第 22 页

"'What's your price? '

"''Arf a crown.'

"'There's your money.'

"'And a gallon of beer.'

"'Well, you brute, I'll give you that as well, and I hope you'll get drunk and hit a bobby and get run in. But that's all you'll squeeze out of me, and if you won't part with the Kid for that, you and she can go to the devil your own way.'

"'Guv'nor,' said the man, ' 'and over. The Kid's yours, bones and soul; and much good may she do you.'

"And so," young Fairbairn concluded, defiantly, "I picked up a stray hansom and brought her along here; and now I'm wondering what on earth I'm going to do with her."

The child on the chair was picking chocolate almonds out of a large white satin-covered box, peering at us intently with those large dog's eyes as she ate. She reminded one of some wild animal feeding for the first time in captivity.

The three other men of the party had joined us by this, and one of them delivered himself of an opinion.

"A stray dog," said this Solon, " you can shoot, or give away if you know of any one Juggins enough to take him; a mongrel kid's different. No one would have an apparition like that for a present, and there's a prejudice against the shooting remedy as applied to this sort. Tell you what it is, old man: there's nothing for it, now you have got her, except adopting the Kid yourself. She's too old for daughter, but you might call her your aunt. Men do have juvenile aunts."

This was intended for humour. The idea of any undergraduate adopting any child was so outrageous that we howled at the funniness of it. The day before, young Fairbairn would have laughed too; but now his infancy had passed from him, and full of a new and gro tesque dignity, he chose to resent our scoffings.

"I say, you men," he drawled out, " you're rather brutes, you know. Besides, the Kid's probably listening. I believe they understand. And, by the way, don't call me Youngun."

We sobered down a little, and Carnegie remarked that it was dinner-time, and that we'd better pack her off to the workhouse.

"Workhouse?" said Fairbairn, thoughtfully. "The workhouse is a rather awful sort of hole, isn't it? What 'ud they do with the Kid there?"

"Wash it, dress it, feed it, and teach it," said Carnegie. " At the age of about thirteen it would matriculate into usefulness, probably as general slavey to a small tradesman."

"Doesn't sound very choice," said young Fairbairn, thoughtfully.

"Standards differ," remarked Carnegie, dryly. "If that Kid were turned into the humblest of slaveys, it would be promotion from her present point of view."

Here a waiter came in, announcing that dinner was ready. Young Fairbairn wanted to stay and discuss the matter further; but we pointed out to him that it was a rudeness to his guests which we couldn't allow him to commit on any terms, and so we trooped off, leaving instructions that the Kid should also dine, in the seclusion of the sitting-room hired for her.

The dinner was distinctly gorgeous, and the blue-and-gold menus had crests on them, enam elled in three colours. We were given seven dif ferent kinds of wine and four liqueurs during dinner, and four wines after, and eighty-year-old cognac with the coffee. Barbaric splendour of this variety, particularly when taken internally, induces generosity which one sometimes repents of afterwards.

Young Fairbairn held that the Parcae had picked that Kid from the gutter to become a power in the land, and we all quite agreed with him. It was suggested that one of the barmaids should take her in charge to inculcate personal cleanliness and the use of shoes without further delay; but because you cannot tip a bar-maiden, we fell back on the services of a chambermaid for this purpose. Having taken that first step, we set about plotting schemes of education and upbringing for the Kid, each man speaking confidently from the depths of his own profound inexperience. Finally, not being able to agree, we got affectionate, and left details entirely in the hands of young Fairbairn. As a preliminary we handed round the hat, making up in I.O.U.'s and currency a matter of fifty pounds. This would not cover the entire expenses of even the cheapest of the schemes propounded, but there was a sort of dim understanding that young Fairbairn would provide the balance out of his own privy purse. After this I fancy we went to bed.

II

From the undergraduate standpoint there was nothing disgraceful in the trifle which, early in the next October, cut short young Fairbairn's career of usefulness at Cambridge. Anglicised, it may pithily be spoken of as rioting with a view to the destruction of public monuments" (to wit, lamp-posts). But the deed in itself did not prove his additional fitness to remain as guardian to the Kid. And for that matter the ramifications of his subsequent insanities before the public eye here in England were even less assuring. He piled up a reputation for wildness which was little short of majestic in its weight, and he ran through a fourth-rate fortune as though it were merely pocket money.

Yet no one took away from him his guardian ship. Perhaps no one wanted to. The only other persons in the world who could feel the least interest in the Kid's welfare were we five others who had sat at meat with him on that day of the Kid's new birth; and none of us moved. Perhaps we could not summon up suf ficient interest; perhaps we feared to be let in for further expense.

Still, it must be owned that, though the Youngun did finger his own affairs with the unwisdom of the wild ass, he showed sanity when ordering the welfare of his protegee. A year at school made that young woman into another person. She had still a howling accent, but she didn't swear, and she was dropping unconventional idioms. In two years the accent had modified still further, and she was distinctly fit for civilised society. She had wonderful receptive powers. With a nice discrimination she imitated the better methods of speech and life which she saw in her new surroundings. Young Fairbairn's only lucid intervals in his career of descent were during the school's holi days. Then he took holidays too, and quiet lodgings, and in these rigidly adhered to the Kid's society.' She soon lost her scared awe of him, and called him Youngun as easily as any of us could have done it.

In ways the Kid was a very old sort of child, and to hear her read young Fairbairn lectures, and rate him generally about his misdeeds, was a moral and improving recreation. I was dining with them one day just before things came to an end. She sat at the head of the table as though she had been born in the purple. We discussed with relish the ways of riding-masters till the entries came, and then she broached the topic of finance.

She turned to me and demanded what I thought was the Youngun's latest craze.

I said I didn't know.

"Why," said she, " he's actually wanting to pack me off to a school which will cost at the very least two hundred a year, and he's as hard up as ever he can stick. I don't intend to go; they can teach me as much as ever I want where I am. 'Tisn't as if I wanted to start governessing afterwards."

"The Kiddie's present notion," said young Fairbairn, " is to turn shop assistant in a year or so's time. Humorous idea, isn't it?"

"Shop assistant," explained the Kid, gravely, "as a step to something else. I haven't quite decided yet, but I think it will be in a photographer's place. I'm not old enough yet, and I shall sponge on the Youngun for another two years; that will bring me up to sixteen, and then I'll begin. Do you know, Mr. M'Gilby, I shouldn't be surprised if I made a big fortune."

Young Fairbairn roared, but the Kid took his mockery with easy coolness. The day afterwards, I ran across to the West Indies.

I saw the Kid next some six months after this, and she commented on young Fairbairn's having received a snug Colonial appointment. Personally, I was under the impression that the individual in question had come a most tremendous mucker, and had cleared out of the country with suddenness lest worse befell; but I didn't correct her view, and when I learnt that two quarters' school fees had been paid since the exodus, I wondered much where the money had come from.

The Kid's education and other expenses footed up, at that period, to quite .180 per annum.

Young Fairbairn had to live himself, somewhere, somehow, and until he left these shores he had never done an hour's work in his life. Moreover, he was eminently unfitted, by both education and habits, for the acquisition of wealth. He had shown great ability to spend it, and converses are seldom true.

When I saw that those school fees continued to be paid, these matters furnished me with food for reflection.

III

There was certainly something about the Kid's methods which one could not help admiring. True to her previous announcement, at the age of sixteen she took herself away from school and got a job in a big photographer's shop. She had to begin at the bottom pencilling in ladies' eyebrows, I suppose, and tinkering up their back hair, and helping them to their cloaks when they had finished a sitting. Then she worked in the office; then as a retoucher, which brought her up to the age of nineteen. At this period Carnegie met her again, and was more impressed than he afterwards liked.

I had the story from his own lips.

"I was never so struck in my life," he said. "I went into the shop to get some cabinets done, and who should I see but the Kid, pretty as a picture and managing half the business. She was full of work, and couldn't talk with me then, but they closed at six, and I walked home with her. Do you know, she's actually putting away money? earns it, too. That sweep, young Fairbairn, has dropped his remittances--I never made out how he kept them going as long as he did--and she's been living entirely on her own ever since she left school."

And he said more things; but I saw there was something still further, and I pressed Carnegie and heard it.

"You're right, M'G.," he said, with a sort of groan; "I did see more of her. In fact, I stayed on in town just because I wanted to meet her every day. It's rather ludicrous, isn't it, for a man of my position to care for a girl who'd developed from that Kid? She told me so, too--I give her all credit for that. She didn't draw me on an inch, and I'm sure she was honestly sorry when I disregarded several blunt warnings and proposed to her. But she wouldn't hear of it--said she didn't care for me in that way, and wasn't going to marry me for money; said she'd been beholden enough to us men already, and was going to play the rest of the game through with her own hand. She's going to start up a place on her own hook directly, but she wouldn't even let me advance a pound or two to help her float that. She says she'll get the necessary credit in the proper quarter, and fight it through on her own business merits. I tell you, Mac, old man, she has pluck, that Kiddie of--I wish I could even say, of ours. But she isn't ours any longer. She isn't even young Fairbairn's, because he's gone under. She's just her own, and I believe, as she says, she'll see it through alone."

IV

The Kid did start that photographic business on her brazen own, and it prospered, and grew, and overflowed into sections and sub-sections, with four studios in London and six in big provincial towns. For Art with a big A the Kid cared not one little hang; but she knew what the public wanted, which is to be made to look pretty on a card for a reasonable price; and she did this for them, and that's why she caught on. The mounts of her photographs were punched with a mere surname and initials, and people took it for granted that they belonged to a man. The Kid never went out anywhere, knew no one except strictly business people, and was known by none. She made her one and only object in life the amassing of money; and because she stuck to this aim and never departed from it, she became the possessor of stocks and shares and majestic bank accounts which would have made London stare if London had known about them. At the commencement of proceedings she had fixed a pecuniary goal-post to make for; to wit, 250,000. She didn't merely hope for it; she made up her mind decidedly that she would get it; which is the way with successful people.

When the Kid had reached her mark which she did at the absurdly early age of seven and twenty she did a very peculiar thing. She chucked up the business entirely. It was put to her very plainly that, if she would still remain the nominal head, a limited liability company could be floated on most advantageous terms. But she wouldn't do this; she wanted to cut it altogether; and consequently she sold it at a painfully small price. And now that same business is going down hill every day, because the present owners don't run it with the nous which our Kid brought to bear.

I was in town and called upon the Kid just after she had completed the sale. She spoke of a great many things, and finally wound up by stating that a fortune had been left out of remorse to young Fairbairn by some one who had swindled him on the turf.

On the strength of one or two vague hints gathered from what had gone before, I spoke up.

"My dear Kiddie," I said, "you always used to be a truthful person."

"And still remain so."

"As a general thing, perhaps. But not about this legacy of the Penitent Thief. He's blatantly apocryphal."

"He shall exist, Mac, if I choose it to be so. He is anonymous and repentant and dead. Also the money will be placed to the Youngun's account, and if he doesn't use it, the whole lot will lie idle doing nothing."

"Kiddie, I'm beginning to believe, with Carnegie, that you are about the best girl in the world."

"Blarney, Mac. I tell you again that the Penitent Thief bequeathed the money."

"And I repeat that I don't believe a word of it. You're showing gratitude of a sort which I thought was only made up by the novelist folk."

"Gratitude! Rubbish."

I leaned my head over her and spoke very quietly.

"Then if it isn't gratitude, Kiddie, it's--it's the other thing."

Then, for perhaps the first time in her life, our Kid lost her coolness. She started, flushed, dropped her head against my shoulder. " Oh, Mac, old friend," she said, "if you only knew how I've felt about the Youngun all these years! It isn't common sordid gratitude alone. It is the other thing as well. I was that way from the very beginning when I sat eating those chocolate almonds out of that white satin box, and you men stood back to the fire and talked over my destiny. You thought I didn't understand. I did: I took in every word, and I remember who said what. Carnegie suggested the workhouse. You--But never mind that now, Mac: you always were a good sort. But it was the Youngun who was the best of you all. He might be a rackety fool; he might be this, that, and the other; all you say and more. Still, it was he who pulled me out of the gutter, and he who brought me up. You don't know, you can never know, what the Youngun did for me, Mac; and he thought I didn't know, didn't see half the sacrifices he made. I'm not emotional, old friend, and I never said much then, and that's perhaps why I felt all the more deeply. I've never spoken about it to a living soul yet; but you were here and and I had to tell. Somehow I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. Mac, do you know how the Youngun got money to keep me those last two years at school? He laboured with his hands, and he pawned his labour for years to come yes, Mac, sold himself into slavery, and wrote me cheery lies that he had an easy Colonial appointment. And that was a man who was under no human pledge to me whatever a man who had bought me in the street, bones and soul, for half a crown and a gallon of beer."