“Mr. Goldenheart,” she said, with the coldest possible politeness, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain what this means?”
She turned back into the dining-room. Amelius followed her in silence. “Here I am, in another scrape with a woman!” he thought to himself. “Are men in general as unlucky as I am, I wonder?”
“You needn’t close the door,” said Regina maliciously. “Everybody in the house is welcome to hear whatIhave to say to you.”
Amelius made a mistake at the outset—he tried what a little humility would do to help him. There is probably no instance on record in which humility on the part of a man has ever really found its way to the indulgence of an irritated woman. The best and the worst of them alike have at least one virtue in common—they secretly despise a man who is not bold enough to defend himself when they are angry with him.
“I hope I have not offended you?” Amelius ventured to say.
She tossed her head contemptuously. “Oh dear, no! I am not offended. Only a little surprised at your being so very ready to oblige my aunt.”
In the short experience of her which had fallen to the lot of Amelius, she had never looked so charmingly as she looked now. The nervous irritability under which she was suffering brightened her face with the animation which was wanting in it at ordinary times. Her soft brown eyes sparkled; her smooth dusky cheeks glowed with a warm red flush; her tall supple figure asserted its full dignity, robed in a superb dress of silken purple and black lace, which set off her personal attractions to the utmost advantage. She not only roused the admiration of Amelius—she unconsciously gave him back the self-possession which he had, for the moment, completely lost. He was man enough to feel the humiliation of being despised by the one woman in the world whose love he longed to win; and he answered with a sudden firmness of tone and look that startled her.
“You had better speak more plainly still, Miss Regina,” he said. “You may as well blame me at once for the misfortune of being a man.”
She drew back a step. “I don’t understand you,” she answered.
“Do I owe no forbearance to a woman who asks a favour of me?” Amelius went on. “If a man had asked me to steal into the house on tiptoe, I should have said—well! I should have said something I had better not repeat. If a man had stood between me and the door when you came back, I should have taken him by the collar and pulled him out of my way. Could I do that, if you please, with Mrs. Farnaby?”
Regina saw the weak point of this defence with a woman’s quickness of perception. “I can’t offer any opinion,” she said; “especially when you lay all the blame on my aunt.”
Amelius opened his lips to protest—and thought better of it. He wisely went straight on with what he had still to say.
“If you will let me finish,” he resumed, “you will understand me a little better than that. Whatever blame there may be, Miss Regina, I am quite ready to take on myself. I merely wanted to remind you that I was put in an awkward position, and that I couldn’t civilly find a way out of it. As for your aunt, I will only say this: I know of hardly any sacrifice that I would not submit to, if I could be of the smallest service to her. After what I heard, while I was in her room—”
Regina interrupted him at that point. “I suppose it’s a secret between you?” she said.
“Yes; it’s a secret,” Amelius proceeded, “as you say. But one thing I may tell you, without breaking my promise. Mrs. Farnaby has—well! has filled me with kindly feeling towards her. She has a claim, poor soul, to my truest sympathy. And I shall remember her claim. And I shall be faithful to what I feel towards her as long as I live!”
It was not very elegantly expressed; but the tone was the tone of true feeling in his voice trembled, his colour rose. He stood before her, speaking with perfect simplicity straight from his heart—and the woman’s heart felt it instantly. This was the man whose ridicule she had dreaded, if her aunt’s rash confidence struck him in an absurd light! She sat down in silence, with a grave sad face, reproaching herself for the wrong which her too ready distrust had inflicted on him; longing to ask his pardon, and yet hesitating to say the simple words.
He approached her chair, and, placing his hand on the back of it, said gently, “do you think a little better of me now?”
She had taken off her gloves: she silently folded and refolded them in her lap.
“Your good opinion is very precious to me,” Amelius pleaded, bending a little nearer to her. “I can’t tell you how sorry I should be—” He stopped, and put it more strongly. “I shall never have courage enough to enter the house again, if I have made you think meanly of me.”
A woman who cared nothing for him would have easily answered this. The calm heart of Regina began to flutter: something warned her not to trust herself to speak. Little as he suspected it, Amelius had troubled the tranquil temperament of this woman. He had found his way to those secret reserves of tenderness—placid and deep—of which she was hardly conscious herself, until his influence had enlightened her. She was afraid to look up at him; her eyes would have told him the truth. She lifted her long, finely shaped, dusky hand, and offered it to him as the best answer that she could make.
Amelius took it, looked at it, and ventured on his first familiarity with her—he kissed it. She only said, “Don’t!” very faintly.
“The Queen would let me kiss her hand if I went to Court,” Amelius reminded her, with a pleasant inner conviction of his wonderful readiness at finding an excuse.
She smiled in spite of herself. “Would the Queen let you hold it?” she asked, gently releasing her hand, and looking at him as she drew it away. The peace was made without another word of explanation. Amelius took a chair at her side. “I’m quite happy now you have forgiven me,” he said. “You don’t know how I admire you—and how anxious I am to please you, if I only knew how!”
He drew his chair a little nearer; his eyes told her plainly that his language would soon become warmer still, if she gave him the smallest encouragement. This was one reason for changing the subject. But there was another reason, more cogent still. Her first painful sense of having treated him unjustly had ceased to make itself keenly felt; the lower emotions had their opportunity of asserting themselves. Curiosity, irresistible curiosity, took possession of her mind, and urged her to penetrate the mystery of the interview between Amelius and her aunt.
“Will you think me very indiscreet,” she began slyly, “if I made a little confession to you?”
Amelius was only too eager to hear the confession: it would pave the way for something of the same sort on his part.
“I understand my aunt making the heat in the concert-room a pretence for taking you away with her,” Regina proceeded; “but what astonishes me is that she should have admitted you to her confidence after so short an acquaintance. You are still—what shall I say?—you are still a new friend of ours.”
“How long will it be before I become an old friend?” Amelius asked. “I mean,” he added, with artful emphasis, “an old friend ofyours?”
Confused by the question, Regina passed it over without notice. “I am Mrs. Farnaby’s adopted daughter,” she resumed. “I have been with her since I was a little girl—and yet she has never told me any of her secrets. Pray don’t suppose that I am tempting you to break faith with my aunt! I am quite incapable of such conduct as that.”
Amelius saw his way to a thoroughly commonplace compliment which possessed the charm of complete novelty so far as his experience was concerned. He would actually have told her that she was incapable of doing anything which was not perfectly becoming to a charming person, if she had only given him time! She was too eager in the pursuit of her own object to give him time. “Ishouldlike to know,” she went on, “whether my aunt has been influenced in any way by a dream that she had about you.”
Amelius started. “Has she told you of her dream?” he asked, with some appearance of alarm.
Regina blushed and hesitated, “My room is next to my aunt’s,” she explained. “We keep the door between us open. I am often in and out when she is disturbed in her sleep. She was talking in her sleep, and I heard your name—nothing more. Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned it? Perhaps I ought not to expect you to answer me?”
“There is no harm in my answering you,” said Amelius. “The dream really had something to do with her trusting me. You may not think quite so unfavourably of her conduct now you know that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Regina replied constrainedly. “If my aunt’s secrets have interested you—what right have I to object? I am sure I shall say nothing. Though I am not in my aunt’s confidence, nor in your confidence, you will find I can keep a secret.”
She folded up her gloves for the twentieth time at least, and gave Amelius his opportunity of retiring by rising from her chair. He made a last effort to recover the ground that he had lost, without betraying Mrs. Farnaby’s trust in him.
“I am sure you can keep a secret,” he said. “I should like to give you one of my secrets to keep—only I mustn’t take the liberty, I suppose, just yet?”
She new perfectly well what he wanted to say. Her heart began to quicken its beat; she was at a loss how to answer. After an awkward silence, she made an attempt to dismiss him. “Don’t let me detain you,” she said, “if you have any engagement.”
Amelius silently looked round him for his hat. On a table behind him a monthly magazine lay open, exhibiting one of those melancholy modern “illustrations” which present the English art of our day in its laziest and lowest state of degradation. A vacuous young giant, in flowing trousers, stood in a garden, and stared at a plump young giantess with enormous eyes and rotund hips, vacantly boring holes in the grass with the point of her parasol. Perfectly incapable of explaining itself, this imbecile production put its trust in the printer, whose charitable types helped it, at the bottom of the page, with the title of “Love at First Sight.” On those remarkable words Amelius seized, with the desperation of the drowning man, catching at the proverbial straw. They offered him a chance of pleading his cause, this time, with a happy indirectness of allusion at which not even a young lady’s susceptibility could take offence.
“Do you believe in that?” he said, pointing to the illustration.
Regina declined to understand him. “In what?” she asked.
“In love at first sight.”
It would be speaking with inexcusable rudeness to say plainly that she told him a lie. Let the milder form of expression be, that she modestly concealed the truth. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said.
“Ido,” Amelius remarked smartly.
She persisted in looking at the illustration. Was there an infection of imbecility in that fatal work? She was too simple to understand him, even yet! “You do—what?” she inquired innocently.
“I know what love at first sight is,” Amelius burst out.
Regina turned over the leaves of the magazine. “Ah,” she said, “you have read the story.”
“I haven’t read the story,” Amelius answered. “I know what I felt myself—on being introduced to a young lady.”
She looked up at him with a sly smile. “A young lady in America?” she asked.
“In England, Miss Regina.” He tried to take her hand—but she kept it out of his reach. “In London,” he went on, drifting back into his customary plainness of speech. “In this very street,” he resumed, seizing her hand before she was aware of him. Too much bewildered to know what else to do, Regina took refuge desperately in shaking hands with him. “Goodbye, Mr. Goldenheart,” she said—and gave him his dismissal for the second time.
Amelius submitted to his fate; there was something in her eyes which warned him that he had ventured far enough for that day.
“May I call again, soon?” he asked piteously.
“No!” answered a voice at the door which they both recognized—the voice of Mrs. Farnaby.
“Yes!” Regina whispered to him, as her aunt entered the room. Mrs. Farnaby’s interference, following on the earlier events of the day, had touched the young lady’s usually placable temper in a tender place—and Amelius reaped the benefit of it.
Mrs. Farnaby walked straight up to him, put her hand in his arm, and led him out into the hall.
“I had my suspicions,” she said; “and I find they have not misled me. Twice already, I have warned you to let my niece alone. For the third, and last time, I tell you that she is as cold as ice. She will trifle with you as long as it flatters her vanity; and she will throw you over, as she has thrown other men over. Have your fling, you foolish fellow, before you marry anybody. Pay no more visits to this house, unless they are visits to me. I shall expect to hear from you.” She paused, and pointed to a statue which was one of the ornaments in the hall. “Look at that bronze woman with the clock in her hand. That’s Regina. Be off with you—goodbye!”
Amelius found himself in the street. Regina was looking out at the dining-room window. He kissed his hand to her: she smiled and bowed. “Damn the other men!” Amelius said to himself. “I’ll call on her tomorrow.”
Returning to his hotel, he found three letters waiting for him on the sitting-room table.
The first letter that he opened was from his landlord, and contained his bill for the past week. As he looked at the sum total, Amelius presented to perfection the aspect of a serious young man. He took pen, ink, and paper, and made some elaborate calculations. Money that he had too generously lent, or too freely given away, appeared in his statement of expenses, as well as money that he had spent on himself. The result may be plainly stated in his own words: “Goodbye to the hotel; I must go into lodgings.”
Having arrived at this wise decision, he opened the second letter. It proved to be written by the lawyers who had already communicated with him at Tadmor, on the subject of his inheritance.
“DEAR SIR,
“The enclosed, insufficiently addressed as you will perceive, only reached us this day. We beg to remain, etc.”
Amelius opened the letter enclosed, and turned to the signature for information. The name instantly took him back to the Community: the writer was Mellicent.
Her letter began abruptly, in these terms:
“Do you remember what I said to you when we parted at Tadmor? I said, ‘Be comforted, Amelius, the end is not yet.’ And I said again, ‘You will come back to me.’
“I remind you of this, my friend—directing to your lawyers, whose names I remember when their letter to you was publicly read in the Common Room. Once or twice a year I shall continue to remind you of those parting words of mine: there will be a time perhaps when you will thank me for doing so.
“In the mean while, light your pipe with my letters; my letters don’t matter. If I can comfort you, and reconcile you to your life—years hence, when you, too, my Amelius, may be one of the Fallen Leaves like me—then I shall not have lived and suffered in vain; my last days on earth will be the happiest days that I have ever seen.
“Be pleased not to answer these lines, or any other written words of mine that may follow, so long as you are prosperous and happy. Withthatpart of your life I have nothing to do. You will find friends wherever you go—among the women especially. Your generous nature shows itself frankly in your face; your manly gentleness and sweetness speak in every tone of your voice; we poor women feel drawn towards you by an attraction which we are not able to resist. Have you fallen in love already with some beautiful English girl? Oh, be careful and prudent! Be sure, before you set your heart on her, that she is worthy of you! So many women are cruel and deceitful. Some of them will make you believe you have won their love, when you have only flattered their vanity; and some are poor weak creatures whose minds are set on their own interests, and who may let bad advisers guide them, when you are not by. For your own sake, take care!
“I am living with my sister, at New York. The days and weeks glide by me quietly; you are in my thoughts and my prayers; I have nothing to complain of; I wait and hope. When the time of my banishment from the Community has expired, I shall go back to Tadmor; and there you will find me, Amelius, the first to welcome you when your spirits are sinking under the burden of life, and your heart turns again to the friends of your early days.
“Goodbye, my dear—goodbye!”
Amelius laid the letter aside, touched and saddened by the artless devotion to him which it expressed. He was conscious also of a feeling of uneasy surprise, when he read the lines which referred to his possible entanglement with some beautiful English girl. Here, with widely different motives, was Mrs. Farnaby’s warning repeated, by a stranger writing from another quarter of the globe! It was an odd coincidence, to say the least of it. After thinking for a while, he turned abruptly to the third letter that was waiting for him. He was not at ease; his mind felt the need of relief.
The third letter was from Rufus Dingwell; announcing the close of his tour in Ireland, and his intention of shortly joining Amelius in London. The excellent American expressed, with his customary absence of reserve, his fervent admiration of Irish hospitality, Irish beauty, and Irish whisky. “Green Erin wants but one thing more,” Rufus predicted, “to be a Paradise on earth—it wants the day to come when we shall send an American minister to the Irish Republic.” Laughing over this quaint outbreak, Amelius turned from the first page to the second. As his eyes fell on the next paragraph, a sudden change passed over him; he let the letter drop on the floor.
“One last word,” the American wrote, “about that nice long bright letter of yours. I have read it with strict attention, and thought over it considerably afterwards. Don’t be riled, friend Amelius, if I tell you in plain words, that your account of the Farnabys doesn’t make me happy—quite the contrary, I do assure you. My back is set up, sir, against that family. You will do well to drop them; and, above all things, mind what you are about with the brown miss, who has found her way to your favourable opinion in such an almighty hurry. Do me a favour, my good boy. Just wait till I have seen her, will you?”
Mrs. Farnaby, Mellicent, Rufus—all three strangers to each other; and all three agreed nevertheless in trying to part him from the beautiful young Englishwoman! “I don’t care,” Amelius thought to himself “They may say what they please—I’ll marry Regina, if she will have me!”
In an interval of no more than three weeks what events may not present themselves? what changes may not take place? Behold Amelius, on the first drizzling day of November, established in respectable lodgings, at a moderate weekly rent. He stands before his small fireside, and warms his back with an Englishman’s severe sense of enjoyment. The cheap looking-glass on the mantelpiece reflects the head and shoulders of a new Amelius. His habits are changed; his social position is in course of development. Already, he is a strict economist. Before long, he expects to become a married man.
It is good to be economical: it is, perhaps, better still to be the accepted husband of a handsome young woman. But, for all that, a man in a state of moral improvement, with prospects which his less favoured fellow creatures may reasonably envy, is still a man subject to the mischievous mercy of circumstances, and capable of feeling it keenly. The face of the new Amelius wore an expression of anxiety, and, more remarkable yet, the temper of the new Amelius was out of order.
For the first time in his life he found himself considering trivial questions of sixpences, and small favours of discount for cash payments—an irritating state of things in itself. There were more serious anxieties, however, to trouble him than these. He had no reason to complain of the beloved object herself. Not twelve hours since he had said to Regina, with a voice that faltered, and a heart that beat wildly, “Are you fond enough of me to let me marry you?” And she had answered placidly, with a heart that would have satisfied the most exacting stethoscope in the medical profession, “Yes, if you like.” There was a moment of rapture, when she submitted for the first time to be kissed, and when she consented, on being gently reminded that it was expected of her, to return the kiss—once, and no more. But there was also an attendant train of serious considerations which followed on the heels of Amelius when the kissing was over, and when he had said goodbye for the day.
He had two women for enemies, both resolutely against him in the matter of his marriage.
Regina’s correspondent and bosom friend, Cecilia, who had begun by disliking him, without knowing why, persisted in maintaining her unfavourable opinion of the new friend of the Farnabys. She was a young married woman; and she had an influence over Regina which promised, when the fit opportunity came, to make itself felt. The second, and by far the more powerful hostile influence, was the influence of Mrs. Farnaby. Nothing could exceed the half sisterly, half motherly, goodwill with which she received Amelius on those rare occasions when they happened to meet, unembarrassed by the presence of a third person in the room. Without actually reverting to what had passed between them during their memorable interview, Mrs. Farnaby asked questions, plainly showing that the forlorn hope which she associated with Amelius was a hope still firmly rooted in her mind. “Have you been much about London lately?” “Have you met with any girls who have taken your fancy?” “Are you getting tired of staying in the same place, and are you going to travel soon?” Inquiries such as these she was, sooner or later, sure to make when they were alone. But if Regina happened to enter the room, or if Amelius contrived to find his way to her in some other part of the house, Mrs. Farnaby deliberately shortened the interview and silenced the lovers—still as resolute as ever to keep Amelius exposed to the adventurous freedom of a bachelor’s life. For the last week, his only opportunities of speaking to Regina had been obtained for him secretly by the well-rewarded devotion of her maid. And he had now the prospect before him of asking Mr. Farnaby for the hand of his adopted daughter, with the certainty of the influence of two women being used against him—even if he succeeded in obtaining a favourable reception for his proposal from the master of the house.
Under such circumstances as these—alone, on a rainy November day, in a lodging on the dreary eastward side of the Tottenham Court Road—even Amelius bore the aspect of a melancholy man. He was angry with his cigar because it refused to light freely. He was angry with the poor deaf servant-of-all-work, who entered the room, after one thumping knock at the door, and made, in muffled tones, the barbarous announcement, “Here’s somebody a-wantin’ to see yer.”
“Who the devil is Somebody?” Amelius shouted.
“Somebody is a citizen of the United States,” answered Rufus, quietly entering the room. “And he’s sorry to find Claude A. Goldenheart’s temperature at boiling-point already!”
He had not altered in the slightest degree since he had left the steamship at Queenstown. Irish hospitality had not fattened him; the change from sea to land had not suggested to him the slightest alteration in his dress. He still wore the huge felt hat in which he had first presented himself to notice on the deck of the vessel. The maid-of-all-work raised her eyes to the face of the long lean stranger, overshadowed by the broadbrimmed hat, in reverent amazement. “My love to you, miss,” said Rufus, with his customary grave cordiality;“I’llshut the door.” Having dismissed the maid with that gentle hint, he shook hands heartily with Amelius. “Well, I call this a juicy morning,” he said, just as if they had met at the cabin breakfast-table as usual.
For the moment, at least, Amelius brightened at the sight of his fellow-traveller. “I am really glad to see you,” he said. “It’s lonely in these new quarters, before one gets used to them.”
Rufus relieved himself of his hat and great coat, and silently looked about the room. “I’m big in the bones,” he remarked, surveying the rickety lodging-house furniture with some suspicion; “and I’m a trifle heavier than I look. I shan’t break one of these chairs if I sit down on it, shall I?” Passing round the table (littered with books and letters) in search of the nearest chair, he accidentally brushed against a sheet of paper with writing on it. “Memorandum of friends in London, to be informed of my change of address,” he read, looking at the paper, as he picked it up, with the friendly freedom that characterized him. “You have made pretty good use of your time, my son, since I took my leave of you in Queenstown harbour. I call this a reasonable long list of acquaintances made by a young stranger in London.”
“I met with an old friend of my family at the hotel,” Amelius explained. “He was a great loss to my poor father, when he got an appointment in India; and, now he has returned, he has been equally kind to me. I am indebted to his introduction for most of the names on that list.”
“Yes?” said Rufus, in the interrogative tone of a man who was waiting to hear more. “I’m listening, though I may not look like it. Git along.”
Amelius looked at his visitor, wondering in what precise direction he was to “git along.”
“I’m no friend to partial information,” Rufus proceeded; “I like to round it off complete, as it were, in my own mind. There are names on this list that you haven’t accounted for yet. Who provided you, sir, with the balance of your new friends?”
Amelius answered, not very willingly, “I met them at Mr. Farnaby’s house.”
Rufus looked up from the list with the air of a man surprised by disagreeable information, and unwilling to receive it too readily. “How?” he exclaimed, using the old English equivalent (often heard in America) for the modern “What?”
“I met them at Mr. Farnaby’s,” Amelius repeated.
“Did you happen to receive a letter of my writing, dated Dublin?” Rufus asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you set any particular value on my advice?”
“Certainly!”
“And you cultivate social relations with Farnaby and family, notwithstanding?”
“I have motives for being friendly with them, which—which I haven’t had time to explain to you yet.”
Rufus stretched out his long legs on the floor, and fixed his shrewd grave eyes steadily on Amelius.
“My friend,” he said, quietly, “in respect of personal appearance and pleasing elasticity of spirits, I find you altered for the worse, I do. It may be Liver, or it may be Love. I reckon, now I think of it, you’re too young yet for Liver. It’s the brown miss—that’s what ‘tis. I hate that girl, sir, by instinct.”
“A nice way of talking of a young lady you never saw!” Amelius broke out.
Rufus smiled grimly. “Go ahead!” he said. “If you can get vent in quarrelling with me, go ahead, my son.”
He looked round the room again, with his hands in his pockets, whistling. Descending to the table in due course of time, his quick eye detected a photograph placed on the open writing desk which Amelius had been using earlier in the day. Before it was possible to stop him, the photograph was in his hand. “I believe I’ve got her likeness,” he announced. “I do assure you I take pleasure in making her acquaintance in this sort of way. Well, now, I declare she’s a columnar creature! Yes, sir; I do justice to your native produce—your fine fleshy beef-fed English girl. But I tell you this: after a child or two, that sort runs to fat, and you find you have married more of her than you bargained for. To what lengths may you have proceeded, Amelius, with this splendid and spanking person?”
Amelius was just on the verge of taking offence. “Speak of her respectfully,” he said, “if you expect me to answer you.”
Rufus stared in astonishment. “I’m paying her all manner of compliments,” he protested, “and you’re not satisfied yet. My friend, I still find something about you, on this occasion, which reminds me of meat cut against the grain. You’re almost nasty—you are! The air of London, I reckon, isn’t at all the thing for you. Well, it don’t matter to me; I like you. Afloat or ashore, I like you. Do you want to know what I should do, in your place, if I found myself steering a little too nigh to the brown miss? I should—well, to put it in one word, I should scatter. Where’s the harm, I’ll ask you, if you try another girl or two, before you make your mind up. I shall be proud to introduce you to our slim and snaky sort at Coolspring. Yes. I mean what I say; and I’ll go back with you across the pond.” Referring in this disrespectful manner to the Atlantic Ocean, Rufus offered his hand in token of unalterable devotion and goodwill.
Who could resist such a man as this? Amelius, always in extremes, wrung his hand, with an impetuous sense of shame. “I’ve been sulky,” he said, “I’ve been rude, I ought to be ashamed of myself—and I am. There’s only one excuse for me, Rufus. I love her with all my heart and soul; and I’m engaged to be married to her. And yet, if you understand my way of putting it, I’m—in short, I’m in a mess.”
With this characteristic preface, he described his position as exactly as he could; having due regard to the necessary reserve on the subject of Mrs. Farnaby. Rufus listened, with the closest attention, from beginning to end; making no attempt to disguise the unfavourable impression which the announcement of the marriage-engagement had made on him. When he spoke next, instead of looking at Amelius as usual, he held his head down, and looked gloomily at his boots.
“Well,” he said, “you’ve gone ahead this time, and that’s a fact. She didn’t raise any difficulties that a man could ride off on—did she?”
“She was all that was sweet and kind!” Amelius answered, with enthusiasm.
“She was all that was sweet and kind,” Rufus absently repeated, still intent on the solid spectacle of his own boots. “And how about uncle Farnaby? Perhaps he’s sweet and kind likewise, or perhaps he cuts up rough? Possible—is it not, sir?”
“I don’t know; I haven’t spoken to him yet.”
Rufus suddenly looked up. A faint gleam of hope irradiated his long lank face. “Mercy be praised! there’s a last chance for you,” he remarked. “Uncle Farnaby may say No.”
“It doesn’t matter what he says,” Amelius rejoined. “She’s old enough to choose for herself, he can’t stop the marriage.”
Rufus lifted one wiry yellow forefinger, in a state of perpendicular protest. “He cannot stop the marriage,” the sagacious New Englander admitted; “but he can stop the money, my son. Find out how you stand with him before another day is over your head.”
“I can’t go to him this evening.” said Amelius; “he dines out.”
“Where is he now?”
“At his place of business.”
“Fix him at his place of business. Right away!” cried Rufus, springing with sudden energy to his feet.
“I don’t think he would like it,” Amelius objected. “He’s not a very pleasant fellow, anywhere; but he’s particularly disagreeable at his place of business.”
Rufus walked to the window, and looked out. The objections to Mr. Farnaby appeared to fail, so far, in interesting him.
“To put it plainly,” Amelius went on, “there’s something about him that I can’t endure. And—though he’s very civil to me, in his way—I don’t think he has ever got over the discovery that I am a Christian Socialist.”
Rufus abruptly turned round from the window, and became attentive again. “So you told him that—did you?” he said.
“Of course!” Amelius rejoined, sharply. “Do you suppose I am ashamed of the principles in which I have been brought up?”
“You don’t care, I reckon, if all the world knows your principles, persisted Rufus, deliberately leading him on.
“Care?” Amelius reiterated. “I only wish I had all the world to listen to me. They should hear of my principles, with no bated breath, I promise you!”
There was a pause. Rufus turned back again to the window. “When Farnaby’s at home, where does he live?” he asked suddenly—still keeping his face towards the street.
Amelius mentioned the address. “You don’t mean that you are going to call there?” he inquired, with some anxiety.
“Well, I reckoned I might catch him before dinner-time. You seem to be sort of feared to speak to him yourself. I’m your friend, Amelius—and I’ll speak for you.”
The bare idea of the interview struck Amelius with terror. “No, no!” he said. “I’m much obliged to you, Rufus. But in a matter of this sort, I shouldn’t like to transfer the responsibility to my friend. I’ll speak to Mr. Farnaby in a day or two.”
Rufus was evidently not satisfied with this. “I do suppose, now,” he suggested, “you’re not the only man moving in this metropolis who fancies Miss Regina. Query, my son: if you put off Farnaby much longer—” He paused and looked at Amelius. “Ah,” he said, “I reckon I needn’t enlarge further: thereisanother man. Well, it’s the same in my country; I don’t know what he does, with You: he always turns up, with Us, just at the time when you least want to see him.”
Therewasanother man—an older and a richer man than Amelius; equally assiduous in his attentions to the aunt and to the niece; submissively polite to his favoured young rival. He was the sort of person, in age and in temperament, who would be perfectly capable of advancing his own interests by means of the hostile influence of Mrs. Farnaby. Who could say what the result might be if, by some unlucky accident, he made the attempt before Amelius had secured for himself the support of the master of the house? In his present condition of nervous irritability, he was ready to believe in any coincidence of the disastrous sort. The wealthy rival was a man of business, a near city neighbour of Mr. Farnaby. They might be together at that moment; and Regina’s fidelity to her lover might be put to a harder test than she was prepared to endure. Amelius remembered the gentle conciliatory smile (too gentle by half) with which his placid mistress had received his first kisses—and, without stopping to weigh conclusions, snatched up his hat. “Wait here for me, Rufus, like a good fellow. I’m off to the stationer’s shop.” With those parting words, he hurried out of the room.
Left by himself, Rufus began to rummage the pockets of his frockcoat—a long, loose, and dingy garment which had become friendly and comfortable to him by dint of ancient use. Producing a handful of correspondence, he selected the largest envelope of all; shook out on the table several smaller letters enclosed; picked one out of the number; and read the concluding paragraph only, with the closest attention.
“I enclose letters of introduction to the secretaries of literary institutions in London, and in some of the principal cities of England. If you feel disposed to lecture yourself, or if you can persuade friends and citizens known to you to do so, I believe it may be in your power to advance in this way the interests of our Bureau. Please take notice that the more advanced institutions, which are ready to countenance and welcome free thought in religion, politics, and morals, are marked on the envelopes with a cross in red ink. The envelopes without a mark are addressed to platforms on which the customary British prejudices remain rampant, and in which the charge for places reaches a higher figure than can be as yet obtained in the sanctuaries of free thought.”
Rufus laid down the letter, and, choosing one among the envelopes marked in red ink, looked at the introduction enclosed. “If the right sort of invitation reached Amelius from this institution,” he thought, “the boy would lecture on Christian Socialism with all his heart and soul. I wonder what the brown miss and her uncle would say to that?”
He smiled to himself, and put the letter back in the envelope, and considered the subject for a while. Below the odd rough surface, he was a man in ten thousand; no more single-hearted and more affectionate creature ever breathed the breath of life. He had not been understood in his own little circle; there had been a want of sympathy with him, and even a want of knowledge of him, at home. Amelius, popular with everybody, had touched the great heart of this man. He perceived the peril that lay hidden under the strange and lonely position of his fellow-voyager—so innocent in the ways of the world, so young and so easily impressed His fondness for Amelius, it is hardly too much to say, was the fondness of a father for a son. With a sigh, he shook his head, and gathered up his letters, and put them back in his pockets. “No, not yet,” he decided. “The poor boy really loves her; and the girl may be good enough to make the happiness of his life.” He got up and walked about the room. Suddenly he stopped, struck by a new idea. “Why shouldn’t I judge for myself?” he thought. “I’ve got the address—I reckon I’ll look in on the Farnabys, in a friendly way.”
He sat down at the desk, and wrote a line, in the event of Amelius being the first to return to the lodgings:
DEAR BOY,
“I don’t find her photograph tells me quite so much as I want to know. I have a mind to see the living original. Being your friend, you know, it’s only civil to pay my respects to the family. Expect my unbiased opinion when I come back.
“Yours,
“RUFUS.”
Having enclosed and addressed these lines, he took up his greatcoat—and checked himself in the act of putting it on. The brown miss was a British miss. A strange New Englander had better be careful of his personal appearance, before he ventured into her presence. Urged by this cautious motive, he approached the looking-glass, and surveyed himself critically.
“I doubt I might be the better,” it occurred to him, “if I brushed my hair, and smelt a little of perfume. Yes. I’ll make a toilet. Where’s the boy’s bedroom, I wonder?”
He observed a second door in the sitting-room, and opened it at hazard. Fortune had befriended him, so far: he found himself in his young friend’s bedchamber.
The toilet of Amelius, simple as it was, had its mysteries for Rufus. He was at a loss among the perfumes. They were all contained in a modest little dressing case, without labels of any sort to describe the contents of the pots and bottles. He examined them one after another, and stopped at some recently invented French shaving-cream. “It smells lovely,” he said, assuming it to be some rare pomatum. “Just what I want, it seems, for my head.” He rubbed the shaving cream into his bristly iron-gray hair, until his arms ached. When he had next sprinkled his handkerchief and himself profusely, first with rose water, and then (to make quite sure) with eau-de-cologne used as a climax, he felt that he was in a position to appeal agreeably to the senses of the softer sex. In five minutes more, he was on his way to Mr. Farnaby’s private residence.