On leaving the office, the happy thought had occurred to Fanny of telegraphing at once to her father apprising him of Charles Bevan's decision. Accordingly they sought the nearest telegraph office, where Miss Lambert indited the following despatch:—
"To Lambert,c/o Miss Pursehouse,The Roost, Rookhurst."Mr Bevan has stopped the action. Isn't it sweet of him?"
"To Lambert,c/o Miss Pursehouse,The Roost, Rookhurst.
"Mr Bevan has stopped the action. Isn't it sweet of him?"
"Any name?" asked the clerk.
"Oh yes," replied Fanny, suddenly remembering that her connection with the matter ought to be kept dark. "Put Hancock."
Then they sought Oxford Street, where Fanny remembered that she had some shopping to do.
"I won't be a minute," she said, pausing before a draper's. "Will you come in, or wait outside?"
Mr Hancock elected to wait outside, and he waited.
It was an unfortunate shop for a man to wait before: there was nothing in the windows butlingerie; the shop on the left of it was a bonnet shop, and the establishment on the right was a bar.
So he had to wait, standing on the kerbstone, in full view of mankind. In two minutes three men passed who knew him, and in the middle of the fourth minute old Sir Henry Tempest, one of his best clients, who was driving by in a hansom, stopped, got out and button-holed him.
"Just the man I want to see, what a piece of luck! I was going to your office. See here,that d——d scamp of a Sawyer has sent me in a bill for sixteen pounds—sixteen pounds for those repairs I spoke to you about. Why! I'd have got 'em done for six if he had left them to me. But jump into the cab, and come and have luncheon, and we can talk things over."
"I can't," said Mr Hancock, "I am waiting for a lady—my sister, she has just gone into that shop. I'll tell you, I will see you, any time you like, to-morrow."
"Well, I suppose that must do. But sixteen pounds!—people seem to think I am made of money. I tell you what, Hancock, the great art in getting through life is to make yourself out a poor man—go about in an old coat and hat; you are just as comfortable, and you are not pestered by every beggar and beast that wants money."
"Decidedly, decidedly—I think you are right," said his listener, standing now on one foot, now on the other.
"Once you get the reputation of being rich you are ruined—what's the matter with you?"
"Twinges of gout, twinges of gout. I can't get rid of it."
"Gout? Have you been to a doctor for it?"
"Yes."
"Well, don't mind what he says; try my remedy. Gout, my dear sir, is incurable with drugs, I've tried 'em. You try hot air baths and vegetarianism; it cured me. I don't say astrictlyvegetarian diet, but just as little meat as you can take. I get it myself. Hancock, we're not so young as we were, and the wine and women of our youth revisit us; yes, the wine and women——"
He stopped. Fanny had just emerged from the shop.
The cabman who drove Sir Henry Tempest that day from Oxford Street to the Raleigh Club has not yet solved the problem as to "what the old gent, was laughing about."
"I'm awfully sorry to have kept you such a time," said Fanny, as they wandered away, "but those shopmen are so stupid. Who was that nice-looking old gentleman you were talking to?"
"That was Sir Henry Tempest; but he never struck me as being especially nice-looking. He is not a bad man in his way—but a bore; yes, very decidedly a bore."
"Come here," said Fanny, from whose facile mind the charms of Sir Henry Tempest hadvanished—"Come here, and I will buy you something." She turned to a jeweller's shop.
"But, my dear child," said James, "I never wear jewellery—never."
"Oh, I don't meanreallyto buy you something, I only mean make belief—window-shopping, you know. I often go out by myself and buy heaps of things like that, watches and carriages, and all sorts of things. I enjoy it just as much as if I were buying them really; more, I think, for I don't get tired of them. Do you know that when I want a thing and get it I don't want it any more? I often get married like that."
"Like what?" asked the astonished Mr Hancock.
"Window-shopping. I see sometimessucha nice-looking man in the street or the park, then I marry him and he's ever so nice; but if I married him really I'm sure I'd hate him, or at least be tired of him in a day or two. Now, see here! I will buy you—let me see—let me see—that!" She pointed suddenly to an atrocious carbuncle scarf-pin. "That, and that watch with the long hand that goes hopping round. You can have the whole window," said Fanny, suddenly becominglavishly generous. "But the scarf-pin would suit you, and the watch would be useful for—for—well, it looks like a business man's watch."
Mr Hancock sighed. "Say an old man's watch, Fanny—may I call you Fanny?"
"Of course, if you like. But you're not old, you're quite young; at least you're just as jolly as if you were. But come, or we will be late for the Zoo."
"Wait," said Mr Hancock; "there is lots of time for the Zoo. Now look at the window and buy yourself a present."
"I'll buy that," said Miss Lambert promptly, pointing to a little watch crusted with brilliants.
Mr Hancock noted the watch and the name and number of the shop, and they passed on.
Mr Hancock found that progress with such a companion in Oxford Street was a slow affair. The extraordinary fascination exercised by the shops upon his charge astonished him; everything seemed to interest her, even churns. The normal state of her brain seemed only comparable to that of a person's who is recovering from an illness.
It was after twelve when they reached Mudie's library.
"Now," said Mr Hancock, pausing and resting on his umbrella, "I am rather perplexed."
"What about?"
"Luncheon. If we take a cab to the Zoo now, we will have to lunch there or in the neighbourhood. I do not know whether they provide luncheons at the Zoo or whether there is even a refreshment room there."
"You can buy buns," said Fanny; "at least, I have a dim recollection of buns when I was there last. We bought them for the bears; but whether they were meant for people to eat, or only made on purpose for the animals, I don't know."
"Just so. I think we had better defer our visit till after luncheon; but, meanwhile, what shall we do? It is now ten minutes past twelve; we cannot possibly lunch till one. Shall we explore the Museum?"
"Oh! not the Museum," said Fanny; "it always takes my appetite away. I suppose it's the mummies. I'll tell you what, we will go and have ices in that café over there."
They crossed to the Vienna Café, and seated themselves at a little marble table.
"Father and I come here often," said Fanny, "when we are in this part of the town; weknow every one here." She bowed and smiled to the lady who sits in the little glass counting house, who smiled and bowed in return. "That was Hermann—the man who went for our ices; and that's Fritz, the waiter, over there, with the bald head." She caught Fritz's eye, who smiled and bowed. "I don't see Henri—I suppose he's married; he told us he was going to get married the last time we were here, to a girl who keeps the accounts in a café in Soho, somewhere, and I promised him to send them a wedding present. He was such a nice man, like a Count in disguise; you know the sort of looking man I mean. What shall I send him?"
James Hancock ran over all the wedding presents he could remember in his mind; he thought of clocks, candlesticks, silver-plated mustard pots.
"Send him a—clock."
"Yes, I'll send him a clock. Wait till I ask where they live."
She rose and approached the lady at the counting-house; a brisk conversation ensued, the lady speaking much with her hands and eyes, which she raised alternately to heaven.
Fanny came back looking sorrowful. "He'sgone," she said; "I never could have thought it!"
"Why should he not go?"
"Yes, but he went with the spoons and forks and things, and there was no girl at Soho."
"Never trust those plausible gentlemen who look like Italian Counts," said James Hancock, not entirely displeased with the melodramatic news.
"Whomisone to trust?" asked Fanny, with the air of a woman whose life's illusion is shattered.
James Hancock couldn't quite say. "Trustme," rose to his lips, but the sentiment was not uttered, partly because it would have been too previous, and partly because Hermann had just placed before him an enormous ice-cream.
"You are not eating your ice!"
"It's too hot—ah, um—I mean it's too cold," said Mr Hancock, waking from a moment's reverie. "That is to say, I scarcely ever eat ices." The fact that a sweet vanilla ice was simply food and drink to the gout was a dietetic truism he did not care to utter.
"If," said Fanny, with the air of a motherspeaking to her child, "if you don't eat your ice I will never take you shopping with me again.Pleaseeat it, I feel so greedy eating alone."
Mr Hancock seized a spoon and attacked the formidable structure before him.
"I hope I'll never grow old," sighed Miss Lambert, as Hermann approached them with a huge dish of fantastic-looking cakes—cakes crusted with sugar and chocolate, Moscow Gâteaux simply sodden with rum, and Merangues filled with cream rich as Devonshire could make it.
"We must all grow old," said Hancock, staring with ghastly eyes at these atrocities. "But why do you specially fear age? Age has its beauties, it must come to us all."
"I don't want to grow old," said his companion, "because then I would not care for sweets any more. Father says the older he grows the less he cares for sweets, and that every one loses their sweet tooth at fifty. I hope I'll never lose mine; if I do I'll—get a false one."
Mr Hancock leisurely helped himself to one of the largest and sweetest-looking of the specimens of "Italian confectionery" beforehim; Fanny helped herself to its twin, and there was silence for a moment.
It is strange that whilst a man may admit his age to a woman he cares for, by word of mouth, he will do much before he admits it by his actions.
Of all places in the world the Zoo is, perhaps, the most uninspiring to your diffident lover, but Mr Hancock was fond of zoology. It was a mild sort of hobby which he cultivated in his few leisure moments, and he was not displeased to air his knowledge before his pretty friend, and to show her that he had a taste for things other than forensic. Accordingly in the Bird House he began to show off. This was a mistake. If you have a hobby, conceal it till after marriage. The man with a hobby, once he lets himself loose upon his pet subject or occupation, always bores. He is like a man in drink, he does not know the extent of his own stupidity;lost in his own paradise he is unconscious of the trouble and weariness he is inflicting on the unfortunates who happen to be his companions—unlike a man in drink, he is rarely amusing.
There were birds with legs without end, and birds apparently with no legs at all, nutcracker-billed birds, birds without tails, and things that seemed simply tails without birds.
Before a long-tailed bird that bore a dim resemblance to himself, Mr Hancock paused and began to instruct his companion. When he had bored her sufficiently they passed to the great Ape House, and from there to the Monkey House.
They had paused to consider the Dog-faced Ape, when Fanny, whose eyes were wandering about the place, gave a little start and plucked her companion by the sleeve. "Look," she said, "there's old Mr Bridgewater!"
"Why! God bless my soul, so it is!" cried Hancock. "What the—what the—what the——"
The appearance of shame and conscious guilt that suffused the face and person of Bridgewater caused the wild idea to rush through his employer's mind that the old man had, vulgarly speaking, "scooped the till" and was attempting evasion.
Defaulters bound for America or France do not, however, as a rule, take the Monkey House at the Zooen route, and the practical mind of James Hancock rejected the idea at once, and gripped the truth of the matter. Bridgewater had been following him for the purpose of spying upon him.
The unhappy Bridgewater had indeed been following him.
When, emerging from the bar, he had perceived his quarry he had followed them at a safe distance. When they went into the Vienna Café he waited; it seemed to him that he waited three hours: it was, in fact, an hour and a quarter. For, having finished her iceand its accompaniments, Fanny had declared that she was quite ready for luncheon, and had proposed that they should proceed to the meal at once without seeking a new café.
When they came out, Bridgewater took up the pursuit. They got into a hansom: he got into another, and ordered the driver to pursue the first vehicle at a safe distance. He did this from instinct, not as a result of having read Gaboriau, or the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes."
The long wait, the upset of all his usual ways, and the fact that he had not lunched, coupled with his dread of a hansom—hitherto when he had moved on wheels it had always been on those of a four-wheeler or omnibus—conspired to reduce him mentally to the condition of an over-driven sheep.
They left the part of the town he knew, and passed through streets he knew not of, streets upon streets, and still the first vehicle pursued its way with undiminished speed. He felt now a dim certainty that his employer was going to be married, and now he tried to occupy his scattered wits in attempting to compute what this frightful cab journey would cost.
At the Zoo gates the first hansom stopped.
"Pull up," cried Bridgewater, poking his umbrella through the trap.
He alighted a hundred yards from the gates. At the turnstile he paid his shilling and went in, but Fanny and her companion had vanished as completely as if the polar bear had swallowed them up.
He wandered away through the gardens aimlessly, but keeping a sharp look-out. He had never been to the Zoo before, but guessed it was the Zoo because of the animals. The whole adventure had the complexion of a nightmare, a complexion not brightened by the melancholy appearance of the eagles and vultures and the distant roaring and lowing of unknown beasts.
He saw an elephant advancing towards him swinging its trunk like a pendulum; to avoid it he took a path that led to the Fish House. His one desire now was to get out of the gardens and get home. He recognised now that he had made a serious mistake in entering the gardens at all. To have returned at once to Miss Hancock with the information that her brother had simply taken Miss Lambert to the Zoo would have beenthe proper and sensible course to have pursued.
Now at any moment he might find himself confronted with the two people he dreaded to meet. What should he say suppose he met them? Whatcouldhe say? The anguish of this thought drove him from the Fish House, where he had taken temporary refuge. He took a path which ended in an elephant; it was the same elephant he had seen before, but he did not know it. A side path, which he pursued hastily, brought him to the polar bear. Here he asked his way to the nearest gate of a young man and maiden who were gazing at the bear. The young man promptly pointed out a path; he took it, and found himself at the Monkey House.
He took off his hat and mopped his head with his bandana handkerchief. Looking round in bewilderment after this refreshing operation he saw something approaching far worse than an elephant; it was Mr Hancock, and with Mr Hancock, Fanny, making directly for him.
He did not hesitate a moment in doing the worst thing possible; as an animal enters a trap, he entered the Monkey House. Hewould have shut and bolted the door behind him had such a proceeding been feasible.
Bridgewater had a horror of monkeys; he had always considered the common organ-grinder's monkey to be the representative of all its kind, and the last production of nature in frightfulness; but here were monkeys of every shape, size, and colour, a symphony of monkeys, each "note" more horrible than the last.
If you have ever studied monkeys and their ways you will know that they have their likes and dislikes just like men. That some people "appeal" to them at first sight, and some people do not. Bridgewater did not. When he saw Fanny entering at the door he retreated to the furthest limits of the place and pretended to be engaged in contemplation of a peculiarly sinister-looking ape, upon which, to judge from its appearance, a schoolboy had been at work with a brushful of blue paint.
The azure and sinister one endured the human's gaze for a few mutterful moments, and then bursting into loud yells flew at the bars and attempted to tear them from their sockets; the mandrills shrieked and chattered,the lemur added his note, and Bridgewater beat a retreat.
It was at this moment that Fanny's wandering gaze caught him.
Mr Hancock, asking Fanny to wait for him for a short time, took Bridgewater by the arm and led him outside.
"Now, Bridgewater, what is the meaning of this? Why have you left the office? Why have you followed me? What earthly reason had you for doing such a thing? Speak out, man—are you dumb?"
"I declare to God, Mr James," said the unhappy Bridgewater, "I had no reason——"
"No reason!—are you mad? Bridgewater, you haven't been—drinking?"
"Drinking!" cried Bridgewater, with what your melodramatist would call a hollow laugh. "Drinking!—oh yes—drinking? No! No!—don't mind me, Mr James. Drinking! One blessed glass of sherry, and not a bitehave I had—waiting two hours and more—following you in a cab—three shillings the fare was—nearly torn in pieces by an ape—following you and hiding in all sorts of places, and then told I've been drinking. Do I look as if I had been drinking, Mr James? Am I given to drinking, Mr James? Have you known me for forty years, Mr James, and have you ever seen me do such a thing? Answer me that, Mr James——"
"Hush, hush!—don't talk so loud," said Hancock, rather alarmed at the old man's hysterical manner. "No, you are the last person to do such a thing, but tell me, all the same, why you followed me."
Bridgewater was dumb. Hungry, thirsty, frightened at being caught spying, startled by elephants and addled by apes as he was, still his manhood revolted at the idea of betraying Patience and sheltering himself at her expense. All the same, he attempted very feminine tactics in endeavouring to evade a direct reply.
"Drinking! I have been in the office, man and boy, this fifty years and more come next Michaelmas; it's fifty-one years, fifty-one years next Michaelmas Day, every day at my placebut Sundays and holidays, year in, year out——"
"Bridgewater," repeated Mr Hancock, "will you answer me the question I just asked you? Why did you follow me to-day?"
"Oh Lord," said Bridgewater, "I wish I had never seen this day! Follow you, Mr James? do you think I followed you for pleasure? Why, the office—God bless my soul! it makes my hair stand on end—no one there but Wolf to take charge, and I have been away hours and hours. It's three o'clock now, and here am I miles and miles away; and I ought to have called at the law courts at 3.20, and there's those bills to file. It seems all like a horrible nightmare, that it does; it seems——"
"I don't want to know what it seems. You have left your duty and come away—for what purpose?"
Silence.
"Ah well!" said Hancock, speaking not in the least angrily, "I see there is a secret of some sort. I regret that a man in whom I have always placed implicit trust should keep from me a secret that concerns me; evidently—no matter, I am not curious. Yes, it is three o'clock; it might be as well for you to returnand look after things, though it is too late for the law courts now."
This tone and manner completely floored Bridgewater. The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and if Patience Hancock could have seen the damage done to his confidential reservoir, she would have shuddered.
"I'll tell you the truth, Mr James. It's not my fault—she put me to the work. I'll tell you the truth. I've been following you and spying upon you, but it was for your own good, she said——"
"Who said?"
"Miss Patience."
"Miss Patience told you to follow me to-day?"
"Yes."
"But what on earth—how on earth did she know I was—er—coming here?"
"She didn't know."
"Well, how thedevildid she tell you to follow me, then?"
"She wanted to know where you were going to."
"But," roared Hancock, whose face had been slowly crimsoning, or purpling rather, since the mention of his sister's name, "howtheblazesdid she know I was goinganywhere?"
"When I saw you going out of the office with Miss Lambert I ran round and told her."
"When you saw me going out of the office with Miss Lambert you ran round and told her!" said Hancock, spacing each word and speaking with such a change from fire to ice that his listener shivered. "Oh, this is too good! I pay you a large salary to spy upon me and to run round and tell my sister my doings. Am I mad, or am I dreaming? And what—what—WHATled you, sir, to leave the office and run round and tell my sister?"
"For God's sake, Mr James, don't talk so loud!" said Bridgewater; "the people are turning round to look at us. I didn't leave the office of my own accord; it was Miss Patience, who said to me, she said, 'Bridgewater, I trust you for your master's sake to let me know if you see him with a lady, for,' she said, 'there is a woman who has designs on him.'"
"Ah!"
"Those were her words. So when I sawyou going out with Miss Lambert I ran round and told her."
"Ah!"
Mr Hancock had fallen from fury into a thoughtful mood: one of the sharpest brains in London was engaged in unravelling the meaning to get at the inner-meaning of all this.
"My sister came round to the office some time ago asking me to spare you for an hour as she wished for your advice about a lease. That, of course, was all humbug: she wanted you for the purpose of talking about me?"
"That is true."
"The lease was never mentioned?"
"Not once, Mr James."
"All the conversation was about me and my welfare?"
"That it was."
"Now see here, Bridgewater, cast your memory back. Is this the first time in your life that my sister has invited you to my house in Gordon Square to discuss my welfare?"
"No indeed, sir. I've been there before."
"How many times?"
Bridgewater assumed the cast of countenance he always assumed when engaged in reckoning.
"That's enough," said Hancock, "don't count. Now tell me, when did she first begin to take you into her confidence—twenty years ago?"
"Yes, Mr James, fully that."
Hancock made a sound like a groan.
"And twenty years ago it was the same tale: 'Protect my brother from a designing woman.'"
"Why, it was, and that's the truth," said Bridgewater, as if the fact had just been discovered by him.
"And you did your best, told her all about me and my movements, as far as you knew them, and mixed and muddled, and made an ass of yourself and a fool of me——"
"Oh, Mr James!"
"Hold your tongue!—a fool of me. Do you know, John Bridgewater, that you have been aiding and abetting in a conspiracy—a conspiracy unpunishable by law, but still a conspiracy—hold your tongue!—you are innocent of everything but of being a fool; indeed, I ought not to call any man a fool, for I have been a fool myself, and I ought to have seen that the one end and aim of my sister's life was to secure her position asmy keeper, and her tenure of my house. You have shown me at one flash a worm that has crawled through my past, cankering and corroding all it touched. Money, money, money—that is my sister's creed. I am not young, Bridgewater, and it seems to me that if instead of living all these years side by side with this money-grub, I had lived side by side with a wife, my lot would have been a better one. I might have had children, grown-up sons now, daughters—things that make an interest for us in our old age. Between me and all that has come my sister. That woman has a very strong will. I see many things in the past now, ay, twenty years ago, that I can explain. Bridgewater, you have done me a great injury, but you did it for the best, and I forgive you. Half the people in this world are pawns and chess-pieces, moved about by the men and women of intellect who form the other half. If you had possessed eyes to see, you might have seen that the really designing woman against whom I should have been protected, was the woman with whom you leagued yourself—my sister."
The expression on Bridgewater's face was so wonderfully funny that Hancock would havelaughed had he not been in such a serious mood.
"However, what's done is done, and there is no use in crying over spilt milk. You have at least done me a service by your stupidity in following me to-day, for you have shown me the light. Miss Lambert pleases me, and if I choose to make her mistress of my house, instead of my sister, mistress of my house she will be. We will return now to—where I left Miss Lambert, and we will all go home to Gordon Square and have dinner with my sister."
"Not me, Mr James," gasped Bridgewater, "I don't feel well."
"Nonsense! you need not fear my sister. She is no longer mistress of my house; next week she shall pack bag and baggage. Come."
He turned towards the Monkey House, and Bridgewater followed him, so mazed in his intellect that it would be hard to tell whether monkeys, men, Fanny Lambert, Patience Hancock, or elephants, were uppermost in his brain.
It was James Hancock's rule that a dinner should be served every night at Gordon Square, to which he could invite any one, even a city alderman.
On this especial day a dinner, even better than usual, was in prospect. Miss Hancock had a large circle of acquaintances of her own; she belonged to several anti-societies. As before hinted, she was not destitute of a certain kindness of heart, and the counterfoils of her cheque book disclosed not inconsiderable sums subscribed to the Society for the Total Abolition of Vivisection and Kindred Bodies.
To-day she expected to dinner a person, a gentleman of the female persuasion—that is to say, a sort of man. Mr Bulders, the person in question, a member of the Anti-Tobacco League, was a crank of the crankiest description. He wrote letters to the paper on every conceivable subject, and in this way had obtained a dim and unholy sort ofnotoriety. Fox hunting was his especial detestation, and his grand hobby was cremation. "Why Fear the Flames?" by Emanuel Bulders, a pamphlet of fifteen pages, privately printed, reposed in Miss Hancock's private bookcase. But Mr Bulders has no place in this story; he is dead and—cremated, let us hope. I shadow him forth as the reason why Miss Hancock was sitting this evening by the drawing-room fireplace, dressed in the dress she assumed when she expected visitors, and engaged in crochet-work.
The clock pointed to half-past six, Bulders was due—over-due, like the Spanish galleon that was destined never to come into port. She had said in her note, "Come early, I wish to talk over the last report of the —— Society, and my brother has little sympathy with such subjects."
Suddenly her trained ear distinguished the sound of her brother's latchkey in the door below. Some women are strangely like dogs in so far as regards the senses of hearing and smell.
Patience Hancock, as she sat by the drawing-room fireplace, could tell that her brother had not entered the house alone. She made outhis voice, and then the voice of Bridgewater. She supposed that James had brought his clerk home to dinner to talk business matters over, as he sometimes did; and she was relapsing from the attitude of strained attention when a sound struck her, hit her, and caused her to drop her crochet-work and rise to her feet.
She heard the laughter of a girl.
Almost instantly upon the laughter the door opened, and it seemed to Miss Hancock that a dozen people entered the room.
"This is my sister Patience—Patience, Miss Lambert. We've all come back to dinner. Sit down, Bridgewater. By the way, Patience, there's a letter for you; I took it from the postman at the hall door." He handed the letter; it was from Mr Bulders, excusing himself for not coming to dine, and alleging for reason a sore throat.
Patience extended a frigid hand to Miss Lambert, who just touched it; all the girl's light-heartedness and vivacity had vanished for the moment, Patience Hancock acted upon her like a draught of cold air.
"I think you have heard me mention Miss Lambert's name, Patience. We have been tothe Zoo, the whole three of us. Immensely amusing place the Zoo—makes one feel quite a boy again. Hey, Bridgewater!"
"I hope you enjoyed it," said Miss Hancock in a perfunctory tone, glancing at Fanny, who was seated in a huge rocking-chair, the only really comfortable chair in the room, and then at Bridgewater, who had taken his seat on the ottoman.
"Pretty well, thanks," said Fanny, speaking in a languid tone. She had assumed very much the air of a fine lady all of a sudden: she was not going to be patronised by a solicitor's daughter, and she had divined in Patience Hancock an enemy. "The Zoo is very much like the world: there is much to laugh at and much to endure. Taken as a whole, it is not an unmixed blessing."
James Hancock opened his mouth at these sage utterances, and then shut it again and turned away to smile. Bridgewater had the bad manners to scratch his head. Miss Hancock said, "Indeed?"
"Don't you think so?"
"I think the world is exactly what we choose to make it," said Patience Hancock, quoting Bulders.
"You thinkthat?" said Fanny, suddenly forgetting her fine lady languors. "Well, I wish some one would show me how to make the world just as I'd choose to make it. Oh, it would be such a world—no poor people, and no rain, and no misery, and no debts."
"You mean no debtors," said Patience, seizing her opportunity. "It is the debtors that make debts, just as it is the drunken people who make drunkenness."
"Yes, I suppose it is," said Fanny, suddenly abandoning her argumentative tone for one of reverie. "It's the people in the world that make it so horrid and so nice."
"That's exactly it," said Hancock, who was standing on the hearthrug listening to these banalities of thought, and contemplating Bridgewater. "Miss Lambert is a true philosopher. It is the people who make the world what it is; could we banish the meddlers and spies and traitors"—he looked fixedly at his sister—"the world would not be an unpleasant place to live in."
"I hate spies," said Fanny, totally unconscious of the delicate ground she was stepping upon—"people who poke about into other people's business, and open letters, and that sort ofthing." Miss Hancock flushed scarlet, and her brother noted the fact. "James opens letters, I caught him."
"Who is James?" asked Miss Hancock.
"He's our butler," said Fanny, looking imploringly at Mr Hancock as if to say "Don't tell."
Miss Hancock rose. "May I show you to my room? you would like to remove your hat."
The dinner was not a success, intellectually speaking. James Hancock's temper half broke down over the soles, the sauce was not to his liking; the sweet cakes, ices, and other horrors he had consumed during the day had induced a mild attack of dyspepsia. His nose was red, and he knew it; and, worst of all, faint twinges of gout made themselves felt. His right great toe was saying to him, "Wait till you see what you'll have to-morrow." Then Boffins, the old butler, tripped on the cat, broke a dish, and James Hancock's temper flew out.
I have described James Hancock badly, if you have not perceived that he was a man with a temper. The evil demons in the Merangues and ices, the irritation caused by Bridgewater's confession, the provokingcalmness of his sister, the uric acid in his blood, and the smash of the broken dish, all combined of a sudden and were too much for him.
"Damn that cat!" he cried. "Cats, cats, cats! How often have I told you"—to his sister—"that I will not have my house filled with those sneaking, prowling beasts? Chase her out; where is she?"
Boffins looked under the table and said "Scat," but nothing "scatted."
"She's gone, Mr James."
"I won't have cats in my house," said Mr James, proceeding with his dinner and feeling rather ashamed of his outburst. "Dear Lord, Patience, what do you call this thing?"
"The cook," said Patience, "calls it, I believe, avol-au-vent. What is wrong with it?"
"What is right with it, you mean. Don't touch it, Miss Lambert, unless you wish to have a nightmare."
"I think it's delicious," said Fanny, "and I don't mind nightmares. They're rather fun—when they are over, and you wake up and find yourself safe in bed."
"Well, you'll have some fun to-night," grunted James. "The person who cookedthis atrocity ought to be made sleep with the person who eats it."
"James, you need not bevulgar," said his sister.
"What's vulgar?"
"Your remark."
"Boffins, fill Miss Lambert's glass—let's change the subject. This champagne is abominably iced—give me some Burgundy."
"James!"
"Well?"
"Burgundy!"
"Well, what about Burgundy?"
"Surely you remember the gout—the frightful attack you had last time after Burgundy."
"Gout? I suppose you mean Arthritic Rheumatism? But perhaps you are right, and Dr Garrod was wrong—let us call it gout. Fill up the glass, Boffins. Bridgewater, try some Burgundy, and see if it affects your gout. Boffins, that cat's in the room, I hear it purring. I hear it, I tell you, sir! where is the beast?"
The beast, as if in answer, poked its head from under the table-cloth—it was in Miss Lambert's lap.
Altogether the dinner was not a success.
"Your father has known my brother some time?" said Miss Hancock, when the ladies found themselves alone in the drawing-room after dinner.
"Oh yes, some time now," said Fanny. "They met over some law business. Father had a dispute with Mr Bevan of Highshot Towers, the place adjoining ours, you know, down in Buckinghamshire, and Mr Hancock was very kind—he arbitrated."
"Indeed? that is funny, for he is Mr Bevan's solicitor."
"Is that so? I'm sure I don't know, I never trouble myself about law business or money matters. I leave all that to father."
They talked on various matters, and before Miss Lambert had been packed into a specially chartered four-wheeler and driven home with Bridgewater on the box beside the driver as chaperone, Miss Hancock had come to form ideas about Miss Lambert such as she had never formed about any other young lady. Ideas the tenor of which you will perceive later on.
Mr Bevan, since his visit to Highgate, dreamed often at nights of monstrous asparagus beds, and his friends and acquaintances noticed that he seemed distrait.
The fact was the mind of this orderly and precise individual had received a shock; his world of thought had tilted somewhat, owing to a slight shifting of the poles, and regions hitherto in darkness were touched with sun.
Go where he would a voice pursued him, turn where he would, a face. Wild impulses to jump into a cab and drive to "The Laurels," Highgate, as swiftly as cab could take him were subdued and conquered. Perhaps it would be happier for some of us if we used less reason in steering our way through life. Impulsive people are often sneered at, yet,I dare say that an impulse acted upon will as often make a man's life as mar it.
Mr Bevan was not an impulsive man. It was not for some days after his visit to "The Laurels" that he carried out his determination to stop the action once for all. He did not return to "The Laurels." He was engaged and a man of honour, and as such he determined to fly from temptation. Accordingly one bright morning he despatched a wire intimating his arrival by the 3.50 at Ditchingham, having sent which he flung himself into a hansom and drove to Charing Cross, followed by another hansom containing Strutt, two portmanteaux, a hunting kit-bag and a bundle of fishing-rods. An extraordinary accident happened to the train he travelled by; it arrived at Paddock Wood only three minutes late, making up for this deficiency, however, by crawling into Ditchingham at 4.10.
On the Ditchingham platform stood two girls. One tall, pale, and decidedly good-looking despite thepince-nezshe wore; the other short and rather stout, and rather pretty.
The tall girl was Miss Pursehouse; the short was Lulu Morgan, Miss Pursehouse's companion, an American.
Pamela Pursehouse at this stage of her career was verging on thirty, the only daughter of the late John Pursehouse of Birmingham, and an orphan. She was exceedingly rich.
Some months ago she had met Bevan on board Sir Charles Napier's yacht; they had spent a fortnight cruising about the Balearic Islands and the Riff coast of Morocco, had been sea-sick together, and bored together, and finally had, one moonlight night, become engaged. It was a cold-blooded affair despite the moonlight, and they harboured no illusions one of the other, and no doubts.
Pamela had a mind of her own. She had attended classes at Mason's College and had quite a knowledge of Natural History; she also had an interest in the ways of the working classes, and had written a paper to prove that, with economy, a man, his wife and five children, could live on an income of eleven shillings a week, and put by sixpence for a rainy day; to disprove which she was eternally helping the cottagers round about with doles of tea on a liberal scale, coal in the winter, and wine in sickness. When the rainy day came she supplied the sixpence, which ought to have been in the savings bank, for she was a girlwho found her heart when she forgot her head.
At Marseilles Lady Napier, Pamela, Lulu, and Charles Bevan had left the yacht and travelled together to Paris; there, after a couple of days, he had departed for London to look after his affairs. Pamela had remained in Paris, where, through Lady Napier, she had theentréeof the best society, and had met many people, including the Lamberts. She had indeed only returned to England a short time ago.
Outside the station stood a governess cart and the omnibus of the hotel. Into the governess cart bundled the lovers and Lulu, into the omnibus Strutt and the luggage. Pamela took the reins and the hog-maned pony started.
"Hot, isn't it?" said Charles, tilting his hat over his eyes, and envying Strutt in the cool shelter of the omnibus.
"Think so?" said Pamela. "It's July, you know. Why do men dress always in summer in such heavy clothes? Seems to me women are much more sensible in the matter of dress. Now if you were dressed as I am, instead of in that Harris tweed, you wouldn't feel the heat at all."
Charles tried to imagine himself in a chip hat and lilac cotton gown, and failed.
"You must have been fried in that train," said Lulu, staring at him with a pair of large blue eyes, eyes that never seemed to shut.
"Pretty nearly," answered Charles, and the conversation languished.
Rookhurst stands on a hill; it is a village composed of gentlemen's houses. Country "seats" radiate from it to a distance of some three miles. Three acres and a house constitute a "seat."
The conservatism of the old Japanese aristocracy pales when considered beside the conservatism of Rookhurst. In this microcosm there are as many circles as in the Inferno of Dante, and the circles are nearly as painful to contemplate.
When Pamela Pursehouse rented "The Roost" and took up residence there she came unknown and untrumpeted. The parson and several curious old ladies called upon her, but the seat-holders held aloof, she was not received. Mrs D'Arcy-Jones—Rookhurst is full of people with double-barrelled names, those double-barrelled names in which thesecond barrel is of inferior metal—Mrs D'Arcy-Jones discovered that Pamela's father was of Birmingham. Mrs D'Arcy-Johnson found out that he was in trade, and Mrs D'Arcy Somebody-else that her mother's maiden name was Jenkins. There was much turning up of noses when poor Pamela's name was mentioned, till one fine day when all the turned-up noses were suddenly turned down by the arrival at "The Roost" of the Duchess of Aviedale, her footman, her maid, her dog, and her companion. Then there was a rush. People flung decency to the winds in their haste to know the tradesman's daughter and incidentally get a lick at the Duchess's boots. But to all callers Pamela was not at home; she had even the rudeness not to return their visits.
The snobs, beaten back, retired, feeling very much like damaged goods, and Pamela was left in peace. Her aunt, Miss Jenkins, a sweet-faced and perfectly inane old lady, lived with her and kept house, and Pamela, protected by her wing, had all sorts of extraordinary people to visit her. Sandyman, M.P., the Labour representative, came down for a week-end once, and smoked shag tobaccoin the dining-room and wandered about the village on Sunday in a Keir-Hardy cap; he also attended the tin chapel, had a quart of beer at the village pub, and did other disgraceful things which were all duly reported and set down to Pamela's account in the D'Arcy-Jones-Johnson notebook.
Pamela liked men, that is to say, men who were original and interesting; yet she had engaged herself to the most unoriginal man in England: a fact for which there is no accounting, save on the hypothesis that she was a woman.
The governess cart having climbed a long, long hill, the hog-maned pony took to himself wings, and presently, in a cloud of dust, halted.
"The Roost," though a fairly large house, did not boast a carriage-drive. A gate in a high hedge led to a path through a rose-garden which was worth all the carriage-drives in existence.
"We have several people staying with us, did I tell you?" said Pamela as she led the way. "Hamilton-Cox, the man who wrote the 'Pillar of Salt,' and Wilson—Professor Wilson of Oxford, and—but come on, and I'll introduce you."
They entered a pleasant hall. The perfume of cigars and the sound of a man's laughter came from a half-open door on the right. Pamela made for it, and as Charles Bevan followed he heard a rich Irish voice. "My friend Stacey, of Castle Stacey, raised one four foot broad across the face; such a sunflower was never seen by mortal man, I measured it with my own hands—four foot——"
Bevan suddenly found himself before a man, an immense, good-looking, priestly-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, a cigar in his mouth, and a billiard cue in his hand.
"Mr Charles Bevan, Mr Lambert; Mr Bevan, Professor Wilson; Mr——"
"Why, sure to goodness it's not my cousin, Charles Bevan of the 'Albany'!" cried the big man, effusively clasping the hand of Charles and gazing at him with the astonished and joyous expression of a man who meets a dear and long-lost brother.
Mr Bevan intimated that he was that person.
"But, sure to goodness," said the big man, dropping Charles' hand and scratching his head with a puzzled air, then he turned on his heel: "Where's my coat?" He found hiscoat and took from it a pocket-book, from the pocket-book a telegram and a sheet of paper, whilst Pamela turned to Professor Wilson and the novelist.
"I got that from your lawyer, Mr Bevan," said he, "some days ago." Charles read:
"Bevan has stopped action. Isn't it sweet of him?—Hancock."
"Yes," said Charles rather stiffly, "I stopped the action, but Hancock seems to have—been drinking."
"And there's the reply I was going to send, only I forgot it," said George Lambert, handing the copy of a telegram to Charles.
"Tell Bevan I relinquish all fishing rights. Wish to be friends.—George Lambert."
"It is very generous of you," said Charles, really touched. "But I can't have it, we'll divide the rights."
"Come into the garden, my boy," said George, who had now resumed his coat, linking his arm in that of Charles and leading him out through the open French window, into the rose-scented garden, "and let's talk things over. It's the pity of the world we weren't always friends. Damn the fish stream and all the fish in it! I wish they'd been boiled beforethey were spawned. What's thegoodof fighting? Isn't life too short for fighting and divisions? Sure, there's a rose as big as a red cabbage, but you should see the roses at my house in Highgate—and where did you meet Miss Pursehouse?"
"Oh," said Charles. "I've known her for some time."
"We met her in Paris, Fanny—that's my daughter—and me met her in Paris. Fanny doesn't care for her much, and wouldn't come with me; but there's never a woman in the world that really cares for another woman, unless the other woman is as ugly as sin and a hundred. There's a melon house for you, but you should see my melon houses in Highgate, the one's I am going to have built by Arthur Lawrence of Cockspur Street; he's made a speciality of glass, but he charges cruel. It's the passion of my life, a garden."
He leaned over the gate leading to the kitchen-garden, and whistled an old Irish hunting song softly to himself as he contemplated the cabbages and peas. Charles lit a cigar. He was a fine figure of a man, this Lambert; one of those large natures ina large frame that dwarf other individualities when brought in contact with them. Hamilton Cox would pass in a crowd, and Professor Wilson was not unimpressive, but beside George Lambert, Hamilton-Cox looked a shrimp, and the Oxford professor somewhat shrivelled.
"It's the passion of my life," reiterated Fanny Lambert's father, addressing the cabbages, the marrow fat peas, Charles Bevan, and the distant woods of Sussex. "And if I'd stuck to it and left horses alone, a richer man I'd have been this day."
"I say," said Charles, who had been plunged in meditation, "why did Hancock telegraph to you, I wonder? It wasn't exactly solicitors' etiquette; the proper course, I think, would have been to communicate with your lawyers, Messrs Sykes and Fagan."
George Lambert broke into a low, mellow laugh.
"Faith," he said, "I suppose he did communicate with them, and they answered that they weren't my lawyers any more. I've fought with them, and that's a fact; and now that we're friends, you and me, I've an idea of transferring my business to Hancock.I've one or two little suits pending; and I'm not sure but one of them won't be with Fagan for the names I called him in his own office before his own clerks. 'I'll have you indicted for slander,' he says. 'Slander!' said I, 'slander, you old clothes-bag, have me up for slander, and I'll beat the dust out of your miserable reputation in any court in the kingdom, ye old wandering-Jew-come-to-roost,' and with that I left the office, and never will I set my foot in it again."
"I should think not."
"Never again. He's a red Jew—always beware of red Jews; black Jews are bad, but red Jews are the devil—bad luck to them! If I'd left Jews alone, a richer man I'd have been this day. Who's that ringing a bell? Oh, it's the afternoon tea-bell: let's go in and talk to the old professor and Miss Pursehouse."
They did not go in, for the Professor and Miss Pursehouse, Lulu Morgan, and the author of the "Pillar of Salt" were having tea on the lawn. There were few places pleasanter than the lawn of "The Roost," especially on this golden and peaceful summer's evening, through which the warm south windbrought the cawing of rooks from distant elm trees.
"Have you two finished your business?" asked Pamela, addressing Charles; "if so, sit down and tell me all the news. I got your note. So sorry you were bored by old Mr—Blundell—was it?—at the club. Mr Blundell is a rose-bore, it seems," turning to Hamilton Cox; "he is mad on roses."
"Blundell! what an excellent name for a bore!" said the "Pillar of Salt" man dreamily, closing his eyes. "I can see him, stout and red-faced and——"
"Matter of fact, old Blundell isn't stout," cut in Charles, to whom Hamilton-Cox did not appeal. "He's thin and white."
"Allwhite?"
"No, his face, you know."
"Ah! I had connected him with the idea of red roses. Why is it that in thinking of roses one always figures them red?"
"Sure, I don't know—I never do."
"I do."
"Well," put in Pamela, "when you escaped from Mr Blundell what did you do with yourself that day—smoked, I suppose, and went to Tattersal's?"
"No, I was busy."
"What was the business—luncheon?"
"Yes," said Charles Bevan, feeling that he was humorous in his reply, and feeling rather a sneak, too. "Luncheon was part of the business."
The remembrance of the fried whiting rose before him, backed by a vision of Susannah holding in one hand a bottle of Böllinger, and in the other a bottle of Gold-water.
It is so easy not to do some things. Bevan, had he acted correctly, ought to have informed Mr Lambert of his visit to Highgate and all that therein lay, yet he did not. There was nothing to hide, yet, as Sir Boyle-Roche might have said, he hid it.
During tea several things occupied his mind very much. The vision of Fanny Lambert was constantly before him, so was the person of her father. He could not but acknowledge that Lambert was a most attractive personage—attractive to men, towomen, to children, to dogs, cats—anything that could see and feel, in fact. Everything seemed to brighten in his presence. Hamilton-Cox's dictum that if Lambert could be bottled he would make the most excellent Burgundy, was not far wrong.
Bevan, as he sipped his tea, watched the genial Lambert, and could not but notice that he paid very marked attention to Pamela, and even more marked attention to old Miss Jenkins, her aunt.
This did not altogether please him, neither did the fact that Pamela seemed to enjoy the attentions of this man, who was her diametrical opposite.
To the profound philosopher who indites these lines it seems that between men and women in the mass there is very little difference. They act pretty much the same, except, perhaps, in the presence of mice. Bevan did very much what a woman would have done in his position: seeing his true love flirting with some one else, he flirted with some one else. Lulu Morgan was nearest to him, so he used her.
"I've been in England a twelvemonth," answered Miss Morgan, in reply to a query,"and I feel beginning to get crusted. They say the old carp in the pond in Versailles get moss-grown after they've been there a hundred and fifty years or so, and I feel like that. When I say I've been in England a twelvemonth, I mean Europe. I've been in England three months, and the rest abroad. Pamela picked me up in Paris, you'd just gone back home; Lady Scott introduced me to her. I was looking out for a job. I came over originally with the Vandervades, then Sadie Vandervade got married; I was her companion, and I lost the job. Of course I could have stayed on with old man Vandervade and his wife, but I wanted a job. I'm like a squirrel, put me in a cage with nothing to do, and I'd die. I must have a mill to turn, so I froze on to Pamela's offer. I write her letters, and do her accounts, and interview her tradespeople. I guess she's getting fat for want of work since I've been her companion. Yes, I like England, and I like this place; if the people could be scraped out of it clean, it would be considerably nicer. I went to church last Sunday to have a good long considerate look at them; they all arrived in carriages—every one here who has a shay of any description turns it out togo to church in on Sunday. Well, I went to have a good long look at them, and such a collection of stuffed images and plug-uglies I never beheld. I'm vicious about them p'rhaps, for they treated Pamela so mean, holding off from her when she first came, and then rushing down her throat when they found she knew a duchess. They'd boil themselves for a duchess. Say—you know the Lamberts? Isn't Fanny sweet?"
Mr Bevan started in his chair, but Miss Morgan did not notice, engrossed as she was with her own conversation.
"We met them in Paris; and I don't know which is sweeter, Fanny or her father. She was to have come down here with him, but she didn't. My, but she is pretty. And don't the men run after her! there were three men in Paris raving about her; she'd only known them two days, and they were near proposing to her. Don't wonder at it, I'd propose to her myself, if I was a man. But she's a little flirt all the same, and I told her so."
"Excuse me," said Bevan, "but I scarcely think you are justified—that is—from what I have heard of Miss Lambert, I would scarcely suspect her of being a—flirt."
"Wouldn't you? Men never suspect a woman of being a flirt till they're flirted with and done for. Fanny's the worst description of flirt—oh, I've told her so to her face—for she doesn't mean it; she just leads men on with her sweetness, and doesn't see they're breaking their hearts for her. She's a regular trap bated with sugar. How did you escape, Mr Bevan? You're the only man, I guess, who ever did."
"I haven't the pleasure—er—of Miss Lambert's acquaintance," said Charles, rather stiffly.
"Well, you're safe, for you are engaged; only for that I'd say 'Don't have the pleasure of her acquaintance.' What I like about her is that she makes all the other women so furious; she sucks the men away from them like a whirlpool. It's a pity she's so rich, for it's simply gilt thrown away——"
"Is Miss—Miss Lambert rich?"
"Why, certainly; at least I conclude so."
"Did she tell you so?"
"No—but she gives one the impression; they have country houses like mushrooms all over the place, and she dresses simply just as she pleases; only really rich people can afford todo that. She went to the opera in Paris with us in an old horror of a gown that made her look quite charming. No one notices what she has on; and if she went to heaven in a coffee-coat they'd let her in, for she'd still be Fanny Lambert."
"You saw a good deal of her in Paris?"
"Yes, we went about a good deal."
"Tell me," said Mr Bevan very gravely, "you said she was a flirt—did you really mean that?"
"Why, how interested you are! She is, but not a bad sort of flirt. She's one of those people all heart—she loves everything and everybody—up to a certain point."
"Do you think she is in love with any man—beyond a certain point?"
"Can't say," said Miss Morgan, shaking her head sagely; "but when she does, she'll go the whole hog. The man she'll love she'll love for ever and ever, and die on his grave, and that sort of thing, you know."
"I believe you are right."
"Why, how do you know? You've never met her."
"I was referring to your description of her. Girls of her impulsive nature—er—generallydo—I mean they are generally warm-hearted and that sort of thing."
"There's one man I think she has a fancy for," said Miss Morgan, staring into space with her wide-open blue eyes, "but he's poor as a rat—an awfully nice fellow, a painter; Mr Lambert fished him up somewhere in a café. He and Fanny and I and a friend of his went and had dinner at a little café near the Boul' Miche. Then we got lost—that is to say, I and Heidenheimer lost sight of Fanny and her friend; and Fanny told me afterwards she'd had no end of a good time finding her way home; so'd I. 'Twas awfully improper, of course, but no one knew, and it was in Paris."
"I may be old-fashioned, of course," said Mr Bevan stiffly, "but I think people can't be too careful, you know—um—how long was Miss Lambert lost with Mr——"
"Leavesley—that's his name. Oh! she didn't turn up at the hotel till after eight."
"Did Mr Lambert know?"
"Oh yes, but he wasn't uneasy; he said she was like a bad penny, sure to turn up all right."
"Good God!"
"What on earth!—why, there was no harm. Leavesley is the best of good fellows, he looked after her like a grandmother; he worships the very ground she walks on, and I'd pity the man who would as much as look twice at Fanny if he was with her."
"Um—Mr Leavesley, as you call him——"
"I don't call him, he calls himself."
"Well, Mr Leavesley may be all right in his way, but I should not care to see a sister of mine worshipped by one of these sort of people. Organ-grinders and out-of-elbow artists may be delightful company amidst their own set, but I confess I am not accustomed to them——"
"That's just your insular prejudice—seems to me I've heard that expression before, but it will do—Leavesley isn't an organ-grinder. I can't stand loafers myself, and if a man can't keep up with the procession, he'd better hang himself; but Leavesley isn't a loafer, and he'll be at the top of the procession yet, leading the elephant. Oh, he paints divinely!"
"Miss Lambert, you say, is in love with him?"
"I didn't—I fancy she had a weakness; but maybe it's only a fancy."
"Does he write to her?"
"Don't know—very likely; these artistic people can do things other people can't. We all went to see the Lamberts off at the Nord, and had champagne at the buffet; and poor old Fragonard—he was another worshipper, an artist you know—turned up with a huge big bouquet of violets for Fanny; we asked him where he'd got them, and he said he'd stolen them. They don't care a fig for poverty, artists; make a joke of it you know. Yes, I daresay he writes to Fanny. Heidenheimer writes to me every week—says he's dying in love with me, and sends poems, screechingly funny poems, all about nightingales and arrows and hearts. He's an artist too, and I'd marry him, I believe I would, only we're both as poor as Lazarus."
"Mr Leavesley is an artist you say?"
"Yes, but he's a genius, but genius doesn't pay—that's to say at first—afterwards—afterwards it's different. Trading rats for diamonds in famine time isn't in it with a genius when he gets on the make."
Mr Bevan gazed reflectively at the tips of his shoes. He quite recognised that these long-haired and out-at-elbowed anomaliesy'clept geniuses had the trick, at times, of making money. A dim sort of wrath against the whole species possessed him. To a clean, correct, and level-headed gentleman possessed of broad acres and a huge rent-roll, it is unpleasant to think that a slovenly, shiftless happy-go-lucky tatterdemallion may be a clean, correct and level-headed gentleman's, superior both in brains, fascination, and even in wealth. We can fancy the correct one subscribing sympathy, if not money, to a society for the extinction of genius, were not such a body entirely superfluous in the present condition of human affairs.
"It may be," said Mr Bevan at last, "that those people are very pleasant and all that, and useful in the world and so on, but I confess I like to associate with people who cut their hair, and, not to put too fine a point on it, wash——"
"Oh, Leavesley washes," said Miss Morgan, "he's as clean as a new pin. And as for cutting his hair, my!—that's what spoils him in my opinion; why, it's cut to the bone almost, like a convict's. All artists cut their hair now; it's only Polish piano-players and violinists wear their hair long."
"Whether they cut their hair 'to the bone' or wear it long is a matter of indifference," said Mr Bevan. "They're all a lot of bounders, and I'd be sorry to see a sister of mine married amongst them—very sorry."
Miss Morgan said nothing, the warmth of Mr Bevan on the subject of Leavesley struck her as being somewhat strange; though she said nothing, like the parrot, she thought the more, and began to consider Mr Bevan more attentively and to "turn him over in her mind." Now the fortunate or unfortunate person whom Miss Morgan distinguished by turning them over in her mind, generally gave up their secrets in the process unconsciously, subconsciously, or sometimes even consciously. Those wide-open blue eyes that seemed always gazing into futurity and distance saw many happenings of the present invisible to most folk.
Professor Wilson and Hamilton-Cox had wandered away through the garden discussing Oxford and modern thought. Miss Pursehouse, Lambert, and old Miss Jenkins were talking and laughing, and seemingly quite happy and content. Said Miss Morgan, looking round: