“A lady strongly recommends her German nursery governess. Good English. Fluent French. Music. Fond of children. Salary very moderate. A good home principal object. Well-connected.—Mrs T., The Manor House, Southam Parva.”
“A lady strongly recommends her German nursery governess. Good English. Fluent French. Music. Fond of children. Salary very moderate. A good home principal object. Well-connected.—Mrs T., The Manor House, Southam Parva.”
Well-connected! I looked over to Charley with some sort of a smile. “The good English is, of course, all right?” I said.
“Isn’t it an infernal shame?” he broke out. “She won’t stay a week after that!”
“It may bring an engagement,” said I.
“Look here, do you think it’s my fault?”
“I’m glad she says Fräulein is well-connected.”
“Do you think it’s my fault? I—I’ve tried to play square—by her as well as by myself.”
“I don’t think we need discuss the Princess.”
“Hallo, Treg!”
“Good heavens!—I—I beg pardon! I mean—why need we talk about Fräulein’s affairs?”
“I was talking about mine.”
“I see no connection.”
He was not angry with me, though (as will have been seen) I had lost my temper hopelessly and disastrously. He got up and stood in front of the fire.
“I hadn’t the pluck, Treg, my boy,” he said. His voice sounded rather dreary, but I had no leisure to pity him.
“Good Heavens, do you suppose she’d have looked at you?” I cried. “Remember who she is!”
“That’s all very well, but facts are facts,” said Charley Miles. “I didn’t mean to make trouble, Treg, old boy. On my honour, I didn’t.” He made a longpause. “I hope I shall be asking you to congratulate me soon, Treg,” he went on.
“Ask me in public, and I’ll do it.”
“That’s just being vicious,” he complained, and with entire justice. “Bessie’s a first-rate girl.”
“I’m very sorry, Charley. So she is. She’ll suit you a mile better than—than Fräulein.”
He brightened up. “I’m awfully glad you do think me right in the end,” he said. “But I’m a bit sorry for Fräulein. She’d have had to go soon, anyhow—when the children got a bit older. She’ll get a berth, I expect.”
“No doubt,” said I. “And I’ll congratulate you even in private, Charley.”
“You’re a decent old chap, but you’ve got a queer temper. I don’t above half understand you, Treg.” He hesitated a little. “I say, you might go and have a talk with Fräulein some day. She likes you, you know.”
“Does she?” The eager words leapt from my lips before I could stop them.
“Rather! Will you go?”
“Yes. I’ll have a talk with Fräulein.”
“Before she goes?”
“She’ll go soon?”
“I think so.”
“Yes, before she goes, Charley.”
With that, or, rather, after a little idle talk which added nothing to that, he left me—left me wondering still. He was sorry for Fräulein, and not only because she must go forth into the world; also because she had not been invited to become Mrs Charley Miles! He conceived that he had made a conquest, and he didn’t value it! His mistake of fact was great, but it shrank to nothing before the immensity of his blunder in estimation. I could account for it only in one way—a way so pleasing to my own vanity that I adopted it forthwith. And I’m not sure I was wrong. Theveil had not been lifted for him, and he had no eyes to see through it. For me it had been raised once, and henceforth eternally hung transparent.
“That’s my home.” She had looked in that moment as if no other place could be.
Now, however, she was advertising for a situation, and I speculated as to how much of the truth Mrs Thistleton would deem it wise to employ in justifying that sublime “Well-connected.”
ISAW her the next day but one—on the morning when the third “insertion” appeared inThe Morning Post. Bessie Thistleton had told me, with obvious annoyance, that there had been no replies yet. “Governesses are really a drug, unless they have a degree, in these days,” she had said. “ ‘Where is she?’ Oh, somewhere in the garden, I think, Mr Tregaskis.”
So I went into the garden and found her again under the tree. But her big book was not with her now; she was sitting idle, looking straight ahead of her, with pondering and, perhaps, fear in her great dark eyes.
She gave me her hand to shake. I kissed it.
“Nobody will kiss my hand in my next place,” she said.
“Why in heaven do you do it?”
“I can’t beg; and if I did, I don’t think I should receive.” She leant forward, resting her hand on the arm of the chair. “We don’t know who I’m to be,” she went on, smiling. “Nobody but Mrs Thistleton could carry it off if I confessed to being myself! Who shall I be, Mr Tregaskis?”
I made no answer, and she gave a little laugh.
“You like to go?” I asked.
“No. I’m frightened. And suppose there’s another Mr Miles?”
“The infernal idiot!”
“He’s wise. Only—I’m amused. They’re right to send me away, though. I’m such an absurdity.”
“Yes,” I assented mournfully. “I’m afraid you are.”
She leant nearer still to me, half whispering in her talk. “I should never have liked him, but yet it hardly seemed strange that he should think of it. I’m forgetting myself, I think. In my next place I wonder if I shall remember at all!”
“You have your book and the picture.”
“Yes, but they seem dim now. I suppose it would be best to forget, as everybody else does.”
“Not everybody,” I said very low.
“No, you don’t forget. I’ve noticed that. It’s foolish, but I like someone to remember. Suppose you forgot too!”
One of her rare smiles lit up her face. But I did not tell her what would happen if I forgot too. I knew very well in my own mind, though. I was not trammelled by previous attentions, nor was I making three or four thousand a year.
“You’ll tell me when you go—and where?” I asked.
“Yes, if you like to know.”
“And will ‘they’ know too?”
She looked at me with searching eyes. “Are you laughing?” she asked, and it seemed to me that there was a break in her voice.
“God forbid, madam!” said I.
“Ah, but I think you should be. How the present can make the past ridiculous!”
“Neither the past ridiculous nor the future impossible,” I said.
She laid her hand on my arm for a moment with a gentle pressure.
“We have an Order at home called The Knights of Faith. Shall I send you the Cross some day—in that impossible future?”
“No. Send me your big book, with the picture ofthe great castle and the broad river flowing by its base.”
She looked at me a moment, flushed but the slightest, and answered: “Yes.” Then, as I remember, we sat silent for a while.
That silence was waste of time, as it proved. For, before it ended, Mrs Thistleton came bounding (really the expression is excusable in view of her unrestrained elation) out of the house, holding a letter in her hand.
“Fräulein, an answer!” she cried.
We both rose, and she came up to us.
“And it sounds most suitable. I do hope you don’t mind London—though really it doesn’t do to be fussy. A Mrs Perkyns, on Maida Hill—nice and high! Only two little children, and she offers—— Oh, well, we can talk about the salary presently.”
That last remark constituted an evident hint to me. I grasped my hat and gave my hand to Mrs Thistleton.
“Good news, isn’t it?” said she. “And Mrs Perkyns says she has such confidence in me—it appears she knew my sister Mary at Cheltenham—that she waives any other references. Isn’t that convenient?”
“Very,” I agreed.
“You’re to go the day after to-morrow if you can be ready. Can you?” asked Mrs Thistleton.
“I can be ready,” Fräulein said.
“In the morning, Mrs Perkyns suggested.”
“I can be ready in the morning.” Then she turned to me. “This is good-bye, then, I’m afraid, Mr Tregaskis.”
“I shall come and see you off,” said I, taking her hand.
Mrs Thistleton raised her brows for a moment, but her words were gracious.
“We shall all be down to wish her a good journey and a happy home.”
I made up my mind to say my farewell at the station—and I took my leave. As I walked out of the frontgate I met Thistleton coming from the station. I took upon myself to tell him the news.
“Good,” said Thistleton. “It ends what was always a false, and has become an impossible, situation.”
How about poor Mrs Perkyns, then? But I did not put that point to him. She was forewarned by that “Well-connected.” As I walked home I pictured Thistleton putting up a board before his residence: “Princesses, beware!”
IT was no use telling me—as the Rector had told me more than once—that the same sort of thing had happened before in history, that a Frenchmarquisof the oldrégimewas at least as good as a Boravian princess, and that if the one had taught dancing as anémigréthe other might teach French verbs in her banishment. The consideration was no doubt just, and even assuaged to some degree the absurdity of the situation—since absurd things that have happened before seem rather less absurd somehow—but it did not console my feelings, nor reconcile my imagination to Mrs Perkyns of Maida Hill, “nice and high” though Maida Hill might be. On the morning of Fräulein’s departure I rose out of temper with the world.
Then I opened the morning paper, and there it was! In a moment it seemed neither strange nor unexpected. It was bound to be there some morning. It chanced to be there this morning by happy fortune, because this was the last morning in which I could help, the last morning when I could see her eyes. But it was glorious. I am afraid it sent me half mad; yet I was very practical. In a minute I had made up my mind what she would want to do and what I could do. In another five minutes I was on my bicycle, “scorching” to Beechington with that paper in one pocket, anda cheque on the local branch of the London and County Bank in the other. And humming in my ears was “Rising in Boravia!” “Rumoured Abdication of the King!” “An Appeal to the Pretender!” Then, in smaller print: “Something about Princess Vera of Friedenburg.”
I hoped she would get away before the Thistletons knew! Very likely she would, for by now Thistleton was in the train for town, and he picked up hisTimesat the station; the family waited for it till the evening.
From the bank I raced to the station, and reached it ten minutes before her train was due to leave Beechington. There she was, sitting on a bench, all alone. She was dressed in plain black and looked very small and forlorn. She seemed deep in thought, and she did not see me till I was close to her. Then she looked up with a start. I suppose she read my face, for she smiled, held out her hand, and said—
“Yes, I had a telegram late last night.”
“You’ve told them?” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the Manor.
“No,” she said rather brusquely.
“You’re going, of course?”
“To Mrs Perkyns’,” she answered, smiling still. “What else can I do?”
“Wire them that you’re starting for Vienna, and that they must communicate with you there. Ah, there are men in Boravia!”
“And Mrs Perkyns? I should never get another character!”
“You’ll go, surely? It might make all the difference. Let them see you, let them see you!”
She shook her head, giving at the same time a short nervous laugh. I sat down by her. Her purse lay in her lap. I took it up; the Princess made no movement; her eyes were fixed on mine. I opened the purse and slipped in the notes I had procured at the bank. Her eyes did not forbid me. I snapped the purse to and laid it down again.
“I had a third-class to London, and eight shillings and threepence,” she said.
“You’ll go now?”
“Yes,” she whispered, rising to her feet.
We stood side by side now, waiting for the train. It was very hard to speak. Presently she passed her hand through my arm and let it rest there. She said no more about the money, which I was glad of. Not that I was thinking much of that. I was still rather mad, and my thoughts were full of one insane idea; it was—though I am ashamed to write it—that just as the train was starting, at the last moment, at the moment of her going, she might say: “Come with me.”
“Did it surprise you?” I said at last, breaking the silence at the cost of asking a very stupid question.
“I had given up all hope. Yet somehow I wasn’t very surprised. You were?”
“No. I had always believed in it.”
“Not at first?”
“No; of late.”
She looked away from me now, but I saw her lips curve in a reluctant little smile. I laughed.
“I don’t think my ideas about it had any particular relation to external facts,” I confessed. “I had become a Legitimist, and Legitimists are always allowed to dream.”
She gave my arm a little pat and then drew her hand gently away.
“If it all comes to nothing, I shall have one friend still,” she said.
“And one faithful hopeful adherent. And there’s your train.”
When I put her in the carriage, my madness came back to me. I actually watched her eyes as though to see the invitation I waited for take its birth there. Of course I saw no such thing. But I seemed to see a great friendliness for me. At the last, when I had pressed her hand and then shut the door, I whispered—
“Are you afraid?”
She smiled. “No. Boravia isn’t Southam Parva. I am not afraid.”
Then—well, she went away.
MRS THISTLETON is great. I said so before, and I remain firmly of that opinion. The last time I called at the Manor, I found her in the drawing-room with Molly, the youngest daughter, a pretty and intelligent child. After some conversation, Mrs Thistleton said to me—
“A little while ago I had an idea, which my husband thought so graceful that he insisted on carrying it out. I wonder if you’ll like it! I should really like to show it to you.”
I expressed a polite interest and a proper desire to see it, whatever it was.
“Then I’ll take you upstairs,” said she, rising with a gracious smile.
Upstairs we went, accompanied by Molly, who is rather a friend of mine and who was hanging on to my arm. Reaching the first floor, we turned to the left, and Mrs Thistleton ushered me into an exceedingly pleasant and handsome bedroom, with a delightful view of the garden. Not conceiving that I could be privileged to view Mrs Thistleton’s own chamber, I concluded that this desirable apartment must be the best or principal guest-room of the house.
“There!” said Mrs Thistleton, pointing with her finger towards the mantelpiece.
Advancing in that direction, I perceived, affixed to the wall over the mantelpiece, a small gilt frame, elaborately wrought and ornamented with a Royal Crown. Enclosed in the frame, and protected by glass, was a square of parchment, illuminated in blue and gold letters. I read the inscription:
This Room was Occupied by Her Majesty the Queen of Boravia on the Occasion of Her Visit to the Manor House, Southam Parva,27th of June, 1902.
This Room was Occupied by Her Majesty the Queen of Boravia on the Occasion of Her Visit to the Manor House, Southam Parva,
27th of June, 1902.
“It’s a very pretty idea, indeed! I congratulate you on it, Mrs Thistleton,” said I.
“I do like it; and ‘the Queen’s Room’ sounds such a nice name for it.”
“Charming!” I declared.
“Why didn’t you put one in the little room upstairs too—the room she slept in all the last part of the time, mamma?” asked Molly.
Well, well, children will make these mistakes. I think it was very creditable to Mrs Thistleton that she merely told Molly to think before she spoke, in which case (Mrs Thistleton intimated) she would not ask such a large number of foolish questions.
So Mrs Thistleton has a very pleasant memento of her Princess. I have one of her too—a big book, with a picture of the great castle and the broad river flowing below. And in the beginning of the book is written: “To him who did not forget—Vera.”
The description still applies.
THE affair had three obvious results: the marriage of Prince Julian, Sir Henry Shum’s baronetcy, and the complete renovation of Lady Craigennoch’s town house. Its other effects, if any, were more obscure.
By accident of birth and of political events Prince Julian was a Pretender, one of several gentlemen who occupied that position in regard to the throne of an important European country: by a necessity of their natures Messrs Shum & Byers were financiers: thanks to a fall in rents and a taste for speculation Lady Craigennoch was hard put to it for money and had become a good friend and ally of Mr Shum; sometimes he allowed her to put a finger into one of his pies and draw out a little plum for herself. Byers, hearing one day of his partner’s acquaintance with Lady Craigennoch, observed, “She might introduce us to Prince Julian.” Shum asked no questions, but obeyed; that was the way to be comfortable and to grow rich if you were Mr Byers’ partner. The introduction was duly effected; the Prince wondered vaguely, almost ruefully, what these men expected to get out of him. Byers asked himself quite as dolefully whether anything could be made out of an indolent, artistic, lazy young man like the Prince; Pretenders such as he served only to buttress existing Governments.
“Yes,” agreed Shum. “Besides, he’s entangled with that woman.”
“Is there a woman?” asked Byers. “I should like to know her.”
So, on his second visit to Palace Gate, Mr Byers was introduced to the lady who was an inmate in PrinceJulian’s house, but was not received in society. Lady Craigennoch however, opining, justly enough, that since she had no girls she might know whom she pleased, had called on the lady and was on friendly terms with her. The lady was named Mrs Rivers, and was understood to be a widow. “And surely one needn’t ask for his death certificate!” pleaded Lady Craigennoch. Byers, as he took tea in Mrs Rivers’ boudoir, was quite of the same mind. He nursed his square chin in his lean hand, and regarded his hostess with marked attention. She was handsome; that fact concerned Byers very little; she was also magnificently self-confident; this trait roused his interest in a moment. He came to see her more than once again; for now an idea had begun to shape itself in his brain. He mentioned it to nobody, least of all to Mrs Rivers. But one day she said to him, with the careless contempt that he admired,
“If I had all your money, I should do something with it.”
“Don’t I?” he asked, half-liking, half-resenting her manner.
“Oh, you make more money with it, I suppose.”
She paused for a moment, and then, leaning forward, began to discuss European politics, with especial reference to the condition of affairs in Prince Julian’s country. Byers listened in silence; she told him much that he knew, a few things which had escaped him. She told him also one thing which he did not believe—that Prince Julian’s indolent airs covered a character of rare resolution and tenacity. She repeated this twice, thereby betraying that she was not sure her first statement had carried conviction. Then she showed that the existing Government in the Prince’s country was weak, divided, unpopular, and poor; and then she ran over the list of rival Pretenders, and proved how deficient all of them were in the qualities necessary to gain or keep a throne. At this point she stopped, and asked Mr Byers to take a second cup of tea. He looked at herwith interest and amusement in his shrewd eyes; she had all the genius, the native power, with none of the training, none of the knowledge of men. He read her so easily; but there was a good deal to read. In one point, however, he read her wrongly; almost the only mistakes he made were due to forgetting the possible existence of unselfish emotion.
Prince Julian had plenty of imagination; without any difficulty he imagined himself regaining his ancestral throne, sitting on it in majesty, and establishing it in power. This vision Mrs Rivers called up before his receptive mind by detailing her conversation with Mr Byers. “You want nothing but money to do it,” she said. And Byers had money in great heaps; Shum had it too, and Shum was for present purposes Byers; so were a number of other persons, all with money. “I believe the people are devoted to me in their hearts,” said Prince Julian; then he caught Mrs Rivers by both her hands and cried, “And then you shall be my Queen!”
“Indeed I won’t,” said she; and she added almost fiercely, “Why do you bring that up again now? It would spoil it all.” For, contrary to what the world thought, Prince Julian had offered several times to marry the lady who was not received nor visited (except, of course, by Lady Craigennoch). Stranger still, this marriage was the thing which the Prince desired above all things, for, failing it, he feared that some day (owing to a conscience and other considerations) Mrs Rivers would leave him, and he really did not know what he should do then. When he imagined himself on his ancestral throne, Mrs Rivers was always very near at hand; whether actually on the throne beside him or just behind it was a point which he was prone to shirk; at any cost, though, she must be very near.
As time went on there were many meetings at Palace Gate; the Prince, Mr Shum, and Lady Craigennochwere present sometimes; Mrs Rivers and Byers were never wanting. The Prince’s imagination was immensely stimulated in those days; Lady Craigennoch’s love for a speculation was splendidly indulged; Mr Shum’s cautious disposition received terrible shocks. Mrs Rivers discussed European politics, the attitude of the Church, and the secret quarrels of the Cabinet in Prince Julian’s country; and Byers silently gathered together all the money of his own and other people’s on which he could lay hands. He was meditating a greatcoup; and just now and then he felt a queer touch of remorse when he reflected that hiscoupwas so very different from thecoupto which Mrs Rivers’ disquisitions and the Prince’s vivid imagination invited him. But he believed in the survival of the fittest; and, although Mrs Rivers was very fit, he himself was just by a little bit fitter still. Meanwhile the Government in the Prince’s country faced its many difficulties with much boldness, and seemed on the whole safe enough.
The birth and attributes of Rumour have often engaged the attention of poets; who can doubt that their rhetoric would have been embellished and their metaphors multiplied had they possessed more intimate acquaintance with the places where money is bought and sold? For in respect of awakening widespread interest and affecting the happiness of homes, what is the character of any lady, however high-born, conspicuous, or beautiful, compared with the character of a Stock? Here indeed is a field for calumny, for innuendo, for hints of frailty, for whispers of intrigue; the scandalmongers have their turn to serve, and the holders are swift to distrust. When somebody writes Sheridan’s comedy anew, let him lay the scene of it in a Bourse; between his slandered Stock and his slandered dame he may work out a very pretty and fanciful parallel.
Here, however, the facts can be set down only plainly and prosaically. On all the Exchanges there arose afeeling of uneasiness respecting the Stock of the Government of Prince Julian’s country; selling was going on, not in large blocks, but cautiously, continually, in unending dribblets; surely on a system and with a purpose? Then came paragraphs in the papers (like whispers behind fans), discussing the state of the Government and the country much in the vein which had marked Mrs Rivers’ dissertations. By now the Stock was down three points; by pure luck it fell another, in mysterious sympathy with the South African mining market. Next there was a riot in a provincial town in the Prince’s country; then a Minister resigned and made a damaging statement in the Chamber. Upon this it seemed no more than natural that attention should be turned to Prince Julian, his habits, hisentourage, his visitors. And now there were visitors; nobles and gentlemen crossed the Channel to see him; they came stealthily, yet not so secretly but that there was a paragraph; these great folk had heard the rumours, and hope had revived in their breasts. They talked to Mrs Rivers; Mrs Rivers had talked previously to Mr Byers. A day later a weekly paper, which possessed good, and claimed universal, information, announced that great activity reigned among Prince Julian’s party, and that His Royal Highness was considering the desirability of issuing a Manifesto. “Certain ulterior steps,” the writer continued, “are in contemplation, but of these it would be premature to speak.” There was not very much in all this, but it made the friends of the Stock rather uncomfortable; and they were no more happy when a leading article in a leading paper demonstrated beyond possibility of cavil that Prince Julian had a fair chance of success, but that, if he regained the throne, he could look to hold it only by seeking glory in an aggressive attitude towards his neighbours. On the appearance of this luminous forecast the poor Stock fell two points more: there had been asauve qui peutof the timid holders.
Then actually came the Manifesto; and it was admitted on all hands to be such an excellent Manifesto as to amount to an event of importance. Whoever had drawn it up—and this question was never settled—knew how to lay his finger on all the weak spots of the existing Government, how to touch on the glories of Prince Julian’s House, what tone to adopt on vexed questions, how to rouse the enthusiasm of all the discontented. “Given that the Prince’s party possess the necessary resources,” observed the same leading journal, “it cannot be denied that the situation has assumed an aspect of gravity.” And the poor Stock fell yet a little more; upon which Mr Shum, who had a liking for taking a profit when he saw it, ventured to ask his partner how long he meant “to keep it up.”
“We’ll talk about that to-morrow,” said Mr Byers. “I’m going to call in Palace Gate this afternoon.” He looked very thoughtful as he brushed his hat and sent for a hansom. But, as he drove along, his brow cleared and he smiled triumphantly. If the Prince’s party had not the necessary resources they could do nothing; if they did nothing, would not the drooping Stock lift up her head again? Now nobody was in a position to solve that problem about the necessary resources so surely or so swiftly as Mr Byers.
A hundred yards from Prince Julian’s house he saw Lady Craigennoch walking along the pavement, and got out of his cab to join her. She was full of the visit she had just paid, above all of Ellen Rivers.
“Because she’s the whole thing, you know,” she said. “The adherents—good gracious, what helpless creatures! I don’t wonder the Republicans upset them if that’s what they’re all like. Oh, they’re gentlemen, of course, and you’re not, Byers”—(Mr Byers bowed slightly and smiled acquiescently)—“but I’d rather have you than a thousand of them. And the Prince, poor dear, is hardly better. Always talking of what he’ll do when he’s there, never thinking how he’s going to get there!”
Byers let her run on; she was giving him both instruction and amusement.
“And then he’s afraid—oh, not of the bullets or the guillotine or whatever it is—because he’s a gentleman too, you know. (Or perhaps you don’t know! I wonder if you do? Shum doesn’t; perhaps you do.) But he’s afraid of losing her. If he goes, she won’t go with him. I don’t mean as—as she is now, you know. She won’t go anyhow, not as his wife even. Well, of course, if he married her he’d wreck the whole thing. But one would hardly expect her to see that; or even to care, if she did. She’s very odd.” Lady Craigennoch paused a moment. “She’s fond of him too,” she added. “She’s a very queer woman.”
“A lady?” asked Mr Byers with a touch of satire.
“Oh yes,” said Lady Craigennoch, scornful that he needed to ask. “But so odd. Well, you’ve seen her with him—just like a mother with her pet boy! How hard she’s worked, to be sure! She told me how she’d got him to sign the what’s-its-name. He almost cried, because he’d have to go without her, you know. But she says it’s all right now; he won’t go back now, because he’s given his word. And she’s simply triumphant, though she’s fond of him, and though she won’t go with him.” Again Lady Craigennoch paused. “People won’t call on that woman, you know,” she remarked after her pause. Then she added, “Of course that’s right, except for a reprobate like me. But still——”
“She’s an interesting woman,” said Byers in a perfunctory sympathy with his companion’s enthusiasm.
Lady Craigennoch cooled down, and fixed a cold and penetrating glance on him.
“Yes, and you’re an interesting man,” she said. “What are you doing, Mr Byers?”
“Vindicating Right Divine,” he answered.
Lady Craigennoch smiled. “Well, whatever it is,” she said, “Shum has promised that I shall stand in.” Again she paused. “Only,” she resumed, “if you’remaking a fool of that woman——” She seemed unable to finish the sentence; there had been genuine indignation in her eyes for a moment; it faded away; but there came a slight flush on her cheeks as she added, “But that doesn’t matter if it’s in the way of business, does it?”
“And Shum has promised that you shall stand in,” Byers reminded her gravely.
Lady Craigennoch dug her parasol into the streak of earth that showed between pavement and curbstone.
“Anyhow I’m glad I called on her,” she said. “I’m not much, Heaven knows, but I’m a woman to speak to.”
“To cry to?” he hazarded.
“How do you know she cried? Think what she’d been through, poor thing! Oh, you won’t find her crying.”
“I hope not,” said Mr Byers with a perfect seriousness in his slightly nasal tones; and when they parted he said to himself, “That woman hates having to know me.” But there were many people in that position; and he spent much time in increasing the number; so the reflection caused him no pain, but rather a sense of self-complacency; when people know you who hate having to know you, you are somebody. The thought passed, and the next moment he found himself being glad that Ellen Rivers had a woman to speak to—or to cry to—even though it were only Lady Craigennoch.
She was not crying when she received Mr Byers. She was radiant. She told him that her part was done; now he must do his part; then the Prince would do his: thus the great enterprise would be accomplished. That odd pang struck Byers again as he listened; he recollected the beginning of Lady Craigennoch’s unfinished sentence, “If you’re making a fool of that woman——” That was just what he was doing. He escaped from the thought and gratified his curiosity by turning the talk to Mrs Rivers herself.
“Accomplished, eh?” said he. “And it’s a crown for the Prince!”
“Yes, and great influence for you.”
“And you’ll be——”
“I shall be nothing. I shall go away.” She spoke quickly and decisively; the resolution was there, but to dwell on it was dangerous.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere.”
“Back to your people?”
She looked at him for a moment. He had allowed himself to sneer. Her manner, as she went on without taking any notice of his question, proved that Lady Craigennoch had been right in saying that she was a lady.
“My work will be done,” she said. “From the first moment I knew the Prince I determined to use my influence in this way. He only—he only needed a little encouragement.”
“And a little money?”
“I gave him one, you’re giving him the other. We shall both be repaid by his success.”
“You’re a very strange woman,” he said. Probably he did not know how straight and hard his eyes were set on her; they could not leave her. What a pity it was that she would not go with the Prince—as his wife, or even (to use Lady Craigennoch’s charitably evasive phrase) as she was now. To set the Prince on the seat of his ancestors was not an exploit that appealed to Mr Byers; but to set this woman on a throne would be worth—well, how much? Mr Byers detected this question in his own heart; he could not help reducing things to figures. “Why don’t you go with him?” he asked bluntly.
“It would prejudice him,” she answered simply, folding her hands in her lap.
Then she stretched out a hand towards him and said suddenly, with a sudden quiver in her voice, “I talk to you like this, and all the time I’m wanting to go down on my knees and kiss your hands, because you’re doing this.”
The lean hand held the square jaw; the attitude was a favourite one with Mr Byers; and his eyes were still on her.
“Yes, that’s what I want to do,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s so splendid of you.” Her breath came fast; her eyes were very bright. At that moment Mr Byers wished that the quick breath and the bright eyes were for him himself, not for the helper of the Prince; and for that moment he forgot Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place; it was years since he had had any such wish about any woman; he felt a sympathy with Prince Julian, who had almost cried when he signed the Manifesto, because, if he mounted the throne, Ellen Rivers would leave him.
“We want money now, directly,” she went on. “We want the Manifesto in every house. I can manage the distribution. And we must pay people—bribe them. We must sow seed. It’ll soon come up. And the Prince will act at the proper time.”
“How much do you want now?” he asked.
“Half-a-million now, and another next month,” she said.
“And more before the end?”
“Yes, most likely. You can get it, you know.”
“And shall I ever get it back?”
“The Prince has given his word.” Mr Byers assumed a doubtful air. “Oh, you’re not as stupid as that; you believe him,” she added almost contemptuously. “Do you mean it’s a speculation? Of course it is. I thought you had courage!”
“So I have,” said Byers. And he added, “I may want it all too.” What he would want it for was in his mind, but he did not tell her.
He thought a great deal about the matter that evening as he sat by the fire opposite to Mrs Byers, who knitted a stocking and said nothing; she never broke in upon his thoughts, believing that a careless interruption might cost a million. Millions were in his mind now,and other things than millions. There was his faith with his associates; they were all waiting his word; when he gave it, rumours would die away, reports be contradicted, the Manifesto pooh-poohed; there would be buyings, the Stock would lift up her head again, confidence would revive; and the first to buy, the first to return to faith in the Stock, would be Mr Byers and his associates; the public would come in afterwards, and when the public came in he and his associates would go out again, richer by vast sums. The money and his good faith—his honour among financiers—bound him; and the triumph of his brains, the beauty of hiscoup, the admiration of his fellows, the unwilling applause of the hard-hit—all these allured him mightily. On the other side there was nothing except the necessity of disappointing Mrs Rivers, of telling her that the necessary resources were not forthcoming, that the agitation and the Manifesto had served their turn, that the Prince had been made a fool of, that she herself had been made a fool of too. Many such a revelation had he made to defeated opponents, calmly, jestingly perhaps, between the puffs of his cigar, not minding what they thought. Why should he mind what Mrs Rivers thought? She would no longer wish to kiss that lean strong hand of his; she might cry (she had Lady Craigennoch to cry to). He looked across at his wife who was knitting; he would not have minded telling anything to her. But so intensely did he mind telling what he had to tell to Ellen Rivers that the millions, his good faith, the joy of winning, and the beauty of thecoup, all hung doubtful in the balance against the look in the eyes of the lady at Prince Julian’s. “What an infernal fool I am!” he groaned. Mrs Byers glanced up for a moment, smiled sympathetically, and went on with her knitting; she supposed that there must be some temporary hitch about the latest million; or perhaps Shum had been troublesome; that was sometimes what was upsetting Mr Byers.
The next morning Mr Shum was troublesome; he thought that the moment for action had come; the poor Stock had been blown upon enough, the process of rehabilitation should begin. Various other gentlemen, weighty with money, dropped in with their hats on the back of their heads and expressed the same views. Byers fenced with them, discussed the question rather inconclusively, took now this side and now that, hesitated, vacillated, shilly-shallied. The men wondered at him; they knew they were right; and, right or wrong, Byers had been wont to know his own mind; their money was at stake; they looked at one another uncomfortably. Then the youngest of them, a fair boy, great at dances and late suppers, but with a brain for figures and a cool boldness which made him already rich and respected in the City, tilted his shining hat still further back and drawled out, “If you’ve lost your nerve, Byers, you’d better let somebody else engineer the thing.”
What her fair fame is to a proud woman the prestige of his nerve was to Mr Byers. The boy had spoken the decisive word, by chance, by the unerring instinct which in any sphere of thought is genius. In half-an-hour all was planned, the Government of the Prince’s country saved, and the agitation at an end. The necessary resources would not be forthcoming; confidence would revive, the millions would be made, thecoupbrought off, the triumph won.
So in the next fortnight it happened. Prince Julian looked on with vague bewilderment, reading the articles and paragraphs which told him that he had abandoned all thought of action, had resigned himself to wait for a spontaneous recall from his loving subjects (which might be expected to assail his ears on the Greek Kalends), that in fact he would do nothing. Mrs Rivers read the paragraphs too, and waited and waited and waited for the coming of Mr Byers and the necessary resources; she smiled at what she read, for she had confidence inthe Cause, or at least in herself and in Mr Byers. But the days went on; slowly the Stock rose; then in went the public with a rush. The paragraphs and the articles dwindled and ceased; there was a commotion somewhere else in Europe; Prince Julian and his Manifesto were forgotten. What did it mean? She wrote a note, asking Mr Byers to call.
It was just at this time also that Mr Henry Shum accepted the invitation of the Conservative Association of the Hatton Garden Division of Holborn Bars to contest the seat at the approaching General Election, and that Lady Craigennoch gave orders for the complete renovation of her town house. Both these actions involved, of course, some expense; how much it is hard to say precisely. The house was rather large, and the seat was very safe.
Prince Julian sat in his library in Palace Gate and Mrs Rivers stood beside him, her hand resting on the arm of his chair. Now and then the Prince glanced up at her face rather timidly. They had agreed that matters showed no progress; then Mrs Rivers had become silent.
“Has Byers thrown us over?” the Prince asked at last.
“Hush, hush,” she answered in a low voice. “Wait till he’s been; he’s coming to-day.” Her voice sank lower still as she whispered, “He can’t have; oh, he can’t!”
There was silence again. A few minutes passed before the Prince broke out fretfully, “I’m sick of the whole thing. I’m very well as I am. If they want me, let them send for me. I can’t force myself on them.”
She looked down for a moment and touched his hair with her hand.
“If this has come to nothing I’ll never try again. I don’t like being made a fool of.”
Her hand rested a moment on his forehead; he looked up, smiling.
“We can be happy together,” he murmured. “Let’s throw up the whole thing and be happy together.” He caught her hand in his. “You’ll stay with me anyhow?”
“You want me still?”
“You’ll do what I ask?” he whispered.
“That would put an end to it, indeed,” she said smiling.
“Thank Heaven for it!” he exclaimed peevishly.
A servant came in and announced that Mr Byers was in the drawing-room.
“Shall I come too?” asked the Prince.
“Oh no,” she answered with a strange little laugh. “What’s the use of bothering you? I’ll see him.”
“Make him say something definite,” urged Prince Julian. “Let’s have an end of it one way or the other.”
“Very well.” She bent down and kissed him, and then went off to talk to Mr Byers.
The fair boy with the business brains might have been seriously of opinion that there was something wrong with Byers’ nerve had he seen him waiting for Mrs Rivers in the drawing-room, waiting to tell her that the necessary resources were not forthcoming; he hoped that he need tell her no more than that; he wished that he had not come, but he could not endure the self-contempt which the thought of running away had brought with it; he must face her; the woman could do no more than abuse him. One other thought he had for a moment entertained—of offering to let her stand in, as Mr Shum had let Lady Craigennoch; there was hardly any sum which he would not have been glad to give her. But long before he reached the house he had decided that she would not stand in. “By God, I should think not,” he said to himself indignantly.
But he had one phrase ready for her. He reminded her of the paragraphs, the rumours, and the Manifesto. “We have by these means felt the pulse of the public,”he said. He paused, she said nothing. “The result is not—er—encouraging,” he went on. “The moment is not propitious.”
“You promised the money if the Prince signed the Manifesto,” she said.
“Promised? Oh, well, I said I’d——”
“You promised,” said Mrs Rivers. “What’s the difficulty now?”
“The state of public feeling——” he began.
“I know that. We want the money to change it. She smiled slightly. “If the feeling had been with us already we shouldn’t have wanted the money.” She leant forward and asked, “Haven’t you got the money? You said you had.”
“Yes, I’ve got it—or I could get it.”
“Yes. Well then—! Why have you changed your mind?”
He made no answer, and for a while she sat looking at him thoughtfully. She did not abuse him, and she did not cry.
“I want to understand,” she said presently. “Did you ever mean to give us the money?”
“Yes, upon my honour I——”
“Are you sure?” She forced him to look her in the face; he was silent. She rose, took a Japanese fan from a side table, and sat down again; the lower part of her face was now hidden by the fan; Byers saw nothing but her eyes. “What did you mean?” she asked. “You’ve made us all—the Prince, and his friends, and me—look very silly. How did that help you? I don’t see what you could get out of that.”
She was looking at him now as though she thought him mad; she could not see what he had got out of it; it had not yet crossed her mind that there had been money to be got out of it; so ignorant was she, with all her shrewdness, with all her resolution.
“And I understood that you were such a clever far-seeing man,” she went on. “Lady Craigennoch alwaystold me so; she said I could trust you in anything. Do tell me about it, Mr Byers.”
“I can’t explain it to you,” he began. “You—you wouldn’t——”
“Yes, I should understand it if you told me,” she insisted.
If he told her he was a liar and a thief, she would understand. Probably she would. But he did not think that she would understand the transaction if he used any less plain language about it. And that language was not only hard to use to her, but struck strangely on his own head and his own heart. Surely there must be other terms in which to describe his part in the transaction? There were plenty such in the City; were there none in Palace Gate?
“It’s a matter of business——” again he began.
She stopped him with an imperious wave of the fan. Her eyes grew animated with a sudden enlightenment; she looked at him for a moment or two, and then asked, “Have you been making money out of it somehow?” He did not answer. “How, please?” she asked.
“What does that matter?” His voice was low.
“I should like to hear, please. You don’t want to tell me? But I want to know. It—it’ll be useful to me to understand things like this.”
It seemed to Mr Byers that he had to tell her, that this was the one thing left that he could do, the one obligation which he could perform. So he began to tell her, and as he told her, naturally (or curiously, since natures are curious) his pride in the greatcouprevived—his professional pride. He went into it all thoroughly; she followed him very intelligently; he made her understand what an “option” was, what “differences,” what the “put,” and what the “call.” He pointed out how the changes in public affairs might make welcome changes in private pockets, and would have her know that the secret centre of great movements must be sought in the Bourses, not in the Cabinets, ofEurope; perhaps he exaggerated here a little, as a man will in praising what he loves. Finally, carried away by enthusiasm, he gave her the means of guessing with fair accuracy the profit that he and his friends had made out of the transaction. Thus ending, he heaved a sigh of relief; she understood, and there had been no need of those uncivil terms which lately had pressed themselves forward to the tip of his tongue so rudely.
“I think I’d better not try to have anything more to do with politics,” she said. “I—I’m too ignorant.” There was a little break in her tones. Byers glanced at her sharply and apprehensively. Now that his story was ended, his enthusiasm died away; he expected abuse now. Well, he would bear it; she was entitled to relieve her mind.
“What a fool I’ve been! How you must have been laughing at me—at my poor Prince and me!” She looked across to him, smiling faintly. He sat twisting his hat in his hands. Then she turned her eyes towards the fireplace. Byers had nothing to say; he was wondering whether he might go now. Glancing at her for permission, he saw that her clear bright eyes had grown dim; presently a tear formed and rolled down her cheek. Then she began to sob, softly at first, presently with growing and rising passion. She seemed quite forgetful of him, heedless of what he thought and of how she looked. All that was in her, the pang of her dead hopes, the woe for her poor Prince, the bitter shame of her own crushed pride and helpless folly, came out in her sobs as she abandoned herself to weeping. Byers sat by, listening always, looking sometimes. He tried to defend himself to himself; was it decent of her, was it becoming, wasn’t it characteristic of the lack of self-control and self-respect that marks the sort of woman she was? It might be open to all these reproaches. She seemed not to care; she cried on. He could not help looking at her now; at last she saw him looking, and with a little stifled exclamation—whether of apology or of irritation he could not tell—she turned sidewaysand hid her face in the cushions of the sofa. Byers rose slowly, almost unsteadily, to his feet. “My God!” he whispered to himself, as he stood for a moment and looked at her. Then he walked over to where she lay, her head buried in the cushions.
“It doesn’t make all that difference to you,” he said roughly. “You wouldn’t have gone with him.”
She turned her face to him for a moment. She did not look her best; how could she? But Mr Byers did not notice that.
“I love him; and I wanted to do it.”
Byers had “wanted to do it” too, and their desires had clashed. But in his desire there had been no alloy of love; it was all true metal, true metal of self. He stood over her for a minute without speaking. A strange feeling seized him then; he had felt it once before with regard to this woman.
“If it had been for you I’d have damned the money and gone ahead,” he blurted out in an indistinct impetuous utterance.
Again she looked up; there was no surprise, no resentment in her face, only a heart-breaking plaintiveness. “Oh, why couldn’t you be honest with me?” she moaned. But she stopped sobbing and sat straight on the sofa again. “You’ll think me still more of a fool for doing this,” she said.
Was the abuse never coming? Mr Byers began to long for it. If he were abused enough, he thought that he might be able to find something to say for himself.
“You think that because—because I live as I do, I know the world and—and so on. I don’t a bit. It doesn’t follow really, you know. Fancy my thinking I could do anything for Julian! What do I know of business? Well, you’ve told me now!”
“If it had been for you I’d have risked it and gone ahead,” said Byers again.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she murmured vaguely. Byers did not try to describe to her the oddstrong impulse which had inspired his speech. “I must go and tell the Prince about it,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded.
“Do? What is there to do? Nothing, I suppose. What can we do?”
“I wish to God I’d—I’d met a woman like you. Shall you marry him now?”
She looked up; a faint smile appeared on her face.
“Yes,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now; and he’ll like it. Yes, I’ll marry him now.”
Two visions—one was of Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place—rose before Byers’ thoughts.
“He hasn’t lost much then,” he said. “And you? You’ll be just as happy.”
“It was the whole world to me,” said she, and for the last time she put her handkerchief to her eyes. Then she stowed it away in her pocket and looked expectantly at her visitor; here was the permission to go.
“Will you take the money?” said he.
“What money?”
“What I’ve made. My share of it.”
“Oh, don’t be silly! What do I care what money you’ve made?”
He spoke lower as he put his second question.
“Will you forgive me?” he asked.
“Forgive you?” She laughed a little, yet looked puzzled. “I don’t think about you like that,” she explained. “You’re not a man to me.”
“You’re a woman to me. What am I to you then?”
“I don’t know. Things in general—the world—business—the truth about myself. Yes, you’re the truth about myself to me.” She laughed again, nervously, tentatively, almost appealingly, as though she wanted him to understand how he seemed to her. He drew in his breath and buttoned his coat.
“And you’re the truth about myself to me,” he said. “And the truth is that I’m a damned scoundrel.”
“Are you?” she asked, as it seemed half in surprise,half in indifference. “Oh, I suppose you’re no worse than other people. Only I was such a fool. Good-bye, Mr Byers.” She held out her hand. He had not meant to offer his. But he took hers and pressed it. He had a vague desire to tell her that he was not a type of all humanity, that other men were better than he was, that there were unselfish men, true men, men who did not make fools of women for money’s sake; yes, of women whose shoes they were not worthy to black. But he could not say anything of all this, and he left her without another word. And the next morning he bought the “call” of a big block of the Stock; for the news of Prince Julian’s marriage with Mrs Rivers would send it up a point or two. Habit is very strong.
When he was gone, Mrs Rivers went upstairs to her room and bathed her face. Then she rejoined Prince Julian in the library. Weary of waiting, he had gone to sleep; but he woke up and was rejoiced to see her. He listened to her story, called Mr Byers an infernal rogue, and, with an expression of relief on his face, said:
“There’s the end of that! And now, darling——?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you now,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Thus, as has been said, the whole affair had only three obvious effects—the renovation of Lady Craigennoch’s town house, a baronetcy for Sir Henry Shum (services to the Party are a recognised claim on the favour of His Majesty), and the marriage of Prince Julian. But from it both Mrs Rivers and Mr Byers derived some new ideas of the world and of themselves. Shall woman weep and hard men curse their own work without result? The Temple of Truth is not a National Institution. So, of course, one pays to go in. Even when you are in, it is difficult to look at more than one side of it at once. Perhaps Mrs Rivers did not realise this; and Mr Byers could not while he seemed still to hear her crying; he heard the sobs for so many evenings, mingling oddly with the click of his wife’s knitting-needles.
OLD Tom Gladwin was not a man to whom you volunteered advice. He had made an immense deal of money for himself, and people who have done that generally like also to manufacture their own advice on their own premises; perhaps it is better done that way, perhaps there’s just a prejudice in favour of the home trade-mark. Anyhow, old Tom needed no suggestions from outside. You said, “Yes, Sir Thomas,” or “Of course not, Sir Thomas,” or “Certainly, Sir Thomas.” At all events, you limited your remarks to something like that if you were—as I was—a young solicitor trying to keep his father’s connection together, of which Sir Thomas’s affairs and the business of the Worldstone Park estate formed a considerable and lucrative portion. But everybody was in the same story about him—secretary, bailiff, stud-groom, gardener, butler—yes, butler, although Sir Thomas had confessedly never tasted champagne till he was forty, whereas Gilson had certainly been weaned on it. Even Miss Nettie Tyler, when she came on the scene, had the good sense to accept Sir Thomas’s version of her heart’s desire; neither had she much cause to quarrel with his reading, since it embraced Sir Thomas himself and virtually the whole of his worldly possessions. He was worth perhaps half-a-million pounds in money, and the net rent-roll of Worldstone was ten thousand, even after you had dressed it up and curled its hair, for all the world as if it were a suburban villa instead of an honest, self-respecting country gentleman’s estate, which ought to have beenrun to pay three per cent. But the new-comers will not take land seriously; they leave that as a prospect for their descendants when the ready money, the city-made money, has melted away.
So I took his instructions for his marriage settlement and his new will without a word, although they seemed to me to be, under the circumstances, pretty stiff documents. The old gentleman—he was not really old, fifty-eight or-nine, I should say, but he looked like a granite block that has defied centuries—had, of course, two excuses. In the first place, he was fairly crazy about Nettie Tyler, orphan daughter of the old vicar of Worldstone, an acquaintance of two months’ standing and (I will say for her) one of the prettiest little figures on a horse that I ever saw. In the second, he wanted—yes, inevitably he wanted—to found a family and to hand on the baronetcy which had properly rewarded his strenuous and successful efforts on his own behalf; it was the sort of baronetcy which is obviously pregnant with a peerage—a step, not a crown; one learns to distinguish these varieties. Accordingly, to cut details short, the effect of the new will and of the marriage settlement was that, given issue of the said intended marriage (and intended it was for the following Tuesday), Miss Beatrice Gladwin was to have five hundred a year on her father’s death, and the rest went to what, for convenience’s sake, I may call the new undertaking—to the Gladwin-Tyler establishment and what might spring therefrom. Even the five hundred was by the will only, therefore revocable. Five hundred a year is not despicable, and is good, like other boons, until revoked. But think what Beatrice Gladwin had been two months before—the greatest heiress in the county, mistress of all! So the old will had made her—the old will in my office safe, which, come next Tuesday, would be so much waste paper. I have always found something pathetic about a superseded will. It is like a royal family in exile.
Sir Thomas read over the documents and looked up at me as he took off his spectacles.
“One great advantage of having made your own way, Foulkes,” he observed, “is that you’re not trammelled by settlements made in early life. I can do what I like with my own.”
And I, as I have foreshadowed, observed merely, “Certainly, Sir Thomas.”
He eyed me for a moment with an air of some suspicion. He was very acute and recognised criticism, however inarticulate; an obstinacy in the bend of one’s back was enough for him. But I gave him no more opening, and, after all, he could not found an explicit reproach on the curve of my spine. After a moment he went on, rasping the short grey hair that sprouted on his chin:
“I think you’d better have a few minutes with my daughter. Put the effect of these documents into plain language for her.” I believe he half suspected me again, for he added quickly: “Free of technicalities, I mean. She knows the general nature of my wishes. I’ve made that quite clear to her myself.” No doubt he had. I bowed, and he rose, glancing at the clock. “The horses must be round,” he said; “I’m going for a ride with Miss Tyler. Ask if my daughter can see you now; and I hope you’ll stay to lunch, Foulkes.” He went to the door, but turned again. “I’ll send Beatrice to you myself,” he called, “and you can get the business over before we come back.” He went off, opening his cigar-case and humming a tune, in excellent spirits with himself and the world, I fancied. He had reason to be, so far as one could see at the minute.
I went to the window and watched them mounting—the strong solid frame of the man, the springy figure of the pretty girl. She was chattering gleefully: he laughed in a most contented approval of her, and, probably, with an attention none too deep to the precise purport of her merry words. Besides the two groomsthere was another member of the party—one who stood rather aloof on the steps that led up to the hall door. Here was the lady for whom I waited, Beatrice Gladwin, his daughter, who was to have the five hundred a year when he died—who was to have had everything, to have been mistress of all. She stood there in her calm composed handsomeness. Neither pretty nor beautiful would you call her, but, without question, remarkably handsome. She was also perfectly tranquil. As I looked she spoke once; I heard the words through the open window.
“You must have your own way, then,” she said, with a smile and a slight shrug of her shoulders. “But the horse isn’t safe for you, you know.”
“Ay, ay,” he answered, laughing again, not at his daughter but round to the pretty girl beside him. “I’ll have my way for four days more.” He and hisfiancéeenjoyed the joke between them; it went no further, I think.
Beatrice stood watching them for a little while, then turned into the house. I watched them a moment longer, and saw them take to the grass and break into a canter. It was a beautiful sunny morning; they and their fine horses made a good moving bit of life on the face of the smiling earth. Was that how it would strike Beatrice, once the heiress, now—well, it sounds rather strong, but shall we say the survival of an experiment that had failed? Once the patroness of the vicar’s little daughter—I had often seen them when that attitude obviously and inevitably dominated their intercourse; then for a brief space, by choice or parental will, the friend; now and for the future—my vocabulary or my imagination failed to supply the exact description of their future relations. It was, however, plain that the change to Miss Beatrice Gladwin must be very considerable. There came back into my mind what my friend, neighbour, and client, Captain Spencer Fullard of Gatworth Hall, impecunious scion of anancient stock, had said in the club at Bittleton (for we have a club at Bittleton, and a very good one, too) when the news of Sir Thomas’s engagement came out. “Rough on Miss Beatrice,” said he; “but she’ll show nothing. She’s hard, you know, but a sportsman.” A sportsman she was, as events proved; and none was to know it better than Spencer Fullard himself, who was, by the way, supposed to feel, or at least to have exhibited, even greater admiration for the lady than the terms of the quoted remark imply. At the time he had not seen Miss Tyler.
One thing more came into my head while I waited. Did pretty Nettie Tyler know the purport of the new documents? If so, what did she think of it? But the suggestion which this idea carries with it probably asked altogether too much of triumphant youth. It is later in life that one is able to look from other people’s points of view—one’s own not being so dazzlingly pleasant, I suppose. So I made allowances for Nettie; it was not perhaps so easy for Beatrice Gladwin to do the same.
OF course the one thing I had to avoid was any show of sympathy; she would have resented bitterly such an impertinence. If I knew her at all—and I had been an interested observer of her growth from childhood to woman’s estate—the sympathy of the county, unheard but infallibly divined, was a sore aggravation of her fate. As I read extracts from the documents and explained their effect, freeing them from technicalities, as Sir Thomas had thoughtfully charged me, my impassivity equalled hers. I might have been telling her the price of bloaters at Great Yarmouth that morning, and she considering the purchase of half-a-dozen. In fact, we overdid it between us; we were bothgrotesquely uninterested in the documents; our artificial calm made a poor contrast to the primitive and disguise-scorning exultation of the pair who had gone riding over the turf in the sunshine. I could not help it; I had to take my cue from her. My old father had loved her; perhaps he would have patted her hand, perhaps he would even have kissed her cheek: what would have happened to her composure then? On the other hand, he would have been much more on Sir Thomas’s side than I was. He used often to quote to me a saying of his uncle’s, the venerable founder of the fine business we enjoyed: “Every other generation, the heir ought to lay an egg and then die.” The long minority which he contemplated as resulting from a family bereavementprima facieso sad would reëstablish the family finances. The Chinese and Japanese, I am told, worship their ancestors. English landed gentry worship their descendants, and of this cult the family lawyer is high priest. My father would have patted Beatrice Gladwin’s cheek, but he would not have invoked a curse on Sir Thomas, as I was doing behind my indifferent face and with the silent end of my drily droning tongue. I was very glad when we got to the end of the documents.
She gave me a nod and a smile, saying, “I quite understand,” then rose and went to the window. I began to tie my papers up in their tapes. The drafts were to go back to be engrossed. She stood looking out on the park. The absurd impulse to say that I was very sorry, but that I really couldn’t help it, assailed me again. I resisted, and tied the tapes in particularly neat bows, admiring the while her straight, slim, flat-shouldered figure. She looked remarkably efficient; I found myself regretting that she was not to have the management of the estate. Was that in her mind, too, as she surveyed it from the window? I do not know, but I do know that the next moment she asked me if Spencer Fullard were ill; she had not seen him aboutlately. I said that he was, I believed, in robust health, but had been up in town on business. (He had gone to raise a loan, if that’s material.) The subject then dropped. I did not, at the time, see any reason why it had cropped up at all at that particular and somewhat uncomfortable moment.
What had put Spencer Fullard into her head?
Suddenly she spoke again, to herself, in a low voice: “How funny!” She turned to me and beckoned: “Mr Foulkes!”
I left my papers on the table and joined her at the open window; it was just to the right of the hall door and commanded a wide view of the park, which, stretching in gentle undulations, with copses scattered here and there among the turf, gave a fine sense of spaciousness and elbow-room—the best things mere wealth can give, in my humble opinion.
“It must be Nettie,” she said; “but why—why is she riding like that?”
I followed with my eyes the direction in which she pointed.
“And where’s father?”
Still a mile or more away, visible now, but from moment to moment hidden by an intervening copse and once or twice by a deep dip in the ground, a horse came towards us at a gallop—a reckless gallop. The next instant the faintest echo of a cry, its purport indistinguishable, fell on our ears.
“It is Nettie,” said Beatrice Gladwin, her eyes suddenly meeting mine. We stood there for a moment, then she walked quickly into the adjoining hall, and out on to the steps in front of the door. I followed, leaving my papers to look after themselves on the table. When I came up to her she said nothing, but caught my wrist with her left hand and held it tightly.
Now we heard what Nettie’s cry was. The monotonous horror of it never ceased for an instant. “Help! Help! Help!” It was incessant, and now, as shereached the drive, sounded loud and shrill in our ears. The men in the stables heard it; two of them ran out at top speed to meet the galloping horse. But horse and rider were close up to us by now. I broke away from Miss Gladwin, who clung to me with a strong unconscious grip, and sprang forward. I was just in time to catch Nettie as she fell from the saddle, and the grooms brought her horse to a standstill. Even in my arms she still cried shrilly, “Help, help, help!”
No misunderstanding was possible. “Where? Where?” was all I asked, and at last she gasped, “By Toovey’s farm.”
One of the grooms was on her horse in a moment and made off for the spot. Nettie broke away from me, staggering to the steps, stumbling over her habit as she went, and sank down in a heap; she ceased now to cry for help, and began to sob convulsively. Beatrice seemed stunned. She said nothing; she looked at none of us; she stared after the man on horseback who had started for Toovey’s farm. The second groom spoke to me in a low voice: “Where’s the master’s horse?”
Nettie heard him. She raised her eyes to his—the blue eyes a little while ago so radiant, now so full of horror. “They neither of them moved,” she said.