‘My poor Laurie! so you all say,’ said the mother; ‘but this I know,—Laurie is never lazy when he can serve other people, Frank; and he is not so clever as Ben is,’ she added. ‘Your dear papa always said so. Ben was the clever one, he always said. I would not mind about cleverness if I but knew where he was and what he was doing. That breaks my heart.’
‘Oh, he will turn up,’ said Frank, whose heart was not in any danger of breaking. And he puthis mother’s gift in his pocket, though not without compunction. ‘It seems like stealing a march upon them,’ he said to himself as he went away. This was just about a month before the time when Ben suddenly appeared at Renton Manor to bid them all good-bye, and when Laurie was near the climax of his little drama. Frank, whom no necessity had urged on, was but beginning to make his arrangements for setting out in the world, when they voluntarily or involuntarily had completed theirs, and were about to take their plunge. As he went down the walk to the river, under the budded trees, his own idea was that he was the only one of the three who would really go off, as his father wished, to seek his fortune. Ben had hidden himself somewhere in a fit of disgust, but would repent and become reasonable, and return to Renton to manage his mother’s affairs, which needed some one to look after them. After all, Renton was his mother’s for the time being, and it was the natural home of her eldest son; and as for Laurie, he would stick fast where he was, and would not have pluck enough to make any change. So that it was utterly out of the question that he, Frank, should relinquish his plans and prospects in order that one of his mother’s children might be near her. Mrs. Renton, indeed, was not a woman to exercise such an influence on her sons. They were fond of her; but either they werenot fond enough to make a sacrifice for her, or she was not the kind of woman to require it. She kept in the background, wailing softly, but was not energetic enough to demand a response from any one. Frank marched down to his boat, which lay waiting for him, with a feeling that if he was not the clever one, he was at least the energetic one, of the family, and probably would be the only one to make his fortune. The first step, to be sure, was a little slow and troublesome, but, once in India, everything became possible. He resolved within himself that he would scorn delight and live laborious days, as soon as he had got himself made into a real soldier instead of an ornamental Guardsman. He would go in for his profession with all his heart. No doubt it was a resolve which might call for a good deal of self-denial, but for that young Frank was prepared. Parties, and pleasure, and music, and even love affairs, were things he meant to be out of his way. As for falling into a lower sphere contentedly, as Laurie seemed to have done, Frank hoped that such a descent was impossible to him. He pulled down the stream to Cookesley, though it was cold; for the river was at once the best and most expeditious way of passing between the manor and Royalborough. Frank pulled down the stream, and felt his heart glow and tingle as he thought of all he was going to do. He had some ‘pluck’ he admitted to himself, if not so muchcleverness as Laurie or Ben. So it will be seen he had quite forgotten that momentary peep at Alice Severn, and the equally temporary impression which her young beauty had made upon his imagination or his heart.
Itwas not very long after this that Frank Renton was accosted by one of his friends in the regiment with what seemed to him a very odd sort of request. ‘Look here, Frank,’ said young Edgbaston, who was a son,—it is unnecessary to add,—of Lord Brummagem, and a very popular, good-natured young fellow, ‘I’ve promised to produce you at the Riches’, where I am going to lunch. Don’t struggle, my boy. They are going to have your brother Laurie, and you must come.’
‘My brother Laurie!’ cried Frank in amazement. ‘And who are the Riches; and what do they want me for? I never heard of the people that I know of. I suppose it is one of your jokes?’
‘It’s very witty to be sure,’ said Edgbaston, ‘but it is not one of my jokes. Papa Rich is something in the City. He was a cheesemonger once upon a time, I believe; but that’s all left behind long ago. Alf Rich, of the Buffs, is one of his sons. You know Alf. He gives capital dinners and eke luncheons. And they’re all intensely jolly, from the pater down to little Nelly. Come along. I promised to bring you. And you’ll meet your brother, if that’s any inducement. Old Rich told me he was to be there.’
‘Laurie to be there! I don’t understand it,’ said Frank.
‘Old Rich buys pictures to no end,’ said Edgbaston; ‘perhaps that’s why your brother’s going; or perhaps he’s after little Nelly. And not a bad speculation either, I can tell you. She’s a nice little girl;—and heaps, cartloads, mountains of tin. If Laurie don’t go in for that style of thing, I’d recommend it to your own consideration.’
‘If it’s so desirable, why do you let it go among your friends in this liberal way?’ said Frank. ‘It’s not in Laurie’s line, I fear,’ he added with a sigh. To tell the truth, the conditions and prospects of his elder brothers lay much on Frank’s mind. He felt easy about himself; but he disapproved of the others, especially Laurie, whom everybody had disapproved of from his cradle,—and felt that he was in a bad way.
‘Then come along, and try your luck, my boy,’ said his friend. And the consequence was that by noon Frank and half-a-dozen more were flying over the green, balmy, awakening country on Edgbaston’s drag. They were all in high spirits, with that delightful sense of fulfilling every duty that can belooked for from a Guardsman which is the soul of pleasure. And Frank Renton, puritanical as he had been in respect to his brother Laurie and Alice Severn, was soon chatting about ‘little Nell,’ whom he had never seen, as familiarly as any of them. So that it is evident stern principle alone was not involved in his displeasure with his brother. The young men were not at all contemptuous of the good things to be had at Richmont; but the family who were to receive them there did not count for much. Old Rich spent his money freely to give them pleasure, and got laughed at for his pains; Mamma Rich, or Richmère, as they call her, was not much more respectfully treated; and as for Nelly Rich, her name was bandied about from mouth to mouth with the most unscrupulous ease. ‘If I were you, So-and-so, I’d certainly go in for little Nell,’ one and another of those lively youths would say from time to time. She had ‘heaps of tin’—that was her grand characteristic,—and was evidently ready to drop into anybody’s arms who should do her the honour to hold them out to her. But the talk was a matter of course, not meaning half that it seemed to mean. And half at least of her critics were dumb before Nelly, and had an unfeigned dread of her keen little bright eyes and sharp speeches. Richmont itself was a big house in a big park, conveying to the ordinary spectator no sense of present incongruity with its past. The old part of the mansion was in the eastwing, and not visible from the front, and all that could be seen by the party in the drag was the vast white modern façade, very fresh and clean as yet, with great plate-glass windows, and a wide hospitable door, opening into a hall with scagliola pillars. At this door old Rich stood, waving his hand in sign of welcome. The flower-beds on the lawn were already full of every bright thing which could be had at the season, and the whole place was alit and alive with wealth, and warmth, and movement. ‘To think that a fine old place like this should drop into the greasy hands of an old cheesemonger!’ said one of the men as they drove through the leafy avenue. But they were all quite willing to be the cheesemonger’s guests, and to drink his wine, and enjoy the good things his greasy gold had provided.
‘Glad to see you all,’ shouted Mr. Rich; ‘delighted we’ve got such a fine day; almost good enough for croquet, it appears to me. Good morning, my lord. Oh, any friend of yours! Ah-ha, Mr. Frank Renton,’ stretching forth his hand with a cordiality which took Frank by surprise, ‘now I call this kind. Had everything been as it ought to be, of course we’d have met before now,—country neighbours, you know. Your brother has just come by the last train with a friend of his, a wonderful clever fellow from town. He’s too much of a swell himself ever to paint much, eh? but he’s hand and glove with all of them. Come along up-stairs, and I’ll take you to him. LordEdgbaston, you know your way to the drawing-room. Mrs. Rich will be delighted to see you; and I trust to you not to let my Nelly leave the room till I send for her. I mean to give the child a little surprise,’ added the millionnaire, rubbing his fat hands. ‘Come along, Mr. Renton.’ Frank followed in a state of partial stupefaction. What reason there could be for this old fellow’s cordiality; why he should leave a live lord to find his own way up-stairs and conduct him, Frank Renton, instead; why Laurie should be here; what he had to do with the surprise Mr. Rich was going to give his child;—all these were mysteries to Frank. He seemed to have gone into an enchanted house. Had Mr. Rich taken him aside and offered him his daughter’s hand and fortune on the spot, his surprise would scarcely have been increased. Was this what it meant? Or if it was not this, what did it mean?
The Rentons and the Beauchamps had been friends in the old days, and Frank knew the house through which he was being guided almost as well, perhaps, as the owner of it did, who walked before him, looking not half so imposing as his own butler. Frank, who had a good deal of prudence for so young a man, thought it would be better on the whole to say nothing about this; but when his host preceded him through passage after passage, and up one short flight of stairs after another, surprise got the better of him.
‘We must be going to the music-room, I suppose,’ he said; ‘this is the way;’ for the new master paused uncertain between two turns.
‘That’s about it,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘droll though, to see a stranger know one’s house better than one does oneself. I suppose you were a deal here in the time of the old people? Very nice people according to all I hear. But, you know, I didn’t turn them out. Bought the place at a fair price, as anybody else might have done. It was their doing, not mine. Ah! it’s a sad thing to outrun the constable, Mr. Frank. It should be a lesson to you as a young man.’
‘I am just going off to India,’ said Frank, determined, at least, to let his new acquaintance know that little was to be made of him in the way of society, ‘and I shall not have much chance.’
‘To India, eh?’ said Mr. Rich, with an unchanged tone. Clearly after all, he did not mean to offer the young Guardsman on the spot his daughter and her fortune. ‘India’s a fine thing at your age. My eldest boy went off a dozen years ago, when we were not quite so well off as we are now; and he’s coming home this summer, please God. If you had been at home we might have had no end of jolly meetings; but your mother goes out nowhere, I hear.’
‘Not now,’ said Frank; ‘my mother is a great invalid.’ And there was something in his tone which betrayed a certain offence,—What right had thisman to speak of his mother? And this tone conveyed itself at once to the other’s lively ear.
‘Ah, well! she has a right to please herself,’ said Mr. Rich. ‘Here we are at last. Halloo, gentlemen, I hope it fits. I wouldn’t have it too large or too small for a hundred pounds.’
‘Never fear, it will fit beautifully,—I knew it would,’ cried Laurie’s voice from behind a great picture, which was being hoisted into its place. After having been rather splendid and haughty about his mother to this commonplace individual, who had no right to hope for her acquaintance, it must be admitted that it gave Frank a pang to find his brother as busy as a workman, and quite at his ease in his occupation, putting up Mr. Rich’s pictures. Here was something worse even than Laurie’s slovenly ways and contented relapse into lower life. When a man has a brother in the Guards he owes it, if not to himself, at least to his relations, to remember that he is a gentleman. And to play the fool in such a house as this was worse than anything, with all those fellows below to tell each other how sadly Frank Renton’s brother, ‘the artist fellow,’ had fallen back in the world.
‘I did not know my brother was in the habit of carrying home his work,’ he said, with a certain savage irony. But Laurie did not hear this speech, and Mr. Rich, who did hear it, took no notice. There was nothing for it but to stand and stare at the daub as it was raised to its place. In the middle of the floor, infront of it, stood a bearded stranger, whom Frank did not know, nor care to know. He was watching the progress of the picture with anxious interest. Was it Laurie’s picture? Whether it were or not, Laurie condescending to make a carpenter of himself for the moment was a sight which shocked his brother much. He strode away to the end window, and gazed out to show his indifference, with a soft whistle of impatience, which would have made itself into words anything but soft had circumstances permitted. But nobody remarked either his impatience or his anger. The room was long and not very broad, and the panel in which the picture was being placed was immediately opposite the gilded pipes of a chamber organ, which was let into the wall. To be sure, if it had been a picture of chorister boys instead of little barbarians it would have been more harmonious with the place; but Suffolk’s Angles shone out of the dark wall like positive sunshine. There were three broad mullioned windows in one end of the room, and at the other a great east window full of heraldic designs in painted glass,—the arms of the Beauchamps and their connexions. Under this blaze of colour, on either side, the panels were carved, running into little pinnacles and canopy work of a semi-ecclesiastical kind. It had been, indeed, a chapel in the early ages, when the Beauchamps were Catholic. A few high-backed, heavy, oak chairs were all the furniture in it now, except quite at the west end of the room, near wherethe picture was being placed, where a grand piano stood under one window, and a small easel in the other. This picturesque place, in which priests in glittering vestments, and knights in steel, and ladies in flowing robes, would have been the natural actors, was now the music-room in Richmont, occupied chiefly by the ex-cheesemonger’s daughter,—an out-of-the-way place in which she could pursue her occupations as she pleased. Reflections, not exactly to this effect, but of a somewhat similar meaning, were in Frank’s mind as he turned with disgust from his unconscious brother. The poor Beauchamps!—who had the best blood in England in their veins, and were now vegetating at all sorts of wretched Continental baths and watering-places. To be sure, old Beauchamp was a blackleg, and his wife no better than she should be,—and the music-room, when Frank knew it, had been a lumber-room and play-room, dear to the children, though nobody thought anything about its picturesqueness. Still, those were the Beauchamps, and these Riches,—and what a falling off was there! Frank was full of these thoughts, and in a very discontented mind generally, not condescending to look at the picture with which all the rest were absorbed, when Laurie emerged from behind the frame, and, to his amazement, saw that it was his brother who interrupted the light in the middle window. It was a kind of bay window, projecting just a little out beyond the line of the others, and in itthere stood a low chair covered with old brocade, and a small table with a vase of fresh spring flowers. Frank had not noticed these little accessories, but Laurie, having the eye of an artist, took them in at a glance. Somehow Frank’s attitude, standing between the low chair and the little table, suggested ideas to Laurie’s mind of a different kind from those which moved his brother. This was the favourite haunt of the millionnaire’s daughter. The chair was hers, and the flowers, and the book which lay on the ledge of the window; and Royalborough was close at hand, not too far for a young soldier to ride over any day. Could Frank be Nelly Rich’s property too?
‘Frank!’ cried Laurie, ‘you here! Who could have dreamt of seeing you?’
‘I have more reason to say so,’ said Frank. ‘We are quartered close by; but what can you be doing carpentering in a house like this? Perhaps that’s the branch of art you have taken to at last,’ the Guardsman continued with a sneer. As for Laurie, he had been good-natured from his cradle, and laughed at this little ebullition.
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Come and look at the picture. Of course, I know you don’t know anything about it; but so long as you have eyes you may look, at least. What games we used to have up here! Is the goddess worthy of the shrine now?’ he added, glancing up with a little curiosity into the young soldier’s face.
‘I don’t know what you mean by shrines and goddesses,’ said Frank, still angry; ‘but I do think, for the sake of your friends, if not for your own, you ought to mind what you’re about, and not be so very complaisant in the house of a cad like this.’
‘Hush!’ said Laurie, ‘don’t call names, my big brother. What have I been doing, I wonder, to come under your great displeasure? Dust on my coat, is it?’ and Laurie suddenly bethought himself of the cobwebs which he had hoped the padrona might have brushed off for him; and stopped short, the foolish fellow, and smiled and sighed.
‘Dust!’ cried Frank, indignantly. ‘I wonder you did not take it off to do your work the better. It would have been the right thing to do.’
‘And so it would,’ said Laurie; ‘I will recollect another time. But come along, old fellow, and look at the picture, and don’t make yourself so disagreeable. Old Rich has sent for his daughter, and we can’t go on squaring before a lady. Stand here, and look at it well.’
‘Is it yours?’ said the reluctant Frank. And Laurie laughed and shook his head.
‘He asks if it is mine,’ he said; ‘there’s a Guardsman’s idea of the possibilities, Suffolk! You might as well have asked if that Madonna was mine.’
‘Well, and what if I had?’ said Frank, stoutly, in his ignorance—and went and stared with a determination to see nothing. The three figures were standing thus grouped,—Frank looking at the picture, and Suffolk, who had taken no part in the conversation, looking with mild surprise at the natural curiosity called a Guardsman of which he knew little more than the other did about the Angles,—when Mr. Rich came back triumphant with his daughter. They made a curious centre to the room, from which, by this time, the workmen who had been placing the picture had disappeared, leaving them alone. Frank, the very impersonation of scepticism and critical ignorance, stood with his face turned upward to the Angles, and defiance and disdain in the very attitude of his feet resentfully planted on the polished oaken floor. Suffolk, turning round and round in his fingers the rule which one of the workmen had left behind him, stood half a step behind, looking at Frank, with the faintest of smiles on his face, and that curious faculty of seeing, which never deserts a true painter, somehow making itself visible in his eyes. He was not studying the figure which thus defiantly posed before him, and yet there was an amusing consciousness of the pose, and of all expressed by it, in his look. Frank was so unaware of this, and Laurie, as he recognised it, became so divided between sympathy with his brother and amusement with his friend, that the three faces made a very curious group; and so Nelly Rich thought as she came into the room, not knowing why it was thather father had brought her here. She was followed by the entire party, Mrs. Rich leading the way, and leaning her substantial weight on Edgbaston’s arm. She had but a minute to notice the group, but it made an impression on her; and curiously enough,—or, perhaps not curiously,—Nelly’s sympathies fixed upon Frank in the moment she had to identify him. The others were laughing at him, and he was young and single-handed, and,—so handsome. Nelly Rich piqued herself upon being intellectual and fond of art; and yet it was neither the painter nor the amateur that caught her eyes; it was the ignorant, unintellectual, handsome young Guardsman, which no doubt was quite natural in a way.
She gave a cry of wonder and delight when she saw the picture; but the kind father, to whom that cry was music, had made a mistake by bringing the party with him. After the first outburst Nelly retreated and was silent. She was not the kind of Nelly Rich whom either Frank or Laurie Renton had expected to see. Anything more unlike the portly, comely mother who came in after her, sweeping her gorgeous skirts all over the brown oak floor, could not be conceived. Nelly was very small; she had the figure and the foot of a fairy; and how her dark, clear, olive complexion,—her hair so dark as to be almost black,—her brilliant dark-brown eyes,—could have been derived from the two ruddy, roundabout people beside her, was a puzzle to everybody. Shemight have been a fairy changeling, but that her small figure was perfect in form, and instinct with life, health, and activity. She was as plainly dressed as her mother was gorgeous, with a black gown and knots of crimson ribbons, like a Spaniard, which, indeed, was the most becoming dress she could have chosen. And she was not a timid maiden generally, taking shelter from the crowd; but a creature quite able to express herself and defend herself. Nevertheless she stepped aside as her mother entered on Edgbaston’s arm, and said not a word more about the picture. The party invaded the music-room, filling it with noise and movement. The scene was changed. It was no longer a retired, half-solemn place, full of associations of the past, and one soft, pleasant suggestion of the present conveyed by the fresh flowers, the instruments, the little easel, and the book, which harmonised everything; but a show place, with vulgar sightseers and a vulgar showman,—vulgar, though the visitors came of blood to which no objection could be taken. They gazed at the painted window, and at the carved oak, and at the pictures, alike with suppressed yawns, and referred stealthily to their watches, wondering when luncheon would be announced. Suffolk, who was the only stranger whom no one knew, stood aside, and looked on with a certain indignation. His picture, newly placed, newly arrived,—a picture which Academicians had condescended to praise, and the ‘Sword’ had noticed favourably,—should have been, no one could doubt, the chief thing to be noticed; but what the newcomers did was to cast a careless glance at it, and say, ‘Ah! oh! pretty thing, to be sure,’ and turn their backs with that unspeakable calm of indifference which galls the artist mind beyond endurance. ‘Like old Woodland’s style, ain’t it?’ said Edgbaston, with his glass in his eye. If there was one man or painter whom Suffolk regarded with especial contempt it was old Woodland! The painter turned to the window stung and smarting all over, and tried to look out; and then one of the young men found a sketch upon Nelly’s little easel, and went into ecstasies over it. They all crowded, a mass of tall heads, to look at it with an interest which no one had dreamt of showing in the Angles. ‘Parcel of empty-headed coxcombs!’ Suffolk said to himself; and then certain reflections overtook him as to the kind of people who were likely to see his work where it was now placed. Was not the Guardsman the very highest possible class of visitor who could come to Richmont; and was this all for which he had spent his brains and his strength? He had turned, and was looking with the most curious wonder and contempt upon the group round Nelly’s easel. Could he help being contemptuous? The sketch was an unobtrusive little performance, pretending nothing, and not meaning much. And it was for such eyes as these that he had painted his picture! He was thinking so with acertain bitterness, when Nelly herself, with a little rush, penetrated the group, and, seizing upon the harmless drawing they were gazing at, thrust it before their eyes into a portfolio.
‘It is not worth a glance,’ she cried; ‘it’s a bit of waste paper. Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t stare, and make me ashamed of myself before Mr. Suffolk! It was the picture you came to see.’
‘I came because you were coming,’ said one of the young men.
‘Oh, never mind the picture. Come and show us what you have here,’ said another, laying his hand on the portfolio. This was how they talked, with Suffolk looking on. As for Nelly, her cheeks grew crimson. She was not, as we have said, a timid maiden; and she was given to speaking her mind, as even these gentlemen knew.
‘Yes,’ she said, with her eyes sparkling; ‘to be sure, you know best. You shall have the portfolio to look at—art brought down to the meanest capacity. I might have known that would be the most suitable for you; and, Mr. Suffolk, come and tell me about it,’ she said softly, turning to the painter. She held out her hand, that he might offer her his arm, and led him, in spite of himself, opposite to the poor picture which had been so scorned. ‘I want to clear them all away, those stupid men,’ said Nelly, confidentially. ‘I hate young men; they are all so idiotic. Mr. Suffolk, when I look at this I could cry, out of envyand spite. How is it you can do it?—And I work and work and can’t do anything. I would give my head if I could paint only that little bit of a tree; and I suppose you never gave it a thought?’ she said, turning the brilliant brown eyes upon him. ‘Tell me about it, please; for it will be my chief friend, and live with me all day long.’
‘What am I to tell you, Miss Rich?’ said the painter, taken by surprise, and yet standing on his dignity still.
And then Nelly gazed at the Angles for at least a minute in silence, holding his arm. ‘It does not matter,’ she said, at last, with a long-drawn breath of satisfaction,—‘I shall learn it all from their faces. You must know, I live in this room, and they will never ask me what they are to tell me. I shall find out all their story in little bits. That one is quite happy to have so much change and variety, and to feel himself in Rome,—you painted him when you were happy, Mr. Suffolk; and that one is thinking of home,—something had happened to you then. I shall find it all out by degrees. Those men don’t find themselves so happy as they thought they would be over the portfolio,’ she broke off suddenly, with a little laugh; ‘but please to remember I have got eyes, and there are other people besides Guardsmen who come here sometimes. Mamma, I hear the bell for luncheon; please take all those men away.’
‘You must not be shocked with Nelly, Mr.Suffolk,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘I have told her all about your charming little wife, so she knows she need not be afraid to speak to you; and that’s her way, making up all that nonsense about the pictures she likes. I think it looks perfectly charming, now that it is in its place. Nelly, this is Mr. Renton, whom I told you of. He is such a friend of Mrs. Severn’s; and this is Mr. Frank Renton; neighbours of ours, you know, when they are at home, and cousins to that nice Miss Westbury you made acquaintance with the other day,—such a nice, lady-like girl. But I hear the bell. I am sure you must all be quite hungry after your long drive.’
‘Yes, come along,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘come along, and let us have something to eat. Nothing like art for giving one an appetite. I am as hungry as a hunter. All with getting up Suffolk’s lovely picture! Gem of my collection, I call it, though I have half-a-dozen Crowquills down-stairs, which I’ll show you after lunch. Come along, gentlemen. As for Nelly, you know, and the painter, they’ll follow. Ladies and men of genius don’t want to eat like us common mortals. Come along, come along,’ said the millionnaire, his voice dying off in the passage. The two Rentons, who had just been presented to Nelly, stood by her, waiting till she led the way; and Nelly, for her part, had no inclination to lead the way. She had got rid of ‘those stupid men,’ and she was rather in the humour for a little talk.
‘Now they’re gone one can breathe,’ she said, with complimentary confidentialness. ‘We need not go down just yet. Please, Mr. Renton, tell me about the Severns. You are grand people, and I don’t suppose Miss Westbury would like it if I quoted her as an acquaintance; but I may ask about the Severns. Do you know them too?’
‘I have only seen them once,’ said Frank; ‘but I don’t think you do Mary Westbury justice. I am sure she would be charmed——’
‘Tell me about the Severns, please,’ said Nelly, with a little wave of her hand.
Then there was a pause, which nobody could have explained. Laurie, it is true, knew very well why it was that he, excited and confused as he was, should feel himself unable to speak of the padrona; but why could not Frank answer so simple a question? In the meanwhile Frank, on his side, saw suddenly before him, as in a vision, that picture of Alice standing in the doorway, with all the shadows round her, and felt his lips sealed, and could not speak.
‘If these gentlemen will not tell me anything,’ said Nelly, ‘Mr. Suffolk, speak. I’m sure you know them too.’
‘I have only seen them once,’ repeated Frank, hastily. ‘Miss Severn plays like—St. Cecilia. I have not heard anything like her playing for a hundred years.’
‘Well,’ said Nelly, shrugging her shoulders, ‘here is one fact elicited by dint of inquiry. Miss Severn—that is, I suppose, Alice, who was a little darling when I saw her last—plays. I don’t care so much for playing as I ought to do. And I wanted to hear of the padrona and all the little ones. Couldn’t you tell me anything more, Mr. Renton? Yes, I call her the padrona too. Mr. Severn used to give me a lesson sometimes—not for money, but for love. It may seem strange to you,’ said Nelly, demurely, ‘but he was fond of me. And I am fond of her, and all of them. And Alice plays! I suppose that is all one could ever get out of a man. If any one asks you about me, Mr. Frank Renton, I know exactly what you will say: “Miss Rich—draws.” It is nice to be so concise, but oh, tell me about my pretty padrona, please!’ cried Nelly, clasping her hands together, and turning appealing eyes to Laurie. It was almost more than Laurie’s composure could bear, for it was just at the moment after he had made his discovery, and was waiting to know what was to be done with him; and his heart was, so to speak, in his mouth.
‘She is as pretty as ever,’ said Laurie, in that strange tone of suppressed emotion which makes itself almost more distinctly apparent than the plainest confession of feeling; ‘and I don’t think I could tell you how good she is. Suffolk knows her. We cannot trust ourselves to speak of the padrona,’ saidLaurie, nervously, ‘we people who live about the Square.’
And then Suffolk said something to the same purport in words, but in so different a tone as to throw the thrill in Laurie’s voice into fuller relief. And Nelly looked at him full in the face, not disguising the little gleams of discernment, half surprise, half mischief, in her eyes. This was the only sign about her of inferior breeding. She had not sufficient delicacy to conceal the enlightenment his tone had given her. She looked at him so that he felt he was discovered, and his face flamed with the sudden consciousness; and then she turned to Frank, who was the particular mouse with which at the moment Nelly felt disposed to play.
‘This room must have been made on purpose for Miss Severn, who plays,’ she said. ‘I should think anybody who was musical would be in paradise here. There is the organ and the piano, and in that closet there are harps, and sackbuts, and dulcimers, and all kinds of music. I shall ask Alice Severn to come to see me, and Mr. Frank Renton shall come too, and hear her—play.’
‘I ask no better,’ said Frank, responding to the challenge as became a Guardsman. And Nelly took them down-stairs, leaving the two graver, pre-occupied men to follow, and making Frank her partner by some subtle sleight of hand. He was very much at home at Richmont before the day was over. EvenLaurie remarked the rising flirtation, and laughed to himself in the midst of his own excitement at the possibility of his brother’s fortune coming in so easy a way. And his friends congratulated him on his success, and pledged him in bumpers when they got home. ‘I tell you, my boy, she has cartloads of tin,’ said Edgbaston. ‘Better that than going out to India.’ And as for Frank, he did not deny to himself that on the whole, notwithstanding Laurie’s undignified aspect, and Mr. Rich’s soap-boiling, or cheesemongering—which was it?—he had spent a very pleasant day.
Nextday, however, Frank Renton was full of many thoughts.
I doubt whether it is in my power to give any clear impression of the reflections naturally produced in a young man’s mind by the first suggestion of marrying money. In ordinary cases, marriage is not the object set before the youth—the purpose contemplated from the beginning of an acquaintance. He is attracted by some stranger, whose name he never heard before, perhaps, and of whose existence, previous to the eventful hour which brought them together, he had no knowledge. Chance or inclination brings them together. Then the germ warms, quickens, bursts into flower. Love comes spontaneous, unsought, perhaps almost unwelcome, and marriage becomes but a necessary accident in its course. But to approach that idea of marriage in cold blood, and without any soft compulsion of feeling, is a very different matter. It is a thing which women are called upon to do every day; but it is not so inevitable among men. It had been brought before Frank in what seemed a very distinct way. True, Nelly Rich was a little flirt, almost confessedly avenging herself on the world for her father’s uncomfortable position, and the spurns her family endured, by doing as much harm as she could among the men who ate Mr. Rich’s dinners and laughed at him. She had no mercy upon them, and more than one, within the knowledge even of the battalion at Royalborough, who had supposed themselves sure of Nelly and her fortune, had been ignominiously turned off when the crisis came. This very fact naturally made Frank think the more of the impression, which all his comrades informed him he had produced. Fifty thousand pounds down, and some further share in all probability when the father and mother died, not to speak of Nelly herself—pretty, and bright, and amusing, and clever as she was! The idea, as was natural, awoke many reflections in the young soldier’s mind. I have said that he had not suffered by his father’s death; but yet had he meant to remain in his present position at home, no doubt Frank would have shared in the disadvantages which his brothers had felt so keenly; and to have it in his power at twenty to secure his own comfort for life without any particular trouble was a dazzling prospect. It is not to be supposed by this that Frank had developed at so early an age the mercenary instincts of a fortune-hunter. On the contrary, the good things whichthe gods seemed thus to have placed within his reach, gave him a shock rather than a thrill of satisfaction. He had no wish to marry,—to plunge into serious life at his age, and give up the wayward ways of youth. The idea would never have entered his mind had he been left to himself. But when a young man sees such a golden apple nodding at him from an accessible bough, and thinks he has but to put forth his hand and secure to himself at one stroke all the advantages of wealth, the sensation is a startling one. He went about thoughtful for two days, turning it over and over in his mind. It is true he did not think very much about Nelly. She was very nice, very jolly, and a man need not fear to have a dull companion for life whom duty called upon to marry Mr. Rich’s daughter; but the truth was that she did not count for very much in the matter. Frank was honest with himself, and affected no delusion on that subject; but then he had heard of people marrying money all his life without any particular reprobation. Many men had done it, as he knew, who got on very well with their wives, and made admirable husbands. Indeed, as Frank reflected to himself, with the mild cynicism which was inseparable from the kind of education he had gone through, marriage was one of the things in which there must be many mixed motives. Love, of course, was all very well to romance about; but love could not be, never was, the only thing takeninto account, except indeed by fools. If it was mere love you married for, of course you did it in the style of King Cophetua, and scorned the consequences. But few men went so far as that. There were questions of income and settlements, and how people were to live, which came in along with the purest affection, and brought marriage,—necessarily,—into the same category with all other human affairs. Edgbaston, for instance, as everybody knew, had been desperately in love with Fanny Trent, who married old Oatley, the brewer, after all. Edgbaston himself, in a melting moment, had told the story to Frank. ‘I’ve got nothing but mortgages to look forward to,’ the young lord said, ‘and of course I knew that was how it must end. I had only a shabby old coronet to offer her, and Oatley was a bag of money. Poor Fanny! I don’t think she liked it any more than I did; but what can a fellow do when circumstances are dead against him?’ That was how it happened in ordinary life. Even when a man was as fond of a woman as he could be, still he must take other matters into account,—how they were to live, what provision was to be made for the future, and a hundred other details about connexions and position and the like. Therefore, whatever your feelings might be, Frank argued with himself, marriage was always a matter of mixed motives; and to reject a rich alliance which had nothing particularly disagreeable in it, or indeed to put asidethe thought of it, as if marriage was not one of the things to be calculated about and carefully considered in all its bearings, was simple folly. He had never thought so deeply on any subject, his profession and general circumstances being rather against any very lively exercise of his mental faculties. This question of Nelly Rich cost him two days’ painful deliberation. To have her and to suspend his negotiations about India and the marching regiment, and to strike out a shorter path instead to wealth, and ease, and comfort—or not to have her! It even interfered with his sleep, though he was so young and healthy. It was not a matter on which he could consult any one, and this increased the difficulty tenfold. Even as to Edgbaston, though he was so good a fellow, Frank had sufficient delicacy to feel that if he should hereafter marry a woman about whom he had thus consulted his friend, he could never allow that friend to enter the house in which his wife should be supreme. If she ever became his wife it would be indispensable that no living creature should know how he had once questioned and doubted. Frank might be susceptible to worldly motives, as most people are; but he was full of honourable feeling all the same. He might marry money, but no one should ever be able so much as to hint to the woman who brought it that it was not her he loved best. He would do all a man could to love her if he did marry her; andhe would breathe his secret to no one. And thus he turned his difficulty over and over in his mind, and denied himself the comfort of friendly counsel on the subject, which indeed was as high an evidence of the young man’s honourable feeling as could well be desired.
But his reasonings with himself were far from being successful. His arguments, like those of philosophy, were irrefutable, but produced no conviction. The more clearly he saw that it was expedient for him to seize so unusual an opportunity, and secure his own prospects for life, the more unwilling did he feel to take the first necessary steps. India suddenly acquired an attraction for Frank which it never had before. Tiger-hunts, warlike expeditions,—all the pomp and circumstance of Eastern life,—suddenly gleamed up in his imagination as contrasted with the tame amusements and monotonous life at home. Yes, home had been very pleasant before any other visions came. Hunting, and fishing, and boating, and going to balls, are very agreeable modes of filling up a young man’s time, and leave him little leisure to think what is the good of it all. But if by any chance that question should penetrate through the maze of pleasures, it either has to be answered or it leaves an unpleasant echo among sounds otherwise most agreeable. Frank had made a virtue of necessity after his father’s death, and had compelled himself to ask and to findan answer to this demand. After all there was no good except amusement in it. He was a lovely spectacle,—he was modestly aware,—on state occasions in his grand uniform; but these occasions were but few, and there would still be heaps of men left to hunt the foxes and fish the rivers of England after he was gone. A man who remained and grew old and yet was never anything more than a beautiful Guardsman, was not an imposing being. And the money he might marry was not enough to give him occupation and a solemn status in the country. Had it been fifty thousand a-year indeed, that would have been as good as a profession; for of course it would have involved estates to manage, and a hundred things to do; but fifty thousand down, though it would make him extremely comfortable, would leave him as ornamental and useless as ever. And India was all novel, and fresh, and full of excitement;—troops to lead, mutinies to quell for anything he knew, principalities to conquer perhaps,—shawls, diamonds, tigers, everything new. Frank had a hard time of it with all these thoughts. And once or twice there did actually spring up before him, quite uncalled-for, among his serious reflections, the shadowy apparition of that doorway with its curtains, and the young face looking through. That had nothing to do with it, you may well say,—less than nothing; but yet it had a sort of confusing effect on the young man’s intellect, and added a perplexity the more.The way in which he finally extricated himself from the maze, and saw daylight at last, is one which, I suppose, few people would divine, and which could have occurred only to a younger brother in conscious possession of many qualities, both intuitive and the result of experience, which Providence had denied to the rest of his family. He wrote a letter to his brother Laurie; and this is what the young Machiavel said;—
‘My dear Laurie,—‘You will be surprised I don’t doubt when you see what I am writing to you about. Perhaps you will think it is not the part of the younger to advise the elder; but if we don’t hang together, and do the best we can for each other, what are we, under our present circumstances, to do? I am not quite as old as you are, but perhaps I have been thrown more into the world. You have always taken to artists, and those kind of people, you know, who are out of the tide, and have queer notions; beside being,—no offence intended,—of a diffeent sphere from us. You think, on the other hand, that we are an empty-headed set, and perhaps you are not far wrong; but a fellow picks up a great many wrinkles even among men that are stupid enough to look at,—don’t you see?—when they’ve got some knowledge of the world.‘The fact is I am beating about the bush a little,because I don’t very well know how to begin what I’ve got to say. It is just this. You must have noticed the other day when you were at Richmont how favourable everybody was to you and to me. Of course, one does not care for the opinion of an old beggar like Rich. But his wife isn’t at all so bad, and the girl, on the whole, is very nice. I assure you frankly I do think so. She’s a clever little thing, and decidedly pretty and amusing too, and fond of pictures, and that sort of thing, so that there would be a sympathy between you. To say it out plump, my opinion is that she is the very sort of girl you ought to marry. It is not everybody that would suit you. You want some one that has money, and yet doesn’t stand upon her money; and that would not be conventional or stuck-up, but take your friends along with yourself, and make up her mind to it. Now Nelly Rich has no right to be stuck-up; and yet she’s nice, and looks nice, and we Rentons are well enough known to marry anybody we please. As for the father, I don’t think you need mind about him. He is very liberal and hospitable, and ready to throw his money about in buckets-full, and that always tells. People may snigger at him, but they’ll go to his house all the same. And you may marry a girl, you know, without marrying her father too. The mother is not at all so bad. She’s motherly, and that sort of thing. And Nelly has fifty thousand pounds. I can’t tellyou how much I have been thinking of it since that day. The fellows here have all advised me to go in for it myself, but I’m rather too young to marry; and besides I think it would suit you far better than me. I have my profession, and I can do very well for a few years on my allowance, especially in India, where there is double pay. But you,—forgive me, my dear Laurie,—have always been a fellow to talk, you know, and to do things for other people. I don’t think you’re the man to make your way in the world, and I can’t help feeling that to have a nice wife who would take an interest in your pursuits, and a nice steady income that would keep you out of anxiety, would be the very thing for you. I have made every inquiry, and as far as I can make out, Nelly Rich is not what you would call a flirt. She is fond of a little fun, and I like her for that; and when a man is cheeky, they say she leads him on till he makes a fool of himself; but no sensible fellow would object to a girl for having a little spirit. She is very good-tempered, and no end of fun; and very clever at drawing, and everything of that kind. She doesn’t go in for music, but neither do you; and she’s the sort of girl that would travel with you, and work with you, and make an ass of herself about pictures, and old churches, and rubbish, just as much as you would. I think, on my word, Laurie, it’s the very thing for you.‘Anyhow, old fellow, you won’t take it amiss myhaving put it into your head? It would be a most sensible thing to do; and I feel sure a man might get quite fond of Nelly Rich, were he to try. I suppose it is because the Manor is so near that they are so friendly to us. As soon as mamma is well enough I’ll make her call. She’ll do it at once when she knows what depends on it. And if you play your cards at all well, you are as sure of success as anything can be. And then you would not need to give up any of your friends. She was as pleased with that painter-fellow the other day as if he had been a prince. And you remember how she talked about the people in Fitzroy Square. The more I think of it, the more it seems providential for you. My dear fellow, go in and win. I should have recommended her to Ben, had Ben been within knowledge. But she will suit you much better than she would have suited him. And it will be a real comfort to think that one of us is saved from the wreck, whether the others sink or swim.‘Yrs. affec.,‘F. Renton.’
‘My dear Laurie,—
‘You will be surprised I don’t doubt when you see what I am writing to you about. Perhaps you will think it is not the part of the younger to advise the elder; but if we don’t hang together, and do the best we can for each other, what are we, under our present circumstances, to do? I am not quite as old as you are, but perhaps I have been thrown more into the world. You have always taken to artists, and those kind of people, you know, who are out of the tide, and have queer notions; beside being,—no offence intended,—of a diffeent sphere from us. You think, on the other hand, that we are an empty-headed set, and perhaps you are not far wrong; but a fellow picks up a great many wrinkles even among men that are stupid enough to look at,—don’t you see?—when they’ve got some knowledge of the world.
‘The fact is I am beating about the bush a little,because I don’t very well know how to begin what I’ve got to say. It is just this. You must have noticed the other day when you were at Richmont how favourable everybody was to you and to me. Of course, one does not care for the opinion of an old beggar like Rich. But his wife isn’t at all so bad, and the girl, on the whole, is very nice. I assure you frankly I do think so. She’s a clever little thing, and decidedly pretty and amusing too, and fond of pictures, and that sort of thing, so that there would be a sympathy between you. To say it out plump, my opinion is that she is the very sort of girl you ought to marry. It is not everybody that would suit you. You want some one that has money, and yet doesn’t stand upon her money; and that would not be conventional or stuck-up, but take your friends along with yourself, and make up her mind to it. Now Nelly Rich has no right to be stuck-up; and yet she’s nice, and looks nice, and we Rentons are well enough known to marry anybody we please. As for the father, I don’t think you need mind about him. He is very liberal and hospitable, and ready to throw his money about in buckets-full, and that always tells. People may snigger at him, but they’ll go to his house all the same. And you may marry a girl, you know, without marrying her father too. The mother is not at all so bad. She’s motherly, and that sort of thing. And Nelly has fifty thousand pounds. I can’t tellyou how much I have been thinking of it since that day. The fellows here have all advised me to go in for it myself, but I’m rather too young to marry; and besides I think it would suit you far better than me. I have my profession, and I can do very well for a few years on my allowance, especially in India, where there is double pay. But you,—forgive me, my dear Laurie,—have always been a fellow to talk, you know, and to do things for other people. I don’t think you’re the man to make your way in the world, and I can’t help feeling that to have a nice wife who would take an interest in your pursuits, and a nice steady income that would keep you out of anxiety, would be the very thing for you. I have made every inquiry, and as far as I can make out, Nelly Rich is not what you would call a flirt. She is fond of a little fun, and I like her for that; and when a man is cheeky, they say she leads him on till he makes a fool of himself; but no sensible fellow would object to a girl for having a little spirit. She is very good-tempered, and no end of fun; and very clever at drawing, and everything of that kind. She doesn’t go in for music, but neither do you; and she’s the sort of girl that would travel with you, and work with you, and make an ass of herself about pictures, and old churches, and rubbish, just as much as you would. I think, on my word, Laurie, it’s the very thing for you.
‘Anyhow, old fellow, you won’t take it amiss myhaving put it into your head? It would be a most sensible thing to do; and I feel sure a man might get quite fond of Nelly Rich, were he to try. I suppose it is because the Manor is so near that they are so friendly to us. As soon as mamma is well enough I’ll make her call. She’ll do it at once when she knows what depends on it. And if you play your cards at all well, you are as sure of success as anything can be. And then you would not need to give up any of your friends. She was as pleased with that painter-fellow the other day as if he had been a prince. And you remember how she talked about the people in Fitzroy Square. The more I think of it, the more it seems providential for you. My dear fellow, go in and win. I should have recommended her to Ben, had Ben been within knowledge. But she will suit you much better than she would have suited him. And it will be a real comfort to think that one of us is saved from the wreck, whether the others sink or swim.
‘Yrs. affec.,‘F. Renton.’
This was Frank’s grand device for utilising Nelly’s fortune, and yet preserving his own freedom. Laurie only received the letter when he was in the midst of his preparations for going to Italy, and he threw it aside with a painful smile. But our Guardsman knew nothing about his brother’s preoccupiedmind, and, satisfied that he had done the best for everybody, laid aside the subject, and went upon his way as usual. He was rather anxious for Laurie’s answer, it is true; but then there are often irregularities in family correspondence, and Laurie might think it best to leave it until they met. As it happened Frank did not even visit his mother for the next ten days; and Mary Westbury, who was his home correspondent, was so full of the news of an unexpected visit from Ben, that she quite omitted to mention Laurie’s intimation, which came immediately after, of his intended departure. So that Frank had actually no information about his brother when he went on the following Saturday to dine at Richmont.
Frankwas alone on his second expedition to Richmont, which was a satisfaction to him. He was full of his scheme, and anxious to see how the land lay, and what Laurie’s prospects might be should he make up his mind to ‘go in’ for the fifty thousand pounds. And he was quite willing to divert himself in the society of his future sister-in-law. The invitation had a family aspect altogether, he thought; and, instead of returning to his quarters, he had made his arrangements to go home for the Sunday, and rouse his mother to such steps as were practicable for securing Laurie’s advantage. Frank left Royalborough with all the lively zest of a matchmaker, pleased with himself and his own generosity, and rather elated on his brother’s account. Fifty thousand pounds!—two thousand five hundred a-year, and always the prospect of something coming at the end of the seven years’ probation! For a man who had no expensive tastes, and whose whole soul was wrapped up in pictures, it was a fortune! He coulddabble in paint as much as he liked, and his wife could help him; and they could travel about as much as they liked, and go to all the pretty places that took their fancy. There was no one to whom he could have said as much in actual words; but the feeling in his mind was, that if anybody had ever originated a better plan he’d like to hear of it. Ben had turned up, as Mary Westbury’s letter told him; and no doubt Ben would make his way in the world. And as for himself, Frank thought that there was no particular fear; but Laurie was the feeble one of the family, the one most likely to do little, to spend his strength for naught, or waste his own life for the advantage of others. And nothing could be so good for him as to be thus put on a comfortable shelf out of harm’s way at the very beginning of his career. He was fond of Laurie, as most people were; and it pleased him as much in his brotherliness as in his vanity to take Laurie thus in hand and be the one to provide for him. This time it was to dinner he was going at Richmont, and he had written to the Manor to beg his mother to send over the dog-cart for him and his portmanteau. The millionnaire’s house was beginning to be lit up in all its windows when he drove along the avenue: the lights in it sparkled like fairy lamps in the blue, spring twilight; and when he entered the great hall he was informed that nobody had come down-stairs yet, and that the dinner had been made an hour later in consequence of some one else who was to arrive by the train.
‘The young ladies is in the music-room, sir,’ the butler said respectfully, being himself a native of Berks, and feeling that the advent of a Renton was an honour to the house; ‘and I was to tell you as tea is served in the drawing-room.’
‘Oh, I’ll join the young ladies,’ said Frank, lightly, thinking of Nelly only, his sister-in-law that was to be. No doubt some one must be with her, but that did not matter. Indeed, on the whole, it was so much the better, for it would not be becoming to flirt, except in the very mildest way, with a girl who was going to be your brother’s wife. He ran up-stairs, telling the man he knew the way, and thus making a daring leap into intimacy such as he would never have dreamed of had he taken time to think. But his own plan had taken possession of him. Of course she was going to be his sister-in-law, and it would be absurd to stand upon ceremony. Thus Frank, being unused to the excitement of so much thinking, was carried away by it, and took his own imaginations for granted. As he ran up-stairs, however, his ear was caught by the sound of the organ, a sound which had not been heard in Beecham so long as he had known the house, and to which Richmont, according to Nelly’s description, was as little accustomed. The music seemed to fill the place, swelling through the stairs and passages, whichwere full of the darkness and stillness of the approaching night. Frank stood still to listen, and then went on with a surprised face, and with a new thrill in his heart. It was surely the same sonata he had heard softly breathing out of the dark drawing-room that night he visited Fitzroy Square. Who could be playing? Could there be two girls in the world who had the same power, the same feeling for music, the same subtle sentiment, and expressive strength? But then how did he know at all that it was a girl who was playing? It might be some old music-master, one of the sort of people whom Nelly loved. All the same, it had the effect of subduing his steps, and making his approach much less confident and unembarrassed. He lingered,—he thought of going back,—he felt himself a coxcomb and presumptuous animal. And yet he went on, led partly by the force of the impulse which was still upon him, and partly allured by the dulcet and harmonious sound to which he was so susceptible. He knocked at the door, but his summons was unheard in the midst of the music. Then he opened it softly, and went in. There was no light in the room except the pale twilight, which marked out every line of the windows, and the glimmering of the painted glass at the end by which he entered. He seemed to step out of the real world altogether into an enchanted place when he crossed that darkling threshold. The gilded organ-pipes caught a certain faint reflection, and under that dimshimmer sat a shadow, which was playing; while in the centre window, in the bay, looking out, as it seemed, into the night, another shadow, light and small as a fairy, stood listening or musing. The opposite wall of the room, and the picture which was so bright in the daylight, had retreated altogether into the gloom; and the painted window hung as if suspended in the air; and all the solid wall in which it was set, and the dark oak carving under it, had receded into obscurity. Frank stood with his hand on the door, and held his breath. He felt at once like a fool and like an intruder, not knowing who they were whose privacy he was invading, and having no right whatever to be there even had he been sure it was Nelly who stood in the window. He had burst into her particular privacy unannounced the second time he had been in the house! But Frank was bewitched, and stood still, blotting himself out as small as possible against the door.
But either the door had creaked or her quick ear had caught some sound of movement, for Nelly Rich turned round suddenly. She was not so absorbed in the music as the player was, or as Frank would have been had he been listening in a legitimate and proper way. Her mind was divided between that and a great many other thoughts, and gave but a partial attention to the sounds which filled the room. When she saw that another shadow had intruded into her retirement,Nelly gave a little cry, and flitted like a ghost towards the door.
‘Who is there?’ she cried with a sharpness which struck in just at a pianissimo passage, and startled the player as well as the intruder. The music ceased with a kind of long-drawn wail, and the musician too gave a little scream. Frank would have been thankful if the old oak floor had suddenly opened and swallowed him up.
‘A thousand pardons,’ he cried; ‘it is I, Miss Rich; Frank Renton. I don’t know how to explain my intrusion. Pray forgive me. I was told I should find you here,—and then the music; I have not a word to say for myself. Pardon?—that is all.’
‘Was it papa who told you you would find me here?’ said Nelly. ‘It is just like him. But, Mr. Renton, I am not papa, and I admit nobody but my friends to this room,—especially in the dark,’ she added, with a quiver of coming laughter, which reassured Frank. He sank down upon his knee, as she stood with her arms extended, metaphorically thrusting him away.
‘What can I say for myself?’ said Frank. ‘I am a wretched sinner, not worthy to be admitted as a friend. Let me come in as a captive, like one of your Angles; or as a beggar, or—— Don’t be too hard upon me. The evil is done. The mortal has crossed the threshold of fairyland. Let him stay.’
‘Alice, advise me,’ cried Nelly, turning to the silent figure at the piano. ‘Shall we let him stay?’
So it was Alice! Something had told him so the instant he recognised that sonata. Now he turned his head towards her in the gloom, breathless, awaiting her answer. Alice, however, made no reply. She only returned to her organ, and took up her pianissimo passage. I cannot tell how she intimated her pleasure to the slave on the other side of the wall who ‘blew;’ but, anyhow, she took it up where she had left off, and the soft, delicious sounds, the very voice of the darkness and stillness, whispered over the two darkling, undiscernible figures,—one standing, one kneeling, in the gloom. A certain soft thrill of consciousness, half comic, half sentimental, moved Nelly. No doubt it had been partly in jest that Frank had put himself on his knees; but might it not be partly in earnest, too? Frank, for his part, had forgotten Nelly’s very existence. It seemed natural to him to listen thus to such a strain. He was not intellectual, and could have heard the finest poetry in the world unmoved. All his pretty sentiments about fairyland, etcetera, were also the most superficial words; but the music seized upon, mastered him, put a soul into the young soldier. He turned half towards the instrument, kneeling, and unconscious that he was kneeling. To him it was poetry, art, passion, imagination, all in one. And Alice went on playing softly as in a dream; and the remaining raysof half light gradually extinguished themselves, till even the two shadows at the door became scarcely discernible, and the organ-pipes faded into obscurity. It was a curious situation altogether, but only Nelly was aware of it. To her the fact was very evident that a handsome young Guardsman, still kneeling on one knee, as to his sovereign, was before her; that twilight was settling down into night; that Mr. Frank Renton was a stranger: and that it was time to dress. Something prevented her from speaking, and cutting short the music; but her impatient mind having got over the first charm, began to grow weary, and long for a change. She could not make out how it was that the musician went on, unfatigued with all those lingering notes. ‘That’s the same thing over again,’ Nelly said to herself, not being so fond of music as she ought to have been, as may easily be perceived. She glided back to the window, at last; and Frank, roused by her motion, rose from his reverential attitude. He knew that Alice could not stop till the movement had come to an end; and was not impatient, but absorbed in the lovely harmony. But after a while the thought stole into even his mind that it would be best to get as much into the light as possible, and he followed Nelly to the window. There was a glimmering of the park visible outside, and, what was more to the purpose, a great expanse of blue sky and stars. And in the room there was the painted window, hanging in the air like a pictureworked in jewels, suspended without visible support; and the music—and the two girls;—even a poet could not have objected to all the accessories of the scene.
‘Thanks, Alice, it is lovely,’ cried Nelly; ‘but all the same for the moment, my dear, I am glad it is done; for this is growing very ghostly. Mr. Renton, I think I can see that you have come in, though you never got permission. Go before us, please, and let us know if there are lights in the passages: and if you are good, and do everything you are told, we will forgive you for coming in. Alice, give me your hand. They are both intoxicated with the music, these two, cried Nelly, as if to herself; ‘and I don’t believe they have any eyes to see that window hanging there all by itself. Come along, you people, who can hear and can’t see:—let us get into the light.’
‘But I can see, too,’ said Alice, softly, coming to Nelly’s side.
‘Ah, you are a painter’s daughter,’ said Nelly: ‘but you would need to be a cat to see anything now. Thanks, Mr. Renton. Now wait a moment till our eyes are used to the light.’
‘Coming down to the common world again,’ said Frank, ‘is hard. No one can feel it more than I do. Take care of that step,—even painters themselves cannot always see.’
‘I wish the common world were not down so many stairs,’ said Nelly; and then they emerged intothe light. They were still in their morning dresses; and Frank’s eyes, once more out of the darkness fell upon the fresh, girlish face, the mass of shining hair,—all those tints of rose and lily which belonged to Alice Severn and her sixteen years. There was a great deal more expression in Nelly’s little brown, sparkling countenance. She had lived a year or two longer in reality, a hundred years or so longer in experience. Alice’s face lay like an inland lake moved from above, from without, by soft, kissing breezes, by beams of sunshine, but not by any movements from within. There were no volcanoes underneath, nor quicksands, nor sunken rocks. She was very young, and ignorant as a child. That want of definite expression which was a trouble to some of her friends, to Frank was a beauty. She looked like a saint, or an angel, to his eyes. In his worldly-mindedness and curious calculations of what he called practical matters, this face disturbed him, experienced man of the world as he was. What would she think of his scheme for Laurie? The first effect of her presence had been to drive Laurie and all his schemes out of his mind. And now the very contrast of her innocence brought them all back with a rush. It was not this visionary creature concerning whom the plot was laid;—but Nelly, little sprite, who stood by her, a being manifestly of this world.
‘I wish Laurie had been here,’ cried Frank, abruptly, remembering hisrôle. ‘He is the only oneof our family who has an eye. He would have raved about your window, Miss Rich.’
‘That would have been kind of him,’ said Nelly, with a slight touch of disdain. ‘It was Mr. Laurence Renton you were speaking of, Alice. Did you say he had gone away?’
‘Gone away!’ cried Frank, with a start, which endangered his footing on the stair.
‘To Italy,’ said Alice. ‘We were all so sorry. He went yesterday morning, and the night before he came to bid mamma good-bye. They say it was quite suddenly that he had made up his mind.’
‘To Italy!’ repeated Frank, in tones of absolute consternation. He stopped on the stair as he went down, to apostrophise mentally both heaven and earth. Gone! notwithstanding all the plans that were making for him. Frank stopped short, so much affected by the news that he forgot even the odd appearance that he made, standing on the stair. ‘Then how is it to be done,—and who is to do it?’ was the question that immediately suggested itself to his mind. Nelly Rich stood and looked up at him through the rails of the stair with bright eyes, full of mischief, contemplating his puzzled countenance. Who was to do it? By this time it seemed a matter of conscience to Frank that some Renton should appropriate Nelly and her fifty thousand pounds. And Ben was going to America, and Laurie had disappeared into the South.His face expressed the liveliest perplexity and self-interrogation. Who was to do it? Laurie being gone, and Nelly’s fortune still unsecured, was it not necessary that he himself, casting all weaker ideas aside, should go in himself for the fifty thousand pounds!