The Tempting of Tavernake

The Tempting of Tavernake, by
E. Phillips Oppenheim

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Title: The Tempting of Tavernake
Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5091] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 24,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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TEMPTING OF TAVERNAKE ***

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THE TEMPTING OF TAVERNAKE BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I
DESPAIR AND INTEREST
They stood upon the roof of a London boarding-house in the
neighborhood of Russell Square--one of those grim shelters, the refuge
of Transatlantic curiosity and British penury. The girl --she represented
the former race was leaning against the frail palisading, with gloomy
expression and eyes set as though in fixed contemplation of the
uninspiring panorama. The young man --unmistakably,
uncompromisingly English--stood with his back to the chimney a few
feet away, watching his companion. The silence between them was as
yet unbroken, had lasted, indeed, since she had stolen away from the
shabby drawingroom below, where a florid lady with a raucous voice
had been shouting a music-hall ditty. Close upon her heels, but without

speech of any sort, he had followed. They were almost strangers,
except for the occasional word or two of greeting which the etiquette of
the establishment demanded. Yet she had accepted his espionage
without any protest of word or look. He had followed her with a very
definite object. Had she surmised it, he wondered? She had not turned
her head or vouchsafed even a single question or remark to him since
he had pushed his way through the trap-door almost at her heels and
stepped out on to the leads. Yet it seemed to him that she must guess.
Below them, what seemed to be the phantasm of a painted city, a
wilderness of housetops, of smoke-wreathed spires and chimneys,
stretched away to a murky, blood-red horizon. Even as they stood there,
a deeper color stained the sky, an angry sun began to sink into the piled
up masses of thick, vaporous clouds. The girl watched with an air of
sullen yet absorbed interest. Her companion's eyes were still fixed
wholly and critically upon her. Who was she, he wondered? Why had
she left her own country to come to a city where she seemed to have no
friends, no manner of interest? In that caravansary of the world's
stricken ones she had been an almost unnoticed figure, silent,
indisposed for conversation, not in any obvious manner attractive. Her
clothes, notwithstanding their air of having come from a first-class
dressmaker, were shabby and out of fashion, their extreme neatness in
itself pathetic. She was thin, yet not without a certain buoyant lightness
of movement always at variance with her tired eyes, her ceaseless air of
dejection. And withal she was a rebel. It was written in her attitude, it
was evident in her lowering, militant expression, the smouldering fire
in her eyes proclaimed it. Her long, rather narrow face was gripped
between her hands; her elbows rested upon the brick parapet. She gazed
at that world of blood-red mists, of unshapely, grotesque buildings, of
strange, tawdry colors; she listened to the medley of sounds--crude,
shrill, insistent, something like the groaning of a world stripped
naked--and she had all the time the air of one who hates the thing she
looks upon.
Tavernake, whose curiosity concerning his companion remained
unappeased, decided that the moment for speech had arrived. He took a
step forward upon the soft, pulpy leads. Even then he hesitated before

he finally committed himself. About his appearance little was
remarkable save the general air of determination which gave character
to his undistinguished features. He was something above the medium
height, broad-set, and with