Part 5 (2/2)

It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan suddenly asked: ”But I say-how will you get to your jolly job? You'll have to telegraph to the opulent youth for money to come on.”

Pemberton bethought himself. ”They won't like that, will they?”

”Oh look out for them!”

Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. ”I'll go to the American Consul; I'll borrow some money of him-just for the few days, on the strength of the telegram.”

Morgan was hilarious. ”Show him the telegram-then collar the money and stay!”

Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for Morgan he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more serious, and to prove he hadn't meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the Consulate-since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his friend-but made sure of their affair by going with him. They splashed through the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and they pa.s.sed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen and Ulick go into a jeweller's shop. The Consul proved accommodating-Pemberton said it wasn't the letter, but Morgan's grand air-and on their way back they went into Saint Mark's for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they should ”get something out” of him. On the other hand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when on coming in they heard the cruel news they took it like perfect men of the world.

CHAPTER VIII

When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be taken in hand for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if this aspirant had really such poor parts or if the appearance were only begotten of his own long a.s.sociation with an intensely living little mind. From Morgan he heard half a dozen times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in little squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest ill.u.s.trations-letters that he was divided between the impulse to show his present charge as a vain, a wasted incentive, and the sense of something in them that publicity would profane. The opulent youth went up in due course and failed to pa.s.s; but it seemed to add to the presumption that brilliancy was not expected of him all at once that his parents, condoning the lapse, which they good-naturedly treated as little as possible as if it were Pemberton's, should have sounded the rally again, begged the young coach to renew the siege.

The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreen three louis, and he sent her a post-office order even for a larger amount. In return for this favour he received a frantic scribbled line from her: ”Implore you to come back instantly-Morgan dreadfully ill.” They were on there rebound, once more in Paris-often as Pemberton had seen them depressed he had never seen them crushed-and communication was therefore rapid. He wrote to the boy to ascertain the state of his health, but awaited the answer in vain. He accordingly, after three days, took an abrupt leave of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at the small hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysees, of which Mrs. Moreen had given him the address. A deep if dumb dissatisfaction with this lady and her companions bore him company: they couldn't be vulgarly honest, but they could live at hotels, in velvety entresols, amid a smell of burnt pastilles, surrounded by the most expensive city in Europe. When he had left them in Venice it was with an irrepressible suspicion that something was going to happen; but the only thing that could have taken place was again their masterly retreat. ”How is he? where is he?” he asked of Mrs.

Moreen; but before she could speak these questions were answered by the pressure round hid neck of a pair of arms, in shrunken sleeves, which still were perfectly capable of an effusive young foreign squeeze.

”Dreadfully ill-I don't see it!” the young man cried. And then to Morgan: ”Why on earth didn't you relieve me? Why didn't you answer my letter?”

Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad, and Pemberton learned at the same time from the boy that he had answered every letter he had received. This led to the clear inference that Pemberton's note had been kept from him so that the game practised should not be interfered with. Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, as Pemberton saw the moment he faced her that she was prepared for a good many other things. She was prepared above all to maintain that she had acted from a sense of duty, that she was enchanted she had got him over, whatever they might say, and that it was useless of him to pretend he didn't know in all his bones that his place at such a time was with Morgan. He had taken the boy away from them and now had no right to abandon him. He had created for himself the gravest responsibilities and must at least abide by what he had done.

”Taken him away from you?” Pemberton exclaimed indignantly.

”Do it-do it for pity's sake; that's just what I want. I can't stand _this_-and such scenes. They're awful frauds-poor dears!” These words broke from Morgan, who had intermitted his embrace, in a key which made Pemberton turn quickly to him and see that he had suddenly seated himself, was breathing in great pain, and was very pale.

”_Now_ do you say he's not in a state, my precious pet?” shouted his mother, dropping on her knees before him with clasped hands, but touching him no more than if he had been a gilded idol. ”It will pa.s.s-it's only for an instant; but don't say such dreadful things!”

”I'm all right-all right,” Morgan panted to Pemberton, whom he sat looking up at with a strange smile, his hands resting on either side of the sofa.

”Now do you pretend I've been dishonest, that I've deceived?” Mrs. Moreen flashed at Pemberton as she got up.

”It isn't _he_ says it, it's I!” the boy returned, apparently easier, but sinking back against the wall; while his restored friend, who had sat down beside him, took his hand and bent over him.

”Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many things to consider,” urged Mrs. Moreen. ”It's his _place_-his only place. You see _you_ think it is now.”

”Take me away-take me away,” Morgan went on, smiling to Pemberton with his white face.

”Where shall I take you, and how-oh _how_, my boy?” the young man stammered, thinking of the rude way in which his friends in London held that, for his convenience, with no a.s.surance of prompt return, he had thrown them over; of the just resentment with which they would already have called in a successor, and of the scant help to finding fresh employment that resided for him in the grossness of his having failed to pa.s.s his pupil.

”Oh we'll settle that. You used to talk about it,” said Morgan. ”If we can only go all the rest's a detail.”

”Talk about it as much as you like, but don't think you can attempt it.

Mr. Moreen would never consent-it would be so _very_ hand-to-mouth,”

Pemberton's hostess beautifully explained to him. Then to Morgan she made it clearer: ”It would destroy our peace, it would break our hearts.

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