The young man considered a little.
“Very well, sir,” he said suddenly. “I owe you a certain reparation. I will undertake this delicate business, on condition that you give me a note of introduction to the lady.”
The obese gentleman laughed with glee.
“Come,” he said—“come home with me at once, and I will write it.”
THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN (continued)
At three o’clock that same afternoon Gilead found himself on the door-step of a bijou residence in Maida Vale. He was very grave, and for more than a present reason. One having the power to examine into his mind would have discovered there a steadfast purpose of loyalty, a determination to ignore the slanderous whisperings of certain dark spirits which were seeking to undermine in him a rooted faith, to destroy a cherished ideal. One would have found there, also, perhaps, a little pathetic unaccountable sense of weariness, a shadowy emotion—the first in his life—of self-pity. If he had, he would have seen them dismissed as soon as realised. The emotion was essentially feminine, and Gilead had surely despised himself for even succumbing to it. He could not be such a woman as to pet a grievance before it was justified. There was no grievance at all to justify itself; with his eyes set to the truth he told himself so, and he had the will to believe it. Suspicion was a germ that once admitted destroyed the reason; only that strong will had power to keep it out.
A slattern servant admitted him into the bijou hall, and there kept him standing while she delivered the note to her mistress. She came back shortly and, breathing heavily, showed him into the bijou drawing-room and there left him. Glancing around, Gilead saw torn lace curtains, a piano with candle brackets run with grease, a dirty table-cloth, and on it the debris of a meal of biscuits and soda-water scattered among many papers. The whole house looked as if it habitually woke too late to tidy up the confusion of yesterday.
A step at the door brought him to attention, and he bowed with a feeling between chivalry and wonder. The incomparable one stood before him, and he had to admit to himself that she was gaunt, fade, and presumably in the over-prime of life. Certainly there was a resemblance to the portrait, but as certainly it was the resemblance of an unflattering copy. Miss Cox was in a negligée of soiled white serge or flannel; there was an air of transcendental slipshoddiness about her; her hair fell in unconsidered loops; her thinness amounted to emaciation; her complexion had once no doubt been ethereal, but had materialized in the course of time, mellowing to the tone of antique parchment. But the expression was all there, spiritual, ineffable—and languishing, for the utmost of its passionate soul, through a couple of large burning eyes.
“Mr Balm?” she exclaimed introductorily, in a deep agitated voice.
He bowed a second time; and she entered, closed the door, and sank into a chair. She was patently nervous and overcome—a lady whose sensitive organization was not proof against unforeseen demands upon it. In one lean long hand she held the accrediting letter; in the other a handkerchief, none too spotless, with which she perpetually fanned herself.