"In getting back at a player who'd won from him, would your father use loaded dice?" I asked.
"Oh, you've no right to ask me that, when I came here to warn you. Yet I opened myself to it. Papa is incredibly lucky with honest dice— I suppose lucky is the right word, since it must be pure chance. The devil doesn't help people. No rational person believes that."
"I can't say. I don't know the nature of evil."
"Well, I've told you what I intended to—if Papa knew it, he wouldn't hit me, but he'd be angry and make me very sorry. And now I feel it was—unnecessary."
"Why?"
"I felt it even before I told you—but I went ahead. This situation is different than I thought. I've decided Papa didn't intend to get you to play tonight. He had Lydia ask you for some other purpose."
"Can you guess what?"
"No."
"Do you think I can?"
"Yes, I think you know. I think, too, that you're capable of looking out for yourself, and I've never thought that of anyone before—in connection with Papa. Yes, I did think the same about another man —a long time ago—but all the dice went against him, and he's dead. Now please take me back to Papa."
We started back through the throng. Her dark red lips that I had loved were pale, and her eyes looked haunted, and she wanted to say something more. Only when we came in sight of the little lord did she blurt it out.
"Maybe you can do more than just look out for yourself, and that frightens me."
"That isn't very plain."
"When you talked with him about the sea fight, it wasn't just talk and it wasn't self-defense, which is all I'm used to in people who deal with Papa. It was attack."
"Did you think so?"
"Instead of taking sides with you—because you were in the right at Almack's—I may have to take sides with him."
"Could you explain that?"
"You've come here out of Africa. You deal with things that happened long ago. You're bringing back to life things that are dead. And you see—I'm afraid of those things. I want to shut out the past. It's dangerous to all I have left."
I wanted to say, "I'll never harm you, Sophia," but I could not. We were almost in hearing of Lord Tarlton. And it might not be true.
He was playing a sociable game of whist with two ladies and a gentleman of high station. He smiled at Sophia and bowed his head tome.
"So you're back! The game's tight, so sit down or what you will—"
"Thank you, but I'm otherwise engaged," I answered.
"Then, Sophia, wait a bit, and play my next hand. Blackburn, I'll accept with pleasure your invitation for Tuesday next, and I'll speak the same for my son Dick and my son-in-law, Harvey Alford, unless you hear to the contrary."
"That's good news."
"I accept also, Mr. Blackburn," Sophia said clearly.
"Oh, blast it, Sophia, Blackburn doesn't want ladies around, for rough shooting in winter weather."
"On the contrary, you'll be very welcome," I told her quickly. "It's too early for angling, the sport you love, but you can look over the water, and later the salmon will be as fat and sporting as those you used to take on the Cornish moors."
"Sophia, you've been boasting, if not lying," the little lord remarked.
"Oddly enough, I've done neither," Sophia answered in low tones.
"Pray come early, all of you, so as not to miss any sport."
Their eyes fixed on my face. The gentleman waiting Lord Tarlton's play uttered a nervous laugh. I bowed and departed.
Lydia White's rout was on Wednesday. Before the week was out, three incidents of varying unusualness became linked in my mind and excited my imagination. None deserved the merest mention in the newspapers, although there might be a handful of people in London who, if they knew of it, would muse over the first of the three, hold it in their memories all their lives, tell of it perhaps when they grew old, and even write it down in books.
Walking the cold streets late Thursday night, I thought to take refuge from the bleak and biting wind in a coffee house in the Poultry. As I turned toward its glowing door, three young men emerged and came face to face with me under the streetlight. Two hurried on, but the youngest, no more than twenty-four, stopped and stared, and a most strange expression, beautiful and touching, came into his face. I saw it was a remarkable face, flushed now with wine and, I suspected, with fever. Also I noticed he was dressed rather shabbily as well as inadequately to the weather.
He addressed me in poetry,
What doth ail thee, scarred knight, Alone and palely loitering The sedge is withered by the lake And no birds sing.
At once he hurried after his friends. Instead of entering the inn, I walked on. The verse haunted me, and I wanted to be alone with it awhile. Recalling it with care, I soon fixed it in my memory.
On Saturday afternoon I had a caller who sent in the name Walt Chalker. I had heard it before in some pleasant connection and told the haughty footman to conduct him to the parlor.
"I'll tell you right 'ere, 'e's not a proper person to be let in the front rooms," the servant remonstrated. "He ought to be made to wite in the entry."
"It's too cold to wite there with 'im," I replied, "so kindly show 'im in."
As I opened the parlor door, a shrill outcry, as from a termagant, appeared to ring out behind me.
"Come on back here, hubby, or I'll whack ye with this here broom."
My visitor laughed boyishly at the start he had given me, and instantly I recognized him as one of the star performers of the fete I had given at Tavistock. There he had put on a most realistic Punch and Judy, as well as feats of ventriloquism with a manikin dressed as a jack-tar between shows. Small and swarthy as a gypsy, he had a wonderfully mobile countenance. Although no doubt humbly born, he was not afraid of footmen, had an easy manner, and when he wished, could employ good English.
His business with me was not to beg or borrow but to seek employment. This was his slack season; and the next time I entertained my friends, he would like to show them what he could do. If only gentlemen were present, he would take off the House of Commons acting on a motion to do away with itself, the show being somewhat ribald. If ladies came, a more refined act could be substituted, mainly of ventriloquism and imitations. He had served his turn on the stage and could bring back David Garrick and Colley Cibber from the grave.
I pressed a guinea upon him and asked him to hold open the following Wednesday. Yet the idea of employing him in my solemn pursuit was so distasteful to me, smacking of artifice and dangerous as well, that I had little intention of doing so and probably would not have, except for the chance opening of a book on rainy, darkling, lonely Sunday afternoon. For the first time since I was in the hospital in Malta, I read Hamlet. The prince's stratagem in employing the company of players to disclose the king's guilt struck me with peculiar force; and suddenly I was ashamed of my false nicety. Was I playing a sociable game of whist with Lord Tarlton and his lieutenants, or trying to carry out Captain Phillips's orders at any cost or by any means at hand?
So when I had talked over the matter with Jim, I sent for Walt Chalker and told him exactly what I wanted him to do. Was he capable of it, without histrionics or indignity or exaggeration?
"I reckon this is something mighty close to your heart," he said before he rephed.
"Yes, sir, it is."
"Well, I never told you so, but what you did at Tavistock was close to my heart. I, too, was a workhouse boy."
"I'm glad you told me."
"Even at the time, the gentlemen may guess it's a plant, the best I can do, and they're almost sure to, afterward."