When the door of No. 22 Great Mornington Street clashed behind Mr. Brabazon, instead of at once proceeding about his business, whatever that might be, he paused on the topmost step and stared first up the street and then down it, like a man whose faculties for the time being had gone wool-gathering. But it was not so much that as it was the strange, sudden sense of homelessness which had come over him, for No. 22 might be said to be the only home he had known since he was quite a child, although during the last few years, since his uncle had taken to living so much abroad, he had crossed its threshold but seldom.
As he stood there he found it hard to realise that, in all likelihood, the old familiar door had closed behind him for the last time, and that the tie between himself and his uncle, which had been one of strong if undemonstrative affection, was severed for ever. And he owed it all to the woman he had just left! He ground his teeth together and went through a brief, but forcible form of commination, which it was, perhaps, just as well that Lady Clinton was not there to hear.
But he could not stand on the step all day. A passing hansom inspired him with a sudden resolution. He would go and see "old Garden," and give him an account of the interview between himself and her ladyship.
He was fortunate enough to find the lawyer at home.
The old man listened to him with kindly patience, and did not interrupt his recital by a word. When Burgo had finished, he said: "It would seem from what you tell me that you and her ladyship have not only begun by being at daggers-drawn, but are likely to remain so."
"Whose fault is that? Not mine assuredly. But how is it possible for me to regard her otherwise than as my enemy? Think how she must have worked upon my uncle's mind before she succeeded in obtaining his consent to an act of such gross injustice! Knowing the dear old boy as I do, it is inconceivable to me how he was ever persuaded to agree to such a thing. Putting aside his affection for me, I never knew a man with a stronger sense of justice; besides which, he had always a will of his own, and knew how to assert it."
The lawyer shook his head with a smile and a pursing out of his lips. "My experience has taught me that it is often the most unlikely men, to all seeming, who succumb the soonest and the most completely to feminine influence. It is your smooth, slippery, softly good-natured sort of men--men with no angles or corners to speak of--whom the ladies find it most difficult to grasp and hold. Now you Mr. Burgo (if you will allow me to say so), with all your fine assertiveness (which, mind you, I like to see in one of your years), and that dash of Hotspur in your composition, are just the kind of man whom a certain kind of woman could twist round her little finger with the utmost ease, and that without allowing you to suspect that you were anything but very much your own master."
Burgo laughed, as if to cover the dusky flush that mounted to his cheeks. Would it be anything but happiness, he asked himself, to be, as old Garden put it, twisted round the little finger of Clara Leslie, even although he should be fully cognisant of the mode in which he was being practised upon? But, for that matter, was Clara at all the kind of girl to try to twist any man round her finger? From what he had seen of her, he felt sure she was not.
Mr. Garden coughed, and put on his gravest professional air. "To return to the interview between Lady Clinton and yourself," he said. "This seems likely to prove a very awkward business for you."
"Awkward is not the word. It simply means ruination."
"And yet you refused the cheque for a thousand guineas!"
"Under the circumstances would you have had me take it? I feel sure that had I done so you would have thought considerably worse of me than you do; which," he added, as if to himself, "it is quite needless that you should." It was an assertion the lawyer made no attempt to refute.
"Of course you have not yet had time to decide upon anything as regards your future," he observed.
"There's one point as to which I'm quite clear--that I must earn my living by hook or by crook."
"And a very good thing for you that you should be compelled to do so, if I may be permitted to say so. You have led an idle life far too long, Mr. Brabazon."
"There I am at one with you. But whose is the fault? Not mine. As you are aware, several years ago I pestered my uncle to send me to Sandhurst; but he would not hear of it, nor of anything else which, in time, might have helped to make me independent of his purse-strings. As far as I see at present, there's only one thing left me to do, and that is to enlist as a full private in one of Her Majesty's regiments of dragoons."
"I hope you will do nothing so rash and ill-advised. A private soldier, indeed! Tut-tut!"
"Why not? I don't see that I'm fit for anything else. And sure I am that I would enlist to-morrow if I could make certain of being sent to India, or somewhere where there was a chance of a brush with the black fellows."
"I am glad to think there's no such chance open to you, for, as far as I am aware, we have not even a little war on hand just now. It is just possible--hem!--thatImight be able to do something for you--of course in a very humble way--in the City, or elsewhere."
Burgo smiled a little bitterly. "Thank you all the same, Mr. Garden, but when you say that, you don't know what a rank duffer I am--you don't really. I should not be a bit of use in an office of any kind. I'm not built that way. I declare I would rather carry a sandwich-board about the streets, or break stones for a bob a day, than be perched on a stool, with a pen in my fist and a big ledger in front of me, for six hours out of the twenty-four, even if by so doing I could rake in five hundred a year, which is utterly absurd, even as a supposition."
"In any case, my serious advice to you is to do nothing in a hurry, nothing rashly. Who knows but that your uncle, when he has had more time to think over the affair, may come to the conclusion that he has dealt too hardly by you; and remembering that you are his sister's son, and that he has always taught the world to look upon you as his heir, will award you that measure of justice, and restore to you that measure of affection, of which, I trust, you have only been temporarily deprived?"
Burgo shook his head. "That his affection for me is just as strong as it ever was, I firmly believe. But so long as he remains in the power of that woman--so long as she retains her influence over him--so long shall I continue to be (for aught he will know to the contrary) the outcast and pauper I know myself to be at this moment."
Mr. Garden rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully with his forefinger.
"You remember what I said to you the other day," he presently remarked, "about the necessity which now exists for a fresh will?"
Burgo nodded.
"Of course, as Sir Everard's legal adviser, I am not justified in mentioning the fact, but in this instance I will take upon myself the responsibility of doing so. The fact to which I refer is this--that, up to the present time, I have been favoured with no instructions from your uncle for the drawing up of another will."
"That seems somewhat singular, does it not?"
"I was inclined to think so before to-day."
"And now?"
"Now I am inclined to look at the affair from an altogether different point of view. After what you have told me about Lady Clinton, I am disposed to think that she is sufficiently--I don't like to say artful, especially where a lady is concerned----"
"There need be no hesitation on your part in applying the term to her ladyship," interpolated Burgo with a short laugh.
"Well, then, we will say sufficiently wide-awake to persuade her husband into engaging a fresh lawyer to draw up the all-important document."
"But why on earth should she be at the trouble of doing that?"
"Knowing, as she probably does, that I have been Sir Everard's confidential adviser ever since he succeeded to the property, that his previous wills--he has made some half-dozen in all at different times--have been drawn up by me, and also, perhaps, being aware that you and I have been brought into frequent contact, she may have deemed it advisable for various reasons that the new will should be entrusted to a stranger, more especially should her husband have been induced, as seems by no means unlikely, to constitute her his sole legatee, to the exclusion of every one else who might be supposed to have some claim to be remembered by him."
"By Jove! I shouldn't wonder if you are right."
"At present we are only dealing with suppositions. It is quite possible that I may have a letter by the next post asking me to wait upon Sir Everard to-morrow morning."
"By the way," said Burgo, "may I ask whether you know anything about my dear aunt's antecedents?"
"I know nothing whatever about them, except that she is said to have been the widow of a certain Colonel Innes."
"Then I am in the position of being able to tell you a little more than that about her." Whereupon he proceeded to recount to Mr. Garden the information which had been retailed to him by Captain Cusden at the club. "Of course it's as plain as a pikestaff that the woman is nothing more than an adventuress," he finished up by saying.
The old lawyer protruded his under lip. "Is not that rather a sweeping assertion to make on no better authority than the gossip of a club acquaintance?"
"Does not what I have told you to-day with regard to myself go far to prove it? Do you suppose the dear old boy would have coldshouldered me as he has done had it not been for her? No, you know better than that. She's thirty years younger than he, and a remarkably handsome woman (there's no denying that); for what else, then, can she have married him save for his money and his position?"
"What then? Don't we hear of such unions every day? I presume your uncle knew what he was about when he married the handsome widow, and we have no right to suppose that he is otherwise than perfectly satisfied with his share of the bargain. All of which, Mr. Brabazon," added the old man, with a kindly inflection of the voice, "makes your case no whit the less hard."
There was a little space of silence. Burgo, with a pencil he had picked up, was idly sketching the profiles of his uncle and Lady Clinton on the blotting-pad in front of him.
"I wonder," said Mr. Garden musingly, as he proceeded to polish his spectacles with the silk handkerchief he kept by him for that purpose, "I wonder whether Lady Clinton is aware of the large sum of money which will accrue to her husband--should he live till then--some time in October next?"
Burgo paused in his sketching. "To what particular sum of money do you refer, Mr. Garden?"
"To the fifteen thousand pounds conditionally bequeathed Sir Everard by his cousin, the late Mrs. Macdona."
"What were the conditions, Mr. Garden? I have more than once heard some vague talk about such a legacy, although it was a subject my uncle always seemed to fight shy of; but nobody ever told me the real ins and outs of the affair."
"As there's nothing about the affair to make a secret of, there can be no harm in my telling you what I know of it," replied the lawyer. "Mrs. Macdona was Sir Everard's cousin on his mother's side. When no longer in the bloom of youth she married a man a great deal older than herself, who was a sleeping partner in one of our big London breweries. At his death she succeeded to the greater portion of his wealth, amounting to nearly a quarter of a million. She outlived her husband a score years, but never married again. She had no family, and by her will, among numerous other legacies with which we are not concerned, she bequeathed to each of her five cousins, your uncle Everard being one of them, the sum of fifteen thousand pounds, which, however, was in no case to be paid till he or she should have reached the age at which the testatrix quitted this world for a better one, which happened to be within a day or two of her sixty-fourth birthday. Should any of the legatees die before attaining that age, the fifteen thousand pounds which would otherwise have come to him or her was to be divided among certain specified charities.
"So eccentric was the will deemed that it was seriously debated by some of the legatees whether an attempt should not be made to have it set aside by a court of law. But Mrs. Macdona was known to have been such a clear-headed, shrewd, businesslike woman, that wiser counsels prevailed, and the will was left undisputed. To make a long story short, of the five cousins who were legatees, two died before reaching the age of sixty-four; one, your aunt, Mrs. Fleming, of whom you can have no recollection, seeing that she married and went with her husband to America nearly a quarter of a century ago, had the pleasure, two years since, of succeeding to her legacy; while the remaining two cousins, of whom your uncle Everard is the elder, and your uncle Denis the younger, have not yet arrived at the required age. But, as I have already remarked, next October will bring Sir Everard's sixty-fourth birthday, and with it his long-deferred legacy of fifteen thousand pounds."
"It will be fifteen thousand pities if he should live to succeed to it merely that it may ultimately help to enrich that she-cormorant his wife! Not but what her nest will be pretty well feathered without that, should she outlive my uncle."
"Yes; although not especially wealthy for a man of his rank and social position, Sir Everard is a long way from being a pauper. As I happen to know, he has always made a point of living well within his income, although what he will do, or be persuaded into doing, now that he is married, it might be dangerous to prophesy. His only extravagance, if such a term may be applied to it, has been that he could rarely or never resist a 'bargain' in the way of curios, coins, orbric-à-brac; which, however, he looks upon as a judicious investment of capital, his contention being that after his death his collection will sell for far more than it originally cost him--which may, or may not, prove to be the case. At any rate, whatever money he has put away (whether it be hundreds or thousands, is no concern of ours) is invested in sound English stock which pays a fair rate of dividend. Yes, if Lady Clinton should outlive her husband and succeed to all he has to leave, the world will deem her a very fortunate woman."
Mr. Brabazon rose and took possession of his hat. He felt that the interview, without having been productive of any positive benefit to him, or having served in any way to modify the facts of his position, had yet done him good. It was something to have secured the sympathy and goodwill of the kind-hearted old man; and that, however undemonstrative his manner might be, or however guarded his utterances, he had secured them he felt fully assured. The cloud had lifted in some measure, and his heart felt lighter, he knew not why, than it had felt an hour before.
The lawyer also rose. There were two or three people in the outer office waiting to see him.
"Don't forget my advice," he said. "Do nothing rashly, or in a hurry. Remember that the chapter of accidents may nearly always be counted on as a big asset, especially when one is still as young as you are. I have your present address by me, but should you change your venue, let me know. Also, don't forget to advise me should there be any change in the present relations between your uncle and yourself. But, for that matter, I don't know why you shouldn't come and look me up as often as you feel inclined. One can say in five minutes more than one can convey in half a dozen sheets of foolscap, and you know without my telling you that I shall always be glad to see you. And now one last word"--here he laid a kindly hand for a moment on the young man's shoulder. "I don't suppose you are very flush of cash--it would be rather an uncommon state of affairs with you if you were, wouldn't it? Well, seeing that one source of supplies has run dry, it behoves you to look out for another. Let me be that other, Mr. Brabazon; let me be your banker till brighter fortunes dawn upon you. I have a tidy little balance lying idle at the bank, and if----"
Burgo caught him suddenly by the hand and gripped it hard, very hard. "My dear Mr. Garden--my dear old friend," he said, and then he had to pause for a moment before he could go on, "not a word more of this just now. I have still a few pounds by me, and by the time they are gone I hope to have settled on something definite as regards my future. But should it ever be my fortune, or misfortune, to be stone-broke (which is by no means an unlikely thing to happen), and to find myself without a shilling to pay for my night's lodging, then I promise you that you shall be the first of whom I will ask that help which I can no longer do without."
Two days later Burgo Brabazon knocked at the door of No. 22 Great Mornington Street. Although Lady Clinton had distinctly told him his uncle was too ill to see anybody, that only made it all the more imperative that he should call and ascertain for himself whether the dear old boy was better or worse.
To the servant who responded to his summons--moderated for fear of annoying the sick man--he said, while handing him his card, "Take this to Lady Clinton with my compliments, and tell her that I have called to inquire about my uncle's health."
It was a curious and by no means a pleasant sensation to Burgo to find himself left standing on the mat in the entrance-hall of the house which, nearly ever since he could remember, he had regarded in the light of home, and to realise that he was now looked upon as nothing more than an alien and an outcast.
The man was not gone more than a couple of minutes. "Lady Clinton begs to inform Mr. Brabazon," he said, "that Sir Everard is neither better nor worse than usual."
Could anything be more vague and unsatisfactory? But that it was so of set purpose he felt fully assured. Then, before he knew what had happened, he found his card back in his fingers. Although the man did not say so, her ladyship had evidently refused to receive it. It was plain that she was bent on insulting him as often as he should afford her an opportunity of doing so. He had to set his teeth hard in order to keep back the imprecation that rose to his lips as he tore the card in a dozen pieces and flung the fragments from him.
Three days later he called again. This time he sent in no card, but contented himself with a verbal message. The answer brought him was in precisely the same terms as before: "Sir Everard is neither better nor worse than usual." This time he was more sad than angry when he turned away from Great Mornington Street.
He felt that it would be hard, very hard, to be compelled to break entirely with his uncle. Not once, but fifty times, he said to himself: "This is not his doing, but hers. He would never treat me so of his own accord. I durst wager twenty to one he has never been told that I called; and even were I to write to him, the chances are that my letter would not reach him. Still, it's worth the attempt, for I want him to know that, although he has thought well to cast me adrift, my affection for him is robust enough to survive all the shocks of chance and change. He may, if he so choose, sever the chain which binds him to me, but he cannot, against my will, sever the one which binds me to him!"
A few days later Burgo wrote to Sir Everard as under:
"My dear Uncle,--You will, I hope, need no assurance on my part that I was extremely grieved to hear from Lady Clinton that since your return from abroad your health has been in such an unsatisfactory state.
"Since my interview with her ladyship I have called twice in Great Mornington Street, but only to be told that there was no improvement in your condition.
"I had hoped on one or the other occasion of my calling to have been permitted to see you, if only for a few minutes, and that I, your sister's son, to whom for the last eighteen years you have filled a father's part, should be debarred from doing so seems indeed hard to credit.
"That I have done anything to forfeit a continuance of your affection and esteem I am wholly unaware, and in conclusion I can but assure you that the dearest hope I have is that the bond which has so long existed between us should remain intact and wholly unaffected by any extraneous circumstances whatever.
"Ever your affectionate Nephew,
"Burgo Brabazon."
Epistolary composition was not much in Burgo's line, and the missive to his uncle was written and altered and rewritten at least a dozen times before the final fair copy was made and despatched, and even then he was far from satisfied with it.
But after all it proved to be so much labour in vain. By the first post next morning his letter came back to him enclosed in an envelope addressed in a feminine hand, but without an added word of any kind inside. It had been opened, and that might be taken as proof positive that it had been read--but by whom? Had it ever reached his uncle? In view of her husband's invalid condition might not Lady Clinton have taken upon herself to open and attend to his correspondence? Nothing seemed more likely. In any case, whether Sir Everard had read the letter or whether he had not, he, Burgo, was powerless to do more than he had done in the way of bringing himself and his uncle together again. He had been baulked at every turn. A resolute and unscrupulous woman had come between them, and against her poisoned arrows he was helpless. As he stood up and tore his letter across and across before flinging it into the fire he cursed Lady Clinton in his heart.
A few days later, as he was taking one of those long solitary rambles after nightfall into the habit of which he had fallen of late, finding himself; without any intention on his part, close by Great Mornington Street, he turned into it and strolled slowly along till he came opposite his uncle's house. Unlike several neighbouring houses, it was almost in darkness. There was a light in the entrance hall, but beyond that only one window in the whole frontage of the house was illumined from within, and that Burgo knew to be the window of a cosy little sitting-room known as "the study," and in bygone days sacred to his uncle's own use. Of course it was quite possible, and indeed most probable, that the back drawing-room and other rooms which faced the opposite way were lighted up, but regarded from the street, No. 22 looked distinctly dismal and forbidding. Still, there was nothing funereal about it, as his first glance at it told him, and the same moment his heart gave a great throb of relief. There had been a certain vague dread upon him as he came slowly--almost reluctantly down the street. What if when he got opposite the house, he should find it staring out at the night with sightless eyes, its every blind drawn down, telling of the presence within of that dread visitant who comes to each of us in turn! Why that dread should have haunted him to-night more than at another time, he did not know.
"Fact is, I'm hipped--off colour," he said to himself, "and am getting all sorts of ridiculous notions into my head. It's high time for me to buckle to work of some kind. Nothing like work, I've been told, for curing the blues. Well, I suppose I shall have every chance of testing the remedy as soon as I've succeeded in finding work of some kind to do."
He had been standing staring at the house for some two or three minutes, and he now turned to go back up the street. A dozen yards brought him to a lamp, and he was full in the light reflected from it when an exclamation from a man who had been on the point of passing him arrested his attention. The man came to a dead halt and involuntarily Burgo did the same.
"Sakes alive! if it ain't Mr. Brabazon!" exclaimed the other. "I thought I couldn't be mistaken," and the same instant Burgo recognised the speaker.
It was Benny Hines, who, many years before, had been Sir Everard's coachman, till a fall which broke his right wrist had disabled him for driving. From that date he had been permanently pensioned by the baronet, the only duty exacted in return being that he and his wife should act as caretakers of the mansion in Great Mornington Street whenever Sir Everard was abroad, or after those families to whom it was occasionally let for the London season had, with the coming of autumn, winged their flight elsewhere.
It was Benny who had taught Burgo to "handle the ribbons" when the latter was a lad, and his memory was stored with reminiscences of many pleasant hours spent in the old man's company.
"Why, Benny, old friend, and how are you after all this long time?" said Burgo, as he gave the ex-coachman's hand a cordial grip. "It must be quite four years since you and I parted last."
"Four years and eight months, Mr. Burgo."
"So long as that! Yes, it must be. I remember it was just before my uncle took it into his head to go and live abroad. You look as perky as a redbreast on a snowy morning, and not a day older than when I saw you last. Missis quite well?"
"Better in health than temper, sir. As I tell her, she has too much of her own way, and that's allus bad for a woman. I made a foolish start, sir; I began by indulging her over much, and now--well, well!" He sighed and pulled down his waistcoat with an air of comic martyrdom.
Burgo laughed. "If I remember rightly, the boot's on the other leg, Benny. I believe you're a regular Bluebeard at home, and that you frighten that little wife of yours half out of her wits."
There was a humorous twinkle in Benny's eye. "It's them little mites o' women like my wife, Mr. Burgo, as are allus the most difficult to manage. Talk about tempers--lor! Now, if I had only married some big, strapping, grenadier-kind of woman----"
"You would have had the life thrashed out of you years ago. But we need not stand here. You were going this way. I'll take a turn with you. To me one road's the same as another." Then after a pause, as they paced slowly along side by side: "Have you seen anything of my uncle and his bride since their arrival home?"
"Very little, sir. You see, they don't either of them go out much. Sir Everard, I'm sorry to say, seems to be slowly breaking up. But no doubt you have observed that for yourself, sir, and think it's like my imperance to speak of it."
Thereupon Burgo proceeded to enlighten the old man to some extent with regard to the relations which now existed between himself and the inmates of No. 22.
Benny gave vent to a prolonged whistle. "Excuse my saying so, Mr. Burgo, but I'm afraid it was a bad day's work for you, sir, when your uncle brought home a wife."
Burgo shrugged his shoulders.
"I would give much to know how my uncle really is," he said, "and--and, in point of fact, to learn how affairs in general are going on at No. 22."
"Then, sir, you have lighted on the very person who can tell you a good deal of what you want to know."
"Do you mean to say that you are that person, Benny?"
"I am, sir."
"You astonish me. But how do you happen to be able to do what you say?"
"It's very simple, sir. My wife's niece is parlour-maid at No. 22. She pops in on us most Sunday evenings, if it's only for a half-hour, and being in her way as sharp as a needle, there ain't much as escapes her, or that we don't hear about."
"Then can you tell me this: Is my uncle really as ill as her ladyship gives me to understand he is?"
"As I said before, sir, my old master seems to be gradually breaking up. It's not that he's in any pain, or has even a bad cough, or has to keep to his room. It's just, as far as I can make out from what Polly tells us, as if he was slowly fading away--gradually dying out, as a lamp does when the oil begins to run low. All his old go and energy seem to have left him; he's as mild as milk, and could hardly say 'Bo' to a goose. Another bad sign is that nothing seems to tempt his appetite. Polly says, and I suppose she has heard the butler say so, that he doesn't eat as much in the twenty-four hours as a man in fairish appetite will eat at one meal."
"Has he any medical advice?"
"Bless you, yes, sir. Dr. Hoskins calls every day."
"Does he never go out of doors?"
"When the weather is very fine, the brougham or barouche is ordered round about four o'clock, and her ladyship and he go out together. Sir Everard is dropped at his club, while her ladyship shows herself in the Park for an hour. Then Sir Everard is picked up and they drive back home. Other days the baronet never crosses the doorstep."
"Has my uncle any nurse, or any regular attendant besides his valet?"
"He has no nurse but her ladyship, and, by all accounts, he couldn't have a better. She seems to think nothing a trouble. She it is that allus gives Sir Everard his medicine and things, and orders this or the other little dainty to be got ready for him by way of a surprise, and just to tempt his appetite. Day or night, it seems all one to her, she's allus on the spot."
After this they walked on for some time in silence, while Burgo strove to digest what had just been told him. It was certainly one of the last things he would have looked to be told about Lady Clinton, that she made an affectionate wife and a devoted nurse to a man whom it was hardly conceivable she should have married for anything save his money and his rank.
"You remember, Mr. Burgo," resumed Benny after a time, "what a man the guv'nor used to be for having his own way?"
"I have not forgotten."
"Allus very quiet--never any bluster--but his own way he would have. He was one of them men as can't abear opposition. His own way seemed better to him than anybody else's--not, mind you, sir, that it allus was. I could have often proved him in the wrong if he would have listened to argyment, but that was just what he wouldn't do."
"Well, what then?"
"Merely this, sir, that if what I hear is true--and I've no call to doubt it--then a mighty change must have come over Sir Everard. Nowadays he's no will about anything; her ladyship keeps it for him under lock and key. Her will is her husband's will and her own too. Everything's done through her. Sir Everard daren't--or if he dare he won't--give an order direct to any of the servants. What he does is to say, 'My dear, don't you think that such-and-such a thing ought to be done?' or, 'What is your idea, love, about so-and-so?' And then her ladyship decides, and whichever way she decides, it seems all one to Sir Everard. And they do say that his eyes follow her about for all the world as if he was frightened of her, and dared hardly call his soul his own. Oh lord! oh lord!" groaned the old fellow, "what a change to have come over a man, and all the doing of one woman!"
Burgo could have groaned in unison.
"And yet you say that, as a nurse, no one could be kinder or more attentive than she is?" he presently remarked.
"Begging your pardon, Mr. Burgo, but that may be only part of her artfulness. Some women, sir, are the very----" A discreet cough finished his sentence.
Before Burgo and the old man parted they exchanged addresses. Benny was exhorted to encourage the gossiping proclivities of his wife's niece anent those matters in which Burgo was interested. He, Burgo, would not fail to look him up from time to time, and draw upon his budget of news. Should any information of an alarming kind, bearing on Sir Everard's health, reach him, Mr. Brabazon was to be communicated with without loss of time.
But there was another matter besides the one he had discussed with Benny Hines, which at this period of his career might not unreasonably be supposed to seriously ruffle that serenity of mind which Mr. Brabazon had heretofore been so successful in cultivating, and that was his love affair with Miss Leslie.
With his uncle's discarding of him, all his hopes in that direction had been irremediably blighted. As a pauper--for he was no more than that now--all thought of love-making was out of the question for years to come, if not for ever. It was true that he had won no promise from Clara, but he had so far declared himself to her at the moment of Mrs. Mordaunt's interruption that he felt it due to both of them that he should find an opportunity of explaining to Miss Leslie that, if he wished her to consider as unsaid the impassioned words he had poured into her ear on that never-to-be-forgotten occasion, it was not because his feelings towards her had undergone the shadow of a change, but because circumstances outside his control had rendered it impossible for him, as an honourable man, to press his suit to an issue. Bitter, very bitter to him, would such a confession be. During the last few months he had dreamt so many dreams of which Clara was the central figure, his imagination had indued her with so many precious attributes, and so full of happy confidence had he been but a little while before, that to find himself at one fell blow robbed of everything, even of hope for the future, had, taken in conjunction with that other stroke of fate, the effect, for the time being, of numbing all his faculties of thought and feeling. For hours he would lie on his back with shut eyes, his senses too dulled to allow of his suffering acutely, while yet what might be termed a slow fever of misery seemed to be eating his very life away.
Among all Mr. Brabazon's acquaintances, and they were more numerous than he could readily have counted, there was not one, perhaps, who would have credited him with the possession of more than that limited--mostly very limited--range of feeling and sensibility with which a somewhat parsimonious Providence has seen fit to endow your average young man about town. Indeed, it is only fair to assume that Burgo himself had no suspicion that there lay dormant within him such heights and depths of passionate but restrained emotion as those which now revealed themselves for the first time. But he was essentially a man of action, and before long he roused himself, although not without an effort, and shook off him a torpor which could not well be otherwise than enervating, and which seemed to him nothing less than a slur on his manhood. And with that his courage came back to him in full measure, and he set himself to confront the future with resolute eyes.
A wild, nay, nothing less than an insane notion, had more than once caught him by the throat, as it were, and for a little while had made his breath come thick and fast. What, he said to himself--what if, when he should tell Clara he was a ruined man, and that she must strive to forget he had ever spoken to her as he had, she were to reply that to her his loss of fortune meant nothing, that her heart was his and ever would be; that she loved him not one jot less now that he was poor than when all the world accepted him as his uncle's heir It was a madman's dream; yet he had read and been told of such things; and there were times when it refused to be scouted, and would "sweetly creep into his study of imagination." But even granting for a moment that such a thing were to come to pass, what then? The circumstances of the case would in no wise be altered. To tie any girl down to his broken fortunes would be both a cruelty and a wrong. It would be very, very sweet to listen to such a confession from the lips he loved--but--après?
Every morning he skimmed the columns of arrivals and departures in theMorning Postin quest of a notification of the return to town of Mrs. Mordaunt and her niece, for he was quite aware that to the elder lady life would have seemed scarcely worth living had her comings and goings failed to be duly recorded in that organ of the elect. At length he found what he was looking for. Mrs. Mordaunt and Miss Leslie had arrived from Paris at No. 6 Cantelupe Gardens. Then, a few days later, in one of the weekly society papers he came across an announcement of the engagement of Miss Leslie and Lord Penwhistle.
It was only what he had been expecting to hear for some time past, and yet the blow, when it did fall, seemed scarcely the less hard to bear on that account. Well, all was at an end now. Whatever faint but altogether illusory hopes had lurked unbidden in the most secret chamber of his heart that Clara might possibly rise superior to the prejudices of her station--might even rise to the height of a great sacrifice, and insist upon throwing in her lot with his--withered and fell dead before that fatal announcement.
On one point he was determined: he would see Clara and speak with her for the last time. After what had passed between them, after what he had said to her on the occasion of their last meeting, he felt that some justification of himself might not improbably be looked for by her. At any rate, it was due to himself to impress upon her that, although fickle fortune had left him in the lurch, there was no change in the sentiments with which he regarded her--that he still loved her as devotedly as ever he had done. No less than that and no more would he say to her.
More clearly, as time went on, was Burgo made to feel that he was being coldshouldered and quietly dropped by numbers of those with whom he had heretofore been on terms of intimacy, and who had always accepted him as one of themselves. Already his cards and invitations had dwindled by fifty per cent. People whom he had been in the habit of visiting for years seemed of late to have unaccountably forgotten his existence. Mothers with marriageable daughters no longer smiled on him so sweetly as they had been wont to do, indeed, they often forgot to smile on him at all; and the daughters themselves, or so he fancied, had become more shy and distant--in some cases positively chilling--and no longer evinced the readiness to dance with him or to allow him to escort them to the supper-room, to which they had accustomed him. Even at his club he detected a difference. There was a frigidity in the atmosphere such as he had never been conscious of before. Men who had always made a point of shaking hands with him, now satisfied themselves with a nod and a curt "How-de-do?" It was a lesson in life the value of which Burgo would recognise later on, but which at present he could only face in a spirit of proud, bitter indifference.
It is not to be presumed that among the circle of Mr. Brabazon's friends and acquaintances any knowledge of the fact that his uncle had discarded him had as yet leaked out. It was enough for society to know that Sir Everard Clinton had taken to himself a wife not more than half his own age, and that, as a consequence, his nephew's prospects had gone down nearly, if not quite, to zero. Henceforward Mr. Brabazon would be relegated to the great army of detrimentals.
But not all people are alike, and the Hon. Mrs. Dovering was one of those who never turned her back on any one whom she liked simply because fortune had chosen to frown on him or her. Yet Mrs. Dovering moved in very select circles indeed. Thus it came to pass that one day a card for her forthcoming garden party reached Burgo. He at once made up his mind to accept the invitation, for he knew that Mrs. Dovering and Mrs. Mordaunt were friends of long standing, and it seemed to him very likely that the latter, accompanied, of course, by Miss Leslie, would be at the party. If so, he might be able to secure his wished-for opportunity of speaking with Clara for the last time.
Twysden Court, the country house of the Hon. Mrs. Dovering, was about a dozen miles up river. When the day of the party arrived Burgo timed himself so as not to reach there till after the majority of the company would have assembled. The great attraction of the afternoon was to be a lawn-tennis match, in which two of the most accomplished amateur players were to take part.
After shaking hands with his hostess, who greeted him with a cordiality in no wise impaired by the recent change in his prospects, of which she had been duly informed, he sauntered off, keeping well on the fringe of the crowd--and it was a crowd, for there must have been quite a couple of hundred people present--which, just then, was, or professed to be, intensely interested in a critical point of the game, but not failing to keep a wary look-out for Mrs. Mordaunt and her niece. At length he caught sight of them, not among the mob round the players, but forming part of a thin outer fringe of people for whom tennis had no special charm, who were scattered about in little groups of three or four--the ladies seated, the gentlemen mostly standing or strolling from one group to another--in the welcome shade of some "immemorial elms." He saw them, but he was nearly sure that neither of them had recognised him, and as Mrs. Mordaunt was somewhat short-sighted, there was not much fear of that matron doing so so long as he kept outside her limited range of vision. They were seated on a couple of rustic chairs, and now and again one or another of the men would lounge up, chat for a couple of minutes, and then retire to make way for some one else. At length he saw his hostess approach them, say something to Mrs. Mordaunt, and presently carry that lady off in the direction of the conservatory. The fact was that, just at that time, the Hon. Mrs. Dovering's pet craze--she had a fresh one every year, sometimes two--was the cultivation of orchids, and as Mrs. Mordaunt, who dabbled a little in most things, but had no enthusiasms (they were too expensive, she said, and she was not overburdened with means), had on a recent occasion expressed a strong desire to see her hostess's collection, her wish was now about to be gratified.
Miss Leslie was left alone.
Here was Burgo's opportunity, and he was not slow to avail him self of it.
He made a little detour on purpose, and so took the girl unawares. She gave a great start as he stood suddenly before her, and caught her breath quickly. Then the hot colour surged up and dyed throat and face alike, but only, a few seconds later, to ebb as swiftly as it had come, leaving her paler than before. Burgo, on his part, was perhaps a trifle paler than ordinary, but perfectly self-possessed and unembarrassed.
"Good afternoon, Miss Leslie," he said in his blandest tones, as he smilingly raised his hat. "It seems a long time since I had the pleasure of seeing you last. As an old acquaintance, I trust it won't be deemed a liberty if I venture to congratulate you on a certain auspicious event which, I am told, may shortly be expected to take place." Then, with an almost startling change of voice and manner, he added: "For, of course, it is true that you are going to marry Lord Penwhistle."
"Yes, Mr. Brabazon, it is quite true," replied Clara in a timid little voice.
"In that case, pray accept my best wishes for your happiness," he said, as he dropped into the chair by her side. His voice had recovered its smoothness, his face was a mask. Only for a moment had he betrayed himself, and, if he could anyhow help it, it should not happen again.
"On the one side youth and beauty," he continued, "on the other a title and a rent-roll of thirty thousand a year, with Love himself, young, fresh, and pure as the dawn, to pipe before the glowing hours as they pass! It will, indeed, be an ideal union--one of those marriages (alas, that they should be so few in number!) which are said to be made in heaven itself."
"You are very cruel, Mr. Brabazon," murmured Clara, with a tear in the corner of either eye.
"Am I? I did not mean to be," he said; and some of the hardness melted out of his eyes as he looked at her.
She was not regarding him, but looking straight before her. How lovely she looked, with her delicate clear-cut profile, her fresh purity of complexion, her long brown upcurved lashes, which half veiled the violet orbs beneath them, and that half-opened rosebud of a mouth which seemed made purposely for kisses--and, perhaps, for sugar-plums! Burgo, as his eyes devoured her, was possessed by an almost irresistible longing to put his strong arms around her and strain her to his heart. How was he to know that beneath that lovely exterior there fluttered the soul of a butterfly (if butterflies possess souls), at once vain, frivolous, and shallow--incapable of constancy, or of any depth of affection, and infected by a certain mercenary quality which would grow and develop into something hateful as years went on, and had already instilled its first great lesson into her mind--that a girl's primary duty to herself; more especially if she be a girl without a "tocher," is to make a wealthy marriage?
Of all the men to whom she had been introduced since her aunt had taken her in hand and brought her out, she liked Burgo Brabazon best. His good looks were of a kind which took her fancy captive. As a rule she did not care for fair men--and yet, little Lord Penwhistle had straw-tinted hair, eyes of the colour of skim milk, and a faint, fluffy moustache, like the down on the breast of a very young chicken--while Brabazon, the first time she saw him, seemed to her her own embodiment of Byron'sCorsair, a poem which she had lately read for the first Lime; or the hero of one of those very sentimental milk-and-water novels, to a perusal of which a large share of her leisure hours was devoted. But although Burgo's personality appealed so strongly to the romantic side of her character, she would never have devoted a second serious thought to him (for one can be at once romantic and mercenary-minded) had he been nothing more than (say) a banker's clerk, instead of the nephew and heir of a wealthy baronet.
Mrs. Mordaunt had made it her business to ascertain as much about Mr. Brabazon's family history as it concerned her to know, and she was quite satisfied that he would make as good a match for her niece as that charming but impecunious young woman could reasonably look for. At any rate, unless something better should presently offer itself, he must by no means be allowed to slip through Clara's fingers, for although Mr. Brabazon had not yet spoken, his infatuation was as plain as a pikestaff to that astute matron. Therefore themot d'ordrewas passed to Clara, much to her delight. She was to lead him gently on as by a silken thread, but never, if possible, to let him suspect that her fingers had fast hold of the other end of it. It ought not to be a difficult matter to bring him to book, Mrs. Mordaunt opined, "for, unless I am very much mistaken, the bandage is over his eyes already."
Nobody, therefore, could have been more astonished than Miss Leslie was that evening when, Mr. Brabazon having been brought to declare himself, her aunt (who had known quite well where to find them) bore down upon them just in time to prevent her from accepting him, and, with a request to Mr. Brabazon to rearrange the conservatory slides, carried her off from under the nose of her would-be lover.
But Clara comprehended when, a few minutes later, her aunt said to her: "Mr. Brabazon's uncle has got married somewhere abroad. I've just heard the news. It may--nay, it must--make a great difference as regards the young man's prospects. The safest plan will be to give him hiscongé. Besides, Lord Penwhistle, with whom you danced twice the other night, has been asking for you. He's very rich. If you play your cards judiciously, there's no knowing what may come to pass."
Miss Leslie cried a good deal in the course of the next few days in the solitude of her chamber. She disliked Lord Penwhistle as much as she liked Burgo; indeed, it might be said that she loved the latter as much as her shallow little heart was capable of loving any one. But she was a good girl, and thoroughly amenable to her aunt's dictates. No thought of rebellion ever entered her mind. Besides, if Mr. Brabazon was going to be a poor man it was far better that they should not marry. She had seen and understood enough of the horrors of genteel poverty when a child at home. It had been the perpetual worry about sordid details and the long, hopeless struggle to free himself from debt, which had worn out her father years before his time. Even now the recollection of it made her shudder.
No, there was no help for it. Fate was very unkind, but she and Mr. Brabazon must part. And when--her birthday falling about a week later--Lord Penwhistle requested her acceptance of a ruby and sapphire bracelet, she felt still more convinced that all must be considered at an end as between Burgo and herself.
"I am glad to have secured this opportunity, Miss Leslie, for a little quiet talk with you," resumed Mr. Brabazon after a pause which to Clara was fast becoming intolerable. The dying embers of her love for Burgo had been fanned afresh into a flame by his presence. Never had Lord Penwhistle seemed so odious to her as at that moment. "After to-day, however, you need have no fear that I shall trouble you again. On a certain occasion I took the liberty of saying certain things to you, but was interrupted before I had got more than half-way through. Your aunt broke in upon us and carried you off--for what reason is now plain enough. She had just heard that my uncle, whose heir I was supposed to be, had taken to himself a wife, and that, consequently, my eligibility as apartifor her niece had suddenly gone down to vanishing point. Is my statement very wide of the mark, Miss Leslie?"
"No, it is not, Mr. Brabazon," replied Clara without hesitation. Just then she felt that she hated Mrs. Mordaunt. She would save her nothing in the way of exposure. "My aunt had heard the news you speak of, and she told me that as between you and me everything must at once come to an end."
"And you?" said Burgo quietly.
"What could I do? When you called, we were not at home. A few days later my aunt carried me off to Paris, and from the date of that evening in the conservatory till now you and I have never met."
"That has been owing to no remissness on my part, I assure you. I was most anxious to meet you. I wanted to tell you that, although I was unfortunately no longer in a position to ask you to become my wife, my sentiments towards you had in no wise changed--that it was not I, but circumstances, that were to blame."
He paused till a burst of clapping and cheering from the crowd round the players had died away.
"I am glad to have been able to tell you this at last," he went on. "But if fortune has behaved scurvily by me, she has dealt kindly by you. If you had conceded me that which I was on the point of asking you for when Mrs. Mordaunt appeared so inopportunely on the scene, you would have made me a happy man, but think what you would have lost yourself!"
"I fail to understand you. Pray explain yourself, Mr. Brabazon," said Clara a little uneasily.
"'Tis plain enough. Had you given your hand to me, you would never have had the happiness of becoming Lady Penwhistle."
A faint "Oh!" was Clara's sole reply. Why was he so bitter? He must have loved her very much to talk as he did.
"So that you see everything has happened for the best as far as you are concerned," resumed Burgo in his soft drawling tones. "Indeed, I think that you ought to be very thankful for your escape--probably you are. The Penwhistle family diamonds are said to be superb, and rumour has it that his lordship is disposed to behave most liberally in the way of settlements. You are a very fortunate young woman, Miss Leslie."
Clara's heart, such as it was, was full to bursting. "Oh! if you knew all," she exclaimed; "if you knew how I was pestered and badgered into accepting Lord Penwhistle, you would pity me instead of sneering at me! If you think I like him, you are mistaken. I don't. There! And I don't care who knows it." For once she was carried out of herself.
"Pestered and badgered, indeed! Is that all? Why should any young woman allow herself to be pestered and badgered by anybody into marrying a man for whom she does not care? What a confession of weakness is here!"
"As I said before, you don't know my aunt--as I know her."
"No--thank heaven!" murmured Burgo.
"But all this talk is to no purpose, Mr. Brabazon," said Clara hastily. She already regretted her little outburst. "In fact, I ought not to have listened to it. It is enough that I have promised to marry Lord Penwhistle, and I am not going to run away from my promise."
"Of course you are not," assented Burgo with that exasperating smile of his. "You would regret it to the last day of your life if you did."
"Ah, here comes my aunt," said Clara with a sigh of relief.
Burgo stood up as Mrs. Mordaunt drew near. Her face became charged with thunder the moment she recognised him. But that in no wise discomposed our friend. "Delighted to see you again, Mrs. Mordaunt," he said, as he raised his hat. "It seems ages since I parted from you last. I have just been felicitating Miss Leslie upon a certain event which, I hear on good authority, is to take place very shortly. I suppose, if it would not be considered presumptuous on my part, that I ought also to congratulate you, Mrs. Mordaunt, for affairs of this sort, to be successfully carried through, necessitate delicate manipulation and diplomatic talent of a very special kind. Yes, I am quite sure you ought to be congratulated. Penwhistle's a decent little chap enough, though theydidblackball him at the Corinthian. Still, I don't think it can be true that the reason they 'chucked' him was because his grandfather is said to have been a marine-store dealer in Auld Reekie. No man can help his grandfather, can he? And when a fellow is worth thirty thousand a year, it would not matter a button even if one of his ancestors was hanged for sheep-stealing."