"Every one's busy, like the children in the Sunday-school story, and we've no one to play with; shall we go for a walk in the village, and I'll show you the church and the pump and the other antiques?"
"Certainly, I'll be delighted," said Charles, rising.
"Then com'long," said Miss Morgan, "Pamela, I'm taking Mr Bevan to show him the village and the creatures that there abound. If we're not back by six, send a search-party."
Rookhurst is, perhaps, one of the prettiest and most quaint of English villages, and the proudest. If communities receive attention from the Recording Angel, amidst Rookhurst's sins written in that tremendous book will be found this entry, "It calls itself a town."
"Isn't the village sweet and sleepy?" said Miss Morgan, as she tripped along beside her companion; "it always reminds me of the dormouse in 'Alice in Wonderland'—always asleep except at tea-time, when it wakes up—and talks gossip. That's the chemist's shop with the two little red bottles in the window, isn't it cunning? The old man chemist doesn't keep any poisons, for he's half blind and'safraid of mixing the strychnine with the Epsom salts. His wife does the poisoning; she libels every one indifferently, and she gave out that Pamela was a lunatic and I was her keeper. She was the butcher's daughter, and she married the chemist man for his money ten years ago, hoping he'd die right off, which he didn't. He was seventy with paralysis agitans and a squint, and the squint's got worse every year, and the paralysis agitans has got better—serve her right. That's the butcher's with the one leg of mutton hanging up, and the little pot with a rose-tree in it. He drinks, and beats his wife, and hunts snakes down the road when he has the jumps—but he sells very good mutton, and he's civil. Here comes a queen, look!"
A carriage drawn by a pair of chestnut horses approached and passed them, revealing a fat and bulbous-faced lady lolling on the cushions, and seen through a haze of dust.
"A queen?" said Bevan; "she doesn't look like one."
"No? She's the Queen of Snobs; looks as if she'd come out of a joke-book, doesn't she? and her name is—I forget. She livesin a big house a mile away. That's a 'pub.' There are seven 'pubs' in this village, and this is a model village—at least, they call it so; what an immodel village in England must be, I don't know. There's a tailor lives in that little house; he preaches in the tin chapel at the cross-roads. I heard him last Sunday."
"You go to Chapel?"
"No, I'm Church. I heard him as I was passing by—couldn't help it, he shouts so's you can hear him at 'The Roost' when the wind's blowing that way—You religious?"
"Not very, I'm afraid."
"Neither'm I. That's the doctor's; he's Church and his wife's Chapel. She has a sister in a lunatic asylum, and her aunt was sister of the hair-cutter's first wife, so people despise her and fling it in her teeth. We can raise some snobs in the States, but they're button mushrooms to the toadstools you raise in England. Pamela is awfully good to the doctor's wife just because the other people are nasty to her. Pamela is grit all through. The parson lives there—a long, thin man, looks as if he'd been mangled, and they'd forgot to hang him out to dry. How areyou, Mrs Jones? and how are the rheumatics?" Miss Morgan had paused to address an old lady who stood at the door of a cottage leaning on a stick.
"That's Mrs Jones; she has more enquiries after her health than any woman in England. Can you tell why?"
"No."
"Well, she has a sort of rheumatics that the least damp affects, and so she's the best barometer in this part of the country. She's eighty, and has been used to weather observation so long, she can tell what's coming—hail, or snow, or rain to a T. That old man leaning on the gate, he's Francis, the village lunatic, he's just ninety; fine days he crawls down to Ditchingham cross-roads to wait for the soldiers coming back from the Crimea. I call that pathetic, but they only laugh at it here. He must have waited for them when he was a boy and seen them marching along, and now he goes and waits for them—makes me feel s'if I could cry. Here's a shilling for you, Francis; Miss Pamela is knitting you some socks—good-day—poor old thing! Let's see now, those cottages are all work-people's, and there's nothing beyond,only the road, and it's dusty, and I vote to go back. Why, there's that old scamp of a Francis making a bee-line for the 'Hand in Hand'; n'mind, I won't have to wear his head in the morning."
Miss Morgan chatted all the way back uninterruptedly, disclosing a more than comprehensive knowledge of all the affairs of the village in which she had lived some ten days or less.
At the gate of "The Roost" she stopped suddenly. "My, what a pity!"
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing; only I might have called and seen Mrs Harmer. She has such a pretty daughter, and I'd have liked you to have seen her, for she's the image of Fanny Lambert." She stared full at Mr Bevan as she said this, and there was a something in her tone and a something in her manner, and a something in her glance that made Charles Bevan lose control of his facial capillaries and blush.
"Fanny's cooked him," thought the lady of the blue eyes as she retired to dress for dinner. "But what in the nation did he mean by saying he did not know her?"
"What the deuce made her say that in such a way?" asked Mr Bevan of himself as he assumed the clothes laid out for him by the careful Strutt.
"The British thoroughbred is not played out by any means. Look at the success of imported blood all over the world. Look at Phantom, the grandsire of Voltaire, and Bay Middleton——" Mr Bevan paused. He was addressing George Lambert, and suddenly found that he was addressing the entire dinner-table in one of those hiatuses of conversation in which every tongue is suddenly held.
"Yes," said Hamilton-Cox, continuing some desultory remarks on literature, in general, into which this eruption of stud book had broken; "but you see the old French ballads are for the most part by the greatest of all poets, Time. Beside those the greatest modern poems seem gaudy and Burlington Arcady,if I may use the expression. An old folk-song that has been handed from generation to generation, played on, so to speak, like an old fiddle by all sorts of hands, gains a sweetness and richness never imagined by the simple-minded person who wrote it or invented it.
"You write poems?" asked Miss Morgan.
"My dear lady," sighed Hamilton-Cox, "nobody writes poems nowadays, or if they do they keep the fact a secret. I have a younger brother who writes poetry——"
"Thought you said no one wrote it."
"Younger brothers are nobodies. I say I have a younger brother, he writes most excellent verse—reams of it. Some years ago he would have been pursued by publishers. Well, only the other day he copied out some of his most cherished productions and approached a London publisher with them. He entered the office at five o'clock, and some few minutes later the people in Piccadilly were asking of each other, 'What's all that row in Vigo Street?' No, a publisher of to-day would as soon see a burglar in his office as a poet."
"I never took much stock in poetry," saidthe practical Miss Morgan. "I'm like Mr Bevan."
"I can't stand the stuff," said Charles. "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, and all that sort of twaddle, makes me ill."
Pamela looked slightly pained. Charles was enjoying his dinner; Burgundy and Moselle had induced a slight flush to suffuse his countenance. If you are engaged and a gourmand never let yourfiancéesee you eat. A man mad drunk is to the sensitive mind a less revolting picture than a man "enjoying his food."
"I heard a man once," said Miss Morgan, "he was squiffy——"
"Lulu!"
"Well, he was; and he was recitingI Stood on the Bridge at Midnight. He'd got everything mixed, and had got as far as
"'I stood on the moon by bridgelightAs the church was striking the tower—'
"'I stood on the moon by bridgelightAs the church was striking the tower—'
"'I stood on the moon by bridgelightAs the church was striking the tower—'
"'I stood on the moon by bridgelight
As the church was striking the tower—'
when every one laughed, and he sat down—on another man's hat. That's the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems tobuzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made? Hood'sSong of the Shirtalways makes me cry."
"Hood," said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet. He could not have written hisSong of the Shirtto-day; the decadence——"
"Now, excuse me," said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written hisSong of the Shirtto-day, simply because shirts are manufactured wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it. 'Whir—whir—whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of—you understand my point. Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste' would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are simply more practical—poetry is to all intents and purposes dead——"
"Is it?" said George Lambert. "IsKing Leardead? I was crying over him last night, but it wasn't at his funeral I was crying. Is old Suckling dead? I bought a first edition of him some time ago, and the fact wasn't mentioned or hinted at in the verses. Is Sophocles dead? Old Maloney at Trinity pounded him into my head, and he's there now alive as ever; and if I was blind to-morrow, I'd still have the skies over his plays to look at and the choruses to hear. Ah no, Mr Cox, poetry is not dead, but they don't write it just now. They don't write it, but it's in every one's heart waiting to be tapped, only there's no man with an augur sharp enough and true enough to do the tapping."
Pamela looked pleased.
"I did not know that you were fond of poetry," she said.
"I love it," said Lambert, in a tone that reminded Charles Bevan of Fanny's tone when she declared her predilection for cats.
"I declare it's delightful," said Professor Wilson, "to find a man of the world who knows all about horses, and is a goodbilliard-player, and all that, confessing a love for poetry."
"Perhaps Mr Lambert is a poet himself," said Hamilton-Cox, with a suspicion of a sneer, "or has written poetry."
"Poetry! yards of it," answered the accused with a mellow laugh, "when I was young and—wise. The first poem I ever wrote was all about the moon; I wrote it when I was eleven, and sent it to a housemaid. Oh, murder! but the things that we do when we are young."
"Did she read it?"
"She couldn't read; it was in the days before the Board schools and the higher education of women. She couldn't read, she was forty, and ugly as sin; and she boxed my ears and told my mother, and my mother told my father, and he leathered me. He said, 'I'll teach you to write poetry to housemaids.' But somehow," said Mr Lambert, admiring with one eye the ruby-tinted light in his glass of port, "somehow, with all his teaching, I never wrote a poem to a housemaid again."
"That must have been a loss to literature."
"Yes, but it was a gain to housemaids; and as housemaids seem the main producers of novels andpoemsnowadays, begad," said Mr Lambert, "it's, after all, a gain to literature."
"That's one for you, Cox," said Professor Wilson, and Hamilton-Cox laughed, as he could well afford to do, for his lucubrations brought him in a good fifteen hundred a year, and his reputation was growing.
On the lawn, under the starlit night after dinner, Bevan had hisfiancéefor a moment alone. They sat in creaky basket-work chairs a good yard apart from each other. The moon was rising over the hills and deep, dark woods of Sussex, the air was warm and perfumed: it was an ideal night for love-making.
"When I left you I had some dinner at the Nord," said Mr Bevan, tipping the ash off his cigar. "The worst dinner I've ever had, I think. Upon my word, I think it was the worst dinner I ever had. When I got to Dover I was so tired I turned into the hotel, and came on next morning. What sort of crossing did you have?"
"Oh, very fine," said Pamela, stifling a yawn, and glancing sideways at a group of her guests dimly seen in a corner of the garden, but happy, to judge from the laughter that came from them.
"Are the Napiers back in England yet?"
"No, they are still in Paris."
"What on earth do they want staying there for so long? it must be empty now."
"Yes, it was emptying fast when we left, wasn't a soul left scarcely. Do you know, I have a great mind to run over to Ostend for a few weeks. The Napiers are going there; it's rather fun, I believe."
"I wouldn't. What's the good of going to these foreign places? stay here."
Pamela was silent, and the inspiriting dialogue ceased.
A great beetle moving through the night across the garden filled the air with its boom. The group in the corner of the garden still were laughing and talking; amidst their voices could be distinguished that of Hamilton-Cox. Mr Cox had not a pleasant voice; it was too highly pitched, and it jarred on the ear of Mr Bevan and on his soul. His soul was in an irritable mood. When we speak of the soulwe refer to an unknown quantity, and when we speak of its condition we refer sometimes, perhaps, to just a touch of liver, or sometimes to an extra glass of champagne.
"I can't make out what induces you to surround yourself with those sort of people," said Mr Bevan, casting his cigar-end away and searching for his cigarette case.
"What sort of people?"
"Oh, that writer man."
"Hamilton-Cox?"
"Yes—is that his name?"
"I am not surrounding myself with Mr Cox; the thing is physically and physiologically impossible. Do talk sense, Charles."
Charles retired into silence, and Miss Pursehouse yawned again, sub-audibly. After a few moments—"Where did you pick up the Lamberts?"
"You mean Mr Lambert and his daughter?"
"Has he a daughter?"
"Has he a daughter? Why, Lulu Morgan, when I asked her what you and she had found to talk about, said Fanny Lambert——"
"It is perfectly immaterial what Miss Morgan said; some of her sayings arescarcely commendable. I believe she did say something about a Miss Lambert. When I said 'has he a daughter?' I spoke with a meaning."
"I am glad to hear that."
"What I meant was, that it would have been much better for him to have brought his daughter down here with him."
"Do you mean to insinuate that she is—unable to take care of herself in town?"
"I mean to insinuate nothing, but according to my old-fashioned ideas——"
"Go on, this is interesting," said Miss Pursehouse, who guessed what was coming.
"According to my old-fashioned ideas it is scarcely the thing for a man, a married man, to pay a visit——"
"You mean it's improper for me to have Mr Lambert staying here as a guest?" "Improper was not the word I used."
"Oh, nonsense! you meant it. Well, I think I am the best judge of my own propriety, and I see nothing improper in the transaction. My aunt is here, Lulu Morgan is here, you are here, Professor Wilson is here, there's a poet coming to-morrow—I suppose that's improper too. I do wish you would besensible; besides, Mr Lambert is not a married man, he is a widower."
"Does he know that you are engaged?"
"Sure, I don't know. I don't go about with a placard with 'I am engaged' written on it on my back. Why do you ask?"
"Well—um—if a stranger had been here at tea to-day he would scarcely have thought that the engaged couple——"
"Go on, this is delightful; it's absolutely bank-holidayish—the engaged couple—go on."
"Were you and I."
"You mean you andme?"
"Yes."
"The behaviour of 'engaged couples' in decent society is, I believe, pretty much the same as our behaviour has been, and I hope will be. How would you have it? Would you like to walk about, I clinging to your arm, and you playing a mouth-organ? Ought we to exchange hats with each other? Shall I call you Choly and put ice down your neck at dinner? Ought we to hire a brake and go on a bean feast? I wish you would instruct me. I hate to appeargauche, and I hate not to do the correct thing."
"Vulgarity is always painful to me," said Mr Bevan, "but senseless vulgarity is doubly so."
"Thanks, your compliments are charming."
"I was not complimenting you, I simply——"
"I know, simply hinting that I was senseless and vulgar."
"I never——"
"I know. Shall we change the subject—what's all this?"
"Please come and help us," said Miss Morgan, coming up. "We've got the astronomical telescope, and we can't make head or tail of it."
Miss Pursehouse rose and approached the group surrounding an astronomical telescope that stood on the lawn. It was trained on the moon, and Hamilton-Cox, with a hand over one eye and the other eye at the eyepiece, was making an observation.
"Sometimes I can see stars, and sometimes nothing. I can't see the moon at all."
"Shut the other eye," said Lambert.
"Perhaps," said Miss Pursehouse, "if you remove the cap from the telescope you will be able to see better. A very simple thing sometimes cures blindness."
Mr Bevan found no chance for atête-à-têtewith hisfiancéeagain that night, perhaps because he did not seek one; he was not in the humour for love-making. He felt—to use the good old nursery term that applies so often, so very often, to grown-ups—"fractious."
He retired to his bedroom at half-past eleven, and was sitting with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, staring at the wood-fire brightly burning in his grate, when a knock came to the door and Lambert appeared.
"I just dropped in to say good-night. Am I disturbing you?"
"Not a bit; sit down and have a cigarette."
Mr Lambert helped himself to a Marcovitch from a box on the table, drew up an easy-chair to the fire and sank into it with a sigh.
"It seems funny," said he in a meditative tone, "that I should be sitting here smoking and yarning with you to-night, and onlyyesterday, so to speak, we were fighting like bull-dogs; but we're friends now, and you must come and see me when you're back in town. You live in the 'Albany'? I had rooms there once, years ago—years ago. Lord! what a change has come over London since the days when Evans' was stuffed of a night with all manner of people—the rows and ructions I remember! The things that went on. One night in Evans' I remember an old gentleman coming in and ordering a chop, and no sooner had he put on his spectacles and settled down to it with a smile all over his face, than Bob O'Grady, of the 10th—Black O'Grady—who'd been watching him—he was drunk as a lord—rose up and said, ''Scuse me,' he said, and took the chop by the shank-bone and flung it on the stage. A man could take his whack in those days, and be none the worse for it; but men are different, somehow, now, and they go in for tea and muffins and nerves just as the women used to, when I was twenty; and the women, begad, are the best men now'days. Look at Miss Pursehouse! as charming as a woman and as clever as a man. Look at this house of hers! One wouldthink a man owned it, everything is so well done: brandies and sodas at your elbows, matches all over the place, and electric bells and a telephone. That's the sort of woman for me—not that I'm not fond of the old-fashioned sort of woman too. Fanny, my daughter—I must introduce you to her—is as old-fashioned as they make 'em. Screeches if she sees a rat, and knows nothing of woman's rights or the higher education of females, and is always ready to turn on the water-works, bless her heart! ready and willing to cry over anything you may put before her that's got the ghost of a cry in it. But, bless you! what's the good of talking about old-fashioned or modern women? From Hecuba down, they're all the same—born to deceive us and make our lives happy."
"Can't see how a woman that deceives a man can make him happy."
"My dear fellow, sure, what's happiness but illusion, and what's illusion but deception, and talking about deception, aren't men—the blackguards!—just as bad at deceiving as women?"
Mr Bevan made no reply to this; he shifted uneasily in his chair.
"You live at Highgate?" he said.
Lambert woke up from a reverie he had fallen into with a start.
"Yes, bad luck to it! I've got a house there I can't get rid of, and, talking of old-fashioned things, it's an old-fashioned house. There aren't any electric bells, and if there were you'd as likely as not ring up the ghost. For there's a ghost there, sure enough; she nearly frightened the gizzard out of my butler James."
He leaned back luxuriously in his chair, blowing cigarette rings at the fire, whilst Charles Bevan mentally recalled the vision of "My butler James."
He could not but admit that Lambert carried his poverty exceedingly well, and with a much better grace than that with which many men carry their wealth. The impression that Fanny Lambert had made upon him was not effaced in any way by the impression made upon him by her father. Lambert was not an impossible man. Wildly extravagant he might be, and reckless to the verge of lunacy, but he was a gentleman; and in saying the word "gentleman," my dear sir or madam I do not refer to birth. There lives many a hideous bounder who yet can fling hisgreat-great-great-grandfather at your head, and many a noble-minded gentleman, the present or past existence of whose father is demonstrable only by the logic of physiology.
Lambert went off to his room at twelve, and Mr Bevan passed a broken night. He dreamt of lawyers and sunflowers. He dreamt that he saw old Francis, the village lunatic, waiting at the cross-roads; and when he asked him what he was waiting for, Francis replied that he was waiting to see his (Mr Bevan's) marriage procession go by: a dream which was scarcely a hopeful omen, considering the object of the old man's daily vigil as revealed by Lulu Morgan.
He came down to breakfast late. His hostess did not appear, and Miss Morgan announced that her friend was suffering from tic-douloureux.
"'S far as I can make out, it's like having the grippe in one eye. I've physicked her with Bile Beans and Perry Davis, and I've sent for some Antikamnia. If she's not better by luncheon I'll send for the doctor."
She was not down by luncheon. After that meal, Charles, strolling across the hall to thebilliard-room, felt something pluck at his sleeve. It was Miss Morgan.
"I want to speak to you alone for a minute," said she. "Come into the garden; there's no one there."
He followed her, much wondering, and they passed down a shady path till they lost sight of the house.
"Pamela's worried," said Lulu, "and I want to talk to you about her——"
"Why, what can be——"
"We've been sitting up all night, she and I, and we've been discussing things, you 'specially."
"Thank you——"
"Now, don't you be mad, for Pamela's very fond of you, and I like you, for you're a right good sort; but, see here, Pamela thinks she's made a mistake."
A queer new feeling entered Mr Bevan's mind, peeped round and passed through it, so to speak—a feeling of relief—or more strictly speaking, release.
"Indeed?"
"She thinks you have both made a mistake, and—you know——"
"The fact is, she doesn't want to marry me; why not say it at once? or, rather, why doesn't she say so to me frankly, instead of deputing another person to do so?"
"There's a letter," said Miss Morgan, producing one from her pocket. "She wrote it and told me to give it to you; it's eight pages long, and all sorts of things in it—she's very fond of you—keep it and read it. But I tell you one line that's in it, she says she will always feel as a sister to you, or be a sister to you, or words to that effect—that's fatal—once a girl says that she's said the last word."
"I don't think she ever cared for me, really," said Mr Bevan—"let us sit down on this seat—no, I don't think she really ever cared for me."
"Whatmadeyou two get engaged"
"Why should we not?"
"Because you're too much alike; you are both rich, and both steady and well-balanced, you know, and that sort of thing. Likes ought never to get married. Dear—dear—dear—what a pity——"
"What?"
"I was only thinking of all the love-making there's wasted in the world. Now I know somany girls who would suit you to a T. I'll tell you of one, if you like——"
"Thank you, I—um——"
"I was thinking of Fanny Lambert," said Miss Morgan in a dreamy voice. "The girl I told you of yesterday——"
Now, Mr Bevan was the last man in the world—as I daresay you perceive—to discuss his feelings with any one. But Miss Morgan had a patent method of her own for extracting confidences, of making people talk out, as she would have expressed it herself.
"I said to you yesterday that I had never met Miss Lambert: I had reasons connected with some law business for saying so—as a matter of fact, I have met her—once."
"Oh, that's quite enough. If you've met Fanny Lambert once, you have met her for ever. Does she like you?—I don't ask you do you like her, for, of course, you do."
"I think—she does."
"You mustn't think—women hate men that think, they like them to be sure. If a man was only bold enough he could marry any woman on earth."
"Is that your opinion?"
"'Tis, and my opinion is worth having. What a woman wants most is some one to make up her mind for her. Go and make Fanny's mind up for her; you and she are just suited."
"In what way?"
"To begin with, you're rich and she's poor."
"You said yesterday that she was rich."
"Yes, but Pamela told me last night the Lamberts are simply stone-broke. Mr Lambert told her all his affairs, his estates are all encumbered. She says he's just like a child, and wants protecting; so he is, and so's Fanny; they're both a pair of children, and you are just the man to keep Fanny straight, and make her life happy and buy her beautiful clothes and diamonds. Why, she'll be the rage of London, Fanny will, if she's only properly staged—and she's a dear and a good woman, and would make any man happy. My!"
Mr Bevan had taken Miss Morgan's hand in his and squeezed it.
"Thank you for saying all that," said he. "Few women praise another woman. I shall leave here by this evening's train, of course; Icannot stay here any longer. I will think over what course I will pursue."
"For heaven's sake, don't think, or you'll find her snapped up; I have a prevision that you will. Go and say to Fanny 'marry me.' Idowant to see her settled, she's not like me, that can rough it, and she's just the girl to fling herself away on some rubbish."
"I will see," said Mr Bevan. "I frankly confess that Miss Lambert—of course, this is between you and me—that Miss Lambert has made me think a good deal about her, but these things are not done in a moment."
"Aren't they? I tell you love-making is just like making pancakes, if you don't do them quick they're done for. You just remember this, that many a man has proposed to a girl the first time he's met her and been accepted. Women like it, it's so different from the other thing—and, look here, kiss her first and ask her afterwards. Have two or three glasses of champagne—you've just got the steady brain that can stand it—and it will liven you up. I'm an old stager."
"I will write to Miss Pursehouse from London to-morrow."
"Dear me! I don't believe you've been listening to a word I've been saying. Well, go your own gate, as the old woman said to the cow thatwouldburst through the hedge and tumbled into the chalk-pit and broke its leg. What you going to do with that letter?"
"I will read it in the train."
It never rains but it pours. It was pouring just now with Leavesley.
The morning after the excursion to Epping Forest he had written a long letter to Fanny: a business-like letter, explanatory of his prospects in life.
He had exhibited in this year's Academy; he had exhibited in the New gallery—more, he had sold the Academy picture for forty pounds. He had a hundred a year of his own, which, as he sagaciously pointed out, was "something." If Fanny would only wait a year, give him something to hope for, something to live for, something to work for. Threepages of business-like statements ending with a fourth page of raving declarations of love. The letter of a lunatic, as all love-letters more or less are.
He had posted this and waited for a reply, but none had come. He little knew that his letter and a bill for potatoes were behind a plate on the kitchen dresser at "The Laurels," stuffed there by Susannah in a fit of abstraction, also the outcome of the troubles of love.
On top of this all sorts of minor worries fell upon him. Mark Moses and Sonenshine, stimulated by the two pounds ten paid on account, were bombarding him with requests for more. A colour-man was also active and troublesome, and a bootmaker lived on the stairs.
Belinda, vice-president of the institution during Mrs Tugwell's sojourn at Margate, was "cutting up shines," cooking disgracefully, not cleaning boots, giving "lip" when remonstrated with, and otherwise revelling in her little brief authority. A man who had all but commissioned a portrait of a bull-dog sent word to say that the sittings couldn't take place as the dog was dead.
Then a cat had slipped into his bedroom and kittened on his best suit of clothes; and Fernandez, the picture dealer to whom he had taken the John the Baptist on the top of a four-wheeler, had offered him five pounds ten for it; and, worst of all, driven by necessity, he had not haggled, but had taken the five pounds ten, thus for ever ruining himself with Fernandez, who had been quite prepared to pay fifteen.
The Captain, who had suddenly come in for a windfall of eighty pounds, was going on like a millionaire—haunting the studio half-tipsy, profuse with offers of assistance and drinks, and, to cap all, the weather was torrid. The only consolation was Verneede, who would listen for hours to the praises of Miss Lambert, nodding his head like a Chinese mandarin and smoking Leavesley's cigarettes.
"I don't know what to do," said the unhappy young man, during one of these conferences, "I don't know what to do. It's so unlike her."
"Write again."
"Not I—at least, how can I? If she won't answerthatletter there's no use in writing any more."
"Call."
"I'm not going to creep round like a dog that has been beaten."
"True."
"She may be ill, for all I know. How do I know that she is not ill?"
"Illness, my dear Leavesley, is one of those things——"
"I know—but the question is, how am I to find out?"
"Could you not apply to their family physician? I should go to him, frankly——"
"But I don't know who their doctor is—do talk sense. See here! couldyoucall and ask—ask did she get home all right, and that sort of thing?"
"Most certainly, with pleasure, if it would relieve your feelings. Anything—anything I can do, my dear Leavesley, in an emergency like this you can count on me to do."
"You needn't mention my name."
"I shall carefully abstain."
"Unless she asks, you know."
"Certainly, unless she asks."
"Armbruster came in this morning, he's going to America. He's got on to a big firm for book illustrating; he wanted me to go withhim and try my luck—offered to pay the expenses. You might hint, perhaps, if the subject turns up, that you think I am going to America."
"Certainly."
"When can you go?"
"Any time."
"You might go now, for I'm awfully anxious to hear if she is all right. What's the time? Two—yes—if you go now you will get there about four."
"Highgate?"
"Yes—'The Laurels,' John's Road. Have you any money?"
"Unfortunately I am rather unprovided with the necessary——"
"Wait."
Leavesley went to a little jug on the mantel and turned the contents of it into his hand.
"Here's five shillings; will that be enough?"
"Ample."
"Now go, like a good fellow, and do come back here straight."
"As an arrow."
"Don't say anything about my letter."
"Not a word, not a word."
Mr Verneede departed, and the painter went on with his painting, feeling very much as Noah must have felt when the dove flew out of the Ark.
Mr Verneede first made straight for his lodgings. He inhabited a top-floor back in Maple Street, a little street leading out of the King's Road.
Here he blacked his boots, put bear's grease on his hair, and assumed a frock-coat a shade more respectable than the one he usually wore. Then, with his coat tightly buttoned, his best hat on his head, and his umbrella under his arm, he made off on his errand revolving in his wonderful mind the forthcoming interview. To assist thought, he turned into the four-ale bar of the "Spotted Dog." Here stood a woman with a baby in her arms, a regular customer, who was explaining domestic troubles to the sympathetic barmaid. Seeing Verneede seated with his ale before him, she included him in her audience. Half an hour later the old gentleman, having given much advice on the rearing of babies and management of husbands, emerged from the "Spotted Dog" slightly flushed and entirely happy.
It seemed so much pleasanter and cooler to enter a public house than an omnibus, that the "King's Arms," where the omnibuses stood, swallowed him easily. Here an anarchistical house-painter, who was destructing the British Empire, included him in his remarks; and it was, somehow, nearly five o'clock before he left the "King's Arms" more flushed and most entirely happy, and took an omnibus for Hammersmith.
At nine o'clock he was wandering about Hammersmith asking people to direct him to "The Hollies" in James' Road; at eleven he was criticising the London County Council in a bar-room somewhere in Shepherd's Bush, but it might have been in Paris or Berlin, Vienna or Madrid, for allheknew or cared.
Verneede having departed on his mission, Leavesley resumed his work with a feeling of relief.
He had done something. There is nothing that strains the mind so much as sitting waiting with hands folded, so to speak, doing nothing.
When Noah closed the trap-door of the Ark having let forth the dove, he no doubt followed its flight with his mind's eye—here flitting over wastes of water, here perched on the island he desired.
Even so Leavesley, as he worked, followed the flight of Verneede towards the object of his desires.
Leavesley was one of those unhappy people who meet their pleasures and their troubles half-way. He was an imaginative man, moving in a most unimaginative world, and as a result he was always knocking his nose against the concrete. Needless to say, his forecasts were nearly always wrong. If he opened a letter thinking it contained a bill, it, ten to one, enclosed a theatre ticket or a cheque, and if he expected a cheque, fifty to one he received a bill.
This temperament, however, sometimes has its advantages, for he was sitting now quite contentedly painting and getting on with hispicture, whilst Mr Verneede was sitting quite contentedly in the bar of the "Spotted Dog."
He was also smoking furiously with all the windows shut. To the artistic temperament at times comes moods, when it shuts all the windows, excluding noise and air, lights the foulest old pipe it can find, and, to use a good old public school term, "fugs."
Suddenly he stopped work, half-sprang to his feet, palette in one hand, pipe in the other. A footstep was on the landing, a girl's footstep—it washer!
The door opened, and his aunt stood before him.
Since the other night when Fanny had dined with them, Miss Hancock had been much exercised in her mind.
How on earth had Leavesley known of the affair? Had he referred to Fanny when he made that mysterious remark about his uncle and a girl, or was thereanothergirl? She had an axiom that when a man once begins to make a fool of himself he doesn't know where to stop; she had also a strong dash of her nephew's imaginative temperament.Fanny had troubled her at first; seraglios were now rising in her mental landscape. She had an intuition that her brother had broken the ice as regards the other sex, and a dreadful fear that now he had broken the ice he was going to bathe.
"Whew!" said Miss Hancock, waving her parasol before her to dispel the clouds of smoke.
"Aunt!"
"For goodness sake, open the window. Open something—achu!—do youlivein this atmosphere?"
Leavesley opened wide the windows, tapped the ashes of his pipe out on a sill, and turned to his aunt, who had taken her seat in an uncomfortable manner on a most comfortable armchair.
"This is an unexpected pleasure!"
Miss Hancock made no reply. It was the first time she had been in the studio, the first time she had been in any studio.
She noticed the dust and the litter. The place was, in fact, extraordinarily untidy, for Belinda, engaged just now in the fascination of a policeman, had scarcely time even forsuch ordinary household duties as making beds without turning the mattresses, and flinging eggs into frying pans full of hot grease.
As fate would have it, or curiosity rather, Belinda at this moment entered the studio, attired in a sprigged cotton gown four inches shorter in front than behind as if to display to their full a pair of wonderful feet shod in list slippers. Her front hair was bound in Hindes' hair-binders tight down to her head, displaying a protruberant forehead that seemed to have been polished. It was the only thing polished about Belinda, and she made a not altogether pleasing picture as she slunk into the studio to "look for something," but in reality to take stock of the visitor.
It would have been much happier for her if she had stayed away.
She was slinking out again when Miss Hancock, who had been following her every movement, said:
"Stop, please!"
Belinda, with her hand on the door handle, faced round.
"Are you the servant here?"
"Yus"—sulkily.
"And I suppose you are paid to keep this room in order. Where's your mistress?"
"She's in Margate," cut in Leavesley.
"Stop twiddling that door handle," said Miss Hancock, entirely ignoring Leavesley, "and attend to what I'm saying. If you are paid to keep this room in order you are defrauding your mistress, and girls who defraud their mistresses end in something worse. Go, get a duster."
The feelings of Cruiser, when he first came under the hands of Mr Rarey, may have been comparable to the feelings of Belinda before this servant-tamer.
She recognised a mistress, but she did not give in at once. She stood looking sulkily from Leavesley to his aunt, and from his aunt to Leavesley.
Miss Hancock had no legal power over her, it was all moral.
"Go, get a duster and a broom," cried Miss Hancock, stamping her foot.
One second more the animal stood in mute rebellion, then it went off and got the duster and the broom.
"Take up that strip of carpet," commanded Mr Leavesley's aunt, when the duster and the broom returned in the hands of the animal. "Whew! Throw it outside the door and beat it in the back garden, if you have such a thing—burn it if you haven't. Give me the duster. Now sweep the floor, whilst I do these shelves; Frank, put those books in a heap. Whew! does no one ever clean this place? Ha! what are you doing sweeping under the couch? Pull out that couch. Mercy!!!"
Under the couch there was a heap of miscellaneous things—empty cigarette tins, an empty beer bottle, an empty whisky bottle, half a pack of cards, a dress tie, a glove, "The Three Musketeers," and an old waistcoat—anddust, mounds of dust.
Miss Hancock looked at this. Like the coster who looked back along the City road to see the way strewn with cabbages, lettuces, and onions which had leaked from his faulty barrow, language was quite inadequate to express her feelings.
"Go, get a dust-pan," she said at last, "and a basket. Be quick about it. Mercy!!!"
By the time the place was in order, Belinda,to Leavesley's astonishment, had become transformed from a sulky-looking slattern to a semi-respectable-looking servant girl.
"That will do," said Miss Hancock in a magisterial voice, when the last consignment of rubbish had been removed. "Now, you can go."
As the boar sharpens its tusks against a tree preparatory to using them to carve human flesh, so had Miss Hancock sharpened the tusks of her temper upon Belinda.
"No thanks, I don't want any tea," she said, replying to Leavesley's invitation. "I've come to ask you for an explanation."
"What of?"
"What you said the other day."
"What did I say the other day?"
"About your uncle."
"About my uncle?" he replied, wrinkling his forehead. He couldn't for the life of him think what she was driving at; he had quite forgotten his Parthian remark about the "girl," the thing had no root in his mind—a bubble made of words that had risen to the surface of his mind, burst, and been forgotten.
Miss Hancock had her own way of dealingwith hypocrites. "Well, we will say no more about your uncle. How about Miss Lambert?"
Leavesley made a little spring from his chair, as if some one had stuck a pin into him, and changed colour violently.
"How—what do you know about Miss Lambert?——"
"I know all about it," said Miss Hancock grimly. She was so very clever that she had got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely, as very clever people sometimes do. If she had come to him frankly she would have found out that he was Fanny's lover, and not James Hancock's confidant and go-between, as she now felt sure he was.
Unhappy Leavesley! his love affair with Fanny seemed destined to be mulled by every one who had a hand in it.
"If you know all about it," he said sulkily, "that ends the matter."
"Unfortunately it doesn't."
"What do you mean?"
"It's dreadful," said Miss Hancock, apparently addressing a tobacco jar that stood on the table, "it's dreadful to watch a man consciously and deliberately making a foolof himself—to sit by and watch it, and not be able to move a hand."
Of course he thought she referred to himself, but he was so accustomed to hear his aunt calling people fools that her remarks did not ruffle him.
"But what I can't understand is this," he said. "Whotoldyou about Fanny—I mean Miss Lambert?"
"Fanny!" said the lady with a sniff. "You call her Fanny?"
"Of course."
"Ofcourse!"
"Why not?"
"Whynot!"
"Yes."
"The world has altered since I was a girl, that's all." Then with deep sarcasm—"Does your uncle know that you call her Fanny?"
"Of course not; I've never told him."
Miss Hancock stared at him stonily, then she spoke. "Areyouin love with her too?" she asked.
"What do you mean by 'too'?"
"Frank Leavesley, don't shuffle and prevaricate. Are you in love with her?"
"Of course I am; every one who meets her must love her. I believe old Verneede is in love with her. Love with her! I'd lay my life down for her, but it's hopeless—hopeless——"
"I trust so indeed," replied Miss Hancock.
For a minute he thought his aunt must be a little bit mad: this was more than her ordinary contrariness; then he went back to his original question.
"I want to know who told you about this."
"Bridgewater, for one," replied Miss Hancock.
"Bridgewater!"
"Yes, Bridgewater."
"But he knows nothing about it," cried Leavesley. "He couldn't have told you."
"He told me everything—Miss Lambert's visit to the Zoological Gardens, her——"
"You may as well be exact whilst you are about it; it wasn't the Zoological Gardens, it was Epping Forest."
"Frank Leavesley, a lie is bad enough, but a silly lie is much worse. Miss Lambert herself told me it was the Zoological Gardens; perhaps she has been to Epping Forest aswell; perhaps next it will be a visit to Paris.Iwash my hands of the affair."
"You have seen Miss Lambert?"
"No matter what I have seen. I have seen enough to make me open my eyes—and shut them again."
Leavesley was now fuming about the studio. What on earth had possessed Bridgewater? How on earth had he found out about the affair, and how had he come to twist Epping Forest into the Zoological Gardens?
"——andshut them again," resumed Miss Hancock. "However, it is none of my business, but if there is such a thing as honour you ought, in my humble opinion, to go to your uncle and tell him the state of your feelings towards Miss Lambert."
"I'll go," said Leavesley—"go to the office to-day; and if uncle chooses to keep that antiquated liar of a Bridgewater in his service any longer after what I tell him, it will be his own look-out."
Miss Hancock had not reckoned on this, she looked uncomfortable.
"Bridgewater is an honourable man, who has acted for the best."
"I know," said Leavesley. "Now, I must go out; I have some business. Are you sure you won't have some tea?"
"No tea, thank you," replied Miss Hancock, rising to depart.
It was just as well she refused the tea, for there was no one to make it. She had hypnotised Belinda, and Belinda coming out of the hypnotic state was having hysterical convulsions in the kitchen, assisted by the charwoman.
"Belinda," cried Leavesley down the kitchen stairs, he had rung his bell vainly, "are you there?"
"She's hill, sir," replied a hoarse voice, "I'm a-lookin' arter her."
"Oh, well, if a Mr Verneede calls, will you ask him to wait for me? I'll be back soon."
"Yessir."
He left the house and proceeded as fastas omnibuses could take him to Southampton Row.
Bridgewater was out, but Mr Wolf, the second in command, ushered him into Hancock's room.
"Well," said Hancock, who was writing a letter—"Oh, it's you. Sit down, sit down for a minute."
He went on with his letter, and Leavesley took his seat and sat in a simmering state listening to the squeaking of the quill pen, and framing in his mind indictments against Bridgewater.
If he had been in a state of mind to absorb details he might have noticed that his uncle was looking younger and brighter. But the youthfulness or brightness of Mr Hancock were indifferent to him absorbed as he was with his own thoughts.
"Well," said Hancock, finishing his letter with a flourish and leaning back in his chair.
"Aunt came to see me to-day," said Leavesley, "and I came on here at once. It's most disgraceful."
"What?"
"Bridgewater. You've got a man in youroffice who is not to be trusted, a mischief-making old——"
"Dear me, what's all this? A man in the office not to be trusted? To whom do you refer?"
"Bridgewater."
"Bridgewater?"
"Yes."
"What has he been doing?"
"Doing! He has been sneaking round to my aunt telling tales about a lady; that's what he has been doing."
"What lady?"
"A Miss Lambert. He told her she had been to the Zoological Gardens with——"
Hancock raised his hand. "Don't go on," he said, "I know it all."
"You know it all?"
"Yes, and I have given Bridgewater a right good dressing down—meddling old stupid!"
Leavesley was greatly taken back at this.
"It's not his fault," continued Hancock. "It's your aunt's fault; she put him on to spy. However, it's rather a delicate subject, and we won't pursue it, but"—suddenly and in a friendly tone—"I take it very kindly of you to come round and tell me this."
"I thought I'd better come," said the young man; "besides, the thing put me in such a wax. Of course, if he was egged on by aunt, it's not so much his fault."
"I take it very kindly of you, and we'll say no more about it." He lapsed into meditation, and Leavesley sat filled with a vague feeling of surprise.
Every one seemed a little out of the ordinary to-day. Why on earth did his uncle take this news so very kindly?
"I've been thinking," said Hancock suddenly—then abruptly: "How are you financially, now?"
"Oh, pretty bad. I had to sell a picture of John the Baptist for five pounds the other day; it was worth twenty."
"When your mother married your father," said Hancock, leaning back in his chair, "she flew in the face of her family. He was penniless and a painter."
"I don't want to hear anything against my father," said Leavesley tartly. "Yes, he was penniless and a painter, and she married him, and I'm glad she did. She loved him, that was quite enough."
"If you will excuse me," said Hancock, "I was going to say nothing against your father. I think a love-match—er—um—well, no matter. I am only stating the facts. She flew in the face of her family, and as a result the money that might have been hers, went to your aunt."
"And a nice use she makes of it."
"The hundred a year left you by your parents," resumed the lawyer, ignoring this reply, "is, I admit, a pittance. I offered you, however, as the head of the family, and feeling that your mother had not received exactly justice, I offered you the choice of a profession. I offered to take you into this office. You refused, preferring to be a painter. Now, I am not stingy, but I have seen much of the world, and in my experience, the less money a young man has in starting in life, the more likely is he to arrive at the top of the tree. You have, however, now started; I have been making enquiries, and you seem to be working, and I am pleased with you for two things. Firstly, when you came to me the other day for money for a—foolish purpose you didn't lie over the matter and say youwanted the money for your landlady, as nine out of ten young men would have done. Secondly, for coming to me to-day and apprising me of the unpleasant intelligence, to which we will not again refer. I appreciate loyalty."
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his note-case.
"What's your present liabilities?"
"Oh, I owe about ten pounds."
"Sure that's all?"
"Of course, I'd tell you if it was more; it's somewhere about that."
Hancock took a five-pound note and a ten-pound note out of the note-case, looked at them both, and then put the ten-pound note back.
"I'm going to lend you five pounds," he said. "It will serve for present expenses, and I expect you to pay me it back before the end of the week." He held out the note.
"You had better keep it," said his nephew, "for there's not the remotest chance of my paying you before the end of the week."
"Take the note," said Hancock testily, "and don't keep me holding it out all day;you don't know what may happen in the course of a week. Take the note."
"Well, I'll take it if youwillhave it so; and I'll pay you back some time if I don't this week."
"Now good day," said Hancock. "I'm busy."