# The Scientist and the Shop-Girl

"The premature stooping of the shoulders distinguished the man by her side as a student of some sort, old before his time. His brow was lined with thought; his attire careless, threadbare, almost shabby, as befits one who pursues knowledge rather than riches." Why, then, did it look like he was stalking her?
THE SCIENTIST and the SHOP-GIRL.
By ROBERT BARR.
ONE would not have expected such behaviour from one so grave and sedate in appearance. He edged closer and closer to the girl, who, quite unconscious of his proximity, gazed through the clear plate-glass window at the ladies' hats marked down to sale prices. She was absorbed in this contemplation, regardless of the passers-by, or of the man twice her age who stood so close to her. She was plainly, but very neatly dressed. Her pale face, though it could not be termed beautiful, possessed an attractive, intellectual quality when you looked twice at her. If gifted with imagination, it is possible that a third observation might stimulate the fancy that she would be very attractive if she smiled, but it was easy to believe that her lips were strangers to smiles. Her outlook upon life was serious, notwithstanding the fact that she squandered some of the scant time allotted to lunch in feminine headgear behind the pane.
The premature stooping of the shoulders distinguished the man by her side as a student of some sort, old before his time. His brow was lined with thought; his attire careless, threadbare, almost shabby, as befits one who pursues knowledge rather than riches.
Once or twice he moistened his lips and seemed about to address her, but his courage oozed away with a side glance that she gave, and thus he stood there silent. He knew perfectly well who she was, for of late, passing down Oxford Street, he had seen her behind the counter of a glove-shop.
For three consecutive days now he had haunted this section of the thoroughfare during the luncheon hour. He had followed her from the glove-shop to the A.B.C. restaurant where she partook of her frugal midday meal—a cup of cocoa and a plate of buttered toast. Several times he endeavoured to accost her, but never got even viewing the attractive far enough to attract her attention. He was disheartened by this lack of valour, but nevertheless persisted, in spite of his repeated failures to take the plunge when opportunity came.
At last the girl withdrew her eyes from the attractive spectacle before her, and heaved a sigh of disappointment, for even the red figures marking down the cheapest of the hats were beyond the resources of her slender purse. Intuitively the unworldly man grasped the worldliness of the situation; she coveted a hat, but had no money to spare with which to purchase one, yet here was he, hesitating to make offer of what she so evidently lacked. Now was the Heaven-sent, psychological moment; the need and its remedy in conjunction. He took the plunge awkwardly as a drunken man stumbling off a bridge.
The girl shuddered as she felt his touch on her shoulder, and the contemplative eyes quickly turned upon him became wide open and shaded with apprehension.
"I—I will buy any hat in that shop you care to select——"
He got no further. The girl fled down the crowded street, while he stood there, dismayed, watching her hurrying figure thread its way through the multitude. Once she looked over her shoulder in affright, but seeing she was not followed, moderated her pace. After passing the accustomed A.B.C. shop, and watching for an opportunity through the traffic, she threaded her way to the other side, then, eagerly doubling back, re-crossed the street and reached the haven where gloves were sold.
Staunton Blair saw with regret the inconvenience he had caused, but he knew of no method to remedy it. Unversed as he was in the ways of his fellow-beings, he surmised it would not be the correct thing to buy some sandwiches at the A.B.C. and present them to her in the glove-shop, therefore, rather depressed in spirits, he turned out of the busy street, made his way northward to a poverty-stricken district, and climbing the stairs of a forbidding house, arrived at his own room, quite forgetting that he, too, had missed his lunch.
The carpetless room he entered resembled a chemist's shop that had taken to drink and fallen into disrepute. The shelves were cluttered with bottles of all shapes and sizes, some corked, others with glass stoppers. Apparatus of various kinds presented a makeshift appearance, much of it painfully constructed from odds and ends that possessed no suitability except cheapness, while other machinery had plainly been discarded by more opulent users, and acquired second-hand. There were many books scattered about much the worse for wear. Scientific volumes bought at an old book-store present an advantage and a disadvantage. First, there being little demand for them, they are cheap; secondly, being old, they are usually out of date.
A long, plain deal table, much stained, occupied the centre of the room, and seated before it were three lads, who rose respectfully when Mr. Blair entered.
"I am very sorry, boys," he said. "I have been detained. Please sit down again."
He plunged at once into the lesson he was to teach, and now there was no hesitation in his speech. All languor left his loosely jointed frame, and his kindly, rugged face seemed to glow from the enthusiasm within. He spoke with magical clarity and animation, making plain the intricacies of chemistry with which he dealt. He was now in the world to which he belonged, a world unperturbed by the swish of a woman's skirts.
When the lads had decorously withdrawn, bidding him "Good afternoon" (it was plain that all three were completely enthralled by a master who never uttered a harsh word to them), Staunton Blair sat down on a bench and sank into a deep pondering. He was quite determined not to give up the quest, but thought it might be advisable to change his method. Why not write to her? But, then, he did not know her name, and if he addressed his note to "The girl at the left-hand counter," the letter might be received by someone else. Still, what difference did that make? He had scarcely noticed the other girls, but doubtless one of them would do just as well as she who seemed so frightened at his address. Then, to his surprise, he found himself shaking his head. After all, he would much prefer this particular girl, who seemed quiet, modest, and lady-like. At last he came to a conclusion, and next day put it into action.
At eleven o'clock the following morning, bold as a buccaneer boarding a brig, Blair entered the glove-shop, hoping his courage would stand by him for the next few minutes. There were several customers within, but the girl he sought was disengaged for the moment. He strode directly towards her, and she, seeing his approach and recognising him, shrank back against the cardboard boxes on the shelves behind her, her eyelids fluttering with fear. No slave was more helpless at the menace of a master. She dared not make a fuss nor complain against a customer. Customers are sacred and must not be offended. It was her place to serve politely—cringingly, if need be—but on no account to allow that man to leave the shop without having made a purchase. She might smile or flirt or simper, and the Argus eyes to the rear of the place would be blind, so long as something was sold; but if any inattention on her part caused the possible buyer to turn away, then came a reckoning with the proprietor.
Perturbed as she was, she wondered whether a man with a face so simple and homely knew, after all, how completely the situation put her in his power. He was not of the type of those who pester a girl with unwished-for attentions, and yet he was the same person who yesterday had spoken to her in the street, and from whom she had fled.
He addressed her quietly (that was a blessing), with the quietness of one who has learned his words by rote.
"Miss, I must have a few words with you. It is very important: important both for you and for me. Will you grant me an interview?"
"Sir," she said, also very quietly, "I am here to sell gloves."
"Very good, I have come in to buy a pair."
"What number, please?"
"Two, of course."
"I mean, what is the size of your hand?"
"Oh, my hand! I don't know, I'm sure. I never wore a pair of gloves in my life."
From a shelf behind her she took down a tape measure.
"Please extend your hand."
"Wait a moment; wait a moment. Surely you do not hurry your customers thus? You give them time to choose, select, think, do you not?"
"Certainly, sir."
Her hands dropped to her sides, the tape line dangling from her fingers. Once more she leaned back against the cardboard boxes, and now having recovered, as it were, from her first fright, she looked across at him, and was astonished to see that he appeared more perturbed than she was. Little sparkles of perspiration stood on his brow, and absent-mindedly he drew the back of his ungloved hand across it.
"It isn't gloves for myself I want," he said at last.
"For a lady, perhaps?" she suggested.
"Yes; a pair of ladies' gloves."
"What size, please?" reiterated the girl, putting the measuring tape on the shelf again.
Blair was evidently in a quandary once more. He breathed like a man who is running a race. The interval this time was so long that the shop-girl had more and more opportunity to study the stranger on the other side of the counter. Her quick intuition told her several surprising things, and upset one or two previously formed opinions. She supposed that the man's persistence arose from admiration of herself, and was astonished at the feeling of pique which arose in her heart when she became convinced that he wasn't thinking of her at all. His mind was a slow-working instrument, and the dilemma in which he found himself involved changed its phases so rapidly that he felt a humiliating sense of discomfiture. the more alert intelligence of the girl, accustomed as she was to meet all sorts of people, showed her that he, and not she, occupied the disadvantageous position. It was with no sinister appreciation of her helplessness that he had entered the shop, and she suspected that he wished himself well out of it, but that some dogged element in his nature rooted him to the spot.
Having misjudged him in the beginning, her sympathy was now extended towards him. She wondered whether he was sane—if he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Don't you know the size the lady wears?"
"No, I don't."
"I suppose," she ventured, bringing her shapely hand into view, "that she wears smaller gloves than I do?"
This remark inspired Staunton Blair with an idea, and his clouded face cleared.
"Her hand is exactly the same size and shape as yours."
"Ah, then we shall have no difficulty. What colour, please?"
"Eh? What colour? I'm sure I don't know. Green, blue, yellow—anything you like. What colour do you wear?"
She did not reply, but, turning, took down a pasteboard box, opened it, and spread out a pair of gloves on a piece of tissue paper she had placed on the counter.
"Do you think those would suit?" she asked.
"Oh, perfectly. I'm sure of it. I'll take them."
He drew from his wallet a five-pound note and placed it before her.
"Haven't you anything smaller than that?"
"No," he said, "I want the change."
She called a shop-boy, gave him the note and the price-slip, which he carried to a desk at the rear. The gloves she wrapped up very daintily in the tissue paper, and was about to cover this with brown paper, when Blair drew a lead-pencil from his waistcoat pocket and said abruptly—
"Wait a minute."
She paused, and he wrote his name and address on the brown paper,
"Oh, you wish them sent?"
"No, I don't. Listen to what I say before that boy returns. You will take four pounds and this address of mine. You will engage a detective, and ask him to learn all he can about me. I don't know where you will find one, but anyone else can tell you. I am really a most harmless person—a tutor of sorts, and a student in chemistry. I know no woman on earth except my landlady. Of course, naturally you distrust a stranger, and I am very awkward so far as women are concerned. You will hear from the detective, however, that I am honest, and that you may quite safely grant me an interview of ten minutes or so."
"Even if the detective confirmed all you say, I see no reason why I should grant you the interview."
"I cannot explain here. Meet me somewhere, listen to what I offer, and then decide to do as I wish, or not, just as you like."
"But you can tell me in a word what your offer is?"
"Well, I want you to accept a better situation."
"I am quite satisfied where I am."
"Then you have no one dependent on you?"
The girl gave a little gasp and leaned back a third time against the boxes.
"Yes," she said in a whisper, speaking more to herself than to him. "Yes, I have someone dependent on me."
"You can use more money than you earn here?"
"Oh, yes."
"Very well. You would be foolish not to listen, wouldn't you? "
"I suppose so. There's no harm in listening."
The boy came back with the change. Blair pushed towards the girl four sovereigns, but she ignored them, dexterously wrapping up the gloves.
"Shall I send them to this address?"
"No; keep them. I don't want them." But she pushed the little parcel towards him in such a way that the money was shoved before it.
"I do not need the advice of a detective. I can see that you are an honest man. I will meet you to-day where you spoke to me yesterday. Please put the money into your pocket; the gloves also. No; you must not leave them. You embarrass me with your hesitation. Do at once what I tell you."
He slipped the four sovereigns into his waistcoat pocket, and, taking the gloves in his hand, walked out of the shop as directly and as awkwardly as he had entered it.
He seemed a rather woebegone figure as he stood before the plate-glass window which displayed the ladies' hats, and the girl took him in charge as if she, and not he, were the pursuer. Without a word she led him down a side street until they reached the Embankment, but did not turn into the gardens as he had expected, making her way instead across the broad thoroughfare to the granite parapet overlooking the river.
Leaning against the parapet, she turned to him.
"I am ready to listen."
"You said you had someone dependent on you," he began. "That person is not a husband?"
"Oh, no. He is my little brother, seven years old. We are alone in the world."
"Are you in love with anyone?"
"Is it to talk like this you have asked me to meet you?"
"We must clear the ground, you know. You will understand later."
"No; I am not in love, and never have been, and never will be."
"I hope not," sighed Blair, so fervently that she looked up at him in surprise.
Again the thought occurred to her that this man was not in his right mind. He went on, however, without noticing her amazement.
"The situation is this. My only sister, who was much older than I, married a man much older than herself. He was a harsh, miserly person, but, they tell me, a very good business man. My sister lived most unhappily with him. He always hated me, and so far as my poor sister was concerned, it would have been much better had I died in my infancy. She managed to give me a University course, and thus put me in the way of earning my own living, which I do. She died about ten years ago. Her husband died last month. I don't know why, having been brought up by so good and so devoted a sister, I should feel such fear of women as is the case. My brother-in-law left a will which he knew would embarrass me. He was well aware that I possessed no business qualifications whatever—that I never could make much money for myself; and he also knew that in my researches I needed money every day of my life for apparatus, for chemicals, and for what not. Personally I should be content to live on half-rations, or even starve occasionally, could I get what I need to aid me in my researches. Knowing all this, he has left me a splendid estate on condition that I marry within two months, otherwise the money goes to an asylum of some kind.
"Of course, I have no wish to marry, but on the other hand, I shall probably see my life frittered away and nullified through lack of money.
"I have studied this predicament night and day ever since the contents of the will were made known to me; and now, if I am to act, I must do so very speedily. I don't mind poverty, if I could but get the appliances I need. I have no desire for wealth, but it occurred to me that if I could meet someone as poor as myself, one not likely ever to marry——"
"Why do you think I am unlikely ever to marry?" asked the girl sharply.
"You said so, only a little while ago."
"But you selected me for your proposal before I said that. Did you judge from my appearance that no man would ask me to marry him?"
"No, no. I didn't think about the matter at all. Your appearance had nothing to do with what was in my mind," he explained earnestly.
"I believe you. Go on, please."
"There is nothing much more to say. If you will agree to marry me, I promise faithfully to leave you at the church door. I'll never molest you, and will settle upon you one-half the income, so that you may be as independent as I."
"How much is the income?" she asked, with quite her sales-counter intonation.
"The solicitor said it was about five thousand pounds a year."
"Five thousand pounds! Oh, I should never consent to take half of that."
"Very good; I'll give you more. I don't suppose I shall need so much as four hundred. You may have all the rest."
"I didn't mean it that way at all. Two thousand five hundred pounds a year is too much. You don't need to say you are a poor business man, for anyone can see it. If you'll settle upon me four hundred pounds a year, I'll marry you under those conditions to-morrow, next week, or any time you like."
"My dear girl," said Blair earnestly, "you do not estimate correctly the disability under which you place yourself. You are young and beautiful. Although you said you would never fall in love with anyone, you cannot be sure of that, and if such an event should happen, you would bitterly regret having tied yourself to me."
"There is no fear of that. Four hundred pounds will be more than enough."
"No; I will compromise on a thousand pounds, if you like, but not a penny less."
"What you propose is robbery. I shall not accept it."
"But I insist."
"Then I must bid you 'Good-bye.'" She held out her hand.
"You are forgetting your brother. You will want to send him to the University and establish him in some profession. A thousand pounds will prove scanty enough when that time comes."
Her hand dropped to her side.
"Yes," she said, "I was forgetting my brother."
"Then we will get into a taxicab and go direct to a solicitor, who will draw up the settlement."
"I must go back to the glove-shop."
"Nonsense! On a thousand a year?"
"I must give due notice and buy my liberty."
"I'll see the proprietor and compensate him."
"No; you'd be cheated. I cannot allow anyone to cheat you but myself. This sordid bargain I have made with you is a very model of chicanery."
"I don't see that," he protested. "The compact you have made may prove to be a very onerous one."
"You mean, should I wish to marry some other person? That is just the point where my deep duplicity shows itself. I had long ago made up my mind never to marry. I proposed to work hard and faithfully until my brother was educated, and then, when he was able to make money, I should leave the shop and keep house for him; thus, you see, I am a rogue, accepting a lavish amount of money from you for doing what I intended to do in any case."
"You forget, miss, that the benefits are mutual, only that I get four times the best of the bargain. To put it mathematically, I aid you towards an income of a thousand a year, but you cause me to inherit four thousand; thus I, as well as you, am enabled to order my life according to my own choosing."
"But any other woman could have done that for you as well as I. Why did you not marry your housekeeper?"
"She is a most slovenly person," said Blair quite seriously, as if the thought had already occurred to him, "repulsively ugly, and nearly fifty. I believe she already possesses a husband, although I have never seen him. Besides, she drinks. Then, I wished to marry someone who would leave me alone, and that my landlady would never have done, surrounded as she is by friends rapacious and disreputable as herself."
Again the girl seemed disappointed that there was no evidence of even an awakening interest in herself on his part. They walked along the Embankment in silence for a time, until an empty taxicab came along, which he hailed. Again she demurred. Duty called and she felt compelled to obey.
"Oh, never mind the proprietor of the glove-shop," he said. "We will telephone to him when we reach the lawyer's office, and you can call there to-morrow, and give him what compensation you please."
They were now seated together in the cab.
"If we are quick about it," he went on, "I think we can be married to-day."
"Oh!" cried the girl, with a little gasp of dismay, "why are you in such a hurry?"
"Well, you see, I'm rather an absent-minded sort of person, and I always expect to be run over while crossing a street. If that happened before we were married, even though the papers were drawn out settling on you the thousand pounds, my death would render them null and void. My brother-in-law's wealth would never have been in my possession, you see."
This remark was so blamelessly practical that it called for no answer, and received none. The girl went off on a side issue.
"You have never even inquired my name," she protested.
"True. What is your name?" he asked abruptly.
For a time she did not speak, then answered quietly—
"Edith Melcomb."
"My name you know, of course."
"Yes."
The taxicab penetrated into the crowded City, and drew up before a sombre building.
"Here we are," said Blair, with a sigh of relief. "This man upstairs was my late brother-in-law's solicitor, and has charge of all the arrangements."
The legal arrangements took longer to adjust than Staunton Blair had supposed, and more than a week elapsed before the marriage took place, celebrated by a business-like registrar, witnessed by two businesslike clerks from the solicitor's office; and finally the scientist accompanied the bride to a hansom, where he shook hands with her, gave the cabman a Chelsea address, and turned away with that sense of relief which a scientific person feels when he has brought a somewhat tiresome scientific experiment to a successful conclusion.
A month from that day, Staunton Blair, in his shirt-sleeves, with hair wildly dishevelled, was absorbed in a distillation when his landlady entered, who more than made good the description he had given of her tawdriness.
"A lady to see you, sir."
Blair straightened himself up in alarm.
"A lady?" he echoed. "What does she want?"
"Didn't say, sir. Wanted to see Mr. Staunton Blair."
"A lady!" he muttered. "What can she want with me? Did she give any name?"
"No, sir. Seems a rich young woman, by the look of her clothes, and came in a carriage."
"Who can she be? There must be some mistake! Tell her so; but if she won't go away, bring her up here. I suppose it can't be helped."
When the lady entered, she stood for a few minutes near the door, glancing first at the astonished, tramp-like man before her, and then around at the disorderly room.
"Don't you know me?" she asked at last.
"Why, yes," he stammered. "You're—you're the girl in the glove-shop."
"No, I am not. I am Mrs. Staunton Blair. My husband is a genius in the scientific world, they tell me, sure to become famous. I clipped a short article about him from this morning's newspaper, and in case he has not seen it, I have brought it to him."
She laid the newspaper cutting on the table before him. He picked it up and read it, looking rather dazed.
"No; I hadn't noticed it; but it is all wrong," he explained. "I fear one of my pupils has rather given me away to some writing man."
"Then you should send a letter to the journal and contradict it."
"Oh, it doesn't matter; it doesn't matter in the least. If it had appeared in a scientific publication, I should have done so, but then a scientific publication wouldn't have printed so erroneous an account."
"Well, it wasn't about the extract that I came to see you, after all; and, by the way, before I say anything further, do you consider this visit an interference on my part?"
"Interference? I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Why, don't you remember our marriage contract? One of us was not to molest the other. Is my coming here an infraction of that contract?"
"Dear me, no. You can come here as often as you like. Won't you sit down?"
Once more she glanced around the room and smiled. The chairs, of a very cheap and common pattern, were all piled with manuscript, jars, packages, and other débris. In his confusion at endeavouring to remedy the condition that nullified his invitation, he scattered a miscellaneous assortment on the floor, and the girl laughed outright.
"Never mind," she said. "I can't stop for more than a moment."
His face had become very red, and he did not appear to know where to put his hands. The metal dish above the Bunsen burner was boiling over, but he did not notice it.
"I suppose it's vanity on my part, for I've some detestable qualities, but I wished you to know that I was not always a shop-girl, as you called me just now. I am reasonably well educated, having been taught by my father, who was a clergyman. We were always very poor, but we passed for gentlefolk."
"Oh, I knew that from the beginning."
"Who told you?"
"I wasn't told. I just seemed to know it was so."
"Then you are not offended at my visiting you?"
"Certainly not."
"Good-bye," she said abruptly, reaching her hand across the table.
Gingerly he took her neatly gloved fingers. Next instant she had vanished.
It was during the depth of winter that Mrs. Blair paid her second call, and it required some bravery for a woman to emerge from comfortable quarters into the streets that day. A dense yellow fog brooded over the town, and her coachman experienced some difficulty in finding his way through the gloom. The landlady came up the uncertain stairs with uncertain steps. She had been taking a little something to mitigate the effect of the fog.
"That same lady," she said thickly, "that called before, is here again."
She looked waveringly, but severely, at her shrinking lodger.
As showing the eternal fitness of things, Blair's candles were all in bottles. He seized one, pushed aside his inebriated housekeeper, and dashed down the stairs. The tall lady in furs smiled up at him. He was as unkempt as ever, and throttling a bottle by the neck that held a guttering candle, haloed by the fog, he resembled some quaint demon of the Middle Ages engaged in alchemy.
"May I come up?" she asked.
"Of course. I came down for you. Steer clear of the landlady," he whispered. "She's a little overcome by the effect of the weather. Beastly day, isn't it?"
"It's not very pleasant," answered his wife, as she followed him into his dismal den. She closed the door behind her, for the honest housekeeper was clutching the railings of the narrow landing, and Mrs. Staunton Blair feared she might fall into the laboratory among the chemicals. As before, she stood and looked about her. The squalid room did not run even to a lamp, not to mention gas or electricity. Five candles of various lengths, four in the necks of bottles and one in a jug, scattered their feeble light around a glass retort suspended over a blue flame.
"Still in a rag and bottle shop, Mr. Blair, I see," she said, with a smile.
"It's sufficient, rather than luxurious," admitted the chemist.
"I think," continued the girl, with a laugh, "it must be the landlady's fault. If she clings to her lodger as she does to her railings, no wonder he cannot get away. How do you ever carry on successful experiments in a dungeon like this?"
"Oh, well, if it comes to that, Michael Faraday, you know, made some great discoveries with a few old medicine bottles and a clay pipe or two."
"I venture to believe he couldn't have done it in such a light as this."
She now came further into the room than had been the case before, examining the scrawled labels on the bottles and jars.
"Your landlady is addicted to gin, I suppose?"
"Oh, well," explained Blair, who could not speak ill of anyone, "to-day is exceptional. The fog gets into her throat, she tells me."
"Yes, and other fluids as well," commented the smiling girl. "I am judging not by her attitude on the landing, but merely by the labels on most of these bottles. They are guaranteed to contain the best unsweetened gin, except where you have covered over the words with your own labels. I never before saw such a slovenly arrangement of dangerous material. Why, look at this!" she cried, taking up a broad-mouthed jar and shaking it. "You keep your carbide of calcium in a jar with a plain cork! In this moist climate it should have had a glass stopper."
"I know that," pleaded Blair, "but I lost the stopper."
She placed the jar on the table before her, and took out the cork, sniffing a little at the substance within.
"Just as I thought," she said. "It is disintegrated, and nearly useless." She took up a thick bradawl that lay on the table and bored a hole in the centre of the broad cork.
"That will make it worse than ever," objected Blair.
"No, it won't. Be my assistant, please, and give me a No. 8 glass tube."
Obediently he handed her what she asked for, and she thrust it through the cork.
"Now a carafe of H$_2$O."
He handed her the water-jug.
"I hope you know what you are doing," he cautioned, at which she laughed merrily, pouring the water into the jar. The nervous scientist hastily blew out four of the candles, and removed the other to the further end of the room. The pungent, disagreeable odour of acetylene gas made itself noticeable. The young lady's dainty fingers thrust the cork into its place, and she stood for a time admiring her handiwork, bending down her head now and again to the top of the glass tube, with a quick sniff estimating the strength of the gas. Then she struck a match, and in spite of the man's shout of "Look out!" held it over the jar. There was a little sudden pop, then a steady pure white flame that penetrated even the fog to the furthest corner of the apartment. She stood in the radiance, a charmingly costumed vision of beauty, and Staunton Blair was much more dazzled by her appearance than by the sun-white flame.
She smiled across at him.
"C$_2$H$_2$ is all right," she said, "if not diluted too much with that familiar compound which, speaking by weight, is oxygen 28, nitrogen 75•66, and argon 1•34. Your landlady would doubtless call it 'h'air.'"
Staunton gazed at her in astonishment, but seemed struck into speechlessness.
"Well," she said, with a laugh and a sigh, "at last I've made you look at me."
"My dear girl," he exclaimed, "where did you learn all this?"
"Oh, I have been taking lessons in chemistry. I married a chemist, you know, and so I thought it well to know something of the Black Art. I am a pupil of the renowned Professor Marling."
"Marling!" sneered Blair. "That incompetent charlatan! Always writing about himself and his precious so-called discoveries in the ignorant newspapers."
"My dear sir, Professor Marling is the most charming of men. He teaches a class of more than forty pupils."
"I dare say. It is always the biggest quack that gathers the greatest number of patients. He's no scientific man—he's what we call a popularity hunter."
"Are your three pupils still with you?" she asked sweetly.
"Yes. I'm not on the search for pupils. I am engaged in serious work, and will be quite content with the approval of my colleagues, if I deserve it."
"Ah, that approval Professor Marling seems not to have attained."
"No, he hasn't. What he's after is the applause of the crowd."
"Strange that I should have thought him so courteous and so learned a man. I enjoy special opportunities of studying him, because I am not in his large class, but take private lessons from him. He told me yesterday that he has never met a pupil so apt in chemical research as I."
"Fudge! Stuff and nonsense! What, in less than four months? Don't you believe it!"
"But I like to believe it. I do believe it."
"You are taking private lessons from him, eh?"
"Yes, and have been for some time."
"Look here, my girl, if you'll take lessons from me, I guarantee that in six months you'll be so far outside the range of Professor Marling's knowledge that he won't be able to understand you when you talk. Blow Professor Marling!"
Staunton Blair had worked himself into a state of such indignation and contempt that for the first time since she had known him, he spoke up like a man. She laughed quietly.
"Will you give me lessons, then?"
"Will I? Of course I will. How often can you come——" he paused abruptly and looked round the dismal room. It was palpable even to his comprehension that this trim figure,, so nice, so dainty, did not belong to such a squalid wilderness.
"It is about that I came to see you," she said, taking no notice of his abrupt halt. "Professor Marling has become so successful, and his classes have augmented to such an extent, that he has been forced to give up his flat and take larger premises. Oh, yes, I know, I know! He's a humbug and all that, but, nevertheless, as I told you, he's a most delightful man, and has been very, very attentive to me."
"Has he?" said the chemist.
"Yes, no one could have been more kind. But as I was saying, he has given up this flat, which contains nine rooms and a laboratory—oh, so conveniently fitted up, everything arranged so spick and span——"
"Quite so, quite so. Faraday and his clay pipe would have been turned out of it as something incongruous."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Blair, do be fair to Michael Faraday. Surely you are aware that later in life, when he got on, he possessed one of the best-equipped laboratories in the world. Still, that has nothing to do with what I was about to tell you. I have taken Professor Marling's studio just as it stands, purchasing apparatus and all, and I wish you would come with me in my carriage and visit it. I should like an expert's opinion on the equipment."
Blair scowled at her with a ferocity entirely foreign to his kindly nature.
"Of course," said the girl, with drooping eyes, "I know how busy you are, and I should not think of asking so much of your time, except that I am prepared to pay you an expert's fee. Since taking up the attractive study of chemistry, I have been privileged to meet many men of science, and on being introduced to them as Mrs. Blair, they have almost invariably mentioned your name, and asked me whether I were acquainted with the great analytical chemist, Staunton Blair, generally adding that of course I wasn't, because you were not known to the public. You were much too good a man for that, they said. 'But by and by,' they added, 'the public will know him as we know him,' and all advised me that if I could get an opinion from you, I should secure it by all means. Therefore, Mr. Blair, I ask you, as a favour, to come with me."
"Certainly, certainly," rapidly answered Staunton Blair, quite unable to conceal his gratification at this well-placed flattery, so modestly and convincingly spoken.
When they reached the flat, even his dislike of the popular Professor Marling could not overcome Blair's admiration for the laboratory that celebrity had abandoned. Here were the things he had yearned for, too absent-minded to remember that he possessed the money wherewith to purchase them. He had not yet become acquainted with the fact that he was a rich man.
The two were standing together after the inspection, and she seemed pleased with his appreciation of their surroundings.
"I must stop talking of chemistry," she said, and now her eyes were downcast once more. "We've had enough of that. Do you mind if I speak of myself?"
"I should be delighted to hear how you are getting on," replied Blair fervently.
"I am sorry to say that the disaster you predicted has overtaken me."
"What was that? I don't recollect predicting any disaster."
"You did. Don't you remember on the Embankment you said, and I denied the possibility of it, that I might fall in love? Well, I have fallen in love."
"Great Heavens!" he muttered, aghast, and then again, "Great Heavens!"
She looked up at him. The colour had fled from his face, and his lips were pale. Then, with quite unnecessary vehemence, he cried—
"Confound Professor Marling!"
Now, this was abominably rude, when you consider that it was uttered in the presence of a lady, and, besides, was dragging in Velasquez, who had nothing to do with the case.
But the lady did not seem to be so much offended as she should have been.
She kissed his lips, and the colour returned to them.
Copyright, 1909, by Robert Barr, in the United States of America.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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