She stops, out of breath, and the listening policeman smiles again.
“People were more robust in those days, Mrs. Brown,” remarked Bertram.
“Yes, sir, there weren’t so many doctors all over the place. When I was a gal, in our village there weren’t a doctor within twenty mile; and nobody never was ill. Nowadays young and old is allus talking about their livers and lights till they fret theirselves into sickness.”
“That is very possible. Science is much to blame for teaching humanity to concentratethe mind on the body. There I wholly agree with you.”
Mrs. Brown picks up her load of linen, which she has momentarily rested on the back of the bench.
“Well, sir, you’ll please excuse me, but I can’t stand chatterin’ here. We pore has got our work to do. That’s what I says to them ladies when they come botherin.’ I says, says I, ‘We pore has our work to do, and when ’tis done we want to sit still, and put our feet up, and take a cup o’ tea, and doze like; we don’t want to go strammarkin’ about to your concerts, and your readin’s, and your mothers’ meetin’s, and all them rubbishes, and see a duchess playin’ a banjo or hear a duke sing “Hot Codlins.”’ Let ’em keep in their place, and we’ll keep in ours.That’s what I says, sir, and I bring up my children to say it arter me.”
“Oh, I am aware, Mrs. Brown, you and those who resemble you, are a terrible stumbling-block to progress.”
“Please don’t call me names, sir. I’m a pore workin’ woman, but I’m one as hev allus kep’ my head above water. You’re in one speer, and we’re in another, as I hev allus told ye, but all the same I choose to be respecket.”
“My dear creature, no one can respect you more profoundly than I do.”
But Mrs. Brown is not appeased by this assurance; walks away in high dudgeon; there is meanwhile a great noise of yelling and shouting in the distance near the statue of Achilles.
“What are they doing?” Bertram asks of the constable, who, touching his helmet, answers:
“Well, sir, the Salvationists have got new banners, ‘Glory’ on one side, and ‘Eternal Fire’ on t’other; and the pop’lace don’t like ’em. Pop’lace very queer and touchy, sir. Never knows what it wants.”
“That is a hasty condemnation to pass on those who form the bulwarks of a nation.”
“Bulwarks, is it, sir? Not when they’ve got any beer in ’em.”
The uproar in the distance grows very loud indeed; some children are alarmed; the nurse who is with them asks the policeman if there is any danger of a riot.
He replies cheerfully, “No fear, mum. They’re roundHachilles; the Salvationists are on one side, a rum chap hollering against property on the other. He’s one o’ them Communists, and the pop’lace don’t cotton to them ideas; pop’lace likes gentlefolks. Lord! see ’em run to stare at the carriages o’ Drawing Room days!”
“What is the use,” thinks Bertram, “of trying to save sheep who carry their own fleeces obstinately to the shearers?”
“This is the impression,” he asks of the policeman, “which years on the London pavement gives you of the London populace?”
Policeman answers, drily, “Yessir. All the force’ll tell ye the same. London populace likes the nobs. Some on ’em yell a lot o’ revolutionary nonsensewhen they gets in Trafalgar Square, but, Lord bless ye, they don’t mean it.”
“They will mean it one day.”
“Well, sir, if they ever run short o’ liquor, on account of them total habstainers, they will.”
“What a view of the sovereign people!” says Bertram, “who in theAge to Comeadvocates voluntary total abstinence.”
“Sovereign, is it, sir? Ever seen ’em o’ Derby Day, sir?”
“Yes,” replies Bertram, curtly. He perceives that the constable is a satirist.
In sight at that moment appears a struggling form being violently propelled by two officers of the law, and followed by some yelling roughs and capering boys.
Bertram cannot believe his senses.
“Good gracious! That is Hopper!” he says to the satirical policeman at his side. “What are they doing to him? Why is he arrested?”
Policeman replies politely, but with slightly veiled contempt: “Seem to be running him in, sir. Is he a protegy of yours?”
Bertram goes up to the prisoner: “Why, Hopper, is that you? What has he done? Why do you collar him like that?”
The constables, who are dragging Hopper between them, reply with curt contempt: “Disorderly; drunk and disorderly, that’s what he is, sir, and incitin’ to crime.”
“Drunk?” repeats Bertram. “Hopper? Impossible! Hehas touched nothing but lemonade and mineral water for three years!”
“Is that so, sir? Well, there’s an excuse for him, then, poor devil!”
The prisoner whines and weeps, “Is that you, Mr. Bertram? You’ll speak for a pore honest man—for a pore honest man—not a drop hev Hopper took—not a—not a—not a drop. Hark’ee, Mister—Hopper was a-tellin’ folks—good tidings—proputty’s pison—proputty’s thievin’—proputty’s root o’ all evil—said so yerself, mister. Hopper used yer werry words. And Hopper’s run in, and ye stand there—yah! Blackgud.”
“I am ashamed of you, Hopper,” says Bertram, sternly. “But,” he adds to the constables, “if you arrest this manfor having taken stimulants, I cannot oppose the measure, he may deserve arrest; but if you consider him guilty because he has merely striven to disseminate the doctrines which I myself hold, I ought in common justice to accompany him and be locked up as well.”
The first policeman, who has a satiric vein, smiles rather cynically: “Well, sir, I don’t say as you shouldn’t, but we can’t run you in, sir; you aren’t disorderly.”
Marlow, who is sauntering past, stops, and laughs: “His opinions are very disorderly. Half an hour in Bow Street might be a seasonable douche.”
Hopper is struggling between the two constables, who have him by the collar: “Hi, mister!” he groans, “won’t ye speak hup for a ’onest man?Kep’ me on beastly swills, you hev—kep’ promisin’ on me beer’d be free all round—promised as ’ow I’d live in Windsor Castle, and hev ale an’ gin on tap all day—promised as ’ow—promised as ’ow—promised as ’ow——”
“Shut up his jaw,” says one of the constables to the other. “Get him along somehow. We can’t waste no more time.”
They go down the road, dragging and pushing Hopper, a group of small boys dancing hilariously in their rear.
“I assure you he was an entirely reformed character, up to this moment,” says Bertram to the satirical and remaining policeman.
“Aye, they’re allus the worst, sir,” says that functionary, with conviction.
“Reformed characters havea knack of backsliding,” says Marlow, who has lingered to look on, with great enjoyment of the scene. “Vice is magnetic. Virtue isn’t—somehow.”
Bertram ignores him and continues to address the policeman: “I suppose I can witness on his behalf in the police-court? Get him out on bail? My testimony surely——”
“Well, sir, I’d let him bide if I was you,” says the policeman, without a grain of sympathy. “Seven days’ll do him a world o’ good. Wonderful how it sobers ’em.”
“Why are you so ungenerous to your own class?”
Policeman looks puzzled: “Don’t know about ongenerous, sir; but I didn’t never cotton to drunkards afore I was in the force.”
“I thought you were a totalabstainer, Bertram?” says Marlow.
Bertram replies, very stiffly: “Drink is the most disgusting of all weaknesses, but our disgust ought not to destroy our compassion. In that poor man yonder it is a relapse into a bad habit after three years of rigorous abstinence.”
The policeman smothers a decorous smile: “Beg pardon, sir that ’ere man was run in dead drunk a fortnight ago on the Nottin’ ’Ill road and got two days.”
Bertram is silent.
He remembers that Hopper appeared at his chambers ten days previously with a black eye and bandaged head, and accounted for his condition by a very well-told episode of a runaway horse and a lady saved by his courage and resolution.
Marlow laughs, nods, and walks on; Bertram lights another cigarette. He is not pleased by this episode.
Marlow, meanwhile continuing his walk, comes, some tenth part of a mile further down the road, on two ladies, whom he recognises immediately although their backs are towards him; one is Cicely Seymour, the other Lady Jane Rivaux. He overtakes them with as much haste and joyousness as it is possible for a London man in the ’Nineties to display in public.
“Oh, Miss Seymour, such a lark down there,” he says, with great satisfaction. “A friend of Bertram’s run in dead drunk by the police, and Bertram preaching red ruin on his behalf. On my word, it’s the drollest sight I’ve seen for many a day.”
“It must be,” replied Cicely,between her teeth. “We have all of us numbers of friends who take more stimulants than are good for them, but they are careful to be in the sanctuary of their own houses or in their clubs.”
“How you do pull up a fellow!” murmurs Marlow. “Of course, when I say friend I mean a—a—well, one of his monstrous queer acquaintances. He lives amongst that class.”
“What class?”
“Well, the—the mob—you know. Folks that come out when there’s a riot and smash windows and lamps; never see ’em any other time; burrow, I suppose, like rabbits.”
“Darkest London? I fear the lamps when they are not smashed do not throw much light on their darkness.”
“How sententious you are,Cicely!” says Lady Jane. “You ought to marry a rising politician.”
“Because I detest politics?”
“Bertram’s views aren’t politics, they’re red ruin,” repeats Marlow. “Red ruin to himself, too; he’s dropped such a pot o’ money over that revolutionary journal of his that he’ll be in the bankruptcy court before the season’s over.”
“Has he borrowed any money of you?” asks Cicely, curtly.
“Oh dear, no; I didn’t mean to imply——”
“Then what are his affairs to you?”
“Well—I—I—don’t know. Mustn’t one talk of one’s neighbours?”
“It shows great poverty of mind to speak merely of people. There are so many other subjects.”
Marlow is abashed.
He knows that his mind is not rich according to her ideas of intellectual wealth.
“At all events,” he says, rather crossly and hotly, “one may be allowed to envy such a prig such good luck as to have Miss Seymour for a champion.”
“Jane,” says Cicely, turning to her friend, “here come your children. How well that mite Dolly rides!”
“Heisa prig, you know, my dear,” murmurs Lady Jane, “and I am sorry it makes you angry when we say so.”
“I dislike all injustice,” says Cicely, coldly, “and I do not consider that Mr. Bertram is in the least done justice to by his friends and relations. How badly every one treated him yesterday in return for a most learned and interesting lecture!”
While she is thus defending himself and his doctrines in his absence, Bertram, still seated under the trees, sees in the distance a girl’s figure; she wears a black straw hat, a black jacket, and a grey stuff skirt; she has thread gloves and leather highlows, the highlows are white with dust; she has two deep baskets filled with primroses and covered by red cotton handkerchiefs; she carries one on each arm. She has a round, fair, freckled face, a sweet and cheerful expression, and a fringe of naturally curling brown hair.
She approaches Bertram smiling: “Oh, gracious, sir! Don’t get up for the likes of me. Mother told me as how you were under this tree; I just met her by the Gate, so I thought I’d come and have a peep at you.”
“Thanks,” replies Bertram, distantly. “Don’t say ‘as how,’ Annie. You are heavily laden this morning.”
“Oh, no, sir. Primroses have no roots; they make a fine show, but they don’t weigh naught.”
“Like the party of which they are the emblem.”
Annie smiles, in entire ignorance of his meaning, and sits down by him, planting her baskets on the ground.
“These aren’t very good flowers,” she says, regretfully, “the rain’s spiled ’em. They’ll do to put at the horses’ ears. Why do they put ’em at the horses’ ears, sir? I asked a groom onst, and he says, says he, it means that when our party come back to office we’ll take the tax off horses. Is that so, sir?”
“They are not only at the horses’ ears, but at the asses’ button-holes!” says Bertram. “As for taxation, it is the arc of Toryism.”
“Dear me!” he thinks, “why will she sit down by me? With all the will in the world one cannot but fret occasionally at their manners, though of course manner is only the shell, and ought not to weigh with one!”
Annie is meanwhile making some primroses up into a bunch. “What had you said to mother?” she asks. “Her back was quite set up, like.”
“Your mother,” replies Bertram, “is the most estimable and indefatigable of persons, but she has the taint of painfully narrowed and archaic views: she persists in considering herself of an inferior class;she persists in speaking of ‘quality,’ by which she means the patrician order, as something superhuman and alien to herself. It distresses me.”
“Oh, yes! Mother’s always going on about our engagement. She says as how——”
“‘As how,’ again, Annie!”
“Well, sir, that’s just what mother means. You speak in one way and I in another. And your friends will laugh at my way of speaking, sir; they certainly will.”
“Let them laugh! Besides, we shall not see them, Annie; we shall live wholly apart from them, in some remote spot of our own.”
“Out o’ London, sir?”
“Out of London beyond a doubt. Is that any subject of regret?”
“Well—I should miss the streets, sir.”
“Miss the streets! Merciful heavens! To what a pass has the baneful disease of town life brought a pure and unsophisticated soul! But you have been in the country this morning early—the hem of the country at any rate. Did the freshness, the silence, the fragrance around you say nothing to your heart?”
“Well, no, sir. Where the growers are you don’t smell much else than manure; and there’s a steam pump always going fit to deafen you.”
“Well, well! But you must have seen the real country. I have taken you myself to Bushey and Thames Ditton. Surely you must see that the streets are the quintessence of vulgarity, of artificiality, of hideousness, of ludicrous effort?”
“If they’re as bad as that,sir, why do all the great ladies stay all the summer in ’em, when they might be in the country? Our little street ain’t much, for sure, but there’s a deal o’ neighbourliness in it; and I’m so used to listening for Sam’s growler rattlin’ home I don’t think sleep ’ud come to me without it.”
“We really cannot take Sam and his cab into our wedded life,” remarks Bertram, with irritation; “and why will you say ‘sir,’ and not Wilfrid?”
“Your Christian name would sound so cheeky, sir,” replies Annie. “I couldn’t bring myself to say it. You’re so different to me, sir. That’s what mother allus says: ‘Mr. Bertram’s got queer notions,’ says she; ‘but he was born of the quality, and quality he’ll be till he die, let him fuss andfad and fettle as much as ever he likes.’”
Bertram is looking uneasily down the Mile: “Won’t your primroses wither in the sun?”
“No; there’s the shade o’ the tree.”
Bertram says to himself: “However shall I get rid of her? If Marlow should come back while she’s sitting here, or Fanshawe come out of his house!” (Aloud.) “Dear Annie, if you won’t misunderstand me, I think we’d better not be seen sitting here together. Cæsar’s wife—no, I don’t mean that, I mean an Englishman’s betrothed—in fact, you know what I mean. It was very kind of you to send those violets yesterday, but it was a mistake—my rooms were full—people laughed.”
“Oh, Mr. Bertram, I amsorry. It was silly, of course, now I think of it,” says the girl, as she rises and takes up the baskets. “Mr. Bertram, if you don’t like to be seen with me settin’ on this bench, how ever will you stand being seen with me all your life?”
“You don’t comprehend,” replies Bertram, nervously. “That isn’t the question at all. I don’t want people to say coarse and rude things of you. Of my wife no one will ever dare to do so.”
Annie hangs her head in silence for a minute; then murmurs:
“Do you really love me, sir? Mother says as how it’s moonshine.”
“I dislike the word love. It is coarse, and implies coarse feelings. It is a degrading impulse, shared with the beastsof the fields. Poets are responsible for having covered its unloveliness with a starry garment which has disguised—fatally disguised—its nakedness. What I feel for you is respect, esteem, the sweetness of fulfilled duty, the means of proving to the world the sincerity of my sociology.”
“Yes, sir. You told me that afore.”
“Well, what better sentiment can you desire? Love fills lunatic asylums, divorce courts, cemeteries, heats charcoal braziers, fires revolvers, gives human bodies to fishes; but such a sentiment as I have for you purifies society, advances civilisation, ensures mutual respect, and eliminates passion, the tyrant of man.”
He stops abruptly, for before his memory floats the vision ofCecily Seymour, and he seems to hear her saying: “What heresy! And how untrue!”
Annie murmurs, keeping her head down, and in a disappointed voice: “Yes, sir.”
“You do not seem to understand! You are vexed?”
“I’ll try to understand, sir. I’m only a poor girl, and all that you say is very beautiful, I dessay; but—it makes me think of a novel I got onst from the library, where a poor governess, without a umberellar or a friend, stands out in the rain and looks through the winder at a cosy kitchen, where they’re a-toastin’ muffins for tea, and a cat’s a-warming hisself at the fire.”
“‘Jane Eyre.’ I fail to see the connection.”
“Well, Mr. Bertram, I say it ill; but when you talk inthat kind o’ way it makes me feel out in the cold like as that poor teacher was, and I think I’d rather have the fire and the muffins and the cat.”
“I fear you are a sad Philistine, Annie.”
“I don’t know what that is, sir. I daresay as it’s only that your beautiful talk’s too fine for me. I think I’ll go now. I didn’t ought to have dawdled here.”
“You are crying, child!”
“Oh, no, sir.”
She gets up and hurries away.
“O Heavens!” Bertram says to himself. “One does not go to that sturdy class to get a sensitive plant that droops at a touch. She saysliberryandumberellar. It is absurd that such a trifle should irritate one, but it does; it is like a grain ofdust in one’s eye, a crumb of bread in one’s sock. What atoms they are, yet how miserable they can make one! And then her absolute inability to understand one! Love! Good gracious! She would want to have a bride cake from Gunter’s; a temple of Hymen in spun sugar!”
The remembrance of Cicely Seymour’s fair face, with its tender, dreamy eyes and its beautiful mouth, comes over him. He shivers in the warmth of the pleasant and unusual sunshine.
Marlow, who has left the ladies after his snubbing, passes him again, puts his glass in his eye, and gazes after Annie Brown.
“Aprotégée? Younger than your disciples usually are,” he remarks. “Ah, tobe sure—that must be the Annie of the violets? My dear Bertram, surely chivalry should suggest that we should carry her baskets for her? If you will take the one, I will take the other.”
Bertram deigns no answer. He feels considerably annoyed, and gazes at the cupola of the hotel in front of him.
Marlow digs holes in the gravel with his cane.
“What an opportunity lost of practical illustration of your doctrines, and—she’s got a smart pair of ankles; rather thick, but still——”
Bertram continues to gaze abstractedly at the hotel roof.
“But why, oh why, let her wear highlows?” continues Marlow. “They would deform a goddess.”
Suddenly, with the sense oftaking a plunge into water of unknown depth, the man whom he torments faces what he considers an imperative obligation.
“The young person in the highlows is my future wife,” he says between his teeth. “You will be so good as to make your jokes about some other matter than her ankles.”
Marlow stares, utterly incredulous and stupefied.
“Good Lord! you can’t mean it! Your wife? Why, she is—she is—she is a very decent sort of girl no doubt; I should be sorry to imply the contrary, but——”
“Be so good as to understand that I am not in jest. That is the—the—the daughter of the people who I am about to marry.”
“Oh, Lord!”
Marlow drops into a chair,so astonished that he could not recover his speech. Annie is too far off to hear, and there is no one else within earshot except a groom on the other side of the rails; the policeman has gone on down the road.
“I was much to blame,” says Bertram, in his chilliest manner, “not to make the announcement yesterday when you asked who were the Brown family. My reticence was a weakness of which I am sincerely ashamed.”
He has done what he believes that courage, truth, and loyalty to this poor little girl with the primrose skips demanded, but doing our duty, unhappily, is apt to leave a shivery and prickly sensation behind it, and his reasons do not, even to himself, appear so logical, admirable, and clear as they had done three months ago.
And why will she say “liberry” and “umberellar”? and her ankles certainly are thick! He tries to remember Sybil in Disraeli’s romance of that name, but he cannot conceal from his mind that Annie is not in the very least like Sybil, if he himself somewhat resembles Egremont.
“And may I tell people?” asks Marlow, with his eyes staring wide open.
“You may tell every one. The office of bellman to society is, I believe, very congenial to you.”
“Eh? Lord, how they will laugh! They’ll die of laughin’.”
Bertram reddens angrily.
“No doubt they will laugh. Such laughter is still as like the crackling of thorns under a pot as it was in the days of Solomon.”
Marlow continues to stare stupidly.
“Are you sure you aren’t jokin’? chaffin’? humbuggin’?” he asks.
“I do not joke,” replies Bertram, with chill dignity. “And certainly I should not use banter on so delicate and solemn a subject. If you think the actions of my insignificant personality will amuse people, you are at liberty to amuse them.”
With that he nods slightly, and walks towards the French Embassy, leaving Marlow rooted to his chair, still staring with a blank expression of incredulity and amaze.
“And that prig, that dolt, that triple idiot might marry Cicely Seymour if he chose!” mutters the young man with the gold crook of his cane between his teeth.
Marlow cannot believe his own senses. It is eleven o’clock in the morning, and he has taken nothing but some black coffee and a devilled kidney, or he really would think he had been drinking, and forgotten the debauch.
He feels that it would be very agreeable to his feelings to return to barbarian methods and pound into a jelly the highly cultured brains of the author of theAge to Come.
“But what do you marry her for?” he shouts after Bertram’s retreating figure. He receives no answer, and Bertram passes away under the budding April boughs. To explain his reasons to Marlow would be indeed to throw pearls before swine.
As he walks backward in the direction of Hyde ParkCorner he sees the figure of Annie Brown going down the almost-deserted roadway of the drive.
“Her anklesarethick,” he thinks painfully; “and why will she use such very odd words as ‘liberry’? Why? I believe philologists consider that the vernacular of the illiterate is the purest Saxon English spoken; but it grates unpleasantly on one’s ears. Is that you, Fanshawe, at last?”
Fanshawe, who has come out of his house, which is near to the French Embassy, fixes his eyeglass on the retreating figure of the unconscious Annie. He is of a supernatural quickness of observation.
Bertram, to his vexation, feels extreme embarrassment. He knows he ought to repeat to Fanshawe the confession justmade to Marlow, but he cannot; it sticks in his throat like a fish bone. The eyes of the potent editor are malicious and inexorable.
“I saw you from my bedroom window sitting with that young daughter of the sovereign people,” remarks Fanshawe. “I wished for a Kodak. TheTorchshould have had an illustrated Easter number.”
“You are fifty minutes late,” says Bertram, irritably.
“My dressing-gown and chocolate pot are dear to me.”
“You always turn night into day.”
“Night is day in London, as coal and electricity are its summer. Well, sha’n’t we take a hansom to Folliott’s?”
“Wait a moment, Fanshawe. Sit down here.”
Fanshawe complies reluctantly.“Why waste time? Let’s go and settle your inheritance.”
“Please go instead of me and say that I refuse. It is very simple.”
“It is simple indeed! So was the remark of ‘Tom’s a’ cold’; and just about as reasonable. My dear Bertram!La nuit porte conseil, and yet you still wish to refuse?”
“Yes, I refuse; and——”
He pauses, then swallows the fish bone desperately.
“And—I am going to marry yonder daughter of the people!”
“Ah! Rumour for once is correct, then?” says the gentleman, to whom the amplification and publication of Rumour brings in £40,000 per annum.
“Yes, I marry the young woman you saw when you wished for a Kodak.”
For once Fanshawe has not a syllable to say: he is dumb.
“You look astonished,” remarks Bertram. “Yet with your principles——”
“Principles be damned!” says Fanshawe. “They must go to the wall when they trample on common sense.”
“But surely for you no class divisions exist?” says Bertram, with some maliciousness. “Therefore of course you will congratulate me as warmly as if my future wife were that abominable thing a duke’s daughter.”
“There ought to be no race-horses, but while there are we put our money on them,” replied Fanshawe. “We must take the world as it is, or cut our throats in it. You are cutting yours with a bowie knife. I will return to my chocolate pot.”
At that instant Mrs. Brown comes down the road out of breath. Annie is out of sight.
“I am come after my daughter, Mr. Bertram, if you please. Soon as I told her ye was here I was that mad with myself, for it flashed across me she’d come and——”
“And why not, madam?” says Fanshawe. “It is, it seems, allen tout bien, tout honneur.”
“I don’t understand gibberish, sir, but girls should be circumspec.”
Fanshawe gazes at her through his eyeglass.
“Your mother-in-law to be?” he murmurs.
Mrs. Brown, not hearing, goes on in a rather shrill tone: “I don’t mean my daughter to walk along with you, sir, till she’s a right totake your arm afore everybody.”
Bertram shudders.
Fanshawe lifts his hat to Mrs. Brown approvingly.
“These sentiments, madam, do you the highest honour. The quality, as you would call them, are not so severe. Their young ladies sit out on the staircases, and flirt in corners with their young men, and meet them in these sylvan groves with a groom as chaperon, without any certainty that matrimony will ever follow. But then thedemi-viergeis probably confined to the Upper Ten.”
“I don’t know about the ways o’ the gentry, sir,” says Mrs. Brown; “in our street we’re respectable though weareback o’ Portman Square.”
“Madam! Juvenal himselfnever implied anything so crushing! Bertram, I ask again, is this good lady about to be your mother-in-law?”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Well, dear madam, it is but right that, standing in this future relation to my friend, you should know this fact: Mr. Bertram has had a very large property left him.”
“Lawk a mussy, sir!”
“But he is inclined to refuse it on account of his social principles, with which, no doubt, you are acquainted. Now, dear madam, tell us freely your opinion as a person of sound common sense, and one who is about to be closely allied to him. Should he refuse it, or should he accept it?”
“Dearie, dearie, sir! How can anybody hev left good money to such a gawk!”
Fanshawe laughs aloud: “When Truth comes out of her well she is seldom polite! Never mind, Mrs. Brown, you can make your peace with your son-in-law some other time. Only tell us now, for we are going to the lawyers on this momentous errand. Ought he to accept or to refuse?”
Annie’s mother is flattered at the deference to her opinion.
“Well, sir, it ain’t for the like o’ me to judge for the likes o’ you. But, if ye want my plain opinion, it is this ’un: if he take the proputty he’lllooksilly. But if he don’t take it he’llbesilly; and he’ll be sorry all his life.”
“Mrs. Brown,” says Bertram, “your daughter would not say so.”
“Likely not, sir. She’s a slim snippet of a girl as haven’tfelt any o’ the weight o’ livin’ yet. When she hev she’ll know a full money-box is the softest pillar one can lay a tired head on any night.”
“Mrs. Brown, the classic form of Socrates dwindles before yours! I place you immediately upon the staff of theTorch.”
Mrs. Brown is puzzled. “I don’t hold with torches, sir. Sam’s link-boy, last week in the great fog, flourishing one about like a fool, set fire to all the straw—such a piece o’ work—and Sam warn’t hinsured.”
“I wince under the moral lesson which you convey by your apologue to my journal, but——”
“How much longer are you going to waste in chaffing this woman?” says Bertram, very angrily. “There’s an empty hansom passing. Take it.”
“Take it yourself. Mrs. Brown, your lips drop pearls of wisdom. Yet you are servile, Mrs. Brown. Are we not all equal before the great Bona Dea of Nature?”
“Equal, sir?” repeats Mrs. Brown, with fine scorn. “That’shisrot; yet when he come to our place one day, and we was eatin’ good Dutch cheese and ’errings, he well-nigh fainted at the stink on ’em!”
Fanshawe laughs delightedly.
“He live on peaches and pinehapples, he do,” she continued, with a snort; “and he’s spoilt a good seasonable chance o’ settlin’ herself as my daughter had with the young man round the corner——”
“Shut up that jaw, Fanshawe!” cries Bertram, falling into low language in his wrath.
“Will you go to Folliottand Hake’s or not?” asks his friend.
“I will go to Satan’s self to stop you chaffing this woman. Look how those people are laughing.”
Bertram calls the passing hansom and gets into it; Fanshawe follows him, and waves his hand to Mrs. Brown.
“You must come and dine with me at Richmond, Mrs. Socrates!”
Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph.
“Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ’cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it;may put it in theMorning Postto-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.”
Much pleased with his own wit and humour he laughs gleefully, whilst his eyes are trying to read Cicely’s face; it gives no sign of any feeling or of having even heard what he has said.
“What nonsense you talk, Lord Marlow!” says Lady Jane. “Bertram may be silly, but he is not so utterly out of his mind as that.”
“Isn’t he? Why, he’s just told me the news himself! The young woman was with him down yonder. She sells flowers, and had got two skipsfull of primroses; and she’s not a good feature in her face. I’ll offer to be best man; shall I send ’em a set of saucepans or a sewing-machine?”
Cicely casts a look of supreme contempt upon him.
“The perfection to which you bring your jokes must have cost you a long apprenticeship on Bank Holidays, Lord Marlow.”
Marlow’s mirth is a little subdued.
“You can’t be speaking seriously,” says one of the men present. “Bertram is not quite such an ass as that.”
“I am, though,” replies Marlow, sulkily. “I’ve seen the girl, and Bertram’s just told me to tell everybody.”
“What is her name?”
“She’s Annie Brown; we heard that yesterday. Mothertakes in washing. Oh, Lord, it’ll kill me, the fun of it.”
Doubled up with silent laughter he leans upon his cane and furtively watches Cicely’s face.
“Why should you be surprised that Mr. Bertram puts his theories into practice?” she says, coldly. “It is only like Count Tolstoi’s ploughing.”
“Goodness, Cicely!” says Lady Jane, with much irritation. “You surely can’t defend such an insanity as this? It is very much worse than any plough. I thought his manner very odd yesterday about those violets; for he is not, you know, a manà bonnes fortunes.”
“You would approve him more if he were!”
“Well, they are less serious,” answers Lady Jane. “You canget rid ofthem; but an Annie Brown when you have once married her——”
“At all events,” says Cicely, “whatever it may be, it is certainly only the business of those concerned in it, and none of ours. Why are you not already on your way to the newspaper offices, Lord Marlow? I believe they give a guinea for first news.”
“Bertram may be so happy as to interest you, Miss Seymour,” says Marlow, sullenly, “but he’s an unknown quantity to the world in general. Nobody’d give twopence for any news of him.”
“Certainly he is not chronicled as the winner at pigeon-shooting and polo matches, which is your distinction, Lord Marlow, and I believe your only one.”
“Why will you be so unkind to Marlow?” asks Lady Jane, as, having shaken off their admirers, they walk back alone.
“I grant,” she continues, as poor Marlow, mortified, falls behind, “that he is not an extraordinarily brilliant person; he will not head the Cabinet or be President of the Royal Society, but his temper is kind and his character blameless.”
“One would think you were recommending a groom! You may safely add that his hand is light and his seat is sure, for riding is his solitary accomplishment!”
“My dear child, how remarkably severe you are! Will you tell me what use to Wilfrid Bertram are the incontestable talents with which he was born? What does he do with them? Write in such amanner that if he were a native of any other country than England he would have been lodged in prison years ago.”
Cicely Seymour is silent.
She has read some numbers of theAge to Come, and she cannot honestly say that she approves of its subversive tendencies. She looks straight before her with a heightened colour, and the rose-leaves of her lips are pressed together in irritation.
“I suppose you will offer to be bridesmaid to Miss Annie Brown,” says Lady Jane, irritably.
“Why not?” says Cicely, very coldly. “One attends many weddings brought about by more ignoble motives.”
“You will not see me at the ceremony,” replies Lady Jane, more and more incensed.
“I know I shall not, nor any of his relatives. But I do not admire the class prejudice which will keep you all away.”
And she leans over the rail of the Ride and pats the mane of a child’s pony.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, resting her empty basket and her rheumatic limbs for a few minutes on a bench, ponders vainly on the name Mr. Fanshawe gave her. “Mrs. Sockatees,” she repeats to herself. “He can’t think as I’m one to marry agen at my time o’ life. If it hadn’t bin for the children there were a tallow chandler, a warm man too, he was, who would hev bin ready as ready——”
She muses pensively a moment on the charms of the lost tallow chandler who had been sacrificed to her maternalscruples, whilst Cicely Seymour and Lady Jane are walking towards her.
“Let’s sit down here a moment, Cicely,” says Lady Jane. “The children will be back again directly.”
Mrs. Brown rises and curtsies, taking up her basket.
“Don’t get up, my good woman, there’s room enough.”
“Your ’umble servant, ma’am,” says Mrs. Brown, standing erect, her empty basket held before her like a shield of Boadicea; she does not know them by name, but they are possible clients for the wash-tub.
“Why should you stand?” says Cicely. “These seats are free to all.”
“Thanks, miss, but I know my duty.” Then she adds, insinuatingly, “If you should bewanting a laundress, ma’am, you’d be doin’ a charity to remember me—Eliza Brown, o’ 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square; no acids used, miss, and no machine-work.”
Cicely looks at her, and with some hesitation asks:
“Are you—are you—the mother of a young person called Annie Brown? She has just gone past here with some primroses.”
“Yes, miss, I be.”
“Of Mr. Bertram’s heroine!” adds Lady Jane, with a laugh.
“Please ’m, don’t call her names, ma’am,” says Annie’s mother, quickly. “She’s a good girl, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, and there’s nought to laugh at, unless it be the gentleman’s rubbish.”
“You don’t seem to be gratefulfor the compliment he pays to your family,” says Lady Jane, much amused.
“Compliment is it, my lady? The gentleman’s a crank, that’s what he is; he won’t never marry her, and there’s a good young man round the corner as is left out in the cold. He’s in the greengrocery line, and hev got a good bit o’ money put by, and the match ’ud be suitable in every way, for my daughter’s a good judge o’ green stuff.”
“Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely, “I should like to have the pleasure of knowing your daughter. Will you bring her to see me? I am staying with Mr. Bertram’s aunt, Lady Southwold.”
Mrs. Brown stares hard.
“You do my girl a great honour, miss, but her head’s turned too crazy as ’tis. Poorfolks, miss, ain’t got no place with rich ’uns.”
“That is a rather narrow feeling, Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely; “and surely your daughter ought to begin to know Mr. Bertram’s friends and relatives?”
“She won’t never be nought to Mr. Bertram, miss,” replies Mrs. Brown, very confidently. “’Tis a pack of stuff their thinkin’ on it. Lord, my lady, if you only see his shirts, that fine as cobwebs is coarse to ’em!”
Lady Jane is much diverted.
“She evidently does not believe in the seriousness of Bertram’s intentions, Cicely.”
Mrs. Brown tucks her basket under her arm.
“You’ll excuse me, my ladies, if I don’t stay to prate. Us poor folks ’even’t got timeto lose in gossip; and if you can give me work, ’m, I’ll be truly thankful to you, ma’am—Eliza Brown, 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square. Your servant, ladies.”
With that she bobs a curtsey and departs.
“A nice honest woman,” says Cicely.
Lady Jane laughs.
“She doesn’t appreciate Bertram or his shirts. What right has he, with his principles, to wear lawn shirts? He ought to wear hemp.”
Cicely traces patterns on the gravel with her sunshade.
“I should like to see the girl.”
“Why? You may be sure she is a little horror.”
“I am sure she is a very good girl,” says Cicely. “I am sure she is a very good girl.A person must be good that lives amongst flowers.”
“Florists are not all saints,” replies Lady Jane, out of patience; “and it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers. There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration. She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”
“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children again.”
Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house—a friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarme and Verlaine, writes studies on thepointillistes, and has published a volume of five hundred pages on Strindberg—but he feels indisposed for eventhat sympathetic society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door with his latch-key.
His rooms areen suite, one out of another, and from the door-mat he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is his study.
There is in that room a large Florentine cabinet of tortoise-shell and brass-work; the key of the drawers thereof is on his watch-chain; yet he perceives that the drawers are all open, their contents are strewn about, and stooping down over them is Critchett.
Critchett’s back is unmistakable; it has as much characterin it as the profile of Cæsar or Napoleon.
Bertram walks noiselessly over the thick carpets, and touches him on the shoulder.
“You!—a common thief!”
Critchett stumbles to his feet, pulls himself erect rather nervously, and faces his employer. In his right hand is a pearl necklace.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he murmurs. “I thought you had gone to Mr. Domville’s. I was coming down with the valise.”
Bertram takes the pearls out of his grasp; he has grown much paler than his nefarious valet. He is cut to the heart.
“A common thief—you!” he repeats. TheEt tu Brutehad not more pathetic reproval in it.
Critchett in the interval hasrecovered his self-possession, and what more vulgar persons would call his cheek.
“Excuse me, sir. There aren’t such a thing as theft. What is called theft is only an over-violent readjustment of unfairly divided values. I’ve read it in theAge to Come.”
“You infernal scoundrel! These are my dead mother’s jewels!”
“I know they are, sir. They were doing no good here; and you told the ladies yesterday as all jewellery was an abomination.”
“This is probably not the first time by many that you have robbed me?”
“I let nobody else steal a farthing from you, sir.”
“Indeed! You like vicarious virtue! How could you open the cabinet? It has a Bramah lock.”
“And this here’s a Bramah pick-lock, sir,” says Critchett, displaying an elegant little tool.
“You infernal scoundrel!” repeats Bertram. “If I did my duty, I should give you to the police.”
“Oh, no, sir, you couldn’t do that to be consistent; and consistency is the first of virtues. I’ve heard you say, sir, that prevention is suggestion, and that if there was no constables there’d be no crime. In locking up this cabinet you put into my mind the idea of opening it. It is you, sir, who are to blame, not I.”
Critchett smiles demurely as he repeats these words.
“You have debased me, sir, by making me fill a servile office,” he adds. “No man should serve another. You’ve said so often.”
Bertram is silent, unspeakably annoyed, mortified, and distressed. He cannot discuss ethics with a treacherous valet.
“I believed in you, Critchett,” he says, after a pause.
Critchett smiles.
“I know you did, sir; you believe in a lot o’ things as won’t wash.”
“And you feel no remorse for having deceived me?”
“No, sir. Remorse aren’t seen outside the theatres, I think. ’Tis a word, sir. ’Tis only a word.”
Bertram is silent. The cheap cynicism of this man, who has lived beside him during a dozen years, is revolting.
“You are aware I could have you arrested?” he says, after a pause.
“No, sir, you couldn’t,” replies Critchett, calmly. “You’dbe giving the lie to all your own theories. Try and look at it philosophic-like, sir.”
Bertram feels a violent longing to call up the policeman now passing by the rails of the Green Park. He puts a five-pound note on the table.
“Take your wage for the coming month, and begone.”
“It is usual, sir,” objects Critchett, “to give more than a month’s anticipatory honorarium on parting after such long association.”
This is the drop too much which makes the cup of Bertram’s patience overflow.
“You impudent villain,” he exclaims. “The only payment you deserve is the treadmill. Do not stretch my patience too far.”
Critchett perceives that his long docile victim is roused, and may become dangerous.
He retreats meekly.
“Would you wish to examine my portmanteau, sir?”
“No,” says Bertram. “Begone.”
Critchett bows very low.
“I have only put your theories into practice, sir,” he says, when he has reached a safe distance; “and you will be sorry if you send me away. You won’t find another Critchett very easily.”
Bertram turns his back on him; he feels again a great inclination to summon the constable who is walking in the street below.
The man having at last departed, he picks up the various objects and begins to replace them in the drawers of the cabinet. He is depressed and humiliated. For over twelve years he has implicitly trusted Critchett, believed in him, extolledhim, and depended on him; taking his excellent service as a surety for moral excellence, as most of us do with our servants.
The cool impertinence with which the thief has quoted his own writings and sayings against him mortifies him; he is conscious that Critchett must have always considered him an ineffable idiot. It is not soothing to one’s self-respect to realise that for more than a dozen years one has been made a fool of successfully.
The sight of his mother’s jewels also saddens him; he had been her favourite son, and he had loved her tenderly.
“You will keep them for your wife, Wilfrid,” she had said to him, when she had given him the pearls and other ornaments on her death-bed.
What would his mother say, were she living, to such a wife for him as poor little Annie Brown? Poor Annie! Who said “as how” and “umberellar,” and who “liked to ’ear the growlers come rattlin’ ’ome o’ nights.”
“Mr. Bertram,” says the voice of Annie at that moment timidly. She has come through the anteroom of which Critchett has left the door open behind him. She wears the same clothes that she wore in the Park, but she carries no baskets on her arms.
Noticing Bertram’s preoccupied and distressed expression and the litter of objects on the floor, she is afraid she appears at an inopportune moment.
“Lord’s sakes, sir!” she murmurs, “what hev happened?”
“Critchett is a thief, Annie.I caught him in the act,” replies Bertram, with tragic force.
“Mother always knew as he was so, sir,” replies the girl, not astonished. “But she didn’t dare to tell you. You was that fond on him.”
“How could she possibly know?”
“Well, sir, he was allers a-boasting of ’ow he fleeced you. I believe all the gentlemen’s gentlemen in these ’ere parts o’ London know how he tricked ye. Law, sir, he even pawned your shirts!”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Well, you see, sir, we didn’t like to lose a man his place.”
“You condoned a felony sooner?”
“Please, sir, I don’t know what that is. But poor folk don’t never take the bread outof each other’s mouths. And, besides, you wouldn’t have believed anybody against Critchett, sir. You were that wrapped up in him.”
“How cruelly one may be deceived!”
“’Tis easy to deceive you, sir, as instead of seeing people as they is, you see ’em as you fancies ’em to be.”
“Perhaps so. I fear I am a greater fool than I thought.”
“Oh, no, sir; only too trustin’ like.”
“Well, well,” says Bertram, much irritated, “Critchett is a thing of the past. We will never speak of him. But why have you come to my rooms, my dear girl? It is not—not quite—correct. Cæsar’s wife you know. But perhaps you never heard of her——”
“No, sir. Who was thelady? I only came to say a word, Mr. Bertram. There aren’t no harm in it, though mother would be angry over the place.”
“If you had sent me a line I would have called on you.”
“You see, sir, mother’s and sister Kate’s at home, they’d hear every word, and I want to speak to you all alone. I won’t be many minutes. I don’t think it’s any harm my comin’, though mother would be fit to kill me if she knew——”
“Your mother is quite right in her views, Annie. Young women cannot be too circumspect.”
“I’m allus circumspec’, sir; and—oh, Lord, Mr. Bertram, what a beautiful string o’ pearls!”
“They were my mother’s, Annie. They will be yours.”
“Mine, sir! Lord, never! The idea of Critchett takin’ them pearls. Why they must be worth thousands and thousands!”
“No, a few hundreds. My mother left these things to me for my wife when I should have one. They are very sacred to me. They will be as dear to you, Annie, I am sure?”
“Oh, sir, they’ll never be mine. You might as well talk of my wearin’ the crown of England.”
“Always low and servile comparisons, Annie!”
“Lord, sir, be a queen’s crown low?”
“To think of it as a desirable and enviable thing is extremely low.”
“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t understand. Will you please put up these pearls? They’rethat beautiful I don’t dare touch ’em.”
“They will be my wife’s. Therefore I repeat they will be yours.”
“That’s what I come to say to you, sir. What we have thought of won’t never be. Can’t never be. Tisn’t in reason. When the ’bus run over me in Piccadilly last year, and you picked me up and took me ’ome, you seemed like a prince to me, sir——”
“Always vulgar and servile comparisons!”
“And when you come about our place, mother said to me, ‘That gent don’t mean no good, and it’s the broom I’ll take to him’; and Sam he said, ‘If he’s harter Hann I’ll give ’im a ’idin’.’ And then you said we was to marry, and mother said it was all moonshine,and Sam didn’t like the idea of it; but you said it would be a beautiful example to all classes, and I—I—well I couldn’t believe my ears, Mr. Bertram.”
“What is the use of going over all this ground, Annie?”
“I want you to understand, sir. I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ of all you said yesterday, and I see, sir, as how you haven’t a mite o’ love for me, and it makes me feel cold all over like——”
“Oh, why do you want love? It is something so vulgar, so unspiritual, so indicative of an unoccupied mind! I have the highest respect for you, which I am about to prove in the strongest manner that any man can prove his sentiments——”
“Yes, I know, sir; but—but——”
“But there are finer sentiments than love!”
“Perhaps there are, sir, for the quality. But love’s poor people’s feast; the only one they ever knows all their days. And—you—don’t love me?”
She looks at him fixedly.
He is embarrassed.
“Should I have given you my mother’s pearls if I did not?”
“You haven’t giv’ ’em, and I haven’t took ’em. Some other than me ’ll wear ’em. I came to say to you, Mr. Bertram, that I won’t never marry you. Mother says as ’ow you’ve come into a great fortune; but, whether you’re rich or poor, that’s nothing to me. I won’t marry you, ’cos we’d be miserable; and that’s what I come here all alone to-day to say to you.”
“You are faithless, Annie!”
“No, sir; I’m faithful. As for me, I’ll remember ye all my days. P’rhaps I’ll marry, p’rhaps I won’t; but I’ll never forgetyou, and I’ll pray for you every night.”
Bertram is touched and astonished.
“But, my dear little girl, you have my word of honour. I can’t retract it. I will try and make you happy, Annie.”
“I’m sure you would try, sir; but you couldn’t do it. You’d make me miserable. You haven’t any love for me; you have said you hadn’t. I couldn’t live like that. I’d work on my knees for you all the day long, but I couldn’t stand your chilly pity and your smiling scorn. I’d die of shame and sorrow!”
“My poor child, you exaggerateimmensely. You don’t understand what sincere regard I have for you, how honestly I will try to do my duty by you.”
“Sir, I ain’t more fit for you than my poor sun-browned throat be fit for a lady’s jewels. You’ve had a hobby, and you’ve rid it hard, and I was a part of it for awhile. But ’twas only a fancy. Lord! how clear I saw it all when you spoke so scornful-like o’ love! Love may be a ordinary valleyless sort o’ thing like buttercups and daisies, but how them little blossoms do make a glory on a dusty common! It’s the buttercups and daisies as I want, sir; not them cold, white pearls.”
“Poor little Annie! I can’t give you what I have not.”
“No, sir, that’s just it; the fault ain’t none o’ yours. Don’tthink as I blame ye, sir, or cast a word against ye. We are as we are made. But it is goodbye, sir, and goodbye it must be for ever. Don’t ye worry or fret. ’Taint no fault o’ yours. We’re too wide apart, and ’twas folly to think as we could ever be one.”
Her voice breaks down, her tears fall; Bertram takes her hands in his and kisses her on the forehead.
“Dear little Annie! I feel as if I had sinned against you! and yet God knows I had the best intentions; and if I deceived any one, I deceived myself first of all.”
The tramp of heavy steps is heard in the rooms beyond, and Annie’s elder brother, Sam, dashes the door-curtains aside and enters, wildly flourishing a driving-whip.
“Yah! Bloated aristocrat! I’ve nabbed ye at last! Shame on ye! Shame on ye, too, Hann!” he yells at the top of his voice. “Out o’ this room, gal, whilst I gi’e your bloomin’ nob the lickin’ he deserves. ’Tis for this we pore workin’-folk toils and moils and starves, to hev our wimmen-kind trod under foot like dirt by blackguard swells! Sister Kate, at ’ome, says to me, ‘Sam, run quick and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ And I meets yer servant in the street, and he says, too, ‘Run, Sam, and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ But I never thought, respectable as our fam’ly is, and so mealy-mouthed as is Sister Hann——”
Bertram coldly interposes.
“When you have done yelling, my good youth, will you listen to a word of common sense?”
“Oh, Sam, are you mad?” cries Annie. “Kate never meant anything of the kind. You know Mr. Bertram has ever treated me as if I was a waxworks under a glass case.”
“Take off your hat, put down your whip, apologise to your sister, and listen to me,” says Bertram, with authority.
But the youth is in no mood to hear or to obey. He has taken a glass of gin with a fellow-cabby, and his blood is on fire.
“I won’t listen to you, nor to nobody. Ye’ll get yer thrashin’ at last, you scoundrel, as preaches to the pore.”
He advances on Bertram, whirling his horsewhip, with a broken lash, above his head. Bertram eyes him calmly, remembers old Oxford rows, straightens his arm, and meetshim with a scientific blow which sends him backward on the floor.
“Don’t scream, Annie. I have not hurt your brother; but he must have a lesson,” he says, as he picked up the whip which has dropped, breaks it, in two, and throws the pieces in a corner. “Get up, you dolt, and ask your sister’s pardon,” he adds, severely, “for brawling in her presence.”
Sam Brown does get up, stupidly and slowly, looks around him bewildered, with a dazed, blind look.
“You hits uncommon hard,” he mutters, when he becomes fully alive to the position which he occupies.
“Certainly, I hit hard when I hit at all. You insulted me and, more gravely still, your sister. I am perfectly ready to marry her; but she will notmarry me. Can you put that into your brain and understand it?”
Sam stares and rubs his aching head.
“Lord, sir, do you mean as Hann hev jilted you?”
“Oh, Sam, how can you!” cries his sister.
“I believe that is what you would call it in your world,” says Bertram, with a slight smile. “Your sister does not wish to marry me. She thinks—perhaps she is right—that I am not worthy of her.”
“Oh, Mr. Bertram! I never——”
“She is my dear little friend, Sam,” continues Bertram; “she will always be my friend; and if you presume to slight or worry her in any kind of way, you will have to deal with me. You know now how I treat affronts.”
The youth is still stupid and ruefully rubbing his pate.
“Lawk a mussy! If you would be spliced to her, she is a darned fool.”
“She is a little sage and a little saint. See her safe home, and there are two sovereigns to buy a new whip.”
“Oh, don’t take the money, Sam!” cries Annie.
But Sam pockets the sovereigns.
“Strikes me, mister, you owes me more than that,” he mutters. “’Tis assault and battery.”
“I shall give you no more money,” says Bertram, very decidedly. “I will knock you down again if you like.”
“Come away, Sam,” says Annie, pulling him towards the door. “Oh Sam, aren’t you ashamed?”
“Naw, I ain’t,” says her brother. “Kate said, ‘Run and you’ll find ’em together.’ I run and I did find ye together. How was I to know?”
“Oh, come away, Sam,” repeats his sister, in anguish. “Come away. You disgrace yourself and me. I’ll tell mother.”
Sam is suddenly subdued and greatly alarmed.