Lion and the Unicorn | Page 6

"I shall
ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at evening
parties."

"That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and besides, I
don't want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough
to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play Nancy."
"I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy," Miss Cavendish
answered.
They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her
saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that his
play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must play
Nancy.
The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair,
who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy.
Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave
and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even of
the lodger--especially of the lodger, who it appeared had known her
very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be
independent of him and the two Americans had many arguments and
disputes about it, but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it only
hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no one but
my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do not,
and, of course, the man I am to marry, must." Then Carroll would talk,
walking up and down, and looking very fierce and determined, and
telling her how he loved her in such a way that it made her look even
more proud and beautiful. And she would say more gently, "It is very
fine to think that any one can care for like that, and very helpful. But
unless I cared in the same way it would be wicked of me to marry you,
and besides--" She would add very quickly to prevent his speaking
again--" I don't want to marry you or anybody, and I never shall. I want
to be free and to succeed in my work, just as you want to succeed in
your work. So please never speak of this again." When she went away
the lodger used to sit smoking in the big arm-chair and beat the arms
with his hands, and he would pace up and down the room while his
work would lie untouched and his engagements pass forgotten.
Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger
stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of

visits to country houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was
painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss
Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End
theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very
beautiful in a white boating frock and a straw hat with a Leander ribbon.
Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting pole and she
was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?" Miss
Cavendish asked. "You need it; you look ill."
"I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll. "The fact is, I paid in advance for
these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be losing five guineas a
week on them."
Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered
his American humor.
"But five guineas--why that's nothing to you," she said. Something in
the lodger's face made her pause. "You don't mean----"
"Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling. "You see, I started in to lay siege
to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large town, and
it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would. So I am economizing. Mr.
Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no longer strangers."
Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward
him
"Are you in earnest?" she asked. "For how long?"
"Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at all
bad--clean and wholesome and all that."
"But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly, waving
her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake and muffins?"

"My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to Lockhart's."
"And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head.
"A dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke.
"Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the Chancellor's,
where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old England, from
Chicago,