The Bishop's purse

A near-sighted German music teacher crossed his legs at an inopportune moment, and this trivial action led directly to the startling incidents of the following narrative, with their momentous effects upon several lives.

This singular occurrence took place on a railway train in England, a boat train with passengers from Paris, three of these, a strangely assorted trio, being brought together by fate within the respectable cushioned walls of a first-class carriage. On one side sat an English bishop, in formal black garments, talking with evident interest and a certain deference to a very pretty and smartly dressed American girl, whose fresh views and charming lack of reverence seemed to delight the rather heavy-minded but well-meaning prelate.

Small wonder that the ecclesiastical gaze was held in rapt attention, for Miss Betty Thompson (of New York and recently of Paris) was not only fair to look upon with her teasing blue eyes, her long curling lashes, her auburn hair shot through with golden lights and her adorable mouth upturned at the corners, but she added to these the fatal gift of unexpectedness. So the bishop looked and listened and marveled, while the tired lines faded from his face and he reflected that, after all, the ride from Dover to London was very short, amazingly short.

The other one of this trio, whose meeting here was to have such far-reaching consequences, was a quietly attired young woman, traveling alone, her black hair and warm ivory coloring seeming to indicate a Latin origin. She, too, was a girl of striking beauty, but there was something of sadness and yearning in the depths of her lustrous dark eyes. As if weary with the journey, she dozed from time to time or seemed to doze, her thick lashes lifting occasionally for a languid glance at her companions and then drooping again, while a faint, half-wistful smile played about her full red lips.

"An interesting face," whispered the bishop to his young friend. "A singularly interesting face. Wouldn't you say so, Miss Thompson?"

Betty studied the sleeping girl a moment and nodded thoughtfully. "A sort of wild beauty. I've been looking at her and wondering if--" She paused in perplexity.

"You think she is a fellow countrywoman?" suggested the bishop.

"I'm not sure, but--I think she's unhappy and--" as the stranger stirred uneasily, "did you ever see anything so deliciously green as these hedges?"

The dark-eyed girl was far away in her reveries, living over again fragments of her life that seemed to flash by in lurid memory pictures, just as this rushing English landscape flashed before her half-closed eyes.

Now ... the great halls of Monte Carlo, hushed groups around green-covered tables, worshiping groups, one would say, with tense, eager faces--and the clink of gold. Stupid people! Bound to lose their money anyway, so--what did it matter?

Now ... the blue of the moon-kissed Mediterranean and a sighing orchestra playing on the marble terrace. And that most ridiculously careless South American general with his gold cigarette case! Fancy having real rubies and emeralds set in a cigarette case! What did the man expect?

Now ... the pigeons at Mentone, circling in frightened sweep over the lazy gardens while a Russian countess suns herself by the beds of chrysanthemums. What a fool to carry all that jewelry in a handbag!

Now ... Paris, a nice enough town and they could have it. All very fine driving in the bois and sipping tea at the Continental, but American secret service men were nosing about and--it's a pity if a girl can't speak a friendly word to an old lady from Grand Rapids, Michigan, without getting called down for it. Time to move on, Hester Storm, especially as you have eight hundred dollars in good coin tucked away and the jewelry. So one ticket, please, to Manhattan Island, for a girl who is going home and--wants to look her sister Rosalie in the eyes and--is just a little sorry for certain things and--anyhow, she's going to keep straight, yes, straight for the rest of her natural life.

At this moment, by some perversity of chance, a phrase in the droning talk opposite caught Hester's ear and brought her to alert attention.

"Five thousand pounds, my dear: not a penny less," the bishop declared impressively.

The Storm girl tingled with sudden interest, yet managed to keep her eyes closed. Then, gradually and cautiously, she lifted her heavy lashes and peeped through them. The bishop was fussing with a handbag, searching for something, taking something out, a purse of brown leather, a fat purse with a heavy elastic band around it. And, in his bland, pompous way he was telling Miss Thompson about his recent and most successful visit to America in the interest of the Progressive Mothers' Society. The Americans had been so kind to him, so generous; their contributions, together with those of Americans in Paris, amounted to this splendid sum that he was now carrying back to London.

Five thousand pounds! And he explained the extraordinary combination of circumstances that had prevented him, at the last moment, just as he was leaving Paris, from depositing this money with his bankers.

Five thousand pounds! It was evidently wiser, unquestionably safer, to remove so large a sum from his careless handbag to the shelter of his ecclesiastical coat, the inside pocket--there! And straightway the transfer was effected with a benignant smile, while the stranger sized up the situation very much as a professional golf player would study a difficult shot.

Not that Hester had any personal interest in this fat brown leather pocketbook or any designs upon it. No, no! She was done with that sort of thing, quite done with it, but from the detached standpoint of a former expert she could not help reflecting that here was an opportunity, a most unusual opportunity, if one could just see the right way of handling it.

Then she thought of the very large sum involved. Five thousand pounds! Twenty-five thousand dollars! How small it made her poor little eight hundred seem! Twenty-five thousand dollars! A fortune--all one could ever need! And there it was for the taking. There in the loosely hung black coat of an absent-minded bishop! Dear, dear, if this wonderful chance had only come sooner--before she made her good resolutions!

However, she had made them and would hold to them. She had given her promise to Rosalie, her promise true, and come what might she was going to keep straight. The bishop's purse was perfectly safe so far as she was concerned. Besides, with only three of them in the carriage, she couldn't get the purse if she wanted to. There must be other passengers, two or three others, so that the coppers would have some one besides her to put the blame on when the big squeal came. There must be at least two other passengers.

As Hester reached this purely academic conclusion the train drew up at a small station and the guard ushered in a near-sighted German music teacher, followed by a friend, who proved to be a trombone player, a very irascible person, and these two straightway fell into a heated discussion of the poisonous and non-poisonous qualities of mushrooms.

The dark-eyed dreamer smiled at the coincidence of their arrival, but remained unshaken in her resolve to leave the bishop's purse alone and all other purses likewise. Too well she remembered that little affair at the Élysêe Palace Hotel. Ugh! When Grimes fixed his cold gray eyes on her! Grimes from Scotland Yard, who happened to be in Paris on a case. Stupid man, who couldn't understand how easily a girl might mistake another woman's cloak for her own! What if it was of costly Russian sable? What did that prove? It was most annoying, and, having wriggled out of this misadventure, Hester did not propose ever again to risk another one.

Besides, it would take more than these two chattering musicians to help her. There must be a mob to shove and jostle. His nobs in the knee breeches must be standing up and somebody must push him against her or trip him up, so that in the scuffle she could sneak the leather. And now, suddenly, as Hester was fortifying herself in this prudent and virtuous decision, there came one of those trifling happenings that change the course of lives and empires--the near-sighted German music teacher crossed his legs. Whereupon the Bishop of Bunchester, who was just starting for the door, as the train drew into Chatham Junction, stumbled over the extended member and was thrown with some violence into Hester's corner, more precisely into Hester's lap, losing his glasses in transit, and was only rescued from this embarrassing position and brought again to a dignified perpendicular after much confusion with assistance and profuse apologies from the two Germans, which apologies the bishop gallantly passed on to the young woman upon whom he had so abruptly descended.

At Chatham Junction there was a stop of ten minutes, during which time the bishop and Miss Thompson walked briskly up and down the platform, but Hester kept her place by the window, looking out with the same odd little smile and wistful glance that had so interested Betty and her venerable friend. When these two returned to their seats the German musicians were gone and as the train resumed its journey to London, the fateful three were once more alone in the carriage.

The bishop and his young friend were now in gay spirits, laughing over something which Betty, apparently, had been describing with delicious drollery. In the self-absorption of their camaraderie, in their utter indifference to Hester's presence, they seemed to her brooding mind, to exclude her as completely from their social atmosphere as if she were a servant. And for some strange reason, the psychic meaning of which she was to understand later, the girl found herself hurt and irritated by this attitude of unconscious superiority.

The Storm girl stirred uneasily. Her wistful smile hardened into a bitter twist of the lips and through half-shut, envious eyes she studied this other American girl, this fortunate being whose every gesture, every tone of voice and every exquisite detail of costume bore witness to the background of culture and wealth that had always been hers. Why should this piece of pink-and-white prettiness be given all the good gifts, money, social position, friends, while she, Hester Storm, had none of these and never would have? It was all unfair! This whole scheme of life was a--it was a crooked game, where the cards were stacked against some people all their lives. What would this spoiled darling over there, with her clothes and her swell ways--what would she have done if she'd been born in a rotten tenement and--had a sick sister that she loved--a sister she'd die for--like Rosalie? Would she have done any better? Would she?

In the midst of her self-justification, Hester's attention was arrested by a sudden eager interest shown by Miss Thompson in the bishop's talk, which now concerned a man named Hiram Baxter, Betty's guardian, who had, it appeared, crossed on the steamer with the bishop the week before.