The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-09-22
CHAPTER XII. Alhau Geas life


 with pencil.''
 CHAPTER XII
 Alban Sees Life.
 Alhan had been five weeks at Hamp stead when he met Willy Forrest for the first tme, and was able to gratify his curiosity concerning one whom he be- leved to be Anna's lover.
 The occasion was Richard Gessner's aS- sence in Paris upon business of great ur- gency and the immediate appearance of the dashing captain at Five Gables True, Anna behaved with great discre- ton, but, none the less, Alban under stood that this man was more to her than others, and he did not fail to judge him with that shrewd scrutiny even youth may command.
 Willy Forrest, to give him his due, took | an instinctive liking to the new intruder and was not to be put off, however much his attentions were dispeasing to Anna. A cunning foresight, added to a fecund imagination and fine taste for all chron- iques scandaleuses, led him to determine that Alban Kennedy might yet inherit the bulk of Gessners fortune and become the plumpest of all possible pigeons. Should this be the case, those who had been the young mans friends in the beginning might well remain so to the end He re- solved instantly to cultivate acquaint-
 
 | in the pursuit of his aims. My dear chap" he said on the third day Of their association, you are posi- lively growing grass in this place. Do you never go anywhere? Has no one taught you how to amuse yourself?' Alban replied that everything was so new to him that he desired no other amusement than its enjoyment.
 "It was almost years since I saw tree that was not black" he said; the water used to drip through the roof of ! my garret. and there was a family in the i room on the opposite side of the landing. i I don't think you can understand what this house means to me. Perhaps don't ! understand myself. | m almost afraid to go to sleep at night for fear I should wake up in Union street and find it all a i fairy story. MT. Gessner says I am to stop with them always-but he might change his mind and then 1t would be Commercial Road again-if l had the courage to go back there" Forrest had known evil times himself ! and he could honestly appreciate me possibility.
 Stick by the old horse while he sticks by you" was his candid advice "'I ex- pect he's under a pretty stiff obligation to some of your people who are gone, and this is how he's paying it. You take all the corn you can get and put 1t in your nose-bag. Anna herself tells me that the old man is only happy while you are in the house. Play mp to it. old chap. and grease your wheels while the cans going round"
 This very worldly advice fell upon ears strikingly deficient in understanding sub tletes. Alban could not dislike Forrest. though he tried his best to do so. There was something sympathetic about tile fellow rogue that he was, and even cbr nd fascination When the Captain proposed that they should go down to the West End of Lon don and see a little of life together, AL ban consented gladly. New experiences set him hungering after those supposed delights which were made so much of in the newspapers He reflected how very little he really knew of the world and it's people.
 It was day of early June when they set off In that very single brougham which had carried Silas Geary to White chapel The Captain, having first ascer- tained the amount of money in his friends possession, proposed a light lunch in the restaurant of the Savoy, and there, 10 do him justice, he was amusing enough.
 People are all giving up houses and living in restaurants nowadays" he said as they sat at table. 'I don't blame 'em either Just think of the number of nass in those big stables. all eating their heads off and smoking your best cigars eh, what? Why, I kept myself in weeds a few years ago-got 'em for twopence halfpenny from a butler in Curzon street and never smoked better. You don't want to do that, for you can bottle old Blue beard's and try 'em on the dog-eh, what? When you marry, don't you take a house. man who lives in hotel doesn't seem as though he were married
 e.. tI,a af these angels here. Why, half of them sold the family oak tree generation ago, and Attenborough down the street will tell you what their Tiffanies are worth. They live in hotels because it's cheaper, and they wear French paste because the other is at uncles That's the truth, my boy, and all the world knows 1t.
 AIban listened with an odd cynical smile upon his face, but he did not im- mediately reply. This famous hotel had seemed a cavern of all the wonders when he first entered it, and he would not will ingly abandon his illusions. The beanti- fully dressed women, the rustling gowns, the chiffon. the lace, the feathers, the diamonds-might he not have thought that they stood for all that pomp and circumstance of life which the East End denounced so vehemently and the West End as consistently demanded? Of the inner lives of these people he knew ab- solutely nothing. And, after al, he re- membered, men and women are much the same whatever the circumstance.
 "I like to be in beautiful places, he confessed in his turn, 'and this place seems to be very beautiful. Does 1t really matter to HIS. Forrest. what the people do or what they are so long as they don't ask us to be the same? Jimmy Dale. a parson in Whitechapel, used to say that man was just what his con- science made him. don't see how the fact of living in or out of hotel would matter anyway--unless you leave your conscience in a cab. The rest is mostly talk, and untrue at that. they say. You yourself konw that you don't believe half of It."
 My dear man.. what would life be If one were increduftus? How would the newspaper propretors buy bread and cheese. to say nothing of nafa dc foia