Look here, Lotty. You are always grumbling about the music-halls."

"Well, and good reason to grumble. If you heard those ballet girls
talk, and see how they go on at the back, you'd grumble. As for the
music--" She laughed, as if against her will. "If anybody had told me
six months ago--me, that used to go to the Cathedral Service every
afternoon--that I should be a Lion Masher at a music-hall and go on
dressed in tights, I should have boxed his ears for impudence."

"Why, you don't mean to tell me, Lotty, that you wish you had stuck to
the moldy old place, and gone on selling music over the counter?"

"Well, then, perhaps I do."

"No, no, Lotty; your husband cannot let you say that."

"My husband can laugh and talk with barmaids. That makes him happy."

"Lotty," he said, "you are a little fool. And think of the glory.
Posters with your name in letters a foot and a half long--'The
People's Favorite.' Why, don't they applaud you till their hands drop
off?"

She melted a little.

"Applaud! As if that did any good! And me in tights!"

"As for the tights," Joe replied with dignity, "the only person whom
you need consult on that subject is your husband; and since I do not
object, I should like to see the man who does. Show me that man,
Lotty, and I'll straighten him out for you. You have my perfect
approval, my dear. I honor you for the tights."

"My husband's approval!"

She repeated his words again in a manner which had been on other
occasions most irritating to him. But to-night he refused to be
offended.

"Of course," he went on, "as soon as I get a berth on another ship I
shall take you off the boards. It is the husband's greatest delight,
especially if he is a jolly sailor, to brave all dangers for his wife.
Think, Lotty, how pleasant it would be not to do any more work."

"I should like to sing sometimes, to sing good music, at the great
concerts. That's what I thought I was going to do."

"You shall; you shall sing as little or as often as you like. 'A
sailor's wife a sailor's star should be.' You shall be a great lady,
Lotty, and you shall just command your own line. Wait a bit, and you
shall have your own carriage, and your own beautiful house, and go to
as many balls as you like among the countesses and the swells."

"Oh, Joe!" she laughed. "Why, if we were as rich as anything, I should
never get ladies to call upon me. And as for you, no one would ever
take you to be a gentleman, you know."

"Why, what do you call me, now?"

He laughed, but without much enjoyment. No one likes to be told that
he is not a gentleman, whatever his own suspicions on the subject may
be.

"Never mind. I know a gentleman when I see one. Go on with your
nonsense about being rich."

"I shall make you rich, Lotty, whether you like it or not," he said,
still with unwonted sweetness.

She shook her head.

"Not by wickedness," she said stoutly.

"I've got there," he pulled a bundle of papers out of his pockets,
"all the documents wanted to complete the case. All I want now is for
the rightful heiress to step forward."

"I'm not the rightful heiress, and I'm not the woman to step forward,
Joe; so don't you think it."

"I've been to-day," Joe continued, "to Doctors' Commons, and I've seen
the will. There's no manner of doubt about it; and the money--oh,
Lord, Lotty, if you only knew how much it is!"

"What does it matter, Joe, how much it is, if it is neither yours nor
mine?"

"It matters this: that it ought all to be mine."

"How can that be, if it was not left to you?"

Joe was nothing if not a man of resource. He therefore replied without
hesitation or confusion:

"The money was left to a certain man and to his heirs. That man is
dead. His heiress should have succeeded, but she was kept out of her
rights. She is dead, and I am her cousin, and entitled to all her
property, because she made no will."

"Is that gospel truth, Joe? Is she dead? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," he replied. "Dead as a door-nail."

"Is that the way you got the papers?"

"That's the way, Lotty."

"Then why not go to a lawyer and make him take up the case for you,
and honestly get your own?"

"You don't know law, my dear, or you wouldn't talk nonsense about
lawyers. There are two ways. One is to go myself to the present
unlawful possessor and claim the whole. It's a woman; she would be
certain to refuse, and then we should go to law, and very likely lose
it all, although the right is on our side. The other way is for some
one--say you--to go to her and say: 'I am that man's daughter. Here
are my proofs. Here are all his papers. Give me back my own.' That you
could do in the interests of justice, though I own it is not the exact
truth."

"And if she refuses then?"

"She can't refuse, with the man's daughter actually standing before
her. She might make a fuss for a bit. But she would have to give in at
last."

"Joe, consider. You have got some papers, whatever they may contain.
Suppose that it is all true that you have told me--"

"Lotty, my dear, when did I ever tell you an untruth?"

"When did you ever tell me the truth, my dear? Don't talk wild.
Suppose it is all true, how are you going to make out where your
heiress has been all this time, and what she has been doing?"

"Trust me for that."

"I trust you for making up something or other, but--oh, Joe, you
little think, you clever people, how seldom you succeed in deceiving
any one."

"I've got such a story for you, Lotty, as would deceive anybody.
Listen now. It's part truth, and part--the other thing. Your father--"

"My father, poor dear man," Lotty interrupted, "is minding his
music-shop in Gloucester, and little thinking what wickedness his
daughter is being asked to do."

"Hang it! the girl's father, then. He died in America, where he went
under another name, and you were picked up by strangers and reared
under that name, in complete ignorance of your own family. All which
is true and can be proved."

"Who brought her up?"

"People in America. I'm one of 'em."

"Who is to prove that?"

"I am. I am come to England on purpose. I am her guardian."

"Who is to prove that you are the girl's guardian?"

"I shall find somebody to prove that."

His thoughts turned to Mr. Chalker, a gentleman whom he judged capable
of proving anything he was paid for.

"And suppose they ask me questions?"

"Don't answer 'em. You know very little. The papers were only found
the other day. You are not expected to know anything."

"Where was the real girl?"

"With her grandfather."

"Where was the grandfather?"

"What does that matter?" he replied; "I will tell you afterward."

"When did the real girl die?"

"That, too, I will tell you afterward."

Lotty leaned her cheek upon her hand, and looked at her husband
thoughtfully.

"Let us be plain, Joe."

"You can never be plain, my dear," he replied with the smile of a
lover, not a husband; "never in your husband's eyes; not even in
tights."

But she was not to be won by flattery.

"Fine words," she said, "fine words. What do they amount to? Oh, Joe,
little I thought when you came along with your beautiful promises,
what sort of a man I was going to marry."

"A very good sort of a man," he said. "You've got a jolly sailor--an
officer and a gentleman. Come now, what have you got to say to this?
Can't you be satisfied with an officer and a gentleman?"

He drew himself up to his full height. Well, he was a handsome fellow:
there was no denying it.

"Good looks and fine words," his wife went on. "Well, and now I've got
to keep you, and if you could make me sing in a dozen halls every
night, you would, and spend the money on yourself--joyfully you
would."

"We would spend it together, my dear. Don't turn rusty, Lotty."

He was not a bad-tempered man, and this kind of talk did not anger him
at all. So long as his wife worked hard and brought in the coin for
him to spend, what mattered for a few words now and then? Besides, he
wanted her assistance.

"What are you driving at?" he went on. "I show you a bit of my hand,
and you begin talking round and round. Look here, Lotty. Here's a
splendid chance for us. I must have a woman's help. I would rather
have your help than any other woman's--yes, than any other woman's in
the world. I would indeed. If you won't help me, why, then, of course,
I must go to some other woman."

His wife gasped and choked. She knew already, after only five weeks'
experience, how bad a man he was--how unscrupulous, false, and
treacherous, how lazy and selfish. But, after a fashion, she loved
him; after a woman's fashion, she was madly jealous of him. Another
woman! And only the other night she had seen him giving
brandy-and-soda to one of the music-hall ballet-girls. Another woman!

"If you do, Joe," she said; "oh, if you do--I will kill her and you
too!"

He laughed.

"If I do, my dear, you don't think I shall be such a fool as to tell
you who she is. Do you suppose that no woman has ever fallen in love
with me before you? But then, my pretty, you see I don't talk about
them; and do you suppose--oh, Lotty, are you such a fool as to suppose
that you are the first girl I ever fell in love with?"

"What do you want me to do? Tell me again."

"I have told you already. I want you to become, for the time, the
daughter of the man who died in America; you will claim your
inheritance; I will provide you with all the papers; I will stand by
you; I will back you up with such a story as will disarm all
suspicion. That is all."

"Yes. I understand. Haven't people been sent to prison for less, Joe?"

"Foolish people have. Not people who are well advised and under good
management. Mind you, this business is under my direction. I am boss."

She made no reply, but took her candle and went off to bed.

In the dead of night she awakened her husband.

"Joe," she said, "is it true that you know another girl who would do
this for you?"

"More than one, Lotty," he replied, this man of resource, although he
was only half awake. "More than one. A great many more. Half-a-dozen,
I know, at least."

She was silent. Half an hour afterward she woke him up again.

"Joe," she said, "I've made up my mind. You sha'n't say that I refused
to do for you what any other girl in the world would have done."

As a tempter it will be seen that Joe was unsurpassed.

It was now a week since he had received, carefully wrapped in wool,
and deposited in a wooden box dispatched by post, a key, newly made.
It was, also, very nearly a week since he had used that key. It was
used during Mr. Emblem's hour for tea, while James waited and watched
outside in an agony of terror. But Joe did not find what he wanted.
There were in the safe one or two ledgers, a banker's book, a
check-book, and a small quantity of money. But there were not any
records at all of monies invested. There were no railway certificates,
waterwork shares, transfers, or notes of stock, mortgages, loans, or
anything at all. The only thing that he saw was a roll of papers tied
up with red tape. On the roll was written: "For Iris. To be given to
her on her twenty-first birthday."

"What the deuce is this, I wonder?" Joe took this out and looked at it
suspiciously. "Can he be going to give her all his money before he
dies? Is he going to make her inherit it at once?" The thought was so
exasperating that he slipped the roll into his pocket. "At all
events," he said, "she sha'n't have them until I have read them first.
I dare say they won't be missed for a day or two."

He calculated that he could read and master the contents that night,
and put back the papers in the safe in the morning while James was
opening the shop.

"There's nothing, James," he whispered as he went out, the safe being
locked again. "There is nothing at all. Look here, my lad, you must
try another way of finding out where the money is."

"I wish I was sure that he hasn't carried off something in his
pocket," James murmured.

Joe spent the whole evening alone, contrary to his usual practice,
which was, as we have seen, to spend it at a certain music-hall. He
read the papers over and over again.

"I wish," he said at length, "I wish I had known this only two months
ago. I wish I had paid more attention to Iris. What a dreadful thing
it is to have a grandfather who keeps secrets from his grandson. What
a game we might have had over this job! What a game we might have
still if--"

And here he stopped, for the first germ or conception of a magnificent
coup dawned upon him, and fairly dazzled him so that his eyes saw a
bright light and nothing else.

"If Lotty would," he said. "But I am afraid she won't hear of it." He
sprung to his feet and caught sight of his own face in the looking
glass over the fireplace. He smiled. "I will try," he said, "I think
I know by this time, how to get round most of 'em. Once they get to
feel there are other women in the world besides themselves, they're
pretty easy worked. I will try."

One has only to add to the revelations already made that Joe paid a
second visit to the shop, this time early in the morning. The shutters
were only just taken down. James was going about with that remarkable
watering-pot only used in shops, which has a little stream running out
of it, and Mr. Emblem was upstairs slowly shaving and dressing in his
bedroom. He walked in, nodded to his friend the assistant, opened the
safe, and put back the roll.

"Now," he murmured, "if the old man has really been such a
dunder-headed pump as not to open the packet all these years, what the
devil can he know? The name is different; he hasn't got any clew to
the will; he hasn't got the certificate of his daughter's marriage, or
of the child's baptism--both in the real name. He hasn't got anything.
As for the girl here, Iris, having the same christian-name, that's
nothing. I suppose there is more than one woman with such a fool of a
name as that about in the world.

"Foxy," he said cheerfully, "have you found anything yet about the
investments? Odd, isn't it? Nothing in the safe at all. You can have
your key back."

He tossed him the key carelessly and went away.

The question of his grandfather's savings was grown insignificant
beside this great and splendid prize which lay waiting for him. What
could the savings be? At best a few thousands; the slowly saved thrift
of fifty years; nobody knew better than Joe himself how much his own
profligacies had cost his grandfather; a few thousands, and those
settled on his Cousin Iris, so that, to get his share, he would have
to try every kind of persuasion unless he could get up a case for law.
But the other thing--why, it was nearly all personal estate, so far as
he could learn by the will, and he had read it over and over again in
the room at Somerset House, with the long table in it, and the
watchful man who won't let anybody copy anything. What a shame, he
thought, not to let wills be copied! Personalty sworn under a hundred
and twenty thousand, all in three per cents, and devised to a certain
young lady, the testator's ward, in trust, for the testator's son, or
his heirs, when he or they should present themselves. Meantime, the
ward was to receive for her own use and benefit, year by year, the
whole income.

"It is unfortunate," said Joe, "that we can't come down upon her for
arrears. Still, there's an income, a steady income, of three thousand
six hundred a year when the son's heirs present themselves. I should
like to call myself a solicitor, but that kite won't fly, I'm afraid.
Lotty must be the sole heiress. Dressed quiet, without any powder, and
her fringe brushed flat, she'd pass for a lady anywhere. Perhaps it's
lucky, after all, that I married her, though if I had had the good
sense to make up to Iris, who's a deuced sight prettier, she'd have
kept me going almost as well with her pupils, and set me right with
the old man and handed me over this magnificent haul for a finish. If
only the old man hasn't broken the seals and read the papers!"

The old man had not, and Joe's fears were, therefore, groundless.




CHAPTER V.

AS A BROTHER.


Arnold immediately began to use the privilege accorded to him with a
large and liberal interpretation. If, he argued, a man is to be
treated as a brother, there should be the immediate concession of the
exchange of christian-names, and he should be allowed to call as often
as he pleases. Naturally he began by trying to read the secret of a
life self-contained, so dull, and yet so happy, so strange to his
experience.

"Is this, Iris?" he asked, "all your life? Is there nothing more?"

"No," she said; "I think you have seen all. In the morning I have my
correspondence; in the afternoon I do my sewing, I play a little, I
read, or I walk, sometimes by myself, and sometimes with Lala Roy; in
the evening I play again, or I read again, or I work at the
mathematics, while my grandfather and Lala Roy have their chess. We
used to go to the theater sometimes, but of late my grandfather has
not gone. At ten we go to bed. That is all my life."

"But, Iris, have you no friends at all, and no relations? Are there no
girls of your own age who come to see you?"

"No, not one; I have a cousin, but he is not a good man at all. His
father and mother are in Australia. When he comes here, which is very
seldom, my grandfather falls ill only with thinking about him and
looking at him. But I have no other relations, because, you see, I do
not know who my father's people were."

"Then," said Arnold, "you may be countess in your own right; you may
have any number of rich people and nice people for your cousins. Do
you not sometimes think of that?"

"No" said Iris; "I never think about things impossible."

"If I were you, I should go about the streets, and walk round the
picture-galleries looking for a face like your own. There cannot be
many. Let me draw your face, Iris, and then we will send it to the
Grosvenor, and label it, 'Wanted, this young lady's cousins.' You must
have cousins, if you could only find them out."

"I suppose I must. But what if they should turn out to be rough and
disagreeable people?"

"Your cousins could not be disagreeable, Iris," said Arnold.

She shook her head.

"One thing I should like," she replied. "It would be to find that my
cousins, if I have any, are clever people--astronomers,
mathematicians, great philosophers, and writers. But what nonsense it
is even to talk of such things; I am quite alone, except for my
grandfather and Lala Roy."

"And they are old," murmured Arnold.

"Do not look at me with such pity," said the girl. "I am very happy. I
have my own occupation; I am independent; I have my work to fill my
mind; and I have these two old gentlemen to care for and think
of. They have taken so much care of me that I ought to think of
nothing else but their comfort; and then there are the books
down-stairs--thousands of beautiful old books always within my reach."

"But you must have some companions, if only to talk and walk with."

"Why, the books are my companions; and then Lala Roy goes for walks
with me; and as for talking, I think it is much more pleasant to
think."

"Where do you walk?"

"There is Battersea Park; there are the squares; and if you take an
omnibus, there are the Gardens and Hyde Park."

"But never alone, Iris?"

"Oh, yes, I am often alone. Why not?"

"I suppose," said Arnold, shirking the question, because this is a
civilized country, and in fact, why not? "I suppose that it is your
work which keeps you from feeling life dull and monotonous."

"No life," she said, looking as wise as Newton, if Newton was ever
young and handsome--"no life can be dull when one is thinking about
mathematics all day. Do you study mathematics?"

"No; I was at Oxford, you know."

"Then perhaps you prefer metaphysics? Though Lala Roy says that the
true metaphysics, which he has tried to teach me, can only be reached
by the Hindoo intellect."

"No, indeed; I have never read any metaphysics whatever. I have only
got the English intellect." This he said with intent satirical, but
Iris failed to understand it so, and thought it was meant for a
commendable humility.

"Physical science, perhaps?"

"No, Iris. Philosophy, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, or science
of any kind have I never learned, except only the science of Heraldry,
which you have taught me, with a few other things."

"Oh!" She wondered how a man could exist at all without learning these
things. "Not any science at all? How can any one live without some
science?"

"I knew very well," he said, "that as soon as I was found out I should
be despised."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.