Captains of souls

by Edgar Wallace

XI

Evie Colebrook came home at an unusually early hour and the girl on the bed looked up in surprise.

"I heard mother talking to somebody, but I had no idea it was you, Evie. What is the matter—has your swain another engagement?"

"My swain, as you call him, is working tonight," said Evie, "and it is so hot that I thought I would come home and get into my pajamas."

"Mother has been talking about your eccentric tastes, with particular reference to pajamas," said Christina. "She thinks that pajamas are indelicate. In her young days girls weren't supposed to have legs."

"Father wore pajamas."

"Father also drank. Mother thinks that the pajamas had something to do with it. She also thinks that book reading was a contributary cause."

"What terrible jaw-breaking words you use, Christina. Father did read a lot, didn't he?"

"Father was a student. He studied, amongst other things, race horses. Do you know who father was?" Evie stared at her expectantly.

"He was a carpenter, wasn't he?"

"He was the youngest son of the youngest son of a lord. Take that look off your face, Evie; there is no possibility of our being the rightful heiresses of the old Hall. But it is true; he had a coat of arms."

"Then why did he marry mother?"

"Why do people marry anybody?" demanded Christina. "Why did grandfather marry grandmother? Besides, why shouldn't he have married mother? He was only a cabinet maker when he met her. She has told me so. And his father was a parson, and his mother the Honorable Mrs. Colebrook, the daughter of Lord Fanshelm. There is blue blood in your veins, Evie."

"But really, Christina," Evie's voice was eager and her eyes bright, "you are not fooling; is it true? It makes such an awful difference—"

Christina groaned. "My God, what have I said?" she asked dramatically.

"But really, Christina?"

"You are related so distantly to nobility that you can hardly see it without a telescope," said Christina, "I thought you knew. Mother used always to be talking about it at one time. My dear, what difference does it make?"

Evie was silent.

"A man doesn't love a girl any more because she has a fifth cousin in the House of Lords; he doesn't love her any less because her mother takes in laundry, and if her lowly origin stands in the way of his marriage, and he finds that really she is the great grandaughter of a princess, he cannot obliterate her intermediate relations."

"What's 'intermediate'?"

"Well, mother and father, and the parson who got into trouble through drinking, and his wife who ran away with a groom."

Evie drew a long sigh.

"Where is your swain?" she asked. "I don't like that word 'swain,' it sounds so much like 'swine'."

"I hope you will never see the resemblance any clearer," said Christina. "My swain is working, too. I shouldn't take off that petticoat, if I were you, Evie; he may come in and you can see your knickers through that dressing-gown."

"Christina!"

"I hate mentioning knickers to a pure-minded girl," said Christina, fanning herself with a paper, "but sisters have no secrets from one another. Ambrose, if that is who you mean, is very busy these days."

"Do you call him Ambrose to his face?" asked Evie curiously, and her sister snorted.

"Would you call Julius Cæsar 'Bill' or 'Juley' to his face; of course not. But I can't think of him as Ambrose Sault, Esquire, can I?"

"I don't understand him," said Evie. "He seems so dull and quiet."

"I'll get him to jazz with you the next time you're home early," said Christina sardonically.

"Don't be so silly. Naturally he isn't very lively being so old."

"Old! He is lively enough to carry me downstairs as though I were a pillow and wheel me for hours at a time in that glorious chariot he got for me! And he is old enough—but what is the good of talking to you, Evie?"

Presently her irritation passed and she laughed. "Tell me the news of the great world, Evie; what startling happenings have there been in Knightsbridge?"

"I can tell you something about Mr. Sault you don't know," Evie was piqued into saying. "He has been in prison." Christina turned on her side with a wince of pain.

"Say that again."

"He has been in prison." A long pause.

"I hoped he had," Christina said at last. "I believe in imprisonment as an essential part of a man's education—who told you?"

"I'm not going to say."

"Ronald Morelle—aha!" She pointed an accusing finger at the dumbfounded Evie.

"I know your guilty secret! The 'Ronnie' you babble about in your sleep is Ronnie Morelle!"

"Wh—what makes you—it isn't true—it is a damned lie—!"

"Don't be profane, Evie. That is the worst of druggists' shops, you pick up such awful language. Mother says you can't work amongst pills without getting ideas in your head."

"I never talk in my sleep—and I don't know Ronnie Morelle—who is he?"

Evie's ignorance was badly assumed. Christina became very thoughtful. She lay with her hand under her cheek, her gray eyes searching her sister's face.

"Would Ronnie be impressed by your distant relationship with nobility?" she asked quietly. "Would it make such an awful difference if he knew about the coat of arms in father's Bible? I don't think it would. If it did, he isn't worth worrying about. What is he?"

"Didn't Mr. Sault tell you?" asked Evie hotly. "He seems to spend his time gossiping about people who are a million times better than him—"

"Than he," murmured Christina, her eyes closed.

"He is a nasty scandal-mongering old man! I hate him!"

"He didn't say that Ronnie had been in prison," Christina's voice was gentle. "All that he said was that the only 'Ronnie' he knew was Ronald Morelle. He did not even describe him or give him a character."

"How absurd, Christina! As if old Sault could give Mr. Morelle 'a character'! One is a gentleman and the other is an old fossil!"

"Old age is honorable," said Christina tolerantly, "the arrogance of you babies!"

"You're half in love with him!"

"Wholly," nodded Christina. "I love his mind and his soul. I am incapable of any other kind of love. I never want a man to draw my flaming head to his shoulder and whisper, that until he met me, the world was a desert, and food didn't taste good. It is because Ambrose Sault never paws me or holds my hand or kisses me on the brow in the manner of a father who hopes to be something closer, that I love him. And I shall love him through eternity. When I am dead and he is dead. And I want nothing more than this. If he were to die tomorrow, I should not grieve because his flesh means nothing to me. The thing he gives me is everlasting. That is where I am better off than you, Evie. You have nothing but what you give yourself. You think he gives you these wonderful memories which keep you awake at nights. You think it is his love for you that thrills you. It isn't that, Evie. Your love is the love of the martyr who finds an ecstatic joy in his suffering."

Groping toward understanding, Evie seized this illustration. "God loves the martyr—it isn't one-sided," she quavered and Christina nodded.

"That is true, or it may be true. Does your god love you?"

"It is blasphemous to—to talk of Ronnie as God."

"God with a small 'g'."

"It is blasphemous anyhow. Ronnie does love me. He hasn't silly and conventional ideas about—about love as most people have. He is much broader-minded, but he does love me. I know it. A girl knows when a man loves her."

"That is one of the things she doesn't know," interrupted Christina. "She knows when he wants her, but she doesn't know how continually he will want her. He is unconventional, too? And broad-minded? The broad-minded are usually people who take a generous view of their own shortcomings. Is he one of those unconventional souls who think that marriage is a barbarous ceremony?"

"Who told you that?" Evie was breathless from surprise.

"It isn't an unique view—broad-minded men often try to get narrow-minded girls to see that standpoint."

"You're cynical—I hate cynical people," said Evie, throwing herself on her bed, "and you have all your ideas of life out of books, and the rotten people who come in here moaning about their troubles. You can't believe writers—not some writers—there are some, of course, that give just a true picture of life—not in books, but in articles in the newspapers. They just seem to know what people are thinking and feeling, and express themselves wonderfully."

"Ah—so Ronnie writes for the newspapers, does he?"

Evie's indignant retort was checked by a knock on the door.

"That is Mr. Sault—can he come in?"

"I suppose so," answered Evie grudgingly. She got off the bed and tied her dressing-gown more tightly. "I don't really show my legs through this kimono do I, Christina?"

"Not unless you want to—come in!"

Ambrose Sault looked tired. "Just looked in before I went to my room," he said. "Good evening, Evie."

"Good evening, Mr. Sault."

Evie's dressing-gown was wrapped so tightly as to give her a mummified appearance.

"I saw the osteopath today and I've arranged for him to come and talk to you tomorrow," said Ambrose, sitting on the edge of the bed at the inviting gesture of Christina's hand.

"I will parley with him," she nodded. "I don't believe that he will make a scrap of difference. I've seen all sorts of doctors and specialists. Mother has a list of them—she is very proud of it."

"I'm only hoping that this man may do you some good," said Ambrose, rubbing his chin meditatively. "I have seen some wonderful cures—in America. Even Dr. Merville believes in them. He says that if you build a sky-scraper and the steel frame isn't true, you cannot expect the doors to shut or the windows to open. I'm sorry I am so late, but the osteopath was dining out, and I had to wait until he came back. He hurt his ankle too, and that took time. I had to give him a rubbing. He is the best man in London. Dr. Duncan More."

She did not take her eyes from his face. Evie noticed this and discounted Christina's earlier assertion.

"Will it cost a lot of money?" asked Christina.

"Not much, in fact very little. The first examination is free. He doesn't really examine you, you know. He will just feel your back, through your clothes. I asked him that, because I know how you dislike examinations. And if he doesn't think that you can be treated, and that there is a chance of making you better, he won't bother you any more."

"I don't believe in these quack doctors," said Evie decidedly. "They promise all sorts of cures and they only take your money. We have a lot of those kind of remedies at the store, but Mr. Donker, the manager, says that they are all fakes—don't tell me that an osteopath isn't a medicine. I know that. He's a sort of doctor, but I'll bet you he doesn't do any good."

"Cheer up, Job!" said Christina. "Faith is something. I suppose you mean well, but if I took any notice of you I'd give up the struggle now."

"I don't want to depress you, you're very unkind, Christina! But I don't think you ought to be too hopeful. It would be such an awful—what's the word, come-down for you."

"Reaction," said Sault and Christina together and they laughed.

Sault went soon after and Evie felt that a dignified protest was called for.

"There is no reason why you should make me look like a fool before Sault," she said hurt. "Nobody would be happier than I should be if you got well. You know that. I'm not so sure that Mr. Sault is sincere—"

"What?"

Christina leaned upon her arm and her eyes were blazing.

"You can say that he is old and ugly, if you like, and shabby and—anything. But don't dare to say that, Evie—don't dare to say that he isn't sincere!"

Evie lay awake for a long time that night. Christina was certainly a strange girl—and when she said she did not love Sault, she was not speaking the truth. That was just how she had felt, when Christina had hinted that Ronnie was not sincere. Only she had been too much of a a lady to lose her temper. About old Sault, too! What did he do for a living? She must ask Christina.