The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hugo, by Arnold Bennett This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Hugo A Fantasia on Modern Themes Author: Arnold Bennett Release Date: April 26, 2005 [EBook #15712] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUGO *** Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. HUGO A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES BY ARNOLD BENNETT [Transcriber's Notes: mismatched quotes have been normalized. "L'éat, c'est moi." corrected to "L'état, c'est moi." Recalicitant corrected to recalcitrant. Other oddities in spelling and punctuation have been left as in the original.] BY THE SAME AUTHOR NOVELS. A MAN FROM THE NORTH. ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS. LEONORA. A GREAT MAN. SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE. FANTASIAS. THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL. THE GATES OF WRATH. TERESA OF WATLING STREET. THE LOOT OF CITIES SHORT STORIES. TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS. BELLES LETTRES. JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN. FAME AND FICTION. HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR. THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR. DRAMA. POLITE FARCES. HUGO A FANTASIA ON MODERN THEMES BY ARNOLD BENNETT AUTHOR OF 'THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL,' 'ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS,' 'A GREAT MAN,' ETC. LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1906 CONTENTS PART I THE SEALED ROOMS I. THE DOME II. THE ESTABLISHMENT III. HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF IV. CAMILLA V. A STORY AND A DISAPPEARANCE VI. A LAPSE FROM AN IDEAL VII. POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS VIII. ORANGE-BLOSSOM IX. 'WHICH?' X. THE COFFIN PART II THE PHONOGRAPH XI. SALE XII. SAFE DEPOSIT XIII. MR. GALPIN XIV. TEA XV. RAVENGAR IN CAPTIVITY XVI. BURGLARS XVII. POLYCARP AND HAWKE'S MAN XVIII. HUSBAND AND WIFE XIX. WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID PART III THE TOMB XX. 'ARE YOU THERE?' XXI. SUICIDE XXII. DARCY XXIII. FIRST TRIUMPH OF SIMON XXIV. THE LODGING-HOUSE XXV. CHLOROFORM XXVI. SECOND TRIUMPH OF SIMON XXVII. THE CEMETERY XXVIII. BEAUTY PART I THE SEALED ROOMS HUGO CHAPTER I THE DOME He wakened from a charming dream, in which the hat had played a conspicuous part. 'I shouldn't mind having that hat,' he murmured. A darkness which no eye could penetrate surrounded him as he lay in bed. Absolute obscurity was essential to the repose of that singular brain, and he had perfected arrangements for supplying the deficiencies of Nature's night. He touched a switch, and in front of him at a distance of thirty feet the ivory dial of a clock became momentarily visible under the soft yellow of a shaded electric globe. It was fifteen minutes past six. At the same moment a bell sounded the quarter in delicate tones, which fell on the ear as lightly as dew. In the upper gloom could be discerned the contours of a vast dome, decorated in turquoise-blue and gold. He pressed a button near the switch. A portière rustled, and a young man approached his bed—a short, thin, pale, fair young man, active and deferential. 'My tea, Shawn. Draw the curtains and open the windows.' 'Yes, sir,' said Simon Shawn. In an instant the room was brilliantly revealed as a great circular apartment, magnificently furnished, with twelve windows running round the circumference beneath the dome. The virginal zephyrs of a July morning wandered in. The sun, although fierce, slanted his rays through the six eastern windows, printing a new pattern on the Tripoli carpets. Between the windows were bookcases, full of precious and extraordinary volumes, and over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school. These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music. A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the ebony instrument stood a mechanical pianoforte-player. 'I must have that hat.' He paused reflectively, leaning on one elbow, as he made the tea which Simon Shawn had brought and left on the night- table. And again, at the third cup, he repeated to himself that he must possess the hat. He had a passion for tea. His servants had received the strictest orders to supply him at early morn with materials sufficient only for two cups. Nevertheless, they were always a little generous, and, by cheating himself slightly in the first and the second cup, the votary could often, to his intense joy, conjure a third out of the pot. After glancing through the newspaper which accompanied the tea, he jumped vivaciously out of bed, veiled the splendour of his pyjamas beneath a quilted toga, and disappeared into a dressing-room, whistling. 'Shawn!' he cried out from his bath, when he heard the rattle of the tea-tray. 'Yes, sir?' 'Play me the Chopin Fantasie, will you. I feel like it.' 'Certainly, sir,' said Simon, and paused. 'Which particular one do you desire me to render, sir?' 'There is only one, Shawn, for piano solo.' 'I beg pardon, sir.' The gentle plashing of water mingled with the strains of one of the greatest of all musical compositions, as interpreted by Simon Shawn with the aid of an ingenious contrivance the patentees of which had spent twenty thousand pounds in advertising it. 'Very good, Shawn,' said Shawn's master, coming forward in his shirt-sleeves as the last echoes of a mighty chord expired under the dome. He meditatively stroked his graying beard while the pianist returned to the tea-tray. 'And, Shawn—' 'Yes, sir?' 'I want a hat.' 'A hat, sir?' 'A lady's hat.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Run down into Department 42, there's a good fellow, and see if you can find me a lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with a garland of pinkish rosebuds.' 'A lady's hat of dark-blue straw, wide brim, trimmed chiefly with pinkish rosebuds, sir?' 'Precisely. Here, you're forgetting the token.' He detached a gold medallion from his watch-chain, and handed it to Shawn, who departed with it and with the tea- tray. Two minutes later, having climbed the staircase between the inner and outer domes, he stood, fully clad in a light-gray suit, on the highest platform of the immense building, whose occidental façade is the glory of Sloane Street and one of the marvels of the metropolis. Far above him a gigantic flag spread its dazzling folds to the sun and the breeze. On the white ground of the flag, in purple letters seven feet high, was traced the single word, 'HUGO.' From his eyrie he could see half the West End of London. Sloane Street stretched north and south like a ruled line, and along that line two hurrying processions of black dots approached each other, and met and vanished below him; they constituted the first division of his army of three thousand five hundred employés. He leaned over the balustrade, and sniffed the pure air with exultant, eager nostrils. He was forty-six. He did not feel forty-six, however. In common with every man of forty-six, and especially every bachelor of forty-six, he regarded forty-six as a mere meaningless number, as a futile and even misleading symbol of chronology. He felt that Time had made a mistake—that he was not really in the fifth decade, and that his true, practical working age was about thirty. Moreover, he was in love, for the first time in his life. Like all men and all women, he had throughout the whole of his adult existence been ever secretly preoccupied with thoughts, hopes, aspirations, desires, concerning the other sex, but the fundamental inexperience of his heart was such that he imagined he was going to be happy because he had fallen in love. 'I'm glad I sent for that hat,' he said, smiling absently at the Great Wheel over a mile and a half of roofs. The key to his character and his career lay in the fact that he invariably found sufficient courage to respond to his instincts, and that his instincts were romantic. They had led him in various ways, sometimes to grandiose and legitimate triumphs, sometimes to hidden shames which it is merciful to ignore. In the main, they had served him well. It was in obedience to an instinct that he had capped the nine stories of the Hugo building with a dome and had made his bed under the dome. It was in obedience to another instinct that he had sent for the hat. 'Very pretty, isn't it?' he observed to Shawn, when Simon handed him the insubstantial and gay object and restored the gold token. They were at a window in the circular room; the couch had magically melted away. 'I admire it, sir,' said Shawn, and withdrew. 'Dolt!' he cried out upon Shawn in his heart. 'You didn't see her at work on it. As if you could appreciate her exquisite taste and the amazing skill of her blanched fingers! I alone can appreciate these things!' He hung the hat on a Louis Quatorze screen, and blissfully gazed at it, her creation. 'But I must be careful,' he muttered—'I must be careful.' A clerk entered with his personal letters. It was scarcely seven o'clock, but these fifteen or twenty envelopes had already been sorted from the three thousand missives that constituted his first post; he had his own arrangement with the Post-Office. 'So it's coming at last,' he said to himself, as he opened an envelope marked 'Private and Confidential' in red ink. The autograph note within was from Senior Polycarp, principal partner in Polycarps, the famous firm of company-promoting solicitors, and it heralded a personal visit from the august lawyer at 11.30 that day. In the midst of dictating instructions to the clerk, Mr. Hugo stopped and rang for Shawn. 'Take that back,' he commanded, indicating the hat. 'I've done with it.' 'Yes, sir.' The hat went. 'I may just as well be discreet,' his thought ran. But her image, the image of the artist in hats, illumined more brightly than ever his soul. CHAPTER II THE ESTABLISHMENT Seven years before, when, having unostentatiously acquired the necessary land, and an acre or two over, Hugo determined to rebuild his premises and to burst into full blossom, he visited America and Paris, and amongst other establishments inspected Wanamaker's, the Bon Marché, and the Magasins du Louvre. The result disappointed him. He had expected to pick up ideas, but he picked up nothing save the Bon Marché system of vouchers, by which a customer buying in several departments is spared the trouble of paying separately in each department. He came to the conclusion that the art of flinging money away in order that it may return tenfold was yet quite in its infancy. He said to himself, 'I will build a shop.' Travelling home by an indirect route, he stopped at a busy English seaport, and saw a great town-hall majestically rising in the midst of a park. The beautiful building did not appeal to him in vain. At the gates of the park he encountered a youth, who was staring at the town-hall with a fixed and fascinated stare. 'A fine structure,' Hugo commented to the youth. 'I think so,' was the reply. 'Can you tell me who is the architect?' asked Hugo. 'I am,' said the youth. 'And let me beg of you not to make any remark on my juvenile appearance. I am sick of that.' They lunched together, and Hugo learnt that the genius, after several years spent in designing the varnished interiors of public-houses, had suddenly come out first in an open competition for the town-hall; thenceforward he had thought in town-halls. 'I want a shop putting up,' said Hugo. The youth showed no interest. 'And when I say a shop,' Hugo pursued, 'I mean a shop.' 'Oh, a shop you mean!' ejaculated the youth, faintly stirred. They both spoke in italics. 'A real shop. Sloane Street. A hundred and eighty thousand superficial feet. Cost a quarter of a million. The finest shop in the world!' The youth started to his feet. 'I've never had any luck,' said he, gazing at Hugo. 'But I believe you really do understand what a shop ought to be.' 'I believe I do,' Hugo concurred. 'And I want one.' 'You shall have it!' said the youth. And Hugo had it, though not for anything like the sum he had named. The four frontages of his land exceeded in all a quarter of a mile. The frontage to Sloane Street alone was five hundred feet. It was this glorious stretch of expensive earth which inflamed the architect's imagination. 'But we must set back the façade twenty feet at least,' he said; and added, 'That will give you a good pavement.' 'Young man,' cried Hugo, 'do you know how much this land has stood me in a foot?' 'I neither know nor care,' answered the youth. 'All I say is, what's the use of putting up a decent building unless people can see it?' Hugo yielded. He felt as though, having given the genius something to play with, he must not spoil the game. The game included twelve thousand pounds paid to budding sculptors for monumental groups of a symbolic tendency; it included forests of onyx pillars and pillars of Carrara marble; it included ceilings painted by artists who ought to have been R.A.'s, but were not; and it included a central court of vast dimensions and many fountains, whose sole purpose was to charm the eye and lure the feet of customers who wanted a rest from spending money. Whenever Hugo found the game over-exciting, he soothed himself by dwelling upon the wonderful plan which the artist had produced, of his extraordinary grasp of practical needs, and his masterly solution of the various complicated problems which continually presented themselves. After the last bit of scaffolding was removed and the machine in full working order, Hugo beheld it, and said emphatically, 'This will do.' All London stood amazed, but not at the austere beauty of the whole, for only a few connoisseurs could appreciate that. What amazed London was the fabulous richness, the absurd spaciousness, the extravagant perfection of every part of the immense organism. You could stroll across twenty feet of private tessellated pavement, enter jewelled portals with the assistance of jewelled commissionaires, traverse furlong after furlong of vistas where nought but man was vile, sojourn by the way in the concert-hall, the reading-room, or the picture-gallery, smoke a cigarette in the court of fountains, write a letter in the lounge, and finally ask to be directed to the stationery department, where seated on a specially designed chair and surrounded by the most precious manifestations of applied art, you could select a threepenny box of J pens, and have it sent home in a pair-horse van. The unobservant visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive action, had combined in order to demand from Hugo, not only higher pay, but an increase in their numbers. Hugo had immediately consented, expressing regret that their desperate plight had escaped his attention. The registered telegraphic address of the establishment was 'Complete, London.' This address indicated the ideal which Hugo had turned into a reality. His imperial palace was far more than a universal bazaar. He boasted that you could do everything there, except get into debt. (His dictionary was an expurgated edition, and did not contain the word 'credit.') Throughout life's fitful fever Hugo undertook to meet all your demands. Your mother could buy your layette from him, and your cradle, soothing-syrup, perambulator, and toys; she could hire your nurse at Hugo's. Your school-master could purchase canes there. Hugo sold the material for every known game; also sweets, cigarettes, penknives, walking-sticks, moustache-forcers, neckties, and trouser-stretchers. He shaved you, and kept the latest in scents and kit-bags. He was unsurpassed for fishing-rods, motor-cars, Swinburne's poems, button- holes, elaborate bouquets, fans, and photographs. His restaurant was full of discreet corners with tables for two under rose-shaded lights. He booked seats for theatres, trains, steamers, grand-stands, and the Empire. He dealt in all stocks and shares. He was a banker. He acted as agent for all insurance companies. He would insert advertisements in the agony column, or any other column, of any newspaper. If you wanted a flat, a house, a shooting-box, a castle, a yacht, or a salmon river, Hugo could sell, or Hugo could let, the very thing. He provided strong-rooms for your savings, and summer quarters for your wife's furs; conjurers to amuse your guests after dinner, and all the requisites for your daughter's wedding, from the cake and the silk petticoats to the Viennese band. His wine-cellars and his specific for the gout were alike famous; so also was his hair-dye.... And, lastly, when the riddle of existence had become too much for your curiosity, Hugo would sell you a pistol by means of which you could solve it. And he would bury you in a manner first-class, second-class, or third-class, according to your deserts. And all these feats Hugo managed to organize within the compass of four floors, a basement, and a sub-basement. Above, were five floors of furnished and unfurnished flats. 'Will people of wealth consent to live over a shop?' he had asked himself in considering the possibilities of his palace, and he had replied, 'Yes, if the shop is large enough and the rents are high enough.' He was right. His flats were the most sumptuous and the most preposterously expensive in London; and they were never tenantless. One man paid two thousand a year for a furnished suite. But what a furnished suite! The flats had a separate and spectacular entrance on the eastern façade of the building, with a foyer that was always brilliantly lighted, and elevators that rose and sank without intermission day or night. And on the ninth floor was a special restaurant, with prices to match the rents, and a roof garden, where one of Hugo's orchestras played every fine summer evening, except Sundays. (The County Council, mistrusting this aerial combination of music and moonbeams, had granted its license only on the condition that customers should have one night in which to recover from the doubtful influences of the other six.) The restaurant and the roof-garden were a resort excessively fashionable during the season. The garden gave an excellent view of the dome, where Hugo lived. But few persons knew that he lived there; in some matters he was very secretive. That very sultry morning Hugo brooded over the face of his establishment like a spirit doomed to perpetual motion. For more than two hours he threaded ceaselessly the long galleries where the usual daily crowds of customers, sales- people, shopwalkers, inspectors, sub-managers, managers, and private detectives of both sexes, moved with a strange and unaccustomed languor in a drowsy atmosphere which no system of ventilation could keep below 75° Fahrenheit. None but the chiefs of departments had the right to address him as he passed; such was the rule. He deviated into the counting-house, where two hundred typewriters made their music, and into the annexe containing the stables and coach-houses, where scores of vans and automobiles, and those elegant coupés gratuitously provided by Hugo for the use of important clients, were continually arriving and leaving. Then he returned to the purchasing multitudes, and plunged therein as into a sea. At intervals a customer, recognising him, would nudge a friend, and point eagerly. 'That's Hugo. See him, in the gray suit?' 'What? That chap?' And they would both probably remark at lunch: 'I saw Hugo himself to-day at Hugo's.' He took an oath in his secret heart that he would not go near Department 42, the only department which had the slightest interest for him. He knew that he could not be too discreet. And yet eventually, without knowing how or why, he perceived of a sudden that his legs carried him thither. He stopped, at a loss what to do, and then, by the direct interposition of kindly Fate, a manager spoke to him.... He gazed out of the corner of his eye. Yes, she was there. He could see her through a half-drawn portière in one of the trying-on rooms. She was sitting limp on a chair, overcome by the tropic warmth of Sloane Street, with her noble head thrown back, her fine eyes half shut, and her beautiful hands lying slackly on her black apron. What an impeachment of civilization that a creature so fair and so divine should be forced to such a martyrdom! He desired ardently to run to her and to set her free for the day, for the whole summer, and on full wages. He wondered if he could trust the manager with instructions to alleviate her lot.... The next instant she sprang up, giving the indispensable smile of welcome to some customer who had evidently entered the trying-on room from the other side. The phenomenon distressed him. She disappeared from view behind the portière, and reappeared, but only for a moment, talking to a foppish old man with a white moustache. It was Senior Polycarp, the lawyer. Hugo flushed, and, abandoning the manager in the middle of a sentence, fled to his central office. He had no confidence in his self-command.... Could this be jealousy? Was it possible that he, Hugo, should be so far gone? Nay! But what was Polycarp, that old and desiccated widower, doing in the millinery department? He said he must form some definite plan, and begin by giving her a private room. CHAPTER III HUGO EXPLAINS HIMSELF 'And what,' asked Hugo, smiling faintly at Mr. Senior Polycarp—'what is your client's idea of price?' For half an hour they had been talking in the luxurious calm of Hugo's central office, which was like an island refuge in the middle of that tossing ocean of business. It overlooked the court of fountains from the second story, and the highest jet of water threw a few jewelled drops to the level of its windows. Mr. Polycarp stroked his beautiful white moustache. 'We would give,' he said in his mincing, passionless voice, 'the cost price of premises, stock, and fixtures, and for goodwill seven times your net annual profits. In addition, we should be anxious to secure your services as managing director for ten years at five thousand a year, plus a percentage of profits.' 'Hum!' 'And, of course, if you wished part of the purchase-money in shares—' 'Have you formed any sort of estimate of my annual profits?' Hugo demanded. 'Yes—a sort of estimate.' 'You have looked carefully round, eh?' 'My clients have. I myself, too, a little. This morning, for example. Very healthy, Mr. Hugo.' 'What departments did you visit this morning? Each has its busy days.' 'Grocery, electrical, and—let me see—yes, furniture.' 'Not a good day for that—too hot! Anything else?' 'No,' said Mr. Polycarp. 'Ah!... Well, and what is your clients' estimate?' 'Naturally, I cannot pretend—' 'Listen, Mr. Polycarp,' said Hugo, interrupting: 'I will be open with you.' The lawyer nodded, appreciatively benign. As usual, he kept his thoughts to himself, but he had the air of adding Hugo to the vast collection of human curiosities which he had made during a prolonged professional career. 'My net trading profits last year were £106,000. You are surprised?' 'Somewhat.' 'You expected a higher figure?' 'We did.' 'I knew it. And the figure might be higher if I chose. Only I do things in rather a royal way, you see. I pay my staff five hundred a week more than I need. And I allow myself to be cheated.' He laughed suddenly. 'Costume department, for instance. I send charming costumes out on approval, and fetch them back in two days. And the pretty girls who have taken off the tickets, and worn the garments, and carefully restored the tickets, and lied to my carmen—the pretty girls imagine they have deceived me. They have merely amused me. My detective reports are excellent reading. And, moreover, I like to think that I have helped a pretty girl to make the best of herself.' 'Immoral and unbusinesslike, Mr. Hugo.' 'Admitted. I have no doubt that if I put the screw on all round I could quite justifiably increase my profits by fifty per cent.' 'That shows what a splendid prospect a limited company would have.' 'Yes, doesn't it?' said Hugo joyously. 'But why are your clients so anxious to turn me into a limited company?' 'They see in your undertaking,' replied Polycarp, folding his thin hands, 'a legitimate opening for that joint-stock enterprise which has had such a beneficial effect on England's prosperity.' 'They would make a profit?' 'A reasonable profit. A small syndicate would be formed to buy from you, and that syndicate would sell to a public company. The usual thing.' 'And where do I come in?' 'Where do you come in, my dear Mr. Hugo? Everywhere! You would receive over a million in cash. You would have your salary and your percentage, and you would be relieved of all your present risks.' 'All my present risks?' 'You have risks, Mr. Hugo, because your business has increased so rapidly that your income is out of all proportion to your capital, which consists almost solely of buildings which you could not sell at anything like their cost price in open market, and of goodwill. Now, I ask you, what is goodwill? What is it? Under our scheme you would at once become a millionaire in actual fact.' 'Decidedly an inviting prospect,' said Hugo. He walked about the room. 'Then I may take it that you are at any rate prepared to negotiate?' the lawyer ventured, staring at the fountain. 'Mr. Polycarp,' answered Hugo, 'I must first give you a little information and ask you a few questions.' 'Certainly.' Hugo halted in front of Polycarp, close to him, and, lighting a cigar, gazed down at the frigid lawyer. 'Till the age of twenty-eight,' he began, 'I had no object in life. I was educated at Oxford. I narrowly escaped the legal profession. I had a near shave of the Church. I wasted years in aimless travel, waiting for destiny to turn up. I was conscious of no gift except a power for organizing. That gift I felt I had, and gradually I perceived that I would like to be the head of some large and complicated undertaking. I examined the latest developments of modern existence, and came to the conclusion that the direction of a thoroughly up-to-date stores would amuse me as well as anything. So I bought this concern—a flourishing little drapery and furnishing business it was then. I had exactly fifty thousand pounds —not a cent more. I paid twenty-five thousand for the business. It was too much, but when an idea takes me it takes me. I required a fine-sounding name, and I chose Hugo. It was an inspiration.' 'Then Hugo is not your—' 'It is not. My real name is Owen. But think of "Owen" on a flag, and then think of "Hugo" on a flag.' 'Exactly.' 'I began. And because I had everything to learn I lost money at first. I took lessons in my own shop, and the course cost me a hundred a week for some months. But in two years I had proved that my theory of myself was correct. In ten I had made nearly a quarter of a million. Everyone knows the history of my growth.' Polycarp nodded. 'In the eleventh year I determined to emerge from the chrysalis. I dreamed a dream of my second incarnation as universal tradesman. And the fabric of my dream, Mr. Polycarp, you behold around you.' He waved the cigar. 'It is the most colossal thing of its kind ever known.' Polycarp nodded again. 'Some people regard it as extravagant. It is. It is meant to be. Hugo's store is only my fun, my device for amusing myself. We have glorious times here, I and my ten managers—my Council of Ten. They know me; I know them. They are well paid; they are artists. A trade spirit must, of course, actuate a trade concern; but above that, controlling that, is another spirit—the spirit which has made this undoubtedly the greatest shop in the world. I cannot describe it, but it exists. All my managers, and even many of the rank and file, feel it.' 'Very interesting,' said the lawyer. 'Mr. Polycarp,' Hugo announced solemnly, 'the direction of this establishment is my life. In the midst of this lovely and interesting organism I enjoy every hour of the day. What else can I want?' Polycarp raised his eyebrows. 'Do you suppose it would add to my fun to have a million in the bank—I, with an income of two thousand a week? Do you suppose I should find it diverting to be at the beck and call of a board of directors—I, the supreme fount of authority? Do you suppose it would be my delight to consider eternally the interests of a pack of shareholders—I, who consider nothing but my fancy? And, finally, do you suppose it would amuse me, Hugo, to have "limited" put after my name? Me, limited!' 'Then,' said the lawyer slowly, 'I am to understand you are not willing—' 'My friend,' Hugo replied, dropping into his chair, 'I would sooner see the whole blessed place fall like the Bastille than see it "limited."' Polycarp rose in his turn. 'My clients,' he remarked in a peculiar tone, 'had set their minds on this affair.' 'For once in a way your clients will be disappointed,' said Hugo. 'What do you mean—"for once in a way"?' 'Who are your clients, Mr. Polycarp?' 'Since the offer is rejected, it would be useless to divulge their names.' 'I will tell you, then,' said Hugo. 'Your client—for there is only one—is Louis Ravengar. I saw it stated in a paper the other day that Louis Ravengar had successfully floated thirty-nine companies with a total capitalization of thirty millions. But my scalp will not be added to his collection.' 'I shall not disclose the identity of my clients,' Mr. Polycarp minced. 'But, speaking of Mr. Ravengar, I have noticed that what he wants he gets. The manner in which the United Coal Company, Limited, was brought to flotation by him in the teeth of the opposition of the proprietors was really most interesting.' 'You mean to warn me that there are ways of compelling a private concern to become public and joint-stock?' 'Not at all, Mr. Hugo. I am incapable of such a hint. I am sure that nothing and nobody could force you against your will. I was only mentioning the case of the Coal Company. I could mention others.' 'Don't trouble, my dear sir. Convey my decision to Louis Ravengar, and give him my compliments. We are old acquaintances.' 'You are?' The solicitor seemed astonished in his imperturbable way. 'We are.' 'I will convey your decision to my clients.' Accepting a cigar, Mr. Polycarp departed. Without giving himself time to think, Hugo went straight to Department 42, and direct to the artist in hats. She stood pale and deferential to receive him. The heat was worse than ever. 'Your name is Payne, I think?' he began. (He well knew her name was Payne.) 'Yes, sir.' Other employés in the trying-on room looked furtively round. 'About half-past eleven an old gentleman, with white moustache, came into this room, Miss Payne. You remember?' 'Yes, sir.' 'What did he want?' 'He was inquiring about a hat, sir,' she hurriedly answered. 'For a lady?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Thank you.' And he hastened back to his central office, and breathed a sigh. 'I have actually spoken to her,' he murmured. 'How charming her voice is!' But Miss Payne's physical condition desolated him. If she was so obviously exhausted at 12.30, what would she be like at the day's end?' 'I've got it!' he cried. He seized a pen and wrote: 'Notice.—The public are respectfully informed that this establishment will close to-day at two o'clock.' He rang a bell, and a messenger appeared. 'Take this to the printing-office instantly, and tell Mr. Waugh it must be posted throughout the place in half an hour.' Shortly after two o'clock Sloane Street was amazed to witness the exodus of the three thousand odd. The closure was attributed to a whim of Hugo's for celebrating some obscure anniversary in his life. Many hundreds of persons were inconvenienced, and the internal economy of scores of polite homes seriously deranged. The evening papers found a paragraph. And Hugo lost perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds net. But Hugo was happy, and he was expectant. At ten o'clock that night a youngish man, extremely like Simon Shawn, was brought by Simon into Hugo's presence under the dome. This was Simon's brother, Albert Shawn, a member of Hugo's private detective force. 'Sit down,' said Hugo. 'Well?' 'I reckon you've heard, sir,' Albert Shawn began impassively, 'the yarn that's going all round the stores.' 'I have not.' 'Everyone's whispering,' said Albert Shawn, gazing carefully at his boots, 'that Mr. Hugo has taken a kind of a fancy to Miss Payne.' Hugo restrained himself. 'Heavens!' he exclaimed, with a clever affectation of lightness, 'what next? I've only spoken to the chit once.' 'Don't I know it, sir!' 'Enough of that! What have you to report?' 'Miss Payne left at 2.15, whipped round to the flats entrance, took the lift to the top-floor, went into Mr. Francis Tudor's flat.' 'What's that you say? Whose flat?' cried Hugo. 'Mr. Francis Tudor's, sir.' Mr. Tudor was famous as the tenant of the suite rented at two thousand a year; he had a reputation for being artistic, sybaritic, and something in the inner ring of the City. 'Ah!' said Hugo. 'Perhaps she is a friend of one of Mr. Tudor's—' 'Servants,' he was about to say, but the idea of Miss Payne being on terms of equality with a menial was not pleasant to him, and he stopped. 'No, sir,' said Albert Shawn, unmoved. 'She is not, because Mr. Tudor shunted out all his servants soon afterwards. Miss Payne was shown into his study. She had her tea there, and her dinner. The Hugo half-guinea dinner was ordered late by telephone for two persons, and rushed up at eight o'clock.' 'I wonder Mr. Tudor didn't order an orchestra with the dinner,' said Hugo grimly. It was a sublime effort on his part to be his natural self. 'I waited for Miss Payne to leave,' continued Albert Shawn. 'That's why I'm so late.' 'And what time did she leave?' 'She hasn't left,' said Albert Shawn. CHAPTER IV CAMILLA Hugo dismissed Albert, with orders to continue his vigil, and then he rang for Simon. 'Do you think I might have some tea?' he asked. 'I am disposed to think you might, sir,' said Simon the cellarer. 'It is eight days since you indulged after dinner.' 'Bring me one cup, then, poured out.' He was profoundly disturbed by Albert's news. He was, in fact, miserable. He had a physical pain in the region of the heart. He wished he could step off Love as one steps off an omnibus, but he found that Love resembled an express train more than an omnibus. 'Can she be secretly married to him?' he demanded half aloud, sipping at the tea. The idea soothed him exactly as much as it alarmed him. 'The question is,' he murmured angrily, 'am I or am I not an ass?... At my age!' He felt vaguely that he was not, that he was rather a splendid and Byronic figure in the grip of tremendous emotions. Having regretfully finished the tea, he unlocked a bookcase, and picked out at random a volume of Boswell's 'Johnson.' It was the modern Oxford edition—the only edition worthy of a true amateur—bound by Rivière. Like all wise and lettered men, Hugo consulted Boswell in the grave crises of life, and to-night he happened upon the venerable Johnson's remark: 'Sir, I would be content to spend the remainder of my existence driving about in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.' He leaned back in his chair and laughed. 'In the whole history of mankind,' he asserted to the dome, 'there have only been two really sensible men. Solomon was one, and Johnson the other.' He restored the book to its place, and sat down to the piano-player, and in a moment the overture to 'Tannhäuser,' that sublime failure to prove that passion is folly, filled the vast apartment. The rushing violin passages, and every call of Aphrodite, intoxicated his soul and raised his spirits till he knew with the certainty of a fully-aroused instinct that Camilla Payne must be his. He became optimistic on all points. 'A lady insists on seeing you, sir,' said Simon Shawn, intruding upon the Pilgrims' Chant. 'She may insist,' Hugo answered lightly. 'But it all depends who she is. I'm—' He stopped, for the insisting lady had entered. It was Camilla. He jumped up. Never before in his career had he been so astounded, staggered, charmed, enchanted, dazzled, and completely silenced. 'Miss Payne?' he gasped after a prolonged pause. Simon Shawn effaced himself. 'Yes, Mr. Hugo.' 'Won't you sit down?' The singular prevalence of beautiful women in England is only appreciated properly by Englishmen who have lived abroad, and these alone know also that in no other country is beauty wasted by women as it is wasted in England. Camilla was beautiful, and supremely beautiful; she was tall, well and generously formed, graceful, fair, with fine eyes and fine dark chestnut hair; her absolutely regular features had the proud Tennysonian cast. But the coldness of Tennysonian damsels was not hers. Whether she had Latin blood in her veins, or whether Nature had peculiarly gifted her out of sheer caprice, she possessed in a high degree that indescribable demeanour, at once a defiance and a surrender, a question and an answer, a confession and a denial, which is the universal weapon of women of Latin race in the battle of the sexes, but of which Englishwomen seem to be almost deprived. 'I am Eve!' say the mocking, melting eyes of the Southern woman, and so said Camilla's eyes. No man could rest calm under that glance; no man could forbear the attempt to decipher the hidden secrecies of its message, and no man could succeed in the task. Hugo felt that he had never seen this woman before. And he might have been excused for feeling so; for instead of the black alpaca, Camilla now wore a simple but effectively charming toilette such as 'Hugo's' created and sold to women for the rapture of men in summer twilights, and over the white dress was thrown a very rich pearl-tinted opera-cloak, which only partly concealed the curves of the shoulders, and poised aslant on the glistening coiffure was the identical blue hat with its wide brims that had visited the dome seventeen hours before. The total effect was calculated, perfect, overwhelming. 'I'm sorry to disturb you, Mr. Hugo,' said Camilla, throwing back her cloak on the left side with a fine gesture, 'but I am in need of your assistance.' 'Yes?' Hugo whispered, seating himself. She had a low voice, rare in a blonde, and it thrilled him. And she was so near him in the great chamber! 'I want you to tell me what plot I am in the midst of. What is the web that has begun to surround me?' 'Plot?' stammered Hugo. 'Web?' Her eyes flashed scrutinizingly on his face. 'You have a kind heart,' she said; 'everybody can see that. Be frank. Do you know,' she asked in a different tone, 'or don't you, that you spoke very gruffly to me this morning?' 'Miss Payne,' he began, 'I assure you—' 'I thought perhaps you didn't know,' she smiled calmly. 'But you did speak very gruffly. Now, I have taken my courage in both hands in order to come to you to-night. I may have lost my situation through it—I can't tell. Whether I have lost my situation or not, I appeal to you for candour.' 'Miss Payne,' said Hugo, 'it distresses me to hear you speak of a "situation."' 'And why?' 'You know why,' he answered. 'A woman as distinguished as you are must be perfectly well aware how distinguished she is, and perfectly capable, let me add, of hiding her distinction from the common crowd. For what purpose of your own you came into my shop, I can't guess. But necessity never forced you there. No doubt you meant to avoid getting yourself talked about; nevertheless, you have got yourself talked about.' 'Indeed!' She looked at him sideways. 'Yes,' Hugo went on; 'several thousands of commonplace persons are saying that I have fallen in love with you. Do you think it's true, this rumour?' 'How can I tell you?' said she. 'Well, it is true!' he cried. 'It's doubly and trebly true! It's the greatest truth in the world at the present moment. It is one of those truths that a believer can't keep to himself.' He paused, expectant. 'A woman less fine than you would have protested against this sudden avowal, which is only too like me—too like Hugo. You don't protest. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you knew. You asked for candour. You have it. I love you.' 'Then, why,' she demanded firmly, with a desolating smile—'why do you have me followed by your private detective?' Hugo was caught in a trap. He had hesitated long before instructing Albert Shawn to shadow Camilla, but in the end his desire for exact knowledge concerning her, and his possession of a corps of detectives ready to hand, had proved too much for his scruples. He had, however, till that day discovered little of importance for his pains—merely that her parents, who were dead, had kept a small milliner's shop in Edgware Road, that her age was twenty-five, that she had come to his millinery department with a good testimonial from an establishment in Walham Green, that she lived in lodgings at Fulham and saw scarcely anyone, and that she had once been a typewriter. 'The fact is—' He stopped, perceiving that the 'fact' would not do at all, and that to explain to the woman you love why you have spied on her is a somewhat nice operation. 'Is that the way you usually serve us?' pursued Camilla, with a strange emphasis on the word 'us' which maddened him. 'The fact is, Miss Payne,' he said boldly, sitting down as soon as he had invented the solution of the difficulty, 'you will not deny that this afternoon and this evening you have been in a position of some slight delicacy. What your relations are with Mr. Francis Tudor I have never sought to inquire, but I have always doubted the bonâ fides of Mr. Francis Tudor. And to-day I have simply—if I may say so—watched over you. If my man has been clumsy, I beg your forgiveness. I beg you to believe in my deep respect for you.' The plain sincerity of his accent and of his gaze touched and convinced her. She looked at her feet, white-shod on the crimson carpet. 'Ah!' she murmured, as if to herself, mournfully, 'why don't you ask me how it is that I, to whom you pay thirty-six shillings a week, am wearing these clothes? Surely you must think that an employé who—' 'At this hour you are not an employé,' he interrupted here. 'You visit me of your own free will to demand an explanation of matters which are quite foreign to our business relations. I give it you. Beyond that I permit myself no thoughts except such as any man is entitled to concerning any woman. You used the word "plot" when you came in. What did you refer to? If Mr. Tudor has—' He could not proceed. 'As I left Mr. Tudor's flat a few minutes since,' said Camilla quietly, producing a revolver from the folds of her cloak, 'I picked up this. It may or may not be loaded. Perhaps you can tell me.' He seized the weapon, and impetuously aimed at a heavy Chinese gong across the room, and pulled the trigger several times. The revolver spoke noisily, and the gong sounded and swung. 'You see!' he exclaimed. 'Pardon the din. I did it without thinking.' 'Did you call, sir?' asked Simon Shawn, appearing in the doorway. Hugo extirpated him with a look. 'How cool you are!' he resumed to Camilla, and laid down the revolver. 'No, you aren't! By Jove, you aren't! What is it? What have you been through? What is this plot? A plot—in my building—and against you! Tell me everything— everything! I insist.' 'Shall you believe all that I say?' she ventured. 'Yes,' he said, 'all.' He saw with intense joy that he was going to be friendly with her. It seemed too good to be true. CHAPTER V A STORY AND A DISAPPEARANCE 'Perhaps I ought to begin by informing you,' said Camilla Payne, 'that I have known Mr. Francis Tudor for about two years. Always he has been very nice to me. Once he asked me to marry him—quite suddenly—it was a year ago. I refused because I didn't care for him. I then saw nothing of him for some time. But after I entered your service here, he came across me again by accident. I did not know until lately that he had one of your flats. He was very careful, very polite, timid, cautious—but very obstinate, too. He invited me to call on him at his rooms, and to bring any friends I liked. Of course, it was a stupidity on his part, but, then, what else could he do? A man who wants to cultivate relations with a homeless shopgirl is rather awkwardly fixed.' 'I wish to Heaven you would not talk like that, Miss Payne!' said Hugo, interrupting her impatiently. 'I am merely telling you these things so that you may understand my position,' Camilla coldly replied. 'Do you imagine that I am amusing myself?' 'Go on, go on, I beg,' he urged, with a gesture of apology. 'Naturally, I declined the invitation. Then next I received a letter from him, in which he said that unless I called on him, or agreed to meet him in some place where we could talk privately and at length, he should kill himself within a week. And he added that death was perhaps less to him than I imagined. I believed that letter. There was something about it that touched me.' 'And so you decided to yield?' 'I did yield. I felt that if I was to trust him at all, I might as well trust him fully, and I called at his flat this afternoon alone. He was evidently astonished to see me at that hour, so I explained to him that you had closed early for some reason or other.' 'Exactly,' said Hugo. He insisted on giving me tea. I was treated, in fact, like a princess; but during tea he said nothing to me that might not have been said before a roomful of people. After tea he left me for a few moments, in order, as he said, to give some orders to his servants. Up till then he had been extremely agitated, and when he returned he was even more agitated. He walked to and fro in that lovely drawing-room of his—just as you were doing here not long since. I was a little afraid.' 'Afraid of what?' demanded Hugo. 'I don't know—of him, lest he might do something fatal, irretrievable; something—I don't know. And then, being alone with him in that palace of a place! Well, he burst out suddenly into a series of statements about himself, and about his future, and his intentions, and his feelings towards me. And these statements were so extraordinary and so startling that I could not think he had invented them. I believed them, as I had believed in the sincerity of his threat to kill himself if I would not listen to him.' 'And what were they—these statements?' Hugo inquired. Camilla waved aside the interruptions, and continued: '"Now," he said, "will you marry me? Will you marry me now?"' She paused and glanced at Hugo, who observed that her eyes were filling with tears. 'And then?' murmured Hugo soothingly. 'Then I agreed to marry him.' And with these words she cried openly. 'If anyone had told me beforehand,' she resumed, 'that I should be so influenced by a man's—a man's acting, I would have laughed. But I was—I was. He succeeded completely.' 'You have not said what these extraordinary statements were,' Hugo insisted. 'Don't ask me,' she entreated, drying her eyes. 'It is enough that I was hoodwinked. If you have had no hand in this plot, don't ask me. I am too ashamed, too scornful of my credulity, to repeat them. You would laugh.' 'Should I?' said Hugo, smiling gravely. 'What occurred next?' 'The next step was that Mr. Tudor asked me to accompany his housekeeper to the housekeeper's room, and on the other side of the passage from the drawing-room I was to dine with him. The housekeeper is a Mrs. Dant, a kind, fat, lame old woman, and she produced this cloak and this hat, and so on, and said that they were for me! I was surprised, but I praised them and tried them on for a moment. You must remember that I was his affianced wife. I talked with Mrs. Dant, and prepared myself for dinner, and then I went back to the drawing-room, and found Mr. Tudor ready for dinner. I asked him why he had got the clothes, and he said he had got them this very morning merely on the chance of my accepting his proposal out of pity for him. And I believed that, too.' There was a silence. 'But that is not the end?' Hugo encouraged her. 'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'it is useless, all this story! And the episode is finished! When I came in here I was angry; I suspect you of some complicity. But I suspect you no longer, and I see now that the wisest course for a woman such as I after such an adventure is to be mute about it, and to forget it.' 'No,' he said; 'you are wrong. Trust me. I entreat.' Camilla bit her lip. 'We went into the dining-room, and dinner was served,' she recommenced, 'and there I had my first shock, my first doubt, for one of the two waiters was your spy.' 'Shawn! My detective!' Hugo was surprised to find that Albert, almost a novice in his vocation, had contrived to be so insinuating. 'And he made a very bad waiter indeed,' Camilla added. 'I regret it,' said Hugo. 'He meant well.' 'When the waiters had gone I asked Mr. Tudor if they were his own servants. He hesitated, and then admitted frankly that they were not. He told me that his servants were out on leave for the evening. "You don't mean to say that I am now alone with you in the flat!" I protested. "No," he said quickly. "Mrs. Dant is always in her room across the passage. Don't be alarmed, dearest." His tone reassured me. After coffee, he took my photograph by flashlight. He printed one copy at once, and then, after we had both been in the dark-room together, he returned there to get some more printing-paper. While he was absent I went into the housekeeper's room for a handkerchief which I...