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The Master Mummer, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 2 |
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_ BOOK I CHAPTER II Why the man should have spoken to me at all I could not tell. Yet it is certain that I heard his simple and courteous inquiry with a thrill of pleasure, not unmixed with excitement. From the first moment of my arrival upon the platform I had singled him out, the only interesting figure in a crowd of nonentities. Perhaps I had lingered a little too closely by his side, had manifested more curiosity in him than was altogether seemly. At any rate, he spoke to me. "Do you know if the Continental train is punctual?" he asked. "I have no idea," I answered. "This guard would tell us, perhaps." "Signalled in, sir," the man declared. "Two minutes late only." My new acquaintance thanked me and lit a cigarette. He seemed in no hurry to depart, and I was equally anxious to engage him in conversation. For although he was dressed with the trim and quiet precision of the foreigner or man of affairs, there was something about his beardless face, his broadly humorous mouth, and easy, nonchalant bearing which suggested the person who juggled always with the ball of life. "Marvellous!" he murmured, looking after the guard. "Two minutes late from Paris--and perhaps beyond. It is a wonderful service. Now, if I had come to meet any one, and had a pressing appointment immediately afterwards, this train would have been an hour late. As it is--ah, well, one is foolish to grumble," he added, with a little shrug of the shoulders. "You, like me, then," I remarked, "are a loiterer." He flashed a keen glance upon me. "I see that I have met," he said slowly, "with someone of similar tastes to my own. I will confess at once that you are right. For myself I feel that there is nothing more interesting in this great city of yours than to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must needs find amusement somewhere." "Yet," I objected, "for a single face or personality which is suggestive, one sees a thousand of the type which only irritates--the great rank and file of the commonplace. I wonder, after all, whether the game is worth the candle." "One in a thousand," he repeated thoughtfully. "Yet think what that one may mean--a walking drama, a tragedy, a comedy, an epitome of life or death. There is more to be read in the face of that one than in the three hundred pages of the novel over which we yawn ourselves to sleep. Here is the train! Now let us watch the people together--that is, if you really mean that you have no friends to look out for." "I really mean it," I assured him. "I am here out of the idlest curiosity. I am by profession a scribbler, and I am in search of an idea." Once more he regarded me curiously. "Your name is Greatson, is it not--Arnold Greatson? You were pointed out to me once at the Vagabonds' Club, and I never forget a face. Here they come! Look! Look!" The train had come to a standstill. People were streaming out upon the platform. My companion laid his fingers upon my arm. He talked rapidly but lightly. "You see them, my young friend," he exclaimed. "Those are returning tourists from Switzerland; the thin, sharp-featured girl there, with a plaid skirt and a satchel, is an American. Heavens! how she talks! She has lost a trunk. The whole system will be turned upside down until she has found it or been compensated. The two young men with her are silent. They are wise. Alone she will prevail. You see the man of commerce; he is off already. He has been to France, perhaps to Belgium also, to buy silks and laces. And the stout old gentleman? See how happy he looks to be back again where English is spoken, and he can pay his way in half-crowns and shillings. You see the milliner's head-woman, dressed with obtrusive smartness, though everything seems a little awry. She has been over to Paris for the fashions; in a few days her firm will send out a little circular, and Hampstead or Balham will be much impressed. And--what do you make of those two, my young friend?" It seemed to me that my companion's tone was changed, that his whole appearance was different. I was suddenly conscious of an irresistible conviction. I did not believe any longer that he was, like me, an idle loiterer here. I felt that his presence had a purpose, and that it was connected in some measure with the two people to whom my attention was so suddenly drawn. They were, in that somewhat heterogeneous crowd, sufficiently noticeable. The man, although he assumed the jauntiness of youth, was past middle-age, and his mottled cheeks, his thin, watery eyes, and thick red neck were the unmistakeable hall-marks of years of self-indulgence. He was well dressed and groomed, and his demeanour towards his companion was one of deferential good humour. She, however, was a person of a very different order. She was a girl apparently between fifteen and sixteen, her figure as yet undeveloped, her dresses a little too short. Her face was small and white, her mouth had a most pathetic droop, and in her eyes--wonderful, deep blue eyes--there was a curious look of shrinking fear, beneath which flashed every now and then a gleam of positive terror. Her dark hair was arranged in a thick straight fringe upon her forehead, and in a long plait behind, after the schoolgirl fashion. Notwithstanding the _gaucherie_ of her years and her apparent unhappiness, she carried herself with a certain dignity and grace of movement which were wonderfully impressive. I watched her admiringly. "They are rather a puzzle," I admitted. "I suppose they might very well be father and daughter. It is certain that she is fresh from some convent boarding-school. I don't like the way she looks at the man, do you? It is as though she were terrified to death. I wonder if he is her father?" My companion did not answer me. He was straining forward as though anxious to hear the instructions which the man was giving to a porter about the luggage; my presence seemed to be a thing which he had wholly forgotten. The girl stood for a moment alone. More than ever one seemed to perceive in her eyes the nameless fear of the hunted animal. She looked around her furtively, yet with a strange, half-veiled wildness in her dilated eyes. I should scarcely have been surprised to have seen her make a sudden dash for freedom. Presently, however, the man, having identified all his luggage, turned towards her. "That's all right," he declared cheerfully. "Now I think that I shall take you straight away for lunch somewhere, and then we must go to the shops. Are you hungry, Isobel?" "I--I do not know," she answered, so tremulously that the words scarcely reached us, though we were standing only a few feet away. "We will soon find out," he said. "Hansom, there! Cafe Grand!" The cab drove off, and I realized then how completely for the last few moments I had forgotten my companion. I turned to look for him, and found him standing close to my side. He was apparently absorbed in thought, and seemed to have lost all interest in our surroundings. His hands were thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, and his eyes were fixed upon the ground. The stream of people from the train had melted away now, and we were almost alone upon the platform. I hesitated for a moment, and then walked slowly off. I did not wish to seem discourteous to the man with whom I had exchanged a few remarks more intimate than those which usually pass between strangers, but he had distinctly the air of one wishing to be alone, and I was unwilling to seem intrusive. I had barely taken a dozen steps, however, before I was overtaken. My companion of a few minutes before was again by my side. All traces of his recent preoccupation seemed to have vanished. He was smoking a fresh cigarette, and his bright, deep-set eyes were lit with gentle mirth. "Well, Mr. Novelist," he exclaimed, "have you succeeded? Is your languid muse stirred? Have you seen a face, a look, a gesture--anything to prick your imagination?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I have seen one thing," I answered, "which it is not easy to forget. I have seen fear, and very pathetic it was." "You mean----?" "In the face of that child, or rather girl, with that coarse-looking brute of a man." The light seemed to die out from my companion's face. Once more he became stern and thoughtful. "Yes," he agreed; "I too saw that. If one were looking for tragedy, one might perhaps find it there." We stood now together on the pavement outside the station. My companion glanced at his watch. "Come," he said; "I have a fancy that you and I might exchange a few ideas. I am a lonely man, and to-day I am not in the humour for solitude. Do me the favour to lunch with me!" I did not hesitate for a moment. It was exactly the sort of invitation which I had coveted. "I shall be delighted," I answered. "I myself," my companion continued, "have no gift for writing. My talents, such as they are, lie in a different direction. But I have been in many countries, and adventures have come to me of various sorts. I may be able even to start you on your way--if, indeed, the author of _The Lost Princess_ is ever short of an idea." I smiled. "I can assure you," I said, "that my pilgrimage this morning has no other object than to find one. I begin to fear that I have written too much lately. At any rate, the well of my inspiration, if I may use so grandiloquent a term, has run dry." He put up his stick and hailed a hansom. "After all," he said, "it is possible--yes, it is possible that you may succeed. Adventures wait for us everywhere, if only we go about in a proper frame of mind. We will lunch, I think, at the Cafe Grand." I followed my prospective host into the cab. Was it altogether a coincidence, I wondered, that we were bound for the same restaurant whither the man and the girl had preceded us a few minutes before? _ |
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