CHAPTER XV.
EDWARD CLARE DISCOVERS A LIKENESS.
‘Hazlehurst Rectory, February 22nd.—Dear Ned,—Do you remember my saying, when Laura refused to have a proper wedding-gown, that her marriage was altogether an ill-omened business? I told her so, I told you so; in fact, I think I told everybody so; if it be not an unpardonable exaggeration to call the handful of wretched dowdies and frumps in such a place as Hazlehurst everybody. Well, I was right. The marriage has been a completefiasco. What do you think of our poor Laura’s coming home from her honeymoonalone? Without even so much as her husband’s portmanteau! She has shut herself up in the Manor-house, where she lives the life of a female anchorite, and is so reserved in her manner towards me, her oldest friend, her all but sister, that even I do not know the cause of this extraordinary state of affairs.
‘“My dear Celia, don’t ask me anything about it,” she said, when we had kissed each other, and cried a little, and I had looked at her collar and cuffs to see if she had brought a new style from Paris.
‘“My dearest, I must ask you,” I replied; “I don’t pretend to be more than human, and I am burning with curiosity and suppressed indignation. What does it all mean? Why have you challenged public opinion by coming home alone? Have you and Mr. Treverton quarrelled?”
‘“No,” she said, decisively; “and that is the last question about my married life that I shall ever answer, Celia, so you need not ask me any more.”
‘“Where did you part with him?” I asked, determined not to give way. My unhappy friend was obstinately silent.
‘“Come and see me as often as you like, so long as you do not talk to me of my husband,” she said a little later. “But if you insist upon talking about him, I shall shut my door upon you.”
‘“I hear he has acted most generously with regard to the settlements, so he cannot be altogether bad,” I said—for you know I am not easily put down—but Laura was adamant. I could not extort another word from her.
‘Perhaps I ought not to tell you this, Ned, knowing what I do about your former affection for Laura; but I felt that I must open my heart to somebody. Parents are so stupid that it’s impossible to tell them things.
‘I can’t conceive what this poor girl is going to do with herlife. He has settled the whole estate upon her, papa says, and she is awfully rich. But she is living like a hermit, and not spending more than her own small income. She even talks of selling the carriage horses, Tommy and Harry, or sending them back to the plough, though I know she dotes upon them. If this is meanness, it is too awful. If she has conscientious scruples about spending John Treverton’s money, it is simply idiotic. Of the two, I could rather think my friend a miser than an idiot.
‘And now, my dear Ned, as there is nothing else to tell you about the dismalest place in the universe, I may as well say good-bye.—Your loving sister,
‘Celia.’
‘P.S.—I hope you are writing a book of poems that will make the Laureate burst with envy. I have no personal animosity to him; but you are my brother, and, of course, your interest must be paramount.’
This letter reached Edward Clare in his dingy lodgings, in a narrow side street near the British Museum, lodgings so dingy that it would have grieved the heart of his country-born and country-bred mother to see her boy in such a den. But the apartments were quite dear enough for his slender means. The world had not yet awakened to the stupendous fact that a new poet had been born into it. Stupid reviewers went on prosing about Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, and the name of Clare was still unknown, even though it had appeared pretty often at the foot of a neat triplet of verses filling an odd page in a magazine.
‘I shall never win a name in the magazines,’ the young man told himself. ‘It is worse than not writing at all. I shall rot unknown in my garret, or die of hunger and opium, like that poor boy who perished within a quarter of a mile of this dismal hole, unless I can get some rich publisher to launch me properly.’
But in the meantime a man must live, and Edward was very glad to get an occasional guinea or two from a magazine. The supplies from home fell considerably below his requirements, though to send them strained the father’s resources. The embryo Laureate liked to take life pleasantly. He liked to dine at a popular restaurant, and to wash down his dinner with good Rhine wine, or sound claret. He liked good cigars. He could not wear cheap boots. He could do without gloves at a pinch, but those he wore must be the best. When he was in funds he preferred a hansom to pedestrianism. This, he told himself, was the poetical temperament. Alfred de Musset was, doubtless, just such a man. He could fancy Heine leading the same kind of life in Paris, before disease had chained him to his bed.
That letter from Celia was like vitriol dropped into an open wound. Edward had not forgiven Laura for accepting John Treverton, or the estate that went with him. He hated JohnTreverton with a vigorous hatred that would stand a great deal of wear and tear. He pondered long over Celia’s letter, trying to discover the clue to the mystery. It seemed to him tolerably clear. Mr. and Mrs. Treverton had married with a deliberate understanding. Love between them there was none, and they had been too honest to pretend an affection which neither felt. They had agreed to marry and live apart, sharing the dead man’s wealth, fulfilling the letter of the law, but not the spirit.
‘I call it sheer dishonesty,’ said Edward. ‘I wonder that Laura can lend herself to such an underhand course.’
It was all very well to talk about John Treverton’s liberality in settling the entire estate upon his wife. No doubt they had their private understanding duly set forth in black and white. The husband was to have his share of the fortune, and squander it how he pleased in London or Paris, or any part of the globe that seemed best to him.
‘There never was such confounded luck,’ exclaimed Edward, angry with Fate for having given this man so much and himself so little; ‘a fellow who three months ago was a beggar.’
In his idle reverie he found himself thinking what he would have done in John Treverton’s place, with, say, seven thousand a year at his disposal.
‘I would have chambers in the Albany,’ he thought, ‘furnished on the purest æsthetic principles. I’d keep a yacht at Cowes, and three or four hunters at Melton Mowbray. I’d spend February and March in the South, and April and May in Paris, where I should have apied à terrein the Champs Elysées. Yes, one could lead a very pleasant life, as a bachelor, on seven thousand a year.’
Thus it will be seen that, although Mr. Clare had been seriously in love with Miss Malcolm, it was the loss of Jasper Treverton’s money which he felt most keenly, and it was the possession of that fortune for which he envied John Treverton.
One afternoon in February, one of those rare afternoons on which the winter sun glorifies the gloomy London streets, Mr. Clare called at the office of a comic periodical, the editor of which had accepted some of his lighter verses—society poems in the Praed and Locker manner. Two or three of his contributions had been published within the last month, and he came to the office with the pleasant consciousness that there was a cheque due to him.
‘I shall treat myself to a careful little dinner at theRestaurant du Pavillon,’ he told himself, ‘and a stall at the Prince of Wales’s to wind up the evening.’
He was not a man of vicious tastes. It was not theaqua fortisof vice, but the champagne of pleasure that he relished.He was too fond of himself, too careful of his own well-being, to fling away youth, health, and vigour in the sloughs and sewers of evil living. He had a refined selfishness that was calculated to keep him pure of low iniquities. He had no aspiration to scale mountain peaks, but he had sufficient regard for himself to eschew gutters.
The cheque was ready for him, but when he had signed the formal receipt the clerk told him the editor wanted to speak to him presently, if he would be kind enough to wait a few minutes.
‘There’s a gentleman with him, but I don’t suppose he’ll be long,’ said the clerk, ‘if you don’t mind waiting.’
Mr. Clare did not mind, particularly. He sat down on an office stool, and made himself a cigarette, while he thoughtfully planned his dinner.
He was not going to be extravagant. A plate of bisque soup, a slice of salmonen papilotte, a wing of chicken with mushrooms, an omelette, half a bottle of St. Julien, and a glass of vermuth.
While he was musing pleasantly thus, the swinging inner door of the office was dashed open, and a gentleman walked quickly through to the open doorway that led into the street, with only a passing nod to the clerk. Edward Clare just caught a glimpse of his face as he turned to give that brief salutation.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked, starting up from his stool, and dropping the half-made cigarette.
‘Mr. Chicot, the artist.’
‘Are you sure?’
The clerk grinned.
‘Pretty positive,’ he said. ‘He comes here every week, sometimes twice a week. I ought to know him.’
Edward knew the name well. The slap-dash caricatures, more Parisian in style than English, which adorned the middle page of the weekly paper called ‘Folly as it Flies,’ were all signed ‘Chicot.’ The dancer’s admirers, for the most part, gave her the credit of those productions, an idea which Mr. Smolendo had taken care to encourage. It was an advantage that his dancer should be thought a woman of many accomplishments—a Sarah Bernhardt in a small way.
Edward Clare was mystified. The face which he had seen turned towards the clerk had presented a wondrous likeness of John Treverton. If this man who called himself Chicot had been John Treverton’s twin brother, the two could not have been more alike. Edward was so impressed with this idea that, instead of waiting to see his editor, he hurried out into the street, bent upon following Mr. Chicot the artist. The office was in one of the narrow streets northward of the Strand. If Chicot had turned to the left, he must be by this time following the strong currentof the Strand, which flows westward at this hour, with its tide of human life, as regularly as the river flows to the sea. If he had turned to the right, he was most likely lost in the labyrinth between Drury Lane and Holborn. In either case—three minutes having been wasted in surprise and interrogation—there seemed little chance of catching him.
Edward turned to the right, and went towards Holborn. Accident favoured him. At the corner of Long Acre he saw Chicot, the artist, button-holed by an older man, of somewhat raffish aspect. That Chicot was anxious to get away from the button-holer was obvious, and before Edward could reach the corner he had done so, and was off at a rapid pace westward. There would be no chance of overtaking him, except by running; and to run in Long Acre would be to make oneself unpleasantly conspicuous. There was no empty hansom within sight. Edward looked round despairingly. There stood the raffish man watching him, and looking as if he knew exactly what Mr. Clare wanted.
Edward crossed the street, looked at the raffish man, and lingered, half inclined to speak. The raffish man anticipated his desire.
‘I think you wanted my friend Chicot,’ he said, in a most insinuating tone.
He had the accent of a gentleman, and in some wise the look of a gentleman, though his degradation from that high estate was patent to every eye. His tall hat, sponged and coaxed to a factitious polish, was of an exploded shape; his coat was the coat of to-day; his stock was twenty years old in style, and so frayed and greasy that it might have been worn ever since it first came into fashion. The hawk’s eye, the iron lines about the mouth and chin, were warnings to the man’s fellow-creatures. Here was a man capable of anything—a being so obviously at war with society as to be bound by no law, daunted by no penalty.
Edward Clare dimly divined that the creature belonged to the dangerous classes, but in his excellent opinion of his own cleverness deemed himself strong enough to cope with half a dozen such seedy sinners.
‘Well, yes, I did rather want to speak to him—er—about a literary matter. Does he live far from here?’
‘Five minutes’ walk. Cibber Street, Leicester Square. I’ll take you there if you like. I live in the same house.’
‘Ah, then you can tell me all about him. But it isn’t the pleasantest thing to stand and talk in an east wind. Come in and take a glass of something,’ suggested Edward, comprehending that this shabby-genteel stranger must be plied with drink.
‘Ah,’ thought Mr. Desrolles, ‘he wants something of me. This liberality is not motiveless.’
Tavern doors opened for them close at hand. They entered the refined seclusion of a jug and bottle department, and each chose the liquor he preferred—Edward sherry and soda water, the stranger a glass of brandy, ‘short.’
‘Have you known Mr. Chicot long?’ asked Edward. ‘Don’t suppose I’m actuated by impertinent curiosity. It’s a matter of business.’
‘Sir, I know when I am talking to a gentleman,’ replied Desrolles, with a stately air. ‘I was a gentleman myself once, but it’s so long ago that the world and I have forgotten it.’
He had emptied his glass by this time, and was gazing thoughtfully, almost tearfully, at the bottom of it.
‘Take another,’ said Edward.
‘I think I will. These east winds are trying to a man of my age. Have I known Jack Chicot long? Well, about a year and a half—a little less, perhaps—but the time is of no moment, I know him well.’
And then Mr. Desrolles proceeded to give his new acquaintance considerable information as to the outer life of Mr. and Mrs. Chicot. He did not enter into the secrets of their domesticity, save to admit that Madame was fonder of the brandy bottle—a lamentable propensity in so fair a being—than she ought to be, and that Mr. Chicot was not so fond of Madame as he might be.
‘Tired of her, I suppose?’ said Edward.
‘Precisely. A woman who drinks like a fish and swears like a trooper is apt to pall upon a man, after some years of married life.’
‘Has this Chicot no other income than what he earns by his pencil?’ asked Edward.
‘Not a sou.’
‘He has not been flush of money lately—since the new year, for instance?’
‘No.’
‘There has been no change in his way of life since then?’
‘Not the slightest—except, perhaps, that he has worked harder than ever. The man is a prodigious worker. When first he came to London he had an idea of succeeding as a painter. He used to be at his easel as soon as it was light. But since the comic journals have taken him up he has done nothing but draw on the wood. He is really a very good creature. I haven’t a word to say against him.’
‘He is remarkably like a man I know,’ said Mr. Clare, musingly; ‘but of course it can’t be the same. The husband of a French dancer. No, that isn’t possible. I wish it were,’ he muttered to himself, with clenched teeth.
‘Is he like some one you know?’ interrogated Desrolles.
‘Wonderfully like, so far as I could make out in the glimpse I got of his face.’
‘Ah, those glimpses are sometimes deceptive. Is your friend residing in London?’
‘I don’t know where he is just at present. When last I saw him he was in the west of England.’
‘Ah, nice country that,’ said Desrolles, kindling with sudden eagerness. ‘Somersetshire or Devonshire way, you mean, I suppose?’
‘I mean Devonshire.’
‘Charming county—delightful scenery!’
‘Very, for your Londoner, who runs down by express train to spend a fortnight there. Not quite so lively for your son of the soil, who sees himself doomed to rot in a God-forsaken hole like Hazlehurst, the village I came from. What! you know the place!’ exclaimed Edward, for the man had given a start that betokened surprised recognition of the name.
‘I do know a village called Hazlehurst, but it’s in Wilts,’ the other answered, coolly. ‘So the gentleman who resembles my friend Chicot is a native of Devonshire, and a neighbour of yours?’
‘I didn’t say he was either,’ returned Edward, who did not want to be catechised by a disreputable-looking stranger. ‘I said I had last seen him at Hazlehurst. That’s all. And now, as I’ve an appointment at five o’clock, I must wish you good afternoon.’
They both left the bar together, and went out into Long Acre, whence the wintry sunshine had departed, giving place to that dull, thick greyness which envelopes London at eventide, like a curtain.
To those who love the city, as Charles Lamb loved it, for instance, there is something comfortable even in this all-enshrouding grey, through which the lamps shine cheerfully, like friendly eyes.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t got my card case with me,’ said Desrolles, feeling in his breast pocket.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ the other answered, curtly. ‘Good-day to you.’
And so they parted, Edward Clare walking swiftly away towards the little French restaurant hard by St. Ann’s Church, where he meant to solace himself with a comfortable dinner.
‘A cad!’ mused Desrolles, looking after him. ‘Provincial, and a cad! Strange that he should come from Hazlehurst.’
Mr. Clare dined entirely to his own satisfaction, and with what he considered a severe economy; for he contented himself with half a bottle of claret, and took only one glass of green chartreuse after his small cup of black coffee. The coffee madehim bright and wakeful, and he left the purlieus of St. Ann in excellent spirits. He had changed his mind about the Prince of Wales’s. Instead of indulging himself with a stall at that luxurious theatre, he would rough it and go to the pit at the Prince Frederick, to seeMademoiselle Chicot. He had been haunted by her name on the walls of London, but he had never yet had the desire to see her. Now all at once his curiosity was aroused. He went, and admired the dancer, as all the world admired her. He was early enough to get a seat in the front row of the pit, and from this position could survey the stalls, which were filled with men, all declared worshippers of La Chicot. There was one squat figure—a stout dark man, with sleek black hair, and colourless Jewish face—which attracted Edward’s particular attention. This man watched the dancer, from his seat at the end of a row, with an expression that differed markedly from the vacuous admiration of other countenances. In this man’s face, dull and weary as it was, there was a look that told of passion held in reserve, of a purpose to be pursued to the very end. A dangerous admirer for any woman, most of all perilous for such a woman as La Chicot.
She saw him, and recognised him, as a familiar presence in an unknown crowd. One brilliant flash of her dark eyes told as much as this, and perhaps was a sufficient reward for Joseph Lemuel’s devotion. A slow smile curled his thick lips, and lost itself in the folds of his fat chin. He flung no bouquet to the dancer. He had no desire to advertise his admiration. When the curtain fell upon the brilliant tableau which ended the burlesque—a picture made up of handsome women in dazzling dresses and eccentric attitudes, lighted by the broad glare of a magnesium lamp—Edward left the pit and went round to the narrow side street on which the stage-door opened. He had an idea that the dancer’s husband would be waiting to escort her home.
He waited himself in the dark chilly street for about a quarter of an hour, and then, instead of Mr. Chicot, the artist, he saw his acquaintance of the tavern stroll slowly to the stage-door, wrapped in an ancient poncho, made of shaggy stuff, like the skin of a wild beast, and smoking a gigantic cigar. This gentleman took up his stand outside the stage-door, and waited patiently for about ten minutes, while Edward Clare walked slowly up and down on the opposite pavement, which was in profound shadow.
At last La Chicot came out, a tall, commanding figure in a black silk gown, which swept the pavement, a sealskin jacket, and a little round hat set jauntily on her dark hair.
She took Desrolles’ arm as if it were an accustomed thing for him to escort her; and they went away together, she talkingwith considerable animation, and as loud as a lady of the highest rank.
‘Curious,’ thought Edward. ‘Where is the husband all this time?’
The husband was spending his evening at a literary club, of somewhat Bohemian character, where there was wit to cheer the saddened soul, and where the nightly talk was of the wildest, breathing ridicule that spared nothing between heaven and earth, and a deep scorn of fools, and an honest contempt for formalism and veneer of all kinds—for the art that follows the fashion of a day, for the literature that is made to pattern. In such a circle Jack Chicot found temporary oblivion. These riotous assemblies, this strong rush of talk, were to him as the waters of Lethe.