Part 1 (1/2)
The Tempting of Tavernake.
by E. Phillips Oppenheim.
BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I. DESPAIR AND INTEREST
They stood upon the roof of a London boarding-house in the neighborhood of Russell Square--one of those grim shelters, the refuge of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl--she represented the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the uninspiring panorama. The young man--unmistakably, uncompromisingly English--stood with his back to the chimney a few feet away, watching his companion. The silence between them was as yet unbroken, had lasted, indeed, since she had stolen away from the shabby drawing-room below, where a florid lady with a raucous voice had been shouting a music-hall ditty. Close upon her heels, but without speech of any sort, he had followed. They were almost strangers, except for the occasional word or two of greeting which the etiquette of the establishment demanded. Yet she had accepted his espionage without any protest of word or look. He had followed her with a very definite object. Had she surmised it, he wondered? She had not turned her head or vouchsafed even a single question or remark to him since he had pushed his way through the trap-door almost at her heels and stepped out on to the leads. Yet it seemed to him that she must guess.
Below them, what seemed to be the phantasm of a painted city, a wilderness of housetops, of smoke-wreathed spires and chimneys, stretched away to a murky, blood-red horizon. Even as they stood there, a deeper color stained the sky, an angry sun began to sink into the piled up ma.s.ses of thick, vaporous clouds. The girl watched with an air of sullen yet absorbed interest. Her companion's eyes were still fixed wholly and critically upon her. Who was she, he wondered? Why had she left her own country to come to a city where she seemed to have no friends, no manner of interest? In that caravansary of the world's stricken ones she had been an almost unnoticed figure, silent, indisposed for conversation, not in any obvious manner attractive. Her clothes, notwithstanding their air of having come from a first-cla.s.s dressmaker, were shabby and out of fas.h.i.+on, their extreme neatness in itself pathetic. She was thin, yet not without a certain buoyant lightness of movement always at variance with her tired eyes, her ceaseless air of dejection. And withal she was a rebel. It was written in her att.i.tude, it was evident in her lowering, militant expression, the smouldering fire in her eyes proclaimed it. Her long, rather narrow face was gripped between her hands; her elbows rested upon the brick parapet. She gazed at that world of blood-red mists, of unshapely, grotesque buildings, of strange, tawdry colors; she listened to the medley of sounds--crude, shrill, insistent, something like the groaning of a world stripped naked--and she had all the time the air of one who hates the thing she looks upon.
Tavernake, whose curiosity concerning his companion remained unappeased, decided that the moment for speech had arrived. He took a step forward upon the soft, pulpy leads. Even then he hesitated before he finally committed himself. About his appearance little was remarkable save the general air of determination which gave character to his undistinguished features. He was something above the medium height, broad-set, and with rather more thick black hair than he knew how to arrange advantageously.
He wore a s.h.i.+rt which was somewhat frayed, and an indifferent tie; his boots were heavy and clumsy; he wore also a suit of ready-made clothes with the air of one who knew that they were ready-made and was satisfied with them. People of a nervous or sensitive disposition would, without doubt, have found him irritating but for a certain nameless gift--an almost Napoleonic concentration upon the things of the pa.s.sing moment, which was in itself impressive and which somehow disarmed criticism.
”About that bracelet!” he said at last.
She moved her head and looked at him. A young man of less a.s.surance would have turned and fled. Not so Tavernake. Once sure of his ground he was immovable. There was murder in her eyes but he was not even disturbed.
”I saw you take it from the little table by the piano, you know,”
he continued. ”It was rather a rash thing to do. Mrs. Fitzgerald was looking for it before I reached the stairs. I expect she has called the police in by now.”
Slowly her hand stole into the depths of her pocket and emerged.
Something flashed for a moment high over her head. The young man caught her wrist just in time, caught it in a veritable grip of iron. Then, indeed, the evil fires flashed from her eyes, her teeth gleamed white, her bosom rose and fell in a storm of angry, unuttered sobs. She was dry-eyed and still speechless, but for all that she was a tigress. A strangely-cut silhouette they formed there upon the housetops, with a background of empty sky, their feet sinking in the warm leads.
”I think I had better take it,” he said. ”Let go.”
Her fingers yielded the bracelet--a tawdry, ill-designed affair of rubies and diamonds. He looked at it disapprovingly.
”That's an ugly thing to go to prison for,” he remarked, slipping it into his pocket. ”It was a stupid thing to do, anyhow, you know. You couldn't have got away with it--unless,” he added, looking over the parapet as though struck with a sudden idea, ”unless you had a confederate below.”
He heard the rush of her skirts and he was only just in time. Nothing, in fact, but a considerable amount of presence of mind and the full exercise of a strength which was continually providing surprises for his acquaintances, was sufficient to save her. Their struggles upon the very edge of the roof dislodged a brick from the palisading, which went hurtling down into the street. They both paused to watch it, his arms still gripping her and one foot pressed against an iron rod. It was immediately after they had seen it pitch harmlessly into the road that a new sensation came to this phlegmatic young man. For the first time in his life, he realized that it was possible to feel a certain pleasurable emotion in the close grasp of a being of the opposite s.e.x. Consequently, although she had now ceased to struggle, he kept his arms locked around her, looking into her face with an interest intense enough, but more a.n.a.lytical than emotional, as though seeking to discover the meaning of this curious throbbing of his pulses. She herself, as though exhausted, remained quite pa.s.sive, s.h.i.+vering a little in his grasp and breathing like a hunted animal whose last hour has come. Their eyes met; then she tore herself away.
”You are a hateful person,” she said deliberately, ”a hateful, interfering person. I detest you.”
”I think that we will go down now,” he replied.
He raised the trap-door and glanced at her significantly. She held her skirts closely together and pa.s.sed through it without looking at him.
She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs. Here, however, upon the landing, she awaited him with obvious reluctance.
”Are you going to send for the police?” she asked without looking at him.
”No,” he answered.
”Why not?”
”If I had meant to give you away I should have told Mrs. Fitzgerald at once that I had seen you take her bracelet, instead of following you out on to the roof.”
”Do you mind telling me what you do propose to do, then?” she continued still without looking at him, still without the slightest note of appeal in her tone.