“I do not love thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this alone I know full well,
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.”
Precisely why the house seemed to him so dreary Ralph would have found it hard to say. It did not usually strike people as anything but a model English home. Something had, however, given the boy a clue, and already he vaguely guessed, what no one else suspected, that there was a skeleton in the cupboard. Little enough had fallen from his father’s lips during those last days, yet Ralph had gathered an impression that in some way Sir Matthew was connected with that disastrous speculation which had ruined his father. He was far too young and ignorant to understand the matter, and even had he been sure that Mr. Marriott knew all the facts he could not have asked the old lawyer to explain things to him, for was not Sir Matthew his godfather? a godfather, moreover, who had generously undertaken to provide for him till he was grown up? He was ashamed of himself for not being able to feel more grateful, but that vague dislike and distrust which he had felt during their first talk at Whinhaven Rectory, only grew stronger each hour.
When the last guest had departed, Sir Matthew was beset by eager questions.
“Why did you adopt that horrid little schoolboy, papa?” said Janet, reproachfully. “You are far too generous.”
“My dear, you forget; he is my godson, and I couldn’t leave him without a helping hand. His father entrusted him to me.”
“They are all ready to sponge upon you, papa,” said Minnie. “A reputation for generosity is a terrible thing.”
“For a man’s daughters, eh?” he said, laughingly. “Well, my dear, I don’t want you to be troubled in the least. The boy will be going to Winchester in September, and we shall only have him in the holidays. As for little Evereld, we shall not be keeping her after her first season unless I’m much mistaken.”
“It’s true she is an heiress,” said Lady Mactavish, critically, “but I doubt if she will make a very stylish girl. And she’s far too conscientious to get on well in society.”
“Well, well, we shall see,” said Sir Matthew, easily. “Already she has one fervent admirer. Bruce Wylie makes himself a perfect fool about the child.”
“He’s old enough to be her father,” said Janet.
“But she couldn’t have a better husband,” said Sir Matthew, in the voice that meant that no more was to be said. “Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to see poor Ewart’s daughter safely under the protection of a man like Wylie, before the heiress-hunters have had time to torment her.”
“You remember that he dines with us this evening?” said Lady Mactavish.
“Yes, to be sure; let me have a list of the guests. And, my dear, remind me that I promised Lady Mountpleasant to open the bazaar for the Decayed Gentlefolk’s Aid Society at the Albert Hall next month.”
“We are no sooner off with one bazaar than we are on with another,” protested Minnie. “Bazaars seem to me the curse of the age.”
“Blessings in disguise, my dear,” replied her father, with a smile. “The days of simple humdrum giving are over, and nowadays, with great wisdom, we kill two or more birds with one stone. To my mind, the bazaar is a most useful institution, and I should be sorry to see it abandoned.”
“Ah, you would ruin yourself with giving, if I allowed you to do it,” said Lady Mactavish, glancing up at him with an air of pride and admiration which for the moment made her hard face beautiful.
The words touched him, and as he left the room he stooped and kissed her forehead. Yet, on the way down to his library, an odd sarcastic smile played about his lips, and he thought to himself, “They have yet to learn that, had St. Paul been a man of the world, he would have added a postscript to his famous chapter, and said, ‘For charity is the best policy.’”
In the meanwhile the schoolroom party were snugly ensconced in the window-seat overlooking St. James’s Park. Ralph had been cheered by the sight of a regiment of Horse Guards, and Miss Ellerbeck had been beguiled into telling them stories of the Franco-Prussian War and of her brother’s adventures during the campaign. By and bye, as the evening advanced, they were interrupted by the appearance of old Geraghty the butler.
“Sir Matthew would like you to be in the drawing-room before dinner, Miss Evereld,” he said, “and I was to say there was no need for the young gentleman to come down. Maybe he’s tired after the journey,” concluded the Irishman, adding these polite words of his own accord, for Sir Matthew had curtly remarked, “Not Master Denmead, you understand.”
“That means that Mr. Bruce Wylie is coming!” cried Evereld, joyously. “He’s such a nice man, and he always brings me chocolate—real French chocolate. I never go down unless Mr. Wylie is there. You’ll like him, Ralph; he has such nice kind eyes, and such a soft voice.”
“Well, you must run and dress, my child,” said Miss Ellerbeck; “and I, too, must be wishing you both goodnight, for I go, as you remember, with a friend to the Richter concert. We will light the gas for you, Ralph, and then you must, for a short time, make yourself happy with your Charles Dickens. Evereld will soon come back to you.”
She bade him a kind good-night, and Ralph took up “The Cricket on the Hearth” and tried to read. But it would not do; the book had ceased to appeal to him. He threw it down, lowered the gas, and returned to the open window, leaning his arms on the sill and looking down through the bars at the dim road beneath, with its endless succession of cabs and carriages. For a little while it amused him to count the red and yellow lamps as they flitted by, but soon his sorrow overwhelmed him once more. It was the first time he had been alone since that morning hour in the fir-grove at Whinhaven, and now once more all the misery of his loss forced itself upon him. He was well fed, well housed, and his immediate future was provided for, yet, perhaps, in all London, there was not at that moment a more desolate little fellow. To be violently plucked up by the roots and for ever banished from that goodly heritage that had so far been his, was in itself hard enough; but to belong to no one in particular, to be planted down and expected to grow and thrive among loveless strangers seemed intolerable, and no ambitious dreams of a future in India came now to his help! He saw nothing before him but an endless vista of this same pain and aching loss. Tomorrow would be as to-day, and all real happiness had, he fancied, gone from him for ever. There is nothing quite so poignant as a child’s first great grief, though mercifully, like all acute pain, it cannot last long.
The passing lights down below had long ceased to interest him, but presently through his tears he happened to notice the pointers and the Pole Star, and found a sort of comfort in what had for so long been familiar. At any rate the same sky was over Whinhaven and London, and the motto which he could remember puzzling over in his childhood, illuminated in one of the Rectory rooms, returned now to his mind—“Astra castra, Numen lumen.” It was true that the stars were his canopy, but was God his light? Had He not plunged his whole life in darkness, and set him far away from love and help and all that could keep a boy straight?
The Westminster chimes rang out just then into the night air, startling him back from his perplexed wondering. Ralph was not of the temperament that is liable to doubt. He took life very simply, and it would have been almost impossible seriously to disturb the faith into which he had grown up; the wave of wretched questioning passed, and he knew in his heart that just as over the great city with its debates and crimes, its sorrows and struggles, the bells ring out their message, so heavenly voices are ringing through the consciences of men, guiding, controlling, influencing all. Had not his father always said it was mere miserable cowardice to believe that darkness would triumph over light, that selfish competition would in the end conquer? Love was to be the victor. Love was to rule. And the great deep bell as it boomed out the hour seemed to his fancy to ring—“Love! Love! Love!” over the restless crowd of hearers.
In the meantime, however, his heart was still aching with the loss of the man who had been friend and companion, teacher and father in one. Surely since God loved him He would send some one to comfort him? Some one whose voice he could hear, whose hand he could grasp. For after all it was the outward tokens of love and comfort that he craved, as all beings of a threefold nature must crave them. A spiritual love could not as yet suffice him.
Now as Ralph leant on the window-sill crying quietly, much as a soldier slowly bleeds on a battlefield because there is no one to staunch his wound, the schoolroom door opened. He had expected some one to be sent to his great need, but had pictured to himself a man. He glanced round into the dim room and started when he saw, instead, only a little white-robed figure.
“Of course,” he thought to himself in his disappointment, “I ought to have known. It is only Evereld come back.”
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, with profound dejection in his voice.
“Are you all in the dark?” said Evereld.
“I’ve been looking at the carriage lamps,” he replied, evasively.
Evereld made no comment, she knew quite well that he had been crying, and a great shyness stole over her—a terror of not being able to reach him, and yet a consuming desire somehow to comfort him. She remembered that in her own grief grown-up people had always tried to soothe her with the adjuration, “Don’t cry, darling.” She had never found any comfort in the words, and of course they would vex a boy. Dick would have hated them.
“Do you know,” she said suddenly, “in some ways you do so remind me of Dick.”
“Who is he?” asked Ralph, still in the dejected voice.
“Dick is my brother,” said Evereld. “He died last winter. There was an outbreak of cholera. On the Thursday father and mother died, on the Friday Dick and I were taken ill, and when I got better they told me he was gone. I was the only one left.” Her voice quivered a little. She ended abruptly.
“Oh!” cried Ralph, like one in pain, and instinctively he caught her hand in his and held it fast. There was a silence. It seemed as if they did not need words just then.
Ralph had not found the strong man of his dreams; he had found instead a little girl with griefs greater than his own, and he felt a longing to comfort her and care for her, and as far as possible to be to her what Dick would have been.
“Was he older than I am?” was his first question.
“He was thirteen,” said Evereld. “His birthday was in last September—on the 15th.”
“And I was thirteen in September, too,—on the 9th,” said Ralph.
“Only a week between you—how strange!” said Evereld. “And about soldiers he was just like you. When you rushed to the window this afternoon and saw all the little details about the Horse Guards’ uniforms, that I never much noticed before, you made me think of Dick directly. He was crazy about uniforms, and Bridget used to make them for him. We’ll get her to make you one.”
“Do you think she would?” said Ralph, forgetting his troubles. “We could act all sorts of things then, you know. Do you like acting?”
“I love the dressing-up part,” said Evereld, “I don’t much care about the talking, Dick used to do most of that.”
“I’ll do that part,” said Ralph blithely, for although shy and reserved with his elders, he was never at a loss for words in a charade, and the two instantly fell to discussing future plans, forgetting every grief and care in the bliss of perfect companionship.
“Let us come down now,” said Evereld, presently. “Geraghty promised to bring us whatever we liked. We’ll sit on the lowest flight of stairs, you know, and he’ll help us as the dishes come out of the dining-room. It’s such fun. I always do it when there’s a dinner-party.”
Ralph consented willingly enough, and found something cheering in the general air of excitement that pervaded the house. They sat cosily on the rich stair carpet with its soft Eastern colouring, a funny little pair, he in his deep black, she in her white Indian muslin, watching the servants as they hurried to and fro, and enjoying what Evereld termed “that nice sort of late-dinner smell.”
“But it makes one awfully hungry,” said Ralph, and the good-natured Geraghty, catching the words, murmured a comforting assurance as he passed by, “I’m coming to you directly, sir,” and in a minute or two with a beaming face he reappeared with two delicious oyster patties.
“How clever you are, Geraghty,” said the little girl. “You always know just what will be nicest.” Whether Geraghty had much regard for their powers of digestion may be doubted, but he took a rare delight in tempting them with every delicacy, from prawns in aspic, to that curious dish called “Angels on horseback.” Ralph was half way through a huge helping of ice pudding when a momentary pang of doubt and reproach seized him. Ought he to be feasting on the very day of his father’s funeral? Evereld saw the change in his face, and helped by what she had lately lived through, was able to read his thoughts. “Dick will be so glad that I’ve got you,” she said, smiling, though Ralph fancied there were tears in her eyes. “I somehow think that your father and mine will be talking together to-night.”
And those few comfortable words were more to the boy than any number of sermons on the resurrection; all his vague beliefs were freshened into living parts of his everyday existence, and for the first time he knew for himself what had been to him hitherto merely things that others told him.
A sudden lull in the roar of voices from the dining-room now took place, after which the Babel of many tongues rose once more. “They are just beginning dessert,” said Evereld. “That was grace, and in a few minutes the ladies will be coming upstairs. I think we had better go to bed now.”
So they parted, after having arranged that in the walking hour on the next morning, they would go together and sail Ralph’s little schooner in St. James’ Park.
“Of my grief (guess the length of the sword by the sheath’s);
By the silence of life, more pathetic than death’s!
Go—be clear of that day.”
E. Barrett Browning.
The Park seemed dull and well-nigh deserted when, at about ten o’clock on the following day, Fraulein Ellerbeck and the two children made their way to the water’s edge. Fraulein said she would establish herself on a seat in a sheltered nook not far off, and the children carried her book and her knitting-bag for her, chatting as they walked. Pacing slowly towards them was a figure which somehow arrested their attention.
“Why,” said Evereld, lowering her voice, “it is surely the man we saw asBenedick, last March, Fraulein. It’s Hugh Macneillie, the actor.”
Ralph looked curiously and with great interest at a member of the profession which had such charms for him.
Macneillie was a man of about seven and thirty, with chestnut-brown hair, strongly marked features, and a muscular, well-knit figure. About his clean-shaven face there was an air of profound gravity which surprised Ralph, who could not conceive how a man capable of actingBenedick, and noted for his subtle sense of humour, could wear such an anxious and melancholy expression. He glanced at them with dreamy, absent eyes and paced slowly by.
Yet the little group had not been altogether lost on Hugh Macneillie in spite of the unseeing look in his eyes. He had carried away a curiously vivid impression of the two children, their black garments and their fresh young faces. He gave an impatient sigh, and paced on with quicker steps, yet turned again to walk by the side of the water, every now and then glancing at his watch with an air of vexation. He had been waiting there for a good hour, and he was in a mood which made waiting specially irksome.
“I will give her till half past ten,” he thought to himself, and walked doggedly on, his face growing more and more haggard as the time passed by. At last the Westminster chimes rang out the half hour; he mechanically took out his watch again to verify the time, and setting his teeth hard turned to go.
At that moment there suddenly appeared, walking towards him, a very beautiful woman. It was difficult to say precisely in what her great charm lay. Her every movement was full of grace, and although she was dressed with scrupulous quietness—indeed with a simplicity that was almost severe,—no one could have passed her by without a lingering glance. Her complexion was pale but very fair, her hair was like spun gold, contrasting curiously with the brown, deep-set eyes; and though the mouth was a little too wide and betrayed a not ever strong character, both face and manner were full of that indescribable fascination which carries all before it.
Macneillie, though he met her in the company of other people every day of his life, though he had known her for at least ten years, went to meet her now with his heart throbbing painfully. She gave him a charming little greeting, and apologised prettily for being so unpunctual.
“It is Elizabeth’s fault,” she said, glancing at the maid who accompanied her. “She allowed me to oversleep myself. You can wait for me on that bench Elizabeth, I shall not be long.”
The maid walked back to the seat where Fraulein Ellerbeck sat with her knitting, and Macneillie, who had scarcely spoken a word as yet, broke the silence as they paced on together. “I had almost given you up,” he said, a world of repressed impatience in his tone.
“That’s the wisest thing I ever heard you say, Hugh,” she replied lightly, though with a secret effort. “But you must go further. It must be not only almost, but altogether.”
“Don’t let us talk in parables,” said Macneillie, passionately. “You can’t compare an hour’s waiting in a park with ten years waiting through the best part of a man’s life.”
A look of pain flashed across her face: there was remorse and tenderness in her voice as she replied. But there was not the love he had once heard there, and he knew it well enough.
“Poor Hugh!” she said, “I have treated you very badly. But how am I to help myself. We have waited for each other, as you say, these ten years, but you know well enough that my father and mother will never consent. They have made up their minds that I shall make a very different marriage.”
“In other words,” said Macneillie between his teeth, “they have made up their minds to sell you to the highest bidder.”
“No, no, you are so exaggerated, Hugh. Every one can’t look at the matter as you with your religious education in the Highlands look at it. Marriage is, after all, an arrangement affecting many people and interests. We are not living in a romance but in the prosaic nineteenth century. And I must not just please myself. I must think of what will best help on my career; my first duty is undoubtedly to help and to please my parents who have done so much for me.”
“You didn’t think so ten years ago,” said Macneillie.
“Ten years ago I was a foolish girl of seventeen. You had been very good to me when the year before I had been taken straight from school and set down alone and friendless in a travelling company. It was natural enough that I should love you then, Hugh—you who shielded me and helped me.”
“But later on,” said Macneillie, clenching his hands, “when you no longer were lonely and friendless, when fame had come to you and all the world was at your feet, you very naturally needed me no longer, and your love died. Mine was never that sort of love—it will always live.”
Christine Greville looked down with troubled face. Ambition and the importunities of her parents had for the time stifled her love. She felt cold and hard. His passionate constancy annoyed her. “I wish,” she said plaintively, “you would not speak like that, Hugh. I hate to think that I have pained you, or spoiled your life; but what am I to do? What am I to do?”
He turned to her eagerly.
“Be true to your best self, Christine. Trust the man who loved you long before this Sir Roderick Fenchurch had ever seen you. I’m not blind! I can see the advantages you might gain by marrying him! You would be very rich. You could have your own theatre, you would leap at once to a much higher position. But do you dream that such a marriage would be happy? Why, you have hardly a taste in common, and he is old enough to be your father.”
“Oh, as to happiness,” she said, impatiently, “I have long ceased to expect that. Don’t think me brutal if I speak plainly. I have had your love all these years, and it has not made me really happy. And if I married you, Hugh, I should not be happy at all. You are much too good for me, your standard of life is far too high. You would not be able to draw me up, and I should be always longing to drag you down to my level. It would be a life of perpetual strain and tension.”
“No, no,” he cried passionately, and as he spoke he caught her hand in his as though he felt that she was slipping from him. “Together, darling, we should be happy, we should be strong to work for art’s sake and for truth’s sake—strong to fight all that is evil.”
They had paused, and were standing now beside the railing that fenced off the grass and bushes, and within a stone’s throw of Ralph and Evereld; half unconsciously Macneillie watched the progress of the toy boat as the soft summer wind filled its white sails. At a little distance the ducks swam about the wooded island, and in the golden haze Queen Anne’s Mansions loomed up impressively like some great fortress.
“But I don’t want to toil and to struggle like that,” said his companion, petulantly. “Every word you say only proves to me how far we have drifted apart, Hugh. You have a sort of ideal of me in your mind not in the least like the true Christine. I tell you I am tired of all your ideals and aims and dreams of raising the drama. That is not what I care for. I care for success and applause—yes I do, don’t interrupt me. I care for them, and I must have them. And I want a better position, and I want much, much more money. I want other things, too, which you can never give me. You’ll never be a rich man, Hugh, it’s somehow not in you; you’ll never push your way to the very front of the profession. But I must do that, nothing but the very first place will satisfy me. I have ten times your ambition.”
“By that sin fell the angels,” said Macneillie.
“Don’t quote Shakspere, we have enough of him every evening,” she said, forcing a laugh. “And for me, I am not an angel as you very well know. Come, let us make an end of this useless talk. My father is at this moment discussing settlements with Sir Roderick, and in a day or two all the world will know that the marriage is arranged.”
Macneillie’s lips moved but no words would come—he breathed hard.
“Don’t look like that, Hugh,” she exclaimed. “We shall often see each other; we shall be the best of friends; and when I have my own theatre, why you shall be the first to find a place in the company.”
A look of hot anger flashed across Macneillie’s haggard face.
“Do you think I would accept such a post?” he said, indignantly. “For what do you take me?” Then, his tone softening to tender reproach, “You don’t understand a man’s love—you don’t understand!”
“Perhaps I don’t understand it,” she said, looking rather nettled; “but I have met plenty of men who were dying for love of me one month and raving about some one else the next. There, I must go home. Talking only makes matters worse. Go and take a good walk, Hugh, or you will act abominably to-night.Au revoir!”
She beckoned to her maid and turned away abruptly, anxious to put an end to an interview which had been trying to both of them. Her face was grave and down-cast as she walked, and more than once she sighed heavily. She had never been formally betrothed to Macneillie, but there had been a private engagement between them, and she had spoken quite truly when she said that his care during her girlhood had shielded her from many perils. Her love for him had been very real; she had struggled long against the opposition of her parents, but at last her strength had failed, and little by little she had yielded to the influence which by degrees had paralysed her powers of loving.
“Poor Hugh,” she thought to herself, remorsefully. “He is terribly cut up. But I was never good enough for him. Sir Roderick and the low level will suit me much better.”
After he was left alone, Macneillie did not move for some minutes. He just leant on the iron fence with clenched hands and set face, despair in his heart. The voices of the two children to the right fell on his ear, mingling strangely with his miserable thoughts.
“I shall lose her! I shall lose her!” cried the boy in a tragic voice.
“How came you to let go of the string?” asked his small companion.
“I had forgotten all about it; I was thinking of those people. Hurrah! the wind is shifting; she is coming nearer. I do believe I could reach her with my stick.”
Macneillie watched the boy’s strenuous efforts to recapture the tiny craft, which seemed almost within his reach, yet somehow always eluded him. Suddenly, at the very moment when his stick had touched the boat, he lost his balance and fell headlong over the low foot-rail into the water.
Macneillie had hurried to the rescue before Evereld’s cry of terror had reached Fraulein Ellerbeck. He lifted out the dripping boy and laid him on the path, and Ralph, recovering from the shock and rubbing his wet eyelashes, looked up to find a grave face bending over him and to meet the inquiry of the kindest blue-grey eyes he had ever seen.
“None the worse for your bath, I hope?” said Macneillie, smiling a little.
“No, thank you,” said Ralph, struggling to his feet and looking very much like Johnnie Head-in-air when “with hooks the two strong men hooked poor Johnnie out again.”
“It was awfully good of you to help me,” he added, gratefully.
“And now let us rescue the boat,” said Macneillie, winning golden opinions from the children by the real pains he took to capture theRob Roy, and the same from Fraulein Ellerbeck by his courteous farewell.
“So few Englishmen,” she remarked, “know how to bow. You must take a lesson from him, Ralph.”
“And, oh, Fraulein,” said Evereld, as they walked briskly home, that Ralph might change his clothes, “did you see what a long time Miss Christine Greville stayed talking to him? And part of the time they were quite close to us, and we heard her say that soon every one would know she was to be married—I think, to some very rich man—and she would have a theatre of her own, and Mr. Macneillie should act there.”
“You should not have listened, my dears,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck, uneasily.
“But, indeed, Fraulein, we couldn’t help it; her voice was so very, very clear, it reached us every word just like raindrops pattering on leaves.”
“And so did his voice too,” said Ralph. “He seemed quite angry when she said that. He said he would never accept such a post, and that she didn’t a bit understand how he loved her.”
“Well, well,” said Fraulein, “let us say no more about it now; and be sure you never repeat what you accidentally overheard. It may be a secret from people in general, and it would be more honourable if you treated it as a secret.”
The children promised that they would do so, but, like the celebrated parrot, though they said nothing, they thought the more, and Macneillie became their great hero. Through him they had both received their first glimpse into the unknown region where men and women loved and suffered; and, since they both were missing the familiar home life and the close companionship of parents, they seized eagerly on this new outlet for certain feelings of reverence and hero-worship which they both possessed.
Could the actor have known what sympathy and devotion these two felt for him, or how real was their childish love and admiration, he would have felt, even at that bitter time in his life, a touch of amused gratitude and wonder. Wholly unknown to himself he was filling the minds of two somewhat desolate little mortals, brightening their tedious days, and drawing them out of themselves and their own troubles.
Often, in after years, they would laugh to think what pleasure they had found in running downstairs before the breakfast gong had sounded, that they might get possession of theTimesand see the announcement of “Hamlet,” in which Macneillie was appearing. And one morning it chanced that their two smiling faces were still bent over the paper when Sir Matthew came into the room.
“Well,” he said, kindly, “what good news have you found?”
For once Ralph forgot the shy stiffness of manner which usually crept over him at his guardian’s approach.
“Oh,” he said, in an eager boyish way, “We were just looking at the cast for ‘Hamlet.’”
“To be sure. I had quite forgotten that you were stage-struck, and that I had promised you to go to see Washington. You must get Fraulein Ellerbeck to take you some day.”
“We would much rather see Macneillie,” said Evereld, “for it was Macneillie, you know, who helped Ralph out when he tumbled into the water.”
“Very well,” said Sir Matthew, “then do that instead. Fraulein Ellerbeck, will you take tickets for them?—and the sooner the better, for I hear there has been a great run on the seats there since the announcement of Miss Greville’s marriage. She’s to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch at the end of the season.”
Ralph and Evereld having poured forth delighted thanks, discreetly kept silence when the conversation turned on Miss Greville’s betrothal.
“They say, you know,” said Janet, “that it is a great surprise to every one, and that it was always supposed she would marry Macneillie.”
And in response to this every one had something to say about the probability or the improbability of such a story, save the two children who, with a proud pleasure in feeling that Macneillie’s secret was safe in their keeping, went on eating bacon with the most absolute control of countenance.
When the eagerly awaited day at length arrived and the two hero-worshippers were sitting in bliss at the theatre, they found some difficulty at first in recognising Macneillie. He was just the Danish prince and no one else. It was only when both hero and heroine were called before the curtain, that they could at all think of him as the same man they had seen a few weeks before in St. James’ Park.
As he led forward Miss Greville the contrast between them was curiously marked. She, with her smiling face, her air of perfect ease and content, seemed thoroughly to enjoy the warm reception. He, on the other hand, merely bowed mechanically, and looked as if this interlude were highly distasteful to him; the children could have fancied that he was positively nervous, though they doubted whether an experienced actor could really know what nervousness meant.
After that call before the curtain they lost the sense thatHamlethimself was actually present; always through the passionate scenes and the tragic death which followed, it was not entirelyHamlet, but Macneillie with his own personal troubles that they saw; they wondered much how he could get through his part, and more and more after that day his name continually recurred in their talk, in their games, and even in their prayers.
Just at the close of the season they saw him once again. Fraulein Ellerbeck had promised that on the first fine Saturday they should go to Richmond Park, taking their lunch with them. They had learnt from the conversation of their elders at the breakfast table that it was the very day on which Miss Christine Greville was to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch. The marriage was to take place at a small country church, and was to be of a strictly private character. They had talked of it more than once as they sat at lunch under the trees in the park, and early in the afternoon as they wandered along the quiet paths and watched the deer grazing peacefully, their minds were full of their hero and his trouble. Suddenly Evereld gripped hold of her companion’s arm.
“Look!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Is it not Mr. Macneillie?”
Ralph’s heart beat fast as he glanced at the approaching figure. Had their incessant thought of him conjured up a sort of vision of the actor? Or was it indeed himself? Nearer approach answered the question plainly enough. It was undoubtedly Macneillie, but there was something in his ghastly face which struck terror into the boy’s heart, it reminded him of that awful shadow of death which he had seen stealing over his father on that last never-to-be-forgotten day. Apparently quite unconscious of their presence, Macneillie passed by, but in a minute Ralph, to the amazement of Fraulein Ellerbeck and Evereld, had rushed back and overtaken him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, panting a little; “but I am the boy you saved the other day in St. James’ Park. And—and please will you take this knife as a remembrance.”
He thrust into Macneillie’s hand a little old-fashioned silver fruit knife which had belonged to his father.
The actor evidently dragged himself back with an effort to the world of realities. He looked in a puzzled way at the boy and at the embossed handle of the knife.
“You are very good,” he said in a perplexed tone. “Yes, yes, I remember you now—you and your boat. But I don’t like to take your knife away from you.”
“But, indeed, I never use it; I always eat peel and all,” said Ralph with an earnestness which brought a smile to Macneillie’s face. “We went to see you asHamlet, and you were splendid! Please take it. You don’t know how awfully I like you.”
Macneillie’s eyes gave him a kindly glance and his cold fingers closed over the boy’s small hot hand in a hearty grip.
“Then I will certainly use it,” he said. “It shall travel in my pocket for the rest of my life. But only on condition that you take this. Don’t get into mischief with it.”
And with a smile he put into his hand a clasp-knife, and while Ralph was still lost in admiration of the longest and sharpest blade he had ever seen, Macneillie passed rapidly on and disappeared among the trees.
“Oh, Ralph, how delightful!” cried Evereld, as the boy rejoined them.
“How could you be so brave as to go up and speak to him?”
“I’m awfully glad he took the fruit knife,” said Ralph. “But I wish he hadn’t given me this. It’s such a beauty and I had done nothing for him.”
“Perhaps you had,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck, thoughtfully. “The unseen and unrealised help is often the most real help of all.”
“The recognition of his rights therefore, the justice he requires of our hands or our thoughts, is the recognition of that which the person, in his inmost nature, really is; and as sympathy alone can discover that which really is in matters of feeling and thought, true justice is in its essence a finer knowledge through love.”
“Appreciations,” Walter Pater.
Six years after that memorable August day, Ralph and Evereld might have been seen on the tennis ground attached to the pretty house near Redvale, which Sir Matthew was pleased to call his “little country cottage.”
It was decidedly one of those cottages of gentility which once caused the devil to grin. But in spite of that it was a very charming place. Its windows commanded an exquisite view over the hills and woods of one of the southern counties, and its gardens were the admiration of the whole neighbourhood. The tennis-lawn lay to the left of the house in a cosy nook of its own, and there was no one to see the vigorous game which the two were playing. This was a pity, for the play was skilful and dainty to watch, and the players themselves were worth looking at.
Ralph, who had been a remarkably small boy, was never likely, as Geraghty expressed it, to be “six foot long and broad,” but he had developed into a well-proportioned, healthy-looking fellow, and still retained his open, boyish face, expressive brown eyes, and thick, wavy brown hair. Evereld was even less changed, she was still very small and young for her age; and although she was fast approaching her eighteenth birthday she wore the sort of nondescript dress which girls often wear during their last year in the schoolroom, her skirt revealing a pair of pretty ankles, and her hair still hanging down her back.
The contest was an exciting one, but it ended in a victory for Ralph, whose greater strength usually conquered.
“I am heavily handicapped,” said Evereld, throwing up her racket with a laugh. “We’ll borrow the vicar’s cassock and the Lord Chancellor’s wig and you shall play a set in them and see if I don’t beat you then!”
“Come and rest,” said Ralph, strolling towards the little shady arbour at the side of the lawn. “The sun is grilling.”
“You would find it worse if you had all this weight to endure,” said Evereld, shaking back the cloud of nut-brown hair which hung over her shoulders. “I shall take to plaiting it up, then at least one would be cool.”
“No, don’t!” protested Ralph. “You’ll never look half as nice afterwards. And besides, when girls do up their hair they always leave off being natural and get grown-up and horrid, and can’t talk sense to a fellow.”
“My hair has nothing to do with being natural,” said Evereld, fanning herself with a big fern. “How could I help being natural with you, when we have been together all this long time? How I do wish I were a boy and might have gone in for the Indian Civil, too. By-the-by, Ralph, is that to-day’s paper? Is there any news about your exam?”
“They sent the wrong paper,” said Ralph taking it up. “See, it’s last night’sEvening Standardinstead of this morning’s; they have been taking a nap down at the bookstall. I wonder if there really is anything in at last. It seems hard lines to keep us on tenterhooks from the 1st June till August.”
“I don’t believe you have worried about it. Your head was full of those private theatricals the moment the exam. was over. How well they went off! I never saw Sir Matthew so nice to you. He really did for once appreciate you.”
“That was because other people praised me” said Ralph. “He would never have said one word of his own accord. You’ll never find him committing himself before he knows whether he will be swimming with the stream.”
“Ralph, do you know I think you are growing rather hard. I hate to hear you say things like that about Sir Matthew. If Fraulein were here she would have a hundred instances of his kindness to tell us.”
“Yes she would,” owned Ralph. “She has been our good angel all these years. Worse luck to that old professor who married her and left us to ourselves. Why, Evereld, just look at it in that way. What should you and I have been like if all this time we had only had the sort of indifferent cold charity which the Mactavishes have given us? Oh, I know there has been money spent on me: do you think I have ever been allowed to forget that for a moment? But Sir Matthew spoils with one hand the good he does with the other. Thank heaven, I shall soon be on my own hook. I wonder what life out in India will be like—and what the chances of getting any cricket are?”
Evereld fell to talking of happy reminiscences of Simla, and they were planning all manner of impossible arrangements for the future, in which they fondly imagined their present brotherly and sisterly relations would be maintained, when Bridget suddenly appeared upon the scene.
“Miss Evereld,” she exclaimed, “you’d best be coming in to change your frock, my dear. Sir Matthew has come down without any warning from London. He’s in the library, Mr. Ralph and they did tell me he was askin’ for you. Geraghty he just passed me the word that he thought Sir Matthew was troubled in his mind about some little matter.”
Ralph flushed.
“You see now,” he exclaimed, turning to Evereld, “if I haven’t gone and failed in that wretched exam! What on earth shall I do if I have?”
“Why, you will go in for it again next year,” said Evereld philosophically. “But who says you have failed? It may be nothing to do with the exam. Besides, you know that your coach and Professor Rosenwald and Fraulein—I mean Frau Rosenwald—all thought you were safe to pass.”
“I know I had worked hard,” said Ralph. “Well, let me go and hear the worst at once.”
“Don’t despair so soon. As for me, I believe you have passed, and that it is only some business matter that’s worrying Sir Matthew. Good luck to you. Don’t stay long in the library. I shall be dressed in ten minutes.”
She waved her hand gaily and ran upstairs, while Ralph, with a great dread hanging over him, went to the library.
With other people he was invariably cheerful and talkative, but with Sir Matthew he was never his best self. To begin with, he was always ill at ease, and by a sort of fate he seemed destined to say and do exactly what would annoy his patron. If he was silent, Sir Matthew was in the habit of rating him for his dulness. If he laughed and talked, he was ordered not to make so much noise. If he hazarded an opinion he was sure to meet with a snub, and at all times and seasons he was hedged in by significant reminders that he was eating the bread of charity. It was well for him that he had seen comparatively little of the Mactavishes, thanks to his life at Winchester and to his friendship with Evereld and her governess; but he had seen enough to do him considerable harm and to plant seeds of pride, and hardness, and distrust of humanity in his heart.
Sir Matthew was sitting at his bureau. He glanced up as the door opened, bestowed a curt nod upon Ralph and went on writing in silence.
“They told me you were inquiring for me,” said Ralph nervously, noting at once the storm signals in Sir Matthew’s face.
“I did send for you,” said the master of the house grimly, as he signed his name with two flourishing M’s, and methodically folded, directed and stamped his dispatch.
Ralph, horribly chafed by the manner of his reception and by the suspense, turned to the window and took up a newspaper which was lying near it.
“Put that down,” thundered Sir Matthew, as though he had been ordering a child of four years old.
“Sir?” said Ralph, in angry astonishment.
“Do you think I don’t understand your game,” said Sir Matthew. “You are pretending to look for news of your examination when all the time you perfectly well know that you have failed.”
“Failed!” cried Ralph turning pale, and realising how little he had believed in failure when he had talked of the possibility with Evereld. “Who says I have failed? Where are the lists?”
He snatched at the paper again, neither heeding Sir Matthew’s orders nor his scoffing laugh. Here was the list of the successful candidates, and with eager eyes he looked down it. The name of Denmead was not there.
Sir Matthew silently watched his expression of bewildered despair, but though it would have appealed to some men it did not appeal to him.
“Now that the newspaper corroborates what I told you, perhaps you believe my word,” he said sarcastically.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ralph, “I did not mean to doubt you—but the shock———”
“Now my good fellow, you may as well be silent, the less said about a shock the better; you know perfectly well that you never deserved to pass that examination. You had idled away your time over cricket and theatricals, and now you have to face the consequences.”
“You are the first person to say that,” said Ralph, resentfully. “They all told me I had an excellent chance and was well prepared.”
“The examiners, however, thought differently,” said Sir Matthew; “your work was miserable. I have this very day been making special inquiries into the matter, that I may not judge you unfairly. You have not only failed, but failed ignominiously. Don’t fidget about while I am talking to you; sit down and listen to me for I have much to say.”
Ralph forced himself to obey in silence.
“I am perfectly well aware,” resumed Sir Matthew, “that nowadays young men think nothing of failing, that they go in for an examination time after time with light hearts while their unfortunate fathers have to pay the piper. You were not in a position to behave in that fashion. And you would have shown, I think, a finer sense of honour if you had worked well.”
“I did work,” said Ralph emphatically. “If you———”
Sir Matthew raised his long hand and waved it downwards in a silencing manner that was peculiarly his own.
“I say nothing,” he continued, in his cool, measured tone, “as to what I might have expected after the large sum I have thrown away on your schooling at Winchester; I say nothing as to the three months in Germany and the special coach I provided for you; I say nothing of the manner in which I took you at once into my own house when there was no one to stand by you; I say nothing as to the fatherly care I have bestowed on you all these——”
He broke off abruptly, for Ralph, with the look of one goaded past bearing, had sprung to his feet.
“No,” he cried passionately, “at least that word you shall not use: there was never anything fatherly about you. All those other things that you cast in my teeth though you say you won’t mention them—they are true enough, and I have tried to be grateful—I—” he half choked in the desperate struggle between his pride and a certain sense of courtesy which still clung to him—“I will try always to be grateful.” He strode across the room to the window, panting for air. A chuckle escaped Sir Matthew.
“You were always a good hand at acting,” he remarked, “but I shall be obliged if you will come down from your high horse and remember that I am talking about a business arrangement. Don’t waste my time, but listen to what I have to say to you.”
Ralph paced back again to the hearthrug and stood there, looking steadily down at his patron. It somehow seemed as if in those few moments he had passed from boyhood altogether, even Sir Matthew noted the change in his look and bearing. “The only thing,” he resumed, “in which I ever saw you really exert yourself was in that play at the end of the season. I quite admit that you learnt the part ofCharles Surfaceat very short notice and that you acted it far better than any amateur I ever had the pain of watching. But to play a part in ‘The School for Scandal’ is one thing, and to be fit to play your part in life is another. You will never, I am convinced, be sharp enough for the Indian Civil Service, I shall not permit you to go in again for it next year. I have already wasted too much upon you and shall not throw good money after bad. That’s always a mistake.”
Ralph could not calmly stand by and hear his whole future overturned without a word; he broke in eagerly, perhaps rashly. “Yet many have failed the first time and afterwards turned out well,” he pleaded. “The standard of age, too, is likely to be raised they say. I would work my hardest. If you will let me try again——” But once more Sir Matthew gave that expressive downward wave of the hand.
“No,” he said peremptorily, “You have had your chance and lost it. Still, I am loth to turn my back altogether on an old friend’s son, and for my own satisfaction I offer you one more opportunity. I will make a parson of you. Do you remember that snug little vicarage up in the north of England where last year we went to call on a Mr. Crosbie? Years ago the Mactavishes owned the living; it had been in the family for generations. My father at a time when he was pressed for money sold it to old Crosbie. I have long wished to have the property again, and only to-day Crosbie happened to be in town and I got him to promise me that if I bought the living he would undertake to retire in four years. You had better not tell it in Gath, for of course the promise to retire is a strictly private matter, but for the rest it’s all legal enough. Next month you will be twenty. In four years you could be ordained priest, and I will undertake to see you through your training and to put you into this living. It’s three hundred and a house; you could be happy enough up there, and for your father’s sake I am willing to do as much as that for you.”
There was something so artificial in those last words that Ralph, whose anger had been rising every moment, now broke forth indignantly.
“Is it for his sake that you put before me a temptation of this sort? You surely know—you must know—that my father would never have accepted a living obtained in that way. Had you offered it him, and had it been worth ten times the money, he would not have touched it with a pair of tongs. Why, the thing is rank simony!”
“You receive offers of help in a somewhat curious fashion, young man,” said Sir Matthew with a sneer. “But in spite of that I still think you are very well cut out for a parson. Your dramatic instincts and your good voice would fit you well enough for the Church, and you are already able, I perceive, to preach to your elders and betters.”
Ralph winced at the sarcasm, but he caught hold of the weak point in his opponent’s argument.
“No,” he said, emphatically, “I am not fit for the work of a clergyman. The only thing that can fit a man for that is a distinct call from God. You are tempting me to go in for the loaves and fishes, and you dare to say that you do this for my father’s sake—my father, who would have starved first!”
“Perhaps he would,” said Sir Matthew coldly. “He was, as all his friends knew, an unpractical fool. You needn’t look as if you could kill me. He had excellent abilities but no power of pushing his way, and he left you a beggar in consequence, proving, according to scripture, that as he had neglected to secure future provision for his family he had denied the faith and was worse than an infidel. Now, to return to business; are you going to accept this offer of mine, or do you intend to be a pig-headed idiot, and affect to be calling a mere matter of business simony?”
Ralph’s eyes lighted up.
“I mean,” he said quietly, “to be true to my father’s ideals.”
Sir Matthew broke into a discordant laugh.
“Did his precious ideals feed you and clothe you and send you to Winchester? Don’t you know by his own confession that he had mismanaged his affairs?”
“I know,” said Ralph indignantly, “that, whatever his faults, he was at least an honest man.”
He had meant no insinuation whatever, but the words galled his companion terribly. Sir Matthew rose to his feet in a towering passion.
“You impertinent, ungrateful fellow, do you dare to insult me in my own house? Go, sir, get out of my sight! I have had enough of you. Let us see now how your ideals will support you! Leave my house and never set foot in it again!”
Ralph, too angry and sore to realise all that the words meant, turned without a word and left the library.