When he had time to think, Colonel Kelmscott determined in his own mind that he would still do his best to save Granville, whether Granville himself wished it or otherwise. So he proceeded to take all the necessary steps for breaking the entail and raising the money he needed for Guy and Cyril.
In all this, Granville neither acquiesced nor dissented. He signed mechanically whatever documents his father presented to him, and he stood by his bargain with a certain sullen, undeviating, hard-featured loyalty; but he never forgot those few angry words in which his father had half let out his long-guarded life secret.
Thinking the matter over continually with himself, however, he came in the end to the natural conclusion that one explanation alone would fit all the facts. He was not his father’s eldest son at all. Colonel Kelmscott must have been married to some one else before his marriage with Lady Emily. That some one else’s son was the real heir of Tilgate. And it was to him that his father, in his passionate penitence, proposed, after many years, to do one-sided justice. Now Granville Kelmscott, though a haughty and somewhat head-strong fellow, after the fashion of his race, was a young man of principle and of honour. The moment this hideous doubt occurred to his mind, he couldn’t rest in his bed till he had cleared it all up and settled it for ever, one way or the other. If Tilgate wasn’t his, by law and right, he wanted none of it. If his father was trying to buy off the real heir to the estate with a pitiful pittance, in order to preserve the ill-gotten remainder for Lady Emily’s son, why, Granville for his part would be no active party to such a miserable compromise. If some other man was the Colonel’s lawful heir, let that other man take the property and enjoy it; but he, Granville Kelmscott, would go forth upon the world, an honest adventurer, to seek his fortune with his own right hand wherever he might find it.
Still, he could take no active step, on the other hand, to hunt up the truth about the Colonel’s real or supposed first marriage. For here an awful dilemma blocked the way before him. If the Colonel had married before, and if by that former marriage he had a son or sons—how could Granville be sure the supposed first wife was dead before the second was married? And supposing, for a moment, she was not dead—supposing his father had been even more criminal and more unjust than he at first imagined—how could he take the initiative himself in showing that his own mother, Lady Emily Kelmscott, was no wife at all in the sight of the law? that some other woman was his father’s lawful consort? The bare possibility of such an issue was too horrible for any son on earth to face undismayed. So, tortured and distracted by his divided duty, Granville Kelmscott shrank alike from action or inaction.
In the midst of such doubts and difficulties, however, one duty shone out clear as day before him. Till the mystery was cleared up, till the problem was solved, he must see no more of Gwendoline Gildersleeve. He had engaged himself to her as the heir of Tilgate. She had accepted him under that guise, and looked forward to an early and happy marriage. Now, all was changed. He was, or might be, a beggar and an outcast. To be sure, he knew Gwendoline loved him for himself; but how could he marry her if he didn’t even know he had anything of his own in the world to marry upon? The park and fallow deer had been a part of himself; without them, he felt he was hardly even a Kelmscott. It was his plain duty, now, for Gwendoline’s sake, to release her from her promise to a man who might perhaps be penniless, and who couldn’t even feel sure he was the lawful son of his own father. And yet—for Lady Emily’s sake—he mustn’t hint, even to Gwendoline, the real reason which moved him to offer her this release. He must throw himself upon her mercy, without cause assigned, and ask her for the time being to have faith in him and to believe him.
So, a day or two after the interview with his father in the library, the self-disinherited heir of Tilgate took the path through the glade that led into the dell beyond the boundary fence—that dell which had once been accounted a component part of Tilgate Park, but which Gilbert Gildersleeve had proved, in his cold-blooded documentary legal way, to belong in reality to the grounds of Woodlands. It was in the dell that Granville sometimes ran up against Gwendoline. He sat down on the broken ledge of ironstone that overhung the little brook. It was eleven o’clock gone. By eleven o’clock, three mornings in the week, chance—pure chance—the patron god of lovers, brought Gwendoline into the dell to meet him.
Presently, a light footfall rang soft upon the path, and next moment a tall and beautiful girl, with a wealth of auburn hair, and a bright colour in her cheeks, tripped lightly down the slope, as if strolling through the wood in maiden meditation, fancy free, unexpecting any one.
“What, you here, Mr. Kelmscott?” she exclaimed, as she saw him, her pink cheek deepening as she spoke to a still profounder crimson.
“Yes, I’m here, Gwendoline,” Granville Kelmscott answered, with a smile of recognition at her maidenly pretence of an undesigned coincidence. “And I’m here, to say the truth, because I quite expected this morning to meet you.”
He took her hand gravely. Gwendoline let her eyes fall modestly on the ground, as if some warmer greeting were more often bestowed between them. The young man blushed with a certain manly shame. “No, not to-day, dear,” he said, with an effort, as she held her cheek aside, half courting and half deprecating the expected kiss. “Oh, Gwendoline, I don’t know how to begin. I don’t know how to say it. But I’ve got very sad news for you—news that I can’t bear to break—that I can’t venture to explain—that I don’t even properly understand myself. I must throw myself upon your faith. I must just ask you to trust me.”
Gwendoline let him seat her, unresisting, upon the ledge by his side, and her cheek grew suddenly ashy pale, as she answered with a gasp, forgetting the “Mr. Kelmscott” at this sudden leap into the stern realities of life, “Why, Granville, what do you mean? You know I can trust you. You know, whatever it may be, I believe you implicitly.”
The young man took her hand in his with a tender pressure. It was a terrible message to have to deliver. He bungled and blundered on, with many twists and turns, through some inarticulate attempt at an indefinite explanation. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her—oh, devotedly, eternally, she must know that well; she never could doubt it. It wasn’t that any shadow had arisen between him and her, it wasn’t anything he could speak about, or anything she must say to any soul on earth—oh, for his mother’s sake, he hoped and trusted she would religiously keep his secret inviolate! But something had happened to him within the last few days—something unspeakable, indefinite, uncertain, vague, yet very full of the most dreadful possibilities; something that might make him unable to support a wife; something that at least must delay or postpone for an unknown time the long-hoped-for prospect of his claiming her and marrying her. Some day, perhaps—he broke off suddenly, and looked with a wistful look into her deep grey eyes. His resolution failed him. “One kiss,” he said, “Gwendoline!” His voice was choking. The beautiful girl, turning towards him with a wild sob, fell, yielding herself on his breast, and cried hot tears of joy at that evident sign that, in spite of all he said, he still really loved her.
They sat there long, hand in hand, and eye on eye, talking it all over, as lovers will, with infinite delays, yet getting no nearer towards a solution either way. Gwendoline, for her part, didn’t care, of course—what true woman does?—whether Granville was the heir of Tilgate or not; she would marry him all the more, she said, if he were a penniless nobody. All she wanted was to love him and be near him. Let him marry her now, marry her to-day, and then go where he would in the world to seek his livelihood. But Granville, poor fellow, alarmed at the bare suggestion—for his mother’s sake—that Tilgate might really not be his, checked her at once in her outburst with a grave, silent look; he was still, he said calmly, the inheritor of Tilgate. It wasn’t that. At least, not as she took it. He didn’t know precisely what it was himself. She must have faith in him and trust him. She must wait and see. In the end, he hoped, he would come back and marry her.
And Gwendoline made answer, with many tears, that she knew it was so, and that she loved him and trusted him. So, after sitting there long, hand locked in hand, and heart intent on heart, the two young people rose at last to go, protesting and vowing their mutual love on either side, as happy and as miserable in their divided lives as two young people in all England that moment. Over and over again they kissed and said good-bye; then they stood with one another’s fingers clasped hard in their own, unwilling to part, and unable to loose them. After that, they kissed again, and declared once more they were broken-hearted, and could never leave one another. But still, Granville added, half aside, he must make up his mind not to see Gwendoline again—honour demanded that sacrifice—till he could come at last a rich man to claim her. Meanwhile, she was free; and he—he was ever hers, devotedly, whole-souledly. But they were no longer engaged. He was hers in heart only. Let her try to forget him. He could never forget her.
And Gwendoline, sobbing and tearful, but believing him implicitly, retreated with slow steps, looking back at each turn of the zigzag path, and sending the ghosts of dead kisses from her finger-tips to greet him.
Below in the dell Granville stood still, and watched her depart in breathless silence. Then, in an agony of despair, he flung himself down on the ground and burst into tears, and sobbed like a child over his broken daydream.
Gwendoline, coming back to make sure, saw him lying and sobbing so; and, woman-like, felt compelled to step down just one minute to comfort him. Granville in turn refused her proffered comfort—it was better so—he mustn’t listen to her any more; he must steel himself to say No; he must remember it was dishonourable of him to drag a delicately nurtured girl into a penniless marriage. Then they kissed once more and made it all up again; and they sobbed and wept as before, and broke it off for ever; and they said good-bye for the very last time; and they decided they must never meet till Granville came back; and they hoped they would sometimes catch just a glimpse of one another in the outer world, and whatever the other one said or did, they would each in their hearts be always true to their first great love; and they were more miserable still, and they were happier than they had ever been in their lives before; and they parted at last, with a desperate effort, each perfectly sure of the other’s love, and each vowing in soul they would never, never see one another again, but each, for all that, perfectly certain that some day or other they would be husband and wife, though Tilgate and the wretched little fallow deer should sink, unwept, to the bottom of the ocean.
The manager at Messrs. Drummond, Coutts and Barclay’s, Limited, received Colonel Kelmscott with distinguished consideration. A courteous, conciliatory sort of man, that manager, with his close-shaven face and his spotless shirt-front.
“Five minutes, my dear sir?” he exclaimed, with warmth, motioning his visitor blandly into the leather-covered chair. “Half an hour, if you wish it. We always have leisure to receive our clients. Any service we can render them, we’re only too happy.”
“But this is a very peculiar bit of business,” Colonel Kelmscott answered, humming and hawing with obvious hesitation. “It isn’t quite in the regular way of banking, I believe. Perhaps, indeed, I ought rather to have put it into the hands of my solicitor. But, even if you can’t manage the thing yourself, you may be able to put me in the way of finding out how best I can get it managed elsewhere.”
The manager bowed. His smile was a smile of genuine satisfaction. Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate was in a most gracious humour. The manager, with deference, held himself wholly at his client’s disposition.
So the Colonel proceeded to unfold his business. There were two young men, now knocking about town, of the names of Guy and Cyril Waring—the one a journalist, the other a painter—and they had rooms in Staple Inn, Holborn, which would doubtless form a sufficient clue by which to identify them. Colonel Kelmscott desired unobtrusively to know where these young men banked—if indeed they were in a position to keep an account; and when that was found out, he wished Messrs. Drummond, Coutts and Barclay, Limited, to place a sum of money at their bankers to their credit, without mentioning the name of the person so placing it, as well as to transmit to them a sealed envelope, containing instructions as to the use to be made of the money in question.
The manager nodded a cautious acquiescence. To place the money to the credit of the two young men, indeed, would be quite in their way. But to send the sealed envelope, without being aware of its contents, or the nature of the business on which it was despatched, would be much less regular. Perhaps the Colonel might find some other means of managing without their aid that portion of the business arrangement.
The Colonel, for his part, fell in readily enough with this modest point of view. It amply sufficed for him if the money were paid to the young men’s credit, and a receipt, forwarded to him in due course, under cover of a number, to the care of the bankers.
“Very well,” the manager answered, rubbing his hands contentedly. “Our confidential clerk will settle all that for you. A most sagacious person, our confidential clerk. No eyes, no ears, no tongue for anything but our clients’ interests.”
The Colonel smiled, and sat a little longer, giving further details as the precise amount he wished sent, and the particular way he wished to send it—the whole sum to be, in fact, twelve thousand pounds, amount of the purchase money of the Dowlands farms, whereof only six thousand had as yet been paid down; and that six thousand he wished to place forthwith to the credit of Cyril Waring, the painter. The remaining six thousand, to be settled, as agreed, in five weeks’ time, he would then make over under the self-same conditions to the other brother, Guy Waring, the journalist. It had gone a trifle too cheap, that land at Dowlands, the Colonel opined; but still, in days like these he was very glad, indeed, to find a purchaser for the place at anything like its value.
“I think a Miss Ewes was the fortunate bidder, wasn’t she?” the manager asked, just to make a certain decent show of interest in his client’s estate.
“Yes, Miss Elma Ewes of Kenilworth,” the Colonel answered, letting loose for a moment his tongue, that unruly member. “She’s the composer, you know—writes songs and dances; remotely connected with Reginald Clifford, the man who was Governor of some West Indian Dutch-oven—St. Kitts, I think, or Antigua—he lives down our way, and he’s a neighbour of mine at Tilgate. Or rather she’s connected with Mrs. Clifford, the Governor’s wife, who was one of the younger branch, a Miss Ewes of Worthing, daughter of the Ewes who was Dean of Dorchester. Elma’s been a family name for years with all the lot of Eweses, good, bad, or indifferent. Came down to them, don’t you know, from that Roumanian ancestress.”
“Indeed,” the manager answered, now beginning to be really interested—for the Cliffords were clients too, and it behoves a banker to know everything about everybody’s business. “So Mrs. Clifford had an ancestress who was a Roumanian, had she? Well, I’ve noticed at times her complexion looked very southern and gipsy-like—distinctly un-English.”
“Oh, they call it Roumanian,” Colonel Kelmscott went on in a confidential tone, roping his white moustache, and growing more and more conversational; “they call it Roumanian, because it sounds more respectable; but I believe, if you go right down to the very bottom of the thing, it was much more like some kind of Oriental gipsy. Sir Michael Ewes, the founder of the house, in George the Second’s time, was ambassador for awhile at Constantinople. He began life, indeed, I believe, as a Turkey merchant. Well, at Pera one day, so the story goes—you’ll find it all in Horace Walpole’s diary—he picked up with this dark-skinned gipsy-woman, who was a wonderful creature in her way, a sort of mesmeric sorceress, who belonged to some tribe of far eastern serpent charmers. It seems that women of this particular tribe were regularly trained by the men to be capering priestesses—or fortune-tellers, if you like—who performed some extraordinary sacred antics of a mystical kind, much after the fashion of the howling dervishes. However that may be, Sir Michael, at any rate, pacing the streets of Pera, saw the woman that she was passing fair, and fell in love with her outright at some dervish entertainment. But being a very well-behaved old man, combining a liking for Orientals with a British taste for the highest respectability, he had the girl baptized and made into a proper Christian first; and then he married her off-hand and brought her home with him as my Lady Ewes to England. She was presented at Court, to George the Second; and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu stood her sponsor on the occasion.”
“But how did it all turn out?” the manager asked, with an air of intelligent historical interest.
“Turn out? Well, it turned out in a thumping big family of thirteen children,” the Colonel answered; “most of whom, happily for the father, died young, But the five who survived, and who married at last into very good connections, all had one peculiarity, which they transmitted to all their female descendants. Very odd these hereditary traits, to be sure. Very singular! Very singular!”
“Ah, to be sure,” the manager answered, turning over a pile of letters. “And what was the hereditary trait handed down, as you say, in the family of the Roumanian lady?”
“Why, in the first place,” the Colonel continued, leaning back in his chair, and making himself perfectly comfortable, “all the girls of the Ewes connection, to the third and fourth generation, have olive-brown complexions, creamy and soft, but clear as crystal. Then again, they’ve all got most extraordinary intuition—a perfectly marvellous gift of reading faces. By George, sir,” the Colonel exclaimed, growing hot and red at the memory of that afternoon on the Holkers’ lawn, “I don’t like to see those women’s eyes fixed upon my cheek when there’s anything going on I don’t want them to know. A man’s transparent like glass before them. They see into his very soul. They look right through him.”
“If the lady who founded the family habits was a fortune-teller,” the manager interposed, with a scientific air, “that’s not so remarkable; for fortune-tellers must always be quick-witted people, keen to perceive the changes of countenance in the dupes who employ them, and prompt at humouring all the fads and fancies of their customers, mustn’t they?”
“Quite so,” the Colonel echoed. “You’ve hit it on the nail. And this particular lady—Esmeralda they call her, so that Elma, which is short for Esmeralda, understand, has come to be the regular Christian name among all her women descendants—this particular lady belonged to what you might call a caste or priestly family, as it were, of hereditary fortune-tellers, every one of whose ancestors had been specially selected for generations for the work, till a kind of transmissible mesmeric habit got developed among them. And they do say,” the Colonel went on, lowering his voice a little more to a confidential whisper, “that all the girls descended from Madame Esmeralda—Lady Ewes of Charlwood, as she was in England—retain to this day another still odder and uncannier mark of their peculiar origin; but, of course, it’s a story that would be hard to substantiate, though I’ve heard it discussed more than once among the friends of the family.”
“Dear me! What’s that?” the manager asked, in a tone of marked curiosity.
“Why, they do say,” the Colonel went on, now fairly launched upon a piece of after-dinner gossip, “that the eastern snake-dance of Madame Esmeralda’s people is hereditary even still among the women of the family, and that, sooner or later, it breaks out unexpectedly in every one of them. When the fit comes on, they shut themselves up in their own rooms, I’ve been told, and twirl round and round for hours like dancing dervishes, with anything they can get in their hands to represent a serpent, till they fall exhausted with the hysterical effort. Even if a woman of Esmeralda’s blood escapes it at all other times, it’s sure to break out when she first sees a real live snake, or falls in love for the first time. Then the dormant instincts of the race come over her with a rush, at the very dawn of womanhood, all quickened and aroused, as it were, in the general awakening.”
“That’s very curious!” the manager said, leaning back in his chair in turn, and twirling his thumbs, “very curious indeed; and yet, in its way, very probable, very probable. For habits like those must set themselves deep in the very core of the system, don’t you think, Colonel? If this woman, now, was descended from a whole line of ancestresses, who had all been trained for their work into a sort of ecstatic fervour, the ecstasy and all that went with it must have got so deeply ingrained—”
“I beg your pardon,” the Colonel interrupted, consulting his watch and seizing his hat hastily—for as a Kelmscott, he refused point-blank to be lectured—“I’ve an appointment at my club at half-past three, and I must not wait any longer. Well, you’ll get these young men’s address for me, then, at the very earliest possible opportunity?”
The manager pocketed the snub, and bowed his farewell. “Oh, certainly,” he answered, trying to look as pleased and gracious as his features would permit. “Our confidential clerk will hunt them up immediately. We’re delighted to be of use to you. Good morning. Good morning.”
And as soon as the Colonel’s back was turned, the manager rang twice on his sharp little bell for the confidential clerk to receive his orders.
Mr. Montague Nevitt immediately presented himself in answer to the summons.
“Mr. Nevitt,” the manager said, with a dry, small cough, “here’s a bit of business of the most domestic kind—strict seal of secrecy, not a word on any account. Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate wants to know where two young men, named Guy and Cyril Waring, keep their banking account, if any; and, as soon as he knows, he wishes to pay in a substantial sum, quite privately, to their credit.”
Mr. Montague Nevitt bowed a bow of assent; without the faintest sign of passing recognition. “Guy and Cyril Waring,” he repeated to himself, looking close at the scrap of paper his chief had handed him; “Guy and Cyril Waring, Staple Inn, Holborn. I can find out to-day, sir, if you attach any special and pressing importance to promptitude in the matter.”
For Mr. Montague Nevitt was a cautious, cool, and calculating person. He knew, better than most of us that knowledge is power. So when the manager mentioned to him casually in the way of business the names of Guy and Cyril Waring, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn’t respond at once, “Oh, dear yes; one of them’s my most intimate personal friend, and the other’s his brother,” as a man of less discretion might have been tempted to do. For, in the first place, by finding out, or seeming to find out, the facts about the Warings that very afternoon, he could increase his character with his employers for zeal and ability. And, in the second place, if he had let out too soon that he knew the Warings personally, he might most likely on that very account have been no further employed in carrying into execution this delicate little piece of family business.
So Nevitt held his peace discreetly, like a wise man that he was, and answered merely, in a most submissive voice, “I’ll do my best to ascertain where they bank, at once,” as if he had never before in his life heard the name of Waring.
For the self-same reason, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn’t hint that evening to Guy that he had become possessed during the course of the day of a secret of the first importance to Guy’s fortune and future. Of course, a man so astute as Montague Nevitt jumped at once at the correct conclusion, that Colonel Kelmscott must be the two Warings’ father. But he wasn’t going to be fool enough to chuck his chance away by sharing that information with any second person. A secret is far too valuable a lever in life to be carelessly flung aside by a man of ambition. And Montague Nevitt saw this secret in particular was doubly valuable to him. He could use it, wedge-wise, with both the Warings in all his future dealings, by promising to reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his schemes by some active interference.
So when Nevitt strolled round about nine o’clock that night to Staple Inn, violin-case in hand, and cigarette in mouth, he gave not a sign of the curious information he had that day acquired, to the person most interested in learning the truth as to the precise genealogy of the Waring family.
There was no great underlying community of interests between the clever young journalist and his banking companion. A common love for music was the main bond of union between the two men. Yet Montague Nevitt exercised over Guy a strange and fatal fascination which Cyril always found positively unaccountable. And on this particular evening, as Nevitt stood swaying himself to and fro upon the hearth-rug before the empty grate, with his eyes half closed, drawing low, weird music with his enchanted bow from those submissive strings, Guy leaned back on the sofa and listened, entranced, with a hopeless feeling of utter inability ever to approach the wizard-like and supreme execution of that masterly hand and those superhuman fingers. How he twisted and turned them as though his bones were india-rubber. His palms were all joints, and his eyes all ecstasy. He seemed able to do what he liked with his violin. He played on his instrument, indeed, as he played on Guy—with the consummate art of a skilful executant.
“That’s marvellous, Nevitt,” Guy broke out at last; “never heard even Sarasate himself do anything quite so wild and weird as that. What’s the piece called? It seems to have something almost impish or sprite-like in its wailing music. It’s Hungarian, of course, or Polish or Greek; I detect at once the Oriental tinge in it.”
“Wrong for once, my dear boy,” Nevitt answered, smiling, “it’s English, pure English, and by a lady what’s more—one of the Eweses of Kenilworth. She’s a distant relation of Cyril’s Miss Clifford, I believe. An Elma, too; name runs in the family. But she composes wonderfully. Everything she writes is in that mystic key. It sounds like a reminiscence of some dim and lamp-lit eastern temple. The sort of thing a nautch-girl might be supposed to compose, to sing to the clash and clang of cymbals, while she was performing the snake-dance before some Juggernaut idol!”
“Exactly,” Guy answered, shutting his eyes dreamily. “That’s just the very picture it brings up before my mind’s eye—as you render it, Nevitt. I seem to see vague visions of some vast and dimly-lighted rock-hewn cavern, with long vistas of pillars cut from the solid stone, while dark-limbed priestesses, clad in white muslin robes, swing censers in the foreground to solemn music. Upon my word, the power of sound is something simply wonderful. There’s almost nothing, I believe, good music wouldn’t drive me to—or rather lead me to; for it sways one and guides even more than it impels one.”
“And yet,” Nevitt mused, in slow tones to himself, taking up his violin again, and drawing his bow over the chords, with half-closed eyes, in a seemingly listless, aimless manner, “I don’t believe music’s your real first love, Guy. You took it up only to be different from Cyril. The artistic impulse in both of you is the same at bottom. If you’d let it have it’s own way, you’d have taken, not to this, I’m sure, but to painting. But Cyril painted, so, to make yourself different, you went in for music. That’s you all over! You always have such a hankering after being what you are not!”
“Well, hang it all, a man wants to have SOME individuality,” Guy answered apologetically. “He doesn’t like to be a mere copy or repetition of his brother.”
Nevitt reflected quietly to himself that Cyril never wanted to be different from Guy, his was by far the stronger nature of the two: he was content to be himself without regard to his brother. But Nevitt didn’t say so. Indeed, why should he? He merely went on playing a few disconnected bars of a very lively, hopeful utopian sort of a tune—a tune all youth and health, and go and gaiety—as he interjected from time to time some brief financial remarks on the numerous good strokes he’d pulled off of late in his transactions in the City.
“Can’t do them in my own name, you know,” he observed lightly, at last laying down his bow, and replacing the dainty white rose in his left top buttonhole. “Not official for a bank EMPLOYE to operate on the Stock Exchange. The chiefs object to it. So I do my little ventures in Tom’s name instead, my brother-in-law, Tom Whitley’s. Those Cedulas went up another eighth yesterday. Well hit again: I’m always lucky. And that was a good thing I put you on last week, too, wasn’t it? Did you sell out to-day? They’re up at 96, and you bought in at 80.”
“No, I didn’t sell to-day,” Guy answered, with a yawn. “I’m holding on still for a further rise. I thought I’d sell out when they reached the even hundred.”
“My dear fellow, you’re wrong,” Nevitt put in eagerly. “You ought to have sold to-day. It’s the top of the market. They’ll begin to decline soon, and when once they begin they’ll come down with a crash, as P.L.‘s did on Saturday. You take my advice and sell out first thing to-morrow morning. You’ll clear sixteen pounds on each of your shares. That’s enough for any man. You bought ten shares, I think, didn’t you? Well, there you are, you see; a hundred and sixty off-hand for you on your bargain.”
Guy paused and reflected a doubtful moment. “Yes, I’ll sell out to-morrow, Nevitt,” he said, after a struggle, “or what comes to the same thing, you can sell out for me. But, do you know, my dear fellow, I sometimes fancy I’m a fool for my pains, going in for all this silly speculation. Better stick to my guinea a column in the Morning Mail. The risks are so great, and the gains so small. I don’t believe outsiders ought to back their luck at all like this on the Stock Exchange.”
Montague Nevitt acquiesced with cheerful promptitude. “I agree with you down to the ground,” he said, lighting a cigarette, and puffing away at it vigorously. “Outsiders ought not to back their luck on the Stock Exchange. That, I take it, is a self-evident proposition. But the point is, here, that you’re not an outsider; and you don’t back your luck, which alters the case, you’ll admit, somewhat. You embark on speculations on my advice only, and I’m in a position to judge, as well as any other expert in the City of London, what things are genuine and what things are not worth a wise man’s attention.”
He stretched himself on the sofa with a lazy, luxurious air, and continued to puff away in silence at his cigarette for another ten minutes. Then he drew unostentatiously from his pocket a folded sheet of foolscap paper, printed after the fashion of the common company prospectus. For a second or two he read it over to himself in silence, till Guy’s curiosity was sufficiently roused by his mute proceeding.
“What have you got there?” the journalist asked at last, eyeing it inquiringly, as the fly eyes the cobweb.
“Oh, nothing,” Nevitt answered, folding the paper up neatly and returning it to his pocket. “You’ve sworn off now, so it does not concern you. Just the prospectus of a little fresh thing coming out next week—a very exceptional chance—but you don’t want to go in for it. I mean to apply for three hundred shares myself, I’m so certain of its success; and I had thought of advising you to take a hundred and fifty on your own account as well, with that hundred and fifty you cleared over the Cordova Cattle bonds. They’re ten-pound shares, at a merely nominal price—ten bob on application and ten on allotment—you could take a hundred and fifty as easy as look at it. No further calls will ever be made. It’s really a most remarkable investment.”
“Let me see the prospectus,” Guy murmured, faltering, the fever of speculation once more getting the better of him.
Nevitt pretended to hang back like a man with fine scruples. “It’s the Rio Negro Diamond and Sapphire Mine, Limited,” he said, with a deprecatory air. “But you’d better not go in for it. I expect to make a pot out of the thing myself. It’s a unique occasion. Still, no doubt you’re right, and I don’t like the responsibility of advising any other fellow. Though you can see for yourself what the promoters say. Very first-class names. And Klink thinks most highly of it.”
He handed Guy the paper, and took up his violin as if by pure accident, while Guy scanned it closely.
The journalist bent over the prospectus with eager eyes, and Nevitt poured forth strange music as he read, music like the murmur of the stream of Pactolus. It was an inspiring strain; the violin seemed to possess the true Midas touch; gold flowed like water in liquid rills from its catgut. Guy finished, and rose, and dipped a pen in the ink-pot. “All right,” he said low, half hesitating still. “I’ll give you an order to sell out at once, and I’ll fill up this application for three hundred shares—why not three hundred? I may as well go as many as you do. If it’s really such a good thing as you say, why shouldn’t I profit by it? Send this to Klink to-morrow early; strike while the iron’s hot, and get the thing finished.”
Nevitt looked at the paper with an attentive eye. “How curious it is,” he said, regarding the signature narrowly, “that you and Cyril, who are so much alike in everything else, should write so differently. I should have expected your hands to be almost identical.”
“Oh, don’t you know why that is?” Guy answered, with an innocent smile. “I do it on purpose. Cyril writes sloping forward, the ordinary way, so I slope backward just to prevent confusion. And I form all my letters as unlike his as I can, though if I follow my own bent they turn out the same; his way is more natural to me, in fact, than the way I write myself. But I must do something to keep our letters apart. That’s why we always bank at a different banker’s. If I liked I could write exactly like Cyril. See, here’s his own signature to his letter this morning, and here’s my imitation of it, written off-hand, in my own natural manner. No forger on earth could ever need anything more absolutely identical.”
Montague Nevitt took it up, and examined it with interest. “Well, this is wonderful,” he said, comparing the two, stroke for stroke, with the practised eye of an expert. “The signatures are as if written by the self-same hand. Any cashier in England would accept your cheque at sight for Cyril’s.”
He didn’t add aloud that such similarity was very convenient. But, none the less, in his own mind he thought so.
Down at Tilgate, meanwhile, Elma Clifford had met more than once with Cyril Waring at friends’ houses around, for ever since the accident, Society had made up its mind that Elma ought to marry her companion in the tunnel; and, when Society once makes up its mind on a question of this sort, why, it does its level best in the long run to insure the fulfilment of its own prediction.
Wherever Elma had met her painter, however, during those few short weeks, she had seen him only before the quizzing eyes of all the world; and though she admitted to herself that she liked him very much, she was nevertheless so thoroughly frightened by her own performance after the Holkers’ party that she almost avoided him, in spite of officious friends—partly, it is true, from a pure feeling of maidenly shame, but partly also from a deeper-seated and profoundly moral belief that with this fierce mad taint upon her as she naturally thought, it would be nothing short of wrong in her even to marry. She couldn’t meet Cyril now without thinking at once of that irresistible impulse which had seized her by the throat, as it were, and bent her to its wild will in her own room after their interview at the Holkers’; and the thought did far more than bring a deep blush into her rich brown cheek—it made her feel most acutely she must never dream of burdening him with that terrible uncertainty and all it might enclose in it of sinister import.
For Elma felt sure she was mad that night. And, if so, oh, how could she poison Cyril Waring’s life with so unspeakable an inheritance for himself and his children?
She didn’t know, what any psychologist might at once have told her, that no one with the fatal taint of madness in her blood could ever even have thought of that righteous self-denial. Such scruples have no place in the selfish insane temperament; they belong only to the highest and purest types of moral nature.
One morning, however, a few weeks later, Elma had strolled off by herself into Chetwood Forest, without any intention of going anywhere in particular, save for a solitary walk, when suddenly, a turn round the corner of a devious path brought her face to face all at once with a piece of white canvas, stretched opposite her on an easel; at the other side of which, to her profound dismay, an artist in a grey tweed suit was busily working.
The artist, as it happened, didn’t see her at once, for the canvas stretched between them, shutting her out from his eyes, and Elma’s light footstep on the mossy ground hadn’t aroused his attention. So the girl’s first impulse was to retrace her way unobtrusively without exchanging a word, and retire round the corner again, before Cyril could recognise her. But somehow, when she came to try, she couldn’t. Her feet refused point blank to obey her will. And this time, in her own heart, she knew very well why. For there in the background, coiled up against the dense wall of rock and fern, Sardanapalus lay knotted in sleepy folds, with his great ringed back shining blue in the sunlight that struggled in round patches through the shimmering foliage. More consciously now than even in the train, the beautiful deadly creature seemed to fascinate Elma and bind her to the spot. For a moment she hesitated, unable to resist the strange, inexplicable attraction that ran in her blood. That brief interval settled it. Even as she paused, Cyril glanced round at the snake to note the passing effect of a gleam of light that fell slantwise through the leaves to dapple his spotty back—and caught sight of Elma. The poor girl gave a start. It was too late now to retreat. She stood there rooted.
Cyril moved forward to meet her with a frankly outstretched hand. “Good morning, Miss Clifford,” he said, in his cheery manly voice. “So you’ve dropped down by accident upon my lair here, have you? Well, I’m glad you’ve happened to pass by to-day, for this, do you know, is my very last morning. I’m putting the finishing touches upon my picture now before I take it back to town. I go away to-morrow, perhaps to North Wales, perhaps to Scotland.”
Elma trembled a little at those words, in spite of resolution; for though she could never, never, never marry him, it was nice, of course, to feel he was near at hand, and to have the chance of seeing him, and avoiding him as far as possible, on other people’s lawns at garden parties. She trembled and turned pale. She could never MARRY him, to be sure; but then she could never marry any one else either; and that being so, she liked to SEE him now and again, on neutral ground, as it were, and to know he was somewhere that she could meet him occasionally. Wales and Scotland are so distant from Surrey. Elma showed in her face at once that she thought them both unpleasantly remote from Craighton, Tilgate.
With timid and shrinking steps, she came in front of the picture, and gazed at it in detail long and attentively. Never before did she know how fond she was of art.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, after a pause; “I like it immensely. That moss is so soft, and the ferns are so delicate. And how lovely that patch of rich golden light is on Sardanapalus’s shoulder.”
The painter stepped back a pace or two and examined his own handicraft, with his head on one side, in a very critical attitude. “I don’t know that I’m quite satisfied after all with the colour-scheme,” he said, glancing askance at Elma. “I fancy it’s, perhaps, just a trifle too green. It looks all right, of course, out here in the open; but the question is, when it’s hung in the Academy, surrounded by warm reds, and purples, and blues, won’t it look by comparison much too cabbagey and too grassy?”
Elma drew a deep breath.
“Oh, Mr. Waring,” she cried, in a deprecating tone, holding her breath for awe.
It pained her that anybody—even Cyril himself—should speak so lightly about so beautiful a picture.
“Then you like it?” Cyril asked, turning round to her full face and fronting her as she stood there, all beautiful blushes through her creamy white skin.
“Like it? I love it,” Elma answered enthusiastically. “Apart from its being yours, I think it simply beautiful.”
“And you like ME, too, then?” the painter asked, once more, making a sudden dash at the question that was nearest to both their hearts, after all, that moment. He was going away to-morrow, and this was a last opportunity. Who could tell how soon somebody might come up through the woods and interrupt their interview? He must make the best use of his time. He must make haste to ask her.
Elma let her eyes drop, and her heart beat hard. She laid her hand upon the easel to steady herself as she answered slowly, “You know I like you, Mr. Waring; I like you very, very much indeed. You were so kind to me in the tunnel. And I felt your kindness. You could see that day I was—very, very grateful to you.”
“When I asked you if you liked my picture, Elma,” the young man said reproachfully, taking her other hand in his, and looking straight into her eyes, “you said, ‘Like it? I love it.’ But when I ask you if you like me—ask you if you will take me—you only say you’re very, very grateful.”
Elma let him take her hand, all trembling, in his. She let him call her by her name. She let him lean forward and gaze at her, lover-like. Her heart throbbed high. She couldn’t refuse him. She knew she loved him. But to marry him—oh no. That was quite another thing. There duty interposed. It would be cruel, unworthy, disgraceful, wicked.
She drew herself back a little with maidenly dignity, as she answered low, “Mr. Waring, we two saw into one another’s hearts so deep in the tunnel that day we spent together, that it would be foolish for us now to make false barriers between us. I’ll tell you the plain truth.” She trembled like an aspen-leaf. “I love you, I think; but I can never marry you.”
She said it so simply, yet with such an earnestness of despair, that Cyril knew with a pang she really meant it.
“Why not?” he cried eagerly, raising her hand to his lips, and kissing it with fervour. “If you tell me you love me, Elma, all the rest must come. Say that, and you say all. So long as I’ve gained your heart, I don’t care for anything.”
Elma drew her hand away with stately reserve. “I mean it, Mr. Waring,” she said slowly, sitting down on the bank, and gasping a little for air, just as she had done in the tunnel. “I really mean it. I LIKED you in the train that day; I was GRATEFUL to you in the accident; I knew I LOVED you the afternoon we met at the Holkers’. There, I’ve told you that plainly—more plainly than I thought I ever could tell it to any man on earth—because we knew one another so well when we thought we were dying side by side, and because—because I can see you really love me.... Well, it can never be. I can never marry you.”
She gazed at him wistfully. Cyril sat down by her side, and talked it all over with her from a hundred points of view. He pressed his suit hard, till Elma felt, if words could win, her painter would have won her. But she couldn’t yield, she said for HIS sake a thousand times more than for her own, she must never marry. As the man grew more earnest the girl in turn grew more frank and confiding. She could never marry HIM, to be sure, she said fervently, but then she could never, never, never marry any one else. If she married at all she would marry Cyril. He took her hand again. Without one shadow of resistance she let him take it and hold it. Yes, yes, he might love her, if he liked, no harm at all in that; and SHE, she would always, always love him. All her life through, she cried, letting her passionate southern nature get the better of her at last, she would love him every hour of every day in the year, and love him only. But she could never marry him. Why, she must never say. It was no use his trying to read her secret. He must never find it out; never, never, never. But she, for her part, could never forget it.
So Cyril, eagerly pressing his suit with every art he knew, was forced in the end to content himself with that scanty measure. She would love him, she would write to him, even; but she would never marry him.
At last the time came when they must really part, or she would be late for lunch, and mamma would know all; mamma would read everything. He looked her wistfully in the face. Elma held out her lips, obedient to that mute demand, with remorseful blush of maidenly shame on her cheek. “Only once,” she murmured. “Just to seal our compact. For the first and last time. You go away to-morrow.”
“That was BEFORE you said you loved me,” Cyril cried with delight, emboldened by success. “Mayn’t I stay on now, just one little week longer?”
At the proposal, Elma drew back her face in haste before he had time to kiss it, and answered, in a very serious voice—
“Oh no, don’t ask me. After this, I daren’t stand the strain of seeing you again—at least not just now—not so very, very soon. Please, please, don’t ask me. Go to-morrow, as you said. If you don’t, I can’t let you,” she blushed, and held out her blushing face once more. “Only if you promise me to go to-morrow, mind,” she said, with a half-coquettish, half-tearful smile at him.
Cyril hesitated for a second. He was inclined to temporize. “Those are very hard terms,” he said. Then impulse proved too much for him. He bent forward, and pressed his lips just once on that olive-brown cheek. “But I may come back again very soon,” he murmured, pushing home his advantage.
Elma seized his hand in hers, wrung it hard and tremulously, and then turned and ran like a frightened fawn, without pausing to look back, down the path homeward. Yet she whispered one broken sentence through her tears, for all that, before she went.
“I shall love you always; but spare me, spare me.”
And Cyril was left behind by himself in the wood, completely mystified.