He had met her some years before, I don't exactly know where; and it happened that they ran against each other at the corner of Oxford Street on the night after he had spoken to me about going away. She was a slim little thing, not one you would have picked out on a stage as a beauty, but a wonderful woman for kindness, and just as sweet-tempered as any creature I ever clapped eyes on. When she came into a house it was like opening the front door to a breeze of laughter. She had a bright word and a smile for every one, just the prettiest possible smile you could see; and this was the more surprising since her face was the face of a woman who had suffered much and was suffering still. I remember once going into our little parlor, where she had been taking tea with Sir Nicolas, and finding her sitting over the fire with her head resting in her hands; and when I lighted the gas quickly, and she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. My master had gone into the other room to write a letter at the moment; and, of course, I pretended to see nothing. When he came back in a few minutes' time, the whole place was rippling with her laughter. For that was the way of her—then and always, I don't doubt—high spirits for others, and misery for herself. How many women must play a part like that!
Nicky met her just when he was most in want of a cheering word. He had not been out of the house for three days, and when he did go out it was only as far as Oxford Street to buy one of the papers which was telling some new story about him. Directly he got back I knew that something had happened. He was a different man from what he had been twenty minutes before, and the lines in his face seemed almost to have been wiped out by his walk.
"Hildebrand," he cried, pretty well before he was in the house, "ye'll lay out my clothes, please; I'm going to the theatre."
"To the theatre, sir?" exclaimed I, just as astonished as a man could be.
"'Tis so," he went on; "and I'll be supping away after. Ye may set out the glasses, and go to bed when you please. Do you remember me speaking of little Lilian More, that I used to know in Birmingham? Well, she's playing at the Royalty, and she's asked me down. I'm to sup with her and her one-armed brother-in-law at Chelsea. Sure, 'tis as good as quinine to hear her laugh, any day."
I said nothing in answer to this, though I was very glad to think that he had met some one who would take his mind off the trouble. Though I did not know Lilian More then, I began to hope he was not going to make a fool of himself, for he put on his dress-clothes anyhow, and such was not his way when he had the mind to please a woman, he being extraordinary vain, as some of my stories will tell. I knew well enough that an hour wouldn't have served him at the glass if the lady had been any thing but a friend to him—and friend he regarded her right through to the end. What it was on her side is not for me to speak about. I believe that she loved him—I shall believe that to my dying day—and for love of him she paid with her life, as my story will show.
Well, he went to the theatre, and next day he got up at twelve, and was as busy as a man could be. Almost his first words were talk about Miss More, and that he kept up all the time I was shaving him.
"She has the spirits of twenty," he said; "there was never a brighter little woman born. 'Twas good luck that sent me to Oxford Street for sure! Ye'll see Mrs. Leverty about the lunch I spoke of, though I doubt she'll do much."
"You didn't mention no lunch to me, sir," said I while I helped him into his best frock-coat. "Are you looking for any company?"
"Indeed, and I am; there's Miss More coming, and her brother-in-law, Mr. Connoley—him that has one arm. A strange man he is, too, as full of tales as a bowl of good punch of whiskey. Ye must just talk sweetly to the old lady down stairs, and see what ye can do. 'Tis not much I have at the moment, but I'll not forget her when quarter-day is here."
"We've told her that pretty often already, sir," said I. "If she gets what I've promised her, Mrs. Leverty will be a rich woman on quarter-day."
"Be hanged to that!" cried he. "Ye've a sweet way with you, and will persuade her. 'Twould never do to sit down to bread and cheese and kisses. Have I any cigarettes in the house?"
"You smoked the last in bed this morning," said I; "but we've credit at the tobacconist's, and that will be all right. Perhaps I can manage a couple of bottles of champagne from Williams. I'll tell him you've good company, and that we will recommend him. It's astonishing how many wine merchants live on recommendations, sir. One chap who can't pay recommends another who don't mean to pay, and so they keep the ball rolling. It's a beautiful trade, but I've no fancy for it myself."
He laughed at this, and I went off to get his lunch ready. It was hard work to talk over the old woman who let us the lodgings, but I made a bit of love to her, and when she was smoothed down, I got the champagne from Williams. By the time I was back again Miss More and her brother-in-law were in the sitting-room, and she was already busy putting his ornaments straight and arranging a few flowers she had brought him. It was astonishing to see how her laughing little face brightened up that dingy old apartment. She was here, there, and everywhere, like a butterfly in a garden, and I don't believe she stopped talking from the minute she entered the door until the hansom took her away again.
"Pat," I heard her say—all the women called him Pat—"what a place to get into, Pat! Do you know I've a good mind to ask you where you keep the pig?"
"And wouldn't I be glad to tell you that he was under the table," said he; "'tis not me that has the money to think of pigs just now. Bedad, it's myself I'll be taking to market if times don't change. Will ye be smoking, Mr. Connoley? We've tobacco still in the ship, and that's something."
Connoley, you must know, was the queerest fish I've ever seen out of Billingsgate. He was a long, lean man, with his left hand cut off at the wrist, and his face tattooed by the roots of his beard until it looked like the chest of a sailor. Many's the queer tale he has told me in his time. To listen to him, you would think that no such fire-eating devil ever came out of Texas. Yet I discovered afterward that he was only a barrister on half-pay, so to speak, and that he had a wife and ten children in a little slum off Sloane Street. What work he did, or in whose service he did it, the Lord only knows. I never saw him, so far as my recollection goes, busy with any thing but a pipe—a great German pipe with a cherry stem, which he carried everywhere, like other men carry a stick. An odder figure than his you would never see. The first thing he did when he came to our rooms was to change his boots for a pair of carpet-slippers. Then he stuck himself in an arm-chair by the fire, and I don't think he opened his lips for an hour and a half. Food made no difference to him. He would take a fork in his left hand, and a pipe in his right. When he did speak, it was to tell you how he killed three Bulgarians in Sofia, and had a mysterious fortune awaiting him in the East. He promised to take me there when the time was right, and I couldn't answer him for laughing.
But all this is outside my story. What I wanted to write down is that Connoley smoked, and Nicky Steele laughed, and Miss More told stories all the time our little luncheon party was on. When it was done, they went off together to the West End, and I saw nothing of my master until. one o'clock in the morning. He was lively enough then, and all his depression and melancholy seemed troubles of a year rather than that of twenty-four hours ago.
"Bedad," said he, as I mixed him a whiskey and soda and gave him his smoking-coat, "'tis the best little woman in London, she is, and the merriest. I haven't stopped laughing since I left the house; yet what I laughed at, God only knows. That's the way of a witty woman. Her laugh is like the song of a bird in spring. You don't ask why the bird sings, but you tune yourself up to the chorus. I'll