He tottered for a moment. The ring! Yes, there was that to be got off, too, besides the cloak.
"Haven't you got the ring from Vidler's yet?" she said. "He's had it such a time."
He had told her where he had left it for alterations. "Yes," he said, "he has had it a time. It's disgraceful the way that old Vidler potters and potters. I shall go round and 'urry him up. I won't stand it any longer."
Here a customer came in, and Matilda slipped away with a hurried good-bye.
"I've got till Sunday to get straight," the hairdresser thought, as he attended on the new comer, "the best part of a week; surely I can talk that Venus over by that time."
When he was alone he went up to see her, without losing a moment. He must have left the door unlocked in his haste, for she was standing before the low chimney-glass, regarding herself intently. As he came in she turned.
[Illustration: SHE WAS STANDING BEFORE THE LOW CHIMNEY-GLASS, REGARDING HERSELF INTENTLY.]
"Who has done all this?" she demanded. "Tell me, was it you?"
"I did take the liberty, mum," he faltered guiltily.
"You have done well," she said graciously. "With reverent and loving care have you imparted hues as of life to these cheeks, and decked my image in robes of costly skins."
"Don't name it, mum," he said.
"But what are these?" she continued, raising a hand to the light ringlets on her brow. "I like them not--they are unseemly. The waving lines, parted by the bold chisel of a Grecian sculptor, resemble my ambrosial tresses more nearly than this abomination."
"You may go all over London," said Leander, "and you won't find a coiffure, though I say it, to set closer and defy detection more naturally than the one you've got on; selected from the best imported foreign hair in the market, I do assure you."
"I accept the offering for the spirit in which it was presented, though I approve it not otherwise."
"You'll find it wear very comfortable," said Leander; "but that cloak, now I come to see it on, it reely is most unworthy of you, a very inferior piece of goods, and, if you'll allow me, I'll change it," and he gently extended his hand to draw it off.
"Touch it not," said the goddess; "for, having once been placed upon my effigy, it is consecrated to my service."
"For mercy's sake, let me get another one--one with more style about it," he entreated; "my credit hangs on it!"
"I am content," she said, "more than content. No more words--I retain it. And you have pleased me by this conduct, my hairdresser. Unknown it may be, even to yourself, your heart is warming in the sunshine of my favour; you are coy and wayward, but you are yielding. Though pent in this form, carved by a mortal hand, I shall prevail in the end. I shall have you for my own."
He rumpled his hair wildly, "'Orrid obstinate these goddesses are," he thought. "What am I to say to Matilda now? If I could only find a way of getting this statue shut up somewhere where she couldn't come and bother me, I'd take my chance of the rest. I can't go on with this sort of thing every evening. I'm sick and tired of it."
Then something occurred to him. "Could I delude her into it?" he asked himself. "She's soft enough in some things, and, for all she's a goddess, she don't seem up to our London ways yet. I'll have a try, anyway."
So he began: "Didn't I understand you to observe, mum, some time back, that the pidgings and sparrers were your birds?"
"They are mine," she said--"or they were mine in days that are past."
"Well," he said, "there's a place close by, with railings in front of it, and steps and pillars as you go in, and if you like to go and look in the yard there you'll find pidgings enough to set you up again. I shouldn't wonder if they've been keeping them for you all this time."
"They shall not lose by it," she said. "Go thither, and bring me my birds."
"I think," he said, "it would be better if you'd go yourself; they don't know me at the British Museum. But if you was to go to the beadle at the lodge and demand them, I've no doubt you'd be attended to; and you'll see some parties at the gates in long coats and black cloth 'elmets, which if you ask them to ketch you a few sparrers, they'll probably be most happy to oblige."
"My beloved birds!" she said. "I have been absent from them so long.
Yes, I will go. Tell me where."
He got his hat, and went with her to a corner of Bloomsbury Square, from which they could see the railings fronting the Museum in the steel-tinted haze of electric light.
"That's the place," he said. "Keeps its own moonshine, you see. Go straight in, and tell 'em you're come to fetch your doves."
"I will do so," she said, and strode off in imperious majesty.
He looked after her with an irrepressible chuckle.
"If she ain't locked up soon, I don't know myself," he said, and went back to his establishment.
He had only just dismissed his apprentice and secured the shop for the night, when he heard the well-known tread up the staircase. "Back again!
I don't have any luck," he muttered; and with reason, for the statue, wearing an expression of cold displeasure, advanced into his room. He felt a certain sense of guilt as he saw her.
"Got the birds?" he inquired, with a nervous familiarity, "or couldn't you bring yourself to ask for them?"
"You have misled me," she said. "My birds are not there. I came to gates in front of a stately pile--doubtless erected to some god; at the entrance stood a priest, burly and strong, with gold-embroidered garments----"
("The beadle, I suppose," commented Leander.)
"I passed him unseen, and roamed unhindered over the courtyard. It was bare, save for one or two worshippers who crossed it. Presently a winged thing fluttered down to my feet. But though a dove indeed, it was no bird of mine--it knew me not. And it was draggled, begrimed, uncleanly, as never were the doves of Aphrodite. And the sparrows (for these, too, did I see), they were worse. I motioned them from me with loathing. I renounced them all. Thus, Leander, have I fared in following your counsels!"
"Well, it ain't my fault," he said; "it's the London soot makes them like that. There's some at the Guildhall: perhaps they're cleaner."
"No," she said, vehemently; "I will seek no further. This is a city of darkness and mire. I am in a land, an age, which know me not: this much have I learnt already. The world was fairer and brighter of old!"
"You see," said Leander, "if you only go about at night, you can't expect sunshine! But I'm told there's cleaner and brighter places to be seen abroad--if you cared to go there?" he insinuated.
"To one place only, to my Cyprian caves, will I go," she declared, "and with you!"
"We'll talk about that some other time," he answered, soothingly. "Lady Venus, look here, don't you think you've kept that ring long enough?
I've asked you civilly enough, goodness knows, to 'and it over, times without number. I ask you once more to act fair. You know it came to you quite accidental, and yet you want to take advantage of it like this. It ain't right!"
She met this with her usual scornful smile. "Listen, Leander," she said.
"Once before--how long since I know not--a mortal, in sport or accident, placed his ring as you have done upon the finger of a statue erected to me. I claimed fulfilment of the pledge then, as now; but a force I could not withstand was invoked against me, and I was made to give up the ring, and with it the power and rights I strove to exert. But I will not again be thwarted: no force, no being shall snatch you from me; so be not deceived. Submit, ere you excite my fierce displeasure; submit now, since in the end submit you must!"
There was a dreadful force in the sonorous tones which made him shiver; a rigid inflexible will lurked in this form, with all its subtle curves and feminine grace. If goddesses really retained any power in these days, there could be no doubt that she would use hers to the full.
Yet he still struggled. "I can't make you give up the ring," he said; "but no more you can't make me leave my--my establishment, and go away underground with you. I'm an Englishman, I am, and Englishmen are free, mum; p'r'aps you wasn't aware of that? I've got a will of my own, and so you'll find it!"
"Poor worm!" she said pityingly (and the hairdresser hated to be addressed as a poor worm), "why oppose thy weak will to mine? Why enlist my pride against thyself; for what hast thou of thine own to render thy conquest desirable? Thou art bent upon defiance, it seems. I leave thee to reflect if such a combat can be equal. Farewell; and at my next coming let me find a change!"
And the spirit of the goddess fled, as before, to the mysterious realms from which she had been so incautiously evoked, leaving Leander almost frantic with rage, superstitious terror, and baffled purposes.
"I must get the ring off," he muttered, "_and_ the cloak, somehow. Oh!
if I could only find out how----There was that other chap--_he_ got off; she said as much. If I could get out how he managed it, why couldn't I do the same? But who's to tell me? She won't--not if she knows it! I wonder if it's in any history. Old Freemoult would know it if it was--he's such a scholar. Why, he gave me a name for that 'airwash without having to think twice over it! I'll try and pump old Freemoult.
I'll do it to-morrow, too. I'll see if I'm to be domineered over by a image out of a tea-garden. Eh? I--I don't care if she _did_ hear me!"