The Tempting of Tavernake

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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 drawingroom 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 masses 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-class
dressmaker, were shabby and out of fashion, 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 attitude, 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 shirt 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 passing 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
assurance 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
sex. 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 analytical than emotional, as
though seeking to discover the meaning of this curious throbbing
of his pulses. She herself, as though exhausted, remained quite
passive, shivering 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 passed 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.

He withdrew the bracelet from his pocket and balanced it upon his
finger.

"I am going to say that I took it for a joke," he declared.

She hesitated.

"Mrs. Fitzgerald's sense of humor is not elastic," she warned
him.

"She will be very angry, of course," he assented, "but she will
not believe that I meant to steal it."

The girl moved slowly a few steps away.

"I suppose that I ought to thank you," she said, still with
averted face and sullen manner. "You have really been very
decent. I am much obliged."

"Are you not coming down?" he asked.

"Not at present," she answered. "I am going to my room."

He looked around the landing on which they stood, at the
miserable, uncarpeted floor, the ill-painted doors on which the
long-forgotten varnish stood out in blisters, the jumble of
dilapidated hot-water cans, a mop, and a medley of brooms and
rags all thrown down together in a corner.

"But these are the servants' quarters, surely," he remarked.

"They are good enough for me; my room is here," she told him,
turning the handle of one of the doors and disappearing. The
prompt turning of the key sounded, he thought, a little
ungracious.

With the bracelet in his hand, Tavernake descended three more
flights of stairs and entered the drawing-room of the private
hotel conducted by Mrs. Raithby Lawrence, whose husband, one
learned from her frequent reiteration of the fact, had once
occupied a distinguished post in the Merchant Service of his
country. The disturbance following upon the disappearance of the
bracelet was evidently at its height. There were at least a
dozen people in the room, most of whom were standing up. The
central figure of them all was Mrs. Fitzgerald, large and florid,
whose yellow hair with its varied shades frankly admitted its
indebtedness to peroxide; a lady of the dashing type, who had
once made her mark in the music-halls, but was now happily
married to a commercial traveler who was seldom visible. Mrs.
Fitzgerald was talking.

"In respectable boarding-houses, Mrs. Lawrence," she declared
with great emphasis, "thefts may sometimes take place, I will
admit, in the servants' quarters, and with all their temptations,
poor things, it's not so much to be wondered at. But no such
thing as this has ever happened to me before--to have jewelry
taken almost from my person in the drawing-room of what should be
a well-conducted establishment. Not a servant in the room,
remember, from the moment I took it off until I got up from the
piano and found it missing. It's your guests you've got to look
after, Mrs. Lawrence, sorry to say it though I am."

Mrs. Lawrence managed here, through sheer loss of breath on the
part of her assailant, to interpose a tearful protest.

"I am quite sure," she protested feebly, "that there is not a
person in this house who would dream of stealing anything,
however valuable it was. I am most particular always about
references."

"Valuable, indeed!" Mrs. Fitzgerald continued with increased
volubility. "I'd have you understand that I am not one of those
who wear trumpery jewelry. Thirty-five guineas that bracelet
cost me if it cost a penny, and if my husband were only at home I
could show you the receipt."

Then there came an interruption of almost tragical interest.
Mrs. Fitzgerald, her mouth still open, her stream of eloquence
suddenly arrested, stood with her artificially darkened eyes
riveted upon the stolid, self-composed figure in the doorway.
Every one else was gazing in the same direction. Tavernake was
holding the bracelet in the palm of his hand.

"Thirty-five guineas!" he repeated. "If I had known that it was
worth as much as that, I do not think that I should have dared to
touch it."

"You--you took it!" Mrs. Fitzgerald gasped.

"I am afraid," he admitted, "that it was rather a clumsy joke. I
apologize, Mrs. Fitzgerald. I hope you did not really imagine
that it had been stolen."

One was conscious of the little thrill of emotion which marked
the termination of the episode. Most of the people not directly
concerned were disappointed; they were being robbed of their
excitement, their hopes of a tragical denouement were frustrated.
Mrs. Lawrence's worn face plainly showed her relief. The lady
with the yellow hair, on the other hand, who had now succeeded in
working herself up into a towering rage, snatched the bracelet
from the young man's fingers and with a purple flush in her
cheeks was obviously struggling with an intense desire to box his
ears.

"That's not good enough for a tale!" she exclaimed harshly. "I
tell you I don't believe a word of it. Took it for a joke,
indeed! I only wish my husband were here; he'd know what to do."

"Your husband couldn't do much more than get your bracelet back,
ma'am," Mrs. Lawrence replied with acerbity. "Such a fuss and
calling every one thieves, too! I'd be ashamed to be so
suspicious."

Mrs. Fitzgerald glared haughtily at her hostess.

"It's all very well for those that don't possess any jewelry and
don't know the value of it, to talk," she declared, with her eyes
fixed upon a black jet ornament which hung from the other woman's
neck. "What I say is this, and you may just as well hear it from
me now as later. I don't believe this cock-and-bull story of Mr.
Tavernake's. Them as took my bracelet from that table meant
keeping it, only they hadn't the courage. And I'm not referring
to you, Mr. Tavernake," the lady continued vigorously, "because I
don't believe you took it, for all your talk about a joke. And
whom you may be shielding it wouldn't take me two guesses to
name, and your motive must be clear to every one. The common
hussy!"

"You are exciting yourself unnecessarily, Mrs. Fitzgerald,"
Tavernake remarked. "Let me assure you that it was I who took
your bracelet from that table."

Mrs. Fitzgerald regarded him scornfully.

"Do you expect me to believe a tale like that?" she demanded.

"Why not?" Tavernake replied. "It is the truth. I am sorry that
you have been so upset--"

"It is not the truth!"

More sensation! Another unexpected entrance! Once more interest
in the affair was revived. After all, the lookers-on felt that
they were not to be robbed of their tragedy. An old lady with
yellow cheeks and jet black eyes leaned forward with her hand to
her ear, anxious not to miss a syllable of what was coming.
Tavernake bit his lip; it was the girl from the roof who had
entered the room.

"I have no doubt," she continued in a cool, clear tone, "that
Mrs. Fitzgerald's first guess would have been correct. I took
the bracelet. I did not take it for a joke, I did not take it
because I admire it--I think it is hideously ugly. I took it
because I had no money."

She paused and looked around at them all, quietly, yet with
something in her face from which they all shrank. She stood
where the light fell full upon her shabby black gown and
dejected-looking hat. The hollows in her pale cheeks, and the
faint rims under her eyes, were clearly manifest; but
notwithstanding her fragile appearance, she held herself with
composure and even dignity. Twenty--thirty seconds must have
passed whilst she stood there, slowly finishing the buttoning of
her gloves. No one attempted to break the silence. She
dominated them all--they felt that she had something more to say.
Even Mrs. Fitzgerald felt a weight upon her tongue.

"It was a clumsy attempt," she went on. "I should have had no
idea where to raise money upon the thing, but I apologize to you,
nevertheless, Mrs. Fitzgerald, for the anxiety which my removal
of your valuable property must have caused you," she added,
turning to the owner of the bracelet, whose cheeks were once more
hot with anger at the contempt in the girl's tone. "I suppose I
ought to thank you, Mr. Tavernake, also, for your well-meant
effort to preserve my character. In future, that shall be my
sole charge. Has any one anything more to say to me before I
go?"

Somehow or other, no one had. Mrs. Fitzgerald was irritated and
fuming, but she contented herself with a snort. Her speech was
ready enough as a rule, but there was a look in this girl's eyes
from which she was glad enough to turn away. Mrs. Lawrence made
a weak attempt at a farewell.

"I am sure," she began, "we are all sorry for what's occurred and
that you must go--not that perhaps it isn't better, under the
circumstances," she added hastily. "As regards--"

"There is nothing owing to you," the girl interrupted calmly.
"You may congratulate yourself upon that, for if there were you
would not get it. Nor have I stolen anything else."

"About your luggage?" Mrs. Lawrence asked.

"When I need it, I will send for it," the girl replied.

She turned her back upon them and before they realized it she was
gone. She had, indeed, something of the grand manner. She had
come to plead guilty to a theft and she had left them all feeling
a little like snubbed children. Mrs. Fitzgerald, as soon as the
spell of the girl's presence was removed, was one of the first to
recover herself. She felt herself beginning to grow hot with
renewed indignation.

"A thief!" she exclaimed looking around the room. "Just an
ordinary self-convicted thief! That's what I call her, and
nothing else. And here we all stood like a lot of ninnies. Why,
if I'd done my duty I'd have locked the door and sent for a
policeman."

"Too late now, anyway," Mrs. Lawrence declared. "She's gone for
good, and no mistake. Walked right out of the house. I heard
her slam the front door."

"And a good job, too," Mrs. Fitzgerald armed. "We don't want any
of her sort here--not those who've got things of value about
them. I bet she didn't leave America for nothing."

A little gray-haired lady, who had not as yet spoken, and who
very seldom took part in any discussion at all, looked up from
her knitting. She was desperately poor but she had charitable
instincts.

"I wonder what made her want to steal," she remarked quietly.

"A born thief," Mrs. Fitzgerald declared with conviction,--"a
real bad lot. One of your sly-looking ones, I call her."

The little lady sighed.

"When I was better off," she continued, "I used to help at a soup
kitchen in Poplar. I have never forgotten a certain look we used
to see occasionally in the faces of some of the men and women. I
found out what it meant--it was hunger. Once or twice lately I
have passed the girl who has just gone out, upon the stairs, and
she almost frightened me. She had just the same look in her
eyes. I noticed it yesterday--it was just before dinner, too
-- but she never came down."

"She paid so much for her room and extra for meals," Mrs.
Lawrence said thoughtfully. "She never would have a meal unless
she paid for it at the time. To tell you the truth, I was
feeling a bit uneasy about her. She hasn't been in the
diningroom for two days, and from what they tell me there's no
signs of her having eaten anything in her room. As for getting
anything out, why should she? It would be cheaper for her here
than anywhere, if she'd got any money at all."

There was an uncomfortable silence. The little old lady with the
knitting looked down the street into the sultry darkness which
had swallowed up the girl.

"I wonder whether Mr. Tavernake knows anything about her," some
one suggested.

But Tavernake was not in the room.

CHAPTER II

A TETE-A-TETE SUPPER

Tavernake caught her up in New Oxford Street and fell at once
into step with her. He wasted no time whatever upon
preliminaries.

"I should be glad," he said, "if you would tell me your name."

Her first glance at him was fierce enough to have terrified a
different sort of man. Upon Tavernake it had absolutely no
effect.

"You need not unless you like, of course," he went on, "but I
wish to talk to you for a few moments and I thought that it would
be more convenient if I addressed you by name. I do not remember
to have heard it mentioned at Blenheim House, and Mrs. Lawrence,
as you know, does not introduce her guests."

By this time they had walked a score or so of paces together.
The girl, after her first furious glance, had taken absolutely no
notice of him except to quicken her pace a little. Tavernake
remained by her side, however, showing not the slightest sense of
embarrassment or annoyance. He seemed perfectly content to wait
and he had not in the least the appearance of a man who could be
easily shaken off. From a fit of furious anger she passed
suddenly and without warning to a state of half hysterical
amusement.

"You are a foolish, absurd person," she declared. "Please go
away. I do not wish you to walk with me."

Tavernake remained imperturbable. She remembered suddenly his
intervention on her behalf.

"If you insist upon knowing," she said, "my name at Blenheim
House was Beatrice Burnay. I am much obliged to you for what you
did for me there, but that is finished. I do not wish to have
any conversation with you, and I absolutely object to your
company. Please leave me at once."

"I am sorry," he answered, "but that is not possible."

"Not possible?" she repeated, wonderingly.

He shook his head.

"You have no money, you have eaten no dinner, and I do not
believe that you have any idea where you are going," he declared,
deliberately.

Her face was once more dark with anger.

"Even if that were the truth," she insisted, "tell me what
concern it is of yours? Your reminding me of these facts is
simply an impertinence."

"I am sorry that you look upon it in that light," he remarked,
still without the least sign of discomposure. "We will, if you
do not mind, waive the discussion for the moment. Do you prefer
a small restaurant or a corner in a big one? There is music at
Frascati's but there are not so many people in the smaller ones."

She turned half around upon the pavement and looked at him
steadfastly. His personality was at last beginning to interest
her. His square jaw and measured speech were indices of a
character at least unusual. She recognized certain invincible
qualities under an exterior absolutely commonplace.

"Are you as persistent about everything in life?" she asked him.

"Why not?" he replied. "I try always to be consistent."

"What is your name?"

"Leonard Tavernake," he answered, promptly.

"Are you well off--I mean moderately well off?"

"I have a quite sufficient income."

"Have you any one dependent upon you?"

"Not a soul," he declared. "I am my own master in every sense of
the word."

She laughed in an odd sort of way.

"Then you shall pay for your persistence," she said, ---"I mean
that I may as well rob you of a sovereign as the restaurant
people."

"You must tell me now where you would like to go to," he
insisted. "It is getting late."

"I do not like these foreign places," she replied. "I should
prefer to go to the grill-room of a good restaurant."

"We will take a taxicab," he announced. "You have no objection?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"If you have the money and don't mind spending it," she said, "I
will admit that I have had all the walking I want. Besides, the
toe of my boot is worn through and I find it painful. Yesterday
I tramped ten miles trying to find a man who was getting up a
concert party for the provinces."

"And did you find him?" he asked, hailing a cab.

"Yes, I found him," she answered, indifferently. "We went
through the usual programme. He heard me sing, tried to kiss me
and promised to let me know. Nobody ever refuses anything in my
profession, you see. They promise to let you know."

"Are you a singer, then, or an actress?"

"I am neither," she told him. "I said 'my profession' because it
is the only one to which I have ever tried to belong. I have
never succeeded in obtaining an engagement in this country. I do
not suppose that even if I had persevered I should ever have had
one."

"You have given up the idea, then," he remarked.

"I have given it up," she admitted, a little curtly. "Please do
not think, because I am allowing you to be my companion for a
short time, that you may ask me questions. How fast these taxies
go!"

They drew up at their destination--a well-known restaurant in
Regent Street. He paid the cabman and they descended a flight of
stairs into the grill-room.

"I hope that this place will suit you," he said. "I have not
much experience of restaurants."

She looked around and nodded.

"Yes," she replied, "I think that it will do."

She was very shabbily dressed, and he, although his appearance
was by no means ordinary, was certainly not of the type which
inspires immediate respect in even the grill-room of a
fashionable restaurant. Nevertheless, they received prompt and
almost ofcious service. Tavernake, as he watched his companion's
air, her manner of seating herself and accepting the attentions
of the head waiter, felt that nameless impulse which was
responsible for his having followed her from Blenheim House and
which he could only call curiosity, becoming stronger. An
exceedingly matter-of-fact person, he was also by instinct and
habit observant. He never doubted but that she belonged to a
class of society from which the guests at the boarding-house
where they had both lived were seldom recruited, and of which he
himself knew little. He was not in the least a snob, this young
man, but he found the fact interesting. Life with him was
already very much the same as a ledger account--a matter of
debits and credits, and he had never failed to include among the
latter that curious gift of breeding for which he himself, denied
it by heritage, had somehow substituted a complete and
exceedingly rare naturalness.

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