George awoke next morning with a misty sense that somehow the worldhad changed. As the last remnants of sleep left him, he was awareof a vague excitement. Then he sat up in bed with a jerk. He hadremembered that he was in love.
There was no doubt about it. A curious happiness pervaded hisentire being. He felt young and active. Everything was emphaticallyfor the best in this best of all possible worlds. The sun wasshining. Even the sound of someone in the street below whistlingone of his old compositions, of which he had heartily sickenedtwelve months before, was pleasant to his ears, and this in spiteof the fact that the unseen whistler only touched the key in oddspots and had a poor memory for tunes. George sprang lightly out ofbed, and turned on the cold tap in the bath-room. While he latheredhis face for its morning shave he beamed at himself in the mirror.
It had come at last. The Real Thing.
George had never been in love before. Not really in love. True,from the age of fifteen, he had been in varying degrees ofintensity attracted sentimentally by the opposite sex. Indeed, atthat period of life of which Mr. Booth Tarkington has written sosearchingly--the age of seventeen--he had been in love withpractically every female he met and with dozens whom he had onlyseen in the distance; but ripening years had mellowed his taste androbbed him of that fine romantic catholicity. During the last fiveyears women had found him more or less cold. It was the nature ofhis profession that had largely brought about this cooling of theemotions. To a man who, like George, has worked year in and yearout at the composition of musical comedies, woman comes to losemany of those attractive qualities which ensnare the ordinary male.
To George, of late years, it had begun to seem that the salientfeature of woman as a sex was her disposition to kick. For fiveyears he had been wandering in a world of women, many of thembeautiful, all of them superficially attractive, who had left noother impress on his memory except the vigour and frequency withwhich they had kicked. Some had kicked about their musicalnumbers, some about their love-scenes; some had grumbled abouttheir exit lines, others about the lines of their second-actfrocks. They had kicked in a myriad differing ways--wrathfully,sweetly, noisily, softly, smilingly, tearfully, pathetically andpatronizingly; but they had all kicked; with the result that womanhad now become to George not so much a flaming inspiration or atender goddess as something to be dodged--tactfully, if possible;but, if not possible, by open flight. For years he had dreaded tobe left alone with a woman, and had developed a habit of glidingswiftly away when he saw one bearing down on him.
The psychological effect of such a state of things is not difficultto realize. Take a man of naturally quixotic temperament, a man ofchivalrous instincts and a feeling for romance, and cut him off forfive years from the exercise of those qualities, and you get anaccumulated store of foolishness only comparable to an escape ofgas in a sealed room or a cellarful of dynamite. A flicker of amatch, and there is an explosion.
This girl's tempestuous irruption into his life had supplied flamefor George. Her bright eyes, looking into his, had touched off thespiritual trinitrotoluol which he had been storing up for so long.
Up in the air in a million pieces had gone the prudence andself-restraint of a lifetime. And here he was, as desperately inlove as any troubadour of the Middle Ages.
It was not till he had finished shaving and was testing thetemperature of his bath with a shrinking toe that the realizationcame over him in a wave that, though he might be in love, thefairway of love was dotted with more bunkers than any golf coursehe had ever played on in his life. In the first place, he did notknow the girl's name. In the second place, it seemed practicallyimpossible that he would ever see her again. Even in the midst ofhis optimism George could not deny that these facts mightreasonably be considered in the nature of obstacles. He went backinto his bedroom, and sat on the bed. This thing wanted thinkingover.
He was not depressed--only a little thoughtful. His faith in hisluck sustained him. He was, he realized, in the position of a manwho has made a supreme drive from the tee, and finds his ball nearthe green but in a cuppy lie. He had gained much; it now remainedfor him to push his success to the happy conclusion. The driver ofLuck must be replaced by the spoon--or, possibly, the niblick--ofIngenuity. To fail now, to allow this girl to pass out of his lifemerely because he did not know who she was or where she was, wouldstamp him a feeble adventurer. A fellow could not expect Luck todo everything for him. He must supplement its assistance with hisown efforts.
What had he to go on? Well, nothing much, if it came to that,except the knowledge that she lived some two hours by train out ofLondon, and that her journey started from Waterloo Station. Whatwould Sherlock Holmes have done? Concentrated thought supplied noanswer to the question; and it was at this point that the cheeryoptimism with which he had begun the day left George and gave placeto a grey gloom. A dreadful phrase, haunting in its pathos, creptinto his mind. "Ships that pass in the night!" It might easily turnout that way. Indeed, thinking over the affair in all its aspectsas he dried himself after his tub, George could not see how itcould possibly turn out any other way.
He dressed moodily, and left the room to go down to breakfast.
Breakfast would at least alleviate this sinking feeling which wasunmanning him. And he could think more briskly after a cup or twoof coffee.
He opened the door. On a mat outside lay a letter.
The handwriting was feminine. It was also in pencil, and strange tohim. He opened the envelope.
"Dear Mr. Bevan" (it began).
With a sudden leap of the heart he looked at the signature.
The letter was signed "The Girl in the Cab.""DEAR MR. BEVAN,"I hope you won't think me very rude, running offwithout waiting to say good-bye. I had to. I saw Percydriving up in a cab, and knew that he must have followed us.
He did not see me, so I got away all right. I managedsplendidly about the money, for I remembered that I waswearing a nice brooch, and stopped on the way to thestation to pawn it.
"Thank you ever so much again for all your wonderfulkindness.
Yours,THE GIRL IN THE CAB."George read the note twice on the way down to the breakfast room,and three times more during the meal; then, having committed itscontents to memory down to the last comma, he gave himself up toglowing thoughts.
What a girl! He had never in his life before met a woman who couldwrite a letter without a postscript, and this was but the smallestof her unusual gifts. The resource of her, to think of pawning thatbrooch! The sweetness of her to bother to send him a note! Morethan ever before was he convinced that he had met his ideal, andmore than ever before was he determined that a triviality likebeing unaware of her name and address should not keep him from her.
It was not as if he had no clue to go upon. He knew that she livedtwo hours from London and started home from Waterloo. It narrowedthe thing down absurdly. There were only about three counties inwhich she could possibly live; and a man must be a poor fellow whois incapable of searching through a few small counties for the girlhe loves. Especially a man with luck like his.
Luck is a goddess not to be coerced and forcibly wooed by those whoseek her favours. From such masterful spirits she turns away. Butit happens sometimes that, if we put our hand in hers with thehumble trust of a little child, she will have pity on us, and notfail us in our hour of need. On George, hopefully watching forsomething to turn up, she smiled almost immediately.
It was George's practice, when he lunched alone, to relieve thetedium of the meal with the assistance of reading matter in theshape of one or more of the evening papers. Today, sitting down toa solitary repast at the Piccadilly grill-room, he had brought withhim an early edition of the Evening News. And one of the firstitems which met his eye was the following, embodied in a columnon one of the inner pages devoted to humorous comments in prose andverse on the happenings of the day. This particular happening thewriter had apparently considered worthy of being dignified byrhyme. It was headed:
"THE PEER AND THE POLICEMAN.""Outside the 'Carlton,' 'tis averred, these stirringhappenings occurred. The hour, 'tis said (and no onedoubts) was half-past two, or thereabouts. The day wasfair, the sky was blue, and everything was peaceful too,when suddenly a well-dressed gent engaged in heatedargument and roundly to abuse began another well-dressedgentleman. His suede-gloved fist he raised on high to dotthe other in the eye. Who knows what horrors might havebeen, had there not come upon the scene old London city'sfavourite son, Policeman C. 231. 'What means this conduct?
Prithee stop!' exclaimed that admirable slop. With which heplaced a warning hand upon the brawler's collarband. Wesimply hate to tell the rest. No subject here for flippantjest. The mere remembrance of the tale has made our inkturn deadly pale. Let us be brief. Some demon sent starkmadness on the well-dressed gent. He gave the constable apunch just where the latter kept his lunch. The constablesaid 'Well! Well! Well!' and marched him to a dungeon cell.
At Vine Street Station out it came--Lord Belpher was theculprit's name. But British Justice is severe alike onpauper and on peer; with even hand she holds the scale; athumping fine, in lieu of gaol, induced Lord B. to feelremorse and learn he mustn't punch the Force."George's mutton chop congealed on the plate, untouched. The Frenchfried potatoes cooled off, unnoticed. This was no time for food.
Rightly indeed had he relied upon his luck. It had stood by himnobly. With this clue, all was over except getting to the nearestFree Library and consulting Burke's Peerage. He paid his bill andleft the restaurant.
Ten minutes later he was drinking in the pregnant information thatBelpher was the family name of the Earl of Marshmoreton, and thatthe present earl had one son, Percy Wilbraham Marsh, educ. Eton andChrist Church, Oxford, and what the book with its customarycurtness called "one d."--Patricia Maud. The family seat, saidBurke, was Belpher Castle, Belpher, Hants.
Some hours later, seated in a first-class compartment of a trainthat moved slowly out of Waterloo Station, George watched Londonvanish behind him. In the pocket closest to his throbbing heartwas a single ticket to Belpher.