A Young Man's Year
by Anthony Hope · English · Gutenberg #43083 · 678,456 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Young Man's Year
Author: Anthony Hope
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR ***
A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE GOD IN THE CAR
A CHANGE OF AIR
A MAN OF MARK
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO
PHROSO
SIMON DALE
THE KING'S MIRROR
QUISANTÉ
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES
A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC
TALES OF TWO PEOPLE
THE GREAT MISS DRIVER
MRS. MAXON PROTESTS
A YOUNG MAN'S
YEAR
BY
ANTHONY HOPE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W. C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1915_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE 1
II. MISS SARRADET'S CIRCLE 11
III. IN TOUCH WITH THE LAW 19
IV. A GRATEFUL FRIEND 28
V. THE TENDER DIPLOMATIST 37
VI. A TIMELY DISCOVERY 46
VII. ALL OF A FLUTTER 54
VIII. NOTHING VENTURE, NOTHING HAVE! 62
IX. A COMPLICATION 71
X. THE HERO OF THE EVENING 80
XI. HOUSEHOLD POLITICS 89
XII. LUNCH AT THE LANCASTER 98
XIII. SETTLED 108
XIV. THE BATTLE WITH MR. TIDDES 118
XV. THE MAN FOR A CRISIS 127
XVI. A SHADOW ON THE HOUSE 136
XVII. FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON! 146
XVIII. GOING TO RAIN! 156
XIX. THE LAST ENTRENCHMENT 166
XX. A PRUDENT COUNSELLOR 175
XXI. IDOL AND DEVOTEE 185
XXII. PRESSING BUSINESS 194
XXIII. FACING THE SITUATION 204
XXIV. "DID YOU SAY MRS.?" 213
XXV. THE OLD DAYS END 224
XXVI. RATHER ROMANTIC! 233
XXVII. IN THE HANDS OF THE GODS 244
XXVIII. TAKING MEDICINE 254
XXIX. TEARS AND A SMILE 264
XXX. A VARIETY SHOW 274
XXXI. START AND FINISH 284
XXXII. WISDOM CONFOUNDED 294
XXXIII. A NEW VISION 304
XXXIV. THE LINES OF LIFE 314
XXXV. HILSEY AND ITS FUGITIVE 324
XXXVI. IN THE SPRING 335
A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
A YOUNG MAN'S YEAR
CHAPTER I
OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, ESQUIRE
It was a dark, dank, drizzly morning in March. A dull mist filled all
the air, and the rain drifted in a thin sheet across the garden of the
Middle Temple. Everything looked a dull drab. Certainly it was a beastly
morning. Moreover--to add to its offences--it was Monday morning. Arthur
Lisle had always hated Monday mornings; through childhood, school, and
university they had been his inveterate enemies--with their narrow
rigorous insistence on a return to work, with the end they put to
freedom, to leisure, to excursions in the body or in the spirit. And
they were worse now, since the work was worse, in that it was not real
work at all; it was only waiting for work, or at best a tedious and
weary preparation for work which did not come and (for all that he could
see) never would come. There was no reason why it ever should. Even
genius might starve unnoticed at the Bar, and he was no genius. Even
interest might fail to help a man, and interest he had none. Standing
with his hands in the pockets, listlessly staring out of the window of
his cell of a room, unable to make up his mind how to employ himself, he
actually cursed his means of subsistence--the hundred and fifty pounds a
year which had led him into the fatal ambition of being called to the
Bar. "But for that it would have been impossible for me to be such an
ass," he reflected gloomily, as he pushed back his thick reddish-brown
hair from his forehead and puckered the thin sensitive lines of his
mouth into a childish pout.
Henry the clerk (of whom Mr. Arthur Lisle owned an undivided fourth
share) came into the room, carrying a bundle of papers tied with red
tape. Turning round on the opening of the door, Arthur suddenly fell
prey to an emotion of extraordinary strength and complexity; amazement,
joy, excitement, fear, all in their highest expression, struggled for
mastery over him. Had he got a Brief?
"Mr. Norton Ward says, will you be kind enough to protect him in Court
III, in case he's on in the Court of Appeal? It's a very simple matter,
he says; it's the Divisional Court, sir, third in the list." Henry put
the papers on the table and went out, quite disregardful of the storm of
emotion which he had aroused. Though keenly interested in the fortunes
of his employers, he did not study their temperaments.
It had happened, the thing that Arthur knew he ought always to hope for,
the thing that in fact he had always dreaded. He had not got a brief; he
had to "hold" one--to hold one for somebody else, and that at short
notice--"unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed!" That is to say, with no
time to make ready for the fearful ordeal. It was nearly ten o'clock, at
half-past he must be in court; at any moment after that the case might
come on, its two predecessors having crumpled up, as cases constantly
did in the Divisional Court. The fell terrors of nervousness beset him,
so that he was almost sick. He dashed at the brief fiercely, but his
fingers trembled so that he could hardly untie the tape. Still, he
managed a hurried run through the papers and got the point into his
head.
Lance and Pretyman, JJ. took their seats punctually at ten-thirty.
Arthur Lisle, who felt much interest in judges as human beings and would
often spend his time in court studying them rather than the law they
administered, was glad to see Lance there, but feared Pretyman to the
bottom of his heart. Lance was a gentle man, of courtly manners and a
tired urbanity, but Pretyman was gruff, abrupt, terribly anxious about
saving public time, and therefore always cutting into a man's argument
with the Stand-and-deliver of a question to which, in Pretyman's
opinion, there was no answer. It would be an awful thing if Pretyman set
on him like that! Because then he might be incapable of speech, although
he knew that he was in the right. And he believed that his case was
good. "All the worse then, if you lose it!" said a mocking voice within
him.
Henry had taken him over to the court and had done everything possible
for him--had told the solicitor who had briefed Norton Ward how the
matter stood and how very safe he would be in Mr. Lisle's hands if it
came to that, had given his name to the usher so that the usher could,
if necessary, give it to the Bench, and had even introduced him to Mr.
O'Sullivan, who was on the other side, a tall and burly Irishman, famous
for defending criminals, but not credited with knowing much law.
As the first two cases proceeded, Arthur read his brief again and again,
and, when he was not doing that, he read the reported case which (in the
opinion of the pupil who had got up Norton Ward's brief and had made a
note of it for him) was decisive in his favour. All the while he was
praying that the first two cases might last a long time. They did not.
Pretyman, J., smashed the pair of them in three-quarters of an hour.
"Brown and Green" called the usher, and O'Sullivan was on his legs--and
there was no sign of Norton Ward. Henry nodded to Arthur and left the
court; he was going to see how matters stood in the Court of Appeal.
"This is an appeal from the West Hampstead County Court, my lords,"
began Mr. O'Sullivan, "which raises a question of some importance," and
he went on in such a fashion that Arthur hoped he was going to take a
long time; for Henry had come back, and, by a shake of his head, had
indicated that there was no present hope of Norton Ward's arrival. Mr.
O'Sullivan meant to take a decently long time; he wanted his client to
feel that he was getting his money's worth of argument; therefore he
avoided the main point and skirmished about a good deal. Above all he
avoided that case which Norton Ward's pupil had considered decisive. Mr.
O'Sullivan knew all about the case too, and had it with him, but he was
in no hurry to get to it yet.
Lance, J., was leaning back, the picture of polite acquiescence in a lot
assigned to him by Providence, a position wherein dignity was tempered
by _ennui_. But Pretyman, J., was getting restive; he was fingering his
beard--he committed the solecism of wearing a beard on the Bench; then
he picked out a book from the shelf by him, and turned over the leaves
quickly. Mr. O'Sullivan came, by a series of flourishes, a little nearer
the point. And Norton Ward did not come; and Arthur Lisle felt no
better.
"What about Watkins and Chichester?" demanded Pretyman, J., with a
sudden violence that made Arthur jump.
"I have that case here, my lord, and----"
"You don't seem in a hurry to cite it, Mr. O'Sullivan. It seems to me
dead in your teeth."
"Let us hear the headnote, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Lance, J., suavely.
Then they got to it, and Pretyman, J., and Mr. O'Sullivan had a fine
wrangle over it, worrying it up and down, one saying that this was that
case, the other that this case was not that case, because in that case
that happened and in this case this happened, and so forth. Mr.
O'Sullivan "distinguished" valiantly, and Pretyman knocked his
distinctions into a cocked hat. Lance, J., sat on smiling in silence,
till at last he asked blandly:
"If we think the cases indistinguishable, Watkins and Chichester binds
us, I take it, Mr. O'Sullivan?"
That Mr. O'Sullivan had to admit, and on that admission down he sat.
The moment had come--and Norton Ward had not. With an actual physical
effort Arthur rose to his feet; a strange voice, which did not seem to
belong to him, and sounded quite unfamiliar, said, "My lords----" He saw
Lance and Pretyman, JJ., in the shape of a grotesque, monstrous,
two-headed giant; for the latter was leaning over to the former, who sat
listening and twice nodded his head.
A slip of paper was handed up to Lance, J. He glanced at it and from it
to Arthur. Again that strange voice said, "My lords----" But Lance, J.,
interposed suavely, "I don't think we need trouble you, Mr. Lisle," and
he proceeded to say that not even Mr. O'Sullivan's ingenious arguments
could enable his brother or himself to distinguish Brown and Green from
Watkins and Chichester, and therefore the appeal must be dismissed with
costs.
"I concur," said Pretyman, J., with contemptuous curtness; in fact he
did not say "I" at all; he merely grunted out "Concur."
Of course such a thing happened often, and was quite likely to happen;
very probably Norton Ward, after glancing over his pupil's note and at
_Watkins v. Chichester_, had seen that it might happen here and had the
less scruple about entrusting his case to hands so inexperienced. None
the less, Arthur Lisle felt that the gods had played a cruel game with
him. All that agony of apprehension, all that tension of desperate
coward's courage, endured for nothing and gone for nothing! All to be
endured and achieved again--how soon? He got out of court he hardly knew
how, and made his way hurriedly across the Strand. He would have that
wig and gown off, or somebody else would be tapping him on the shoulder,
arresting him with the stern command to hold another brief!
Now, back in chambers, with the strain over, he was furious with
himself, savage and furious; that mood follows hard on the paroxysms of
the malady. He began to attribute to it all the failures of his past
life--quite unjustly, for in most cases, though it had tortured him, he
had overcome the outward manifestation of it. He could not see his life
as liveable if it were to meet him at every turn. What made him a prey
to it? Self-consciousness, silly self-consciousness, his wise elders had
always told him. But what made people self-conscious? Self-conceit, the
same wise mentors had added. His soul rose in a plain and sincere
protest, certain of its truth: "But I'm not conceited." "Yes, but" (he
imagined the mentors' argument now) "you really are; you think
everybody's looking at you and thinking of you." "Well, but so they are
when I'm on my legs speaking; and beforehand I know they're going to
be." The mentors did not seem to have anything to say to that.
In the afternoon Norton Ward came into his room to thank him for holding
the brief; he was a man of punctilious courtesy, as indeed he was master
of most of the arts and gifts that make for success in life. At little
more than thirty he had already a fine practice; he was on the edge of
"taking silk"; he had married well--the daughter of a peer, with a
substantial portion; he was a "prospective" candidate for Parliament. A
favourite of nature and of fortune indeed! Moreover he was a kindly man,
although a ruthlessly ambitious one. He and Arthur had become acquainted
merely through the accident of Arthur's renting the spare room in his
chambers, when he had been called to the Bar a twelve-month before; but
the landlord had taken to his tenant and would gladly have done him a
turn.
"I thought the case quite plain," he said; "but I'm sorry you were done
out of your argument."
"I wasn't sorry," Arthur confessed, with a frankness habitual to him.
"You weren't? Oh, I see! Nervous!" He laughed gently.
"Beyond belief. Did you used to be?"
"Just at first. I soon got over it. But they say one oughtn't to get
over it. Oh, you've heard the stories about big men, haven't you? Anyhow
some men never do. Why, I've sat behind Huntley and seen his hand
tremble like our old friend the aspen leaf--and that when he was
Attorney-General!"
"Lord!" was Arthur's despairing comment; because a malady which did not
spare an Attorney-General must surely be unconquerable by lesser folk.
"But I expect it's not quite the same sort," Norton Ward went on,
smiling. "It's rather like falling in love, I expect. A man's excited
every time he falls in love, but I don't think it's the same sort of
excitement as he suffers when he falls in love for the first time--I
mean badly."
Now the last word of this observation so struck Arthur that he forgot
all the earlier part of it--nay, he forgot his malady itself, together
with the truth or falsity of the parallel Norton Ward suggested.
"Badly? What do you mean by falling in love badly?"
"I'm not speaking with regard to morals, Lisle. I mean severely, or
utterly, or passionately, or, if you prefer, idiotically."
Arthur's lips puckered about his pipe-stem; it was a trick he had.
"I think I should call that falling in love well, not badly," he
observed gravely.
It was the gravity of the speaker, not the import of the thing spoken,
which made Norton Ward laugh again and heartily. His was one of those
temperaments--sane, practical, concrete, equable--which regard the
affairs of love as a very subsidiary matter in real life, in the real
life of any individual, that is, for of course they possess a national
and racial importance when reduced to statistics. He did not quarrel
with the literary convention which exalted love to the highest
place--the convention made good reading and produced exciting plays--but
it did not answer to real life as he knew it, to the stern yet
delightful fight which filled his days, and really filled his wife's
too, since she was a partner wherever she could be, and an eager
encourager in all things. But what of the great amorists who were also
great men and women? Well, how much of that too was play-acting--to the
public and to themselves? That was the question his mind instinctively
put about such cases.
As he looked at Arthur Lisle's slight figure and sensitive face, he felt
a compassion for him, a pitying doubt whether so frail a vessel could
live in the rough sea on which it had embarked. Characteristically this
friendly impulse expressed itself in an invitation to dinner, which was
received by Arthur with surprise, delight, and gratitude.
"Of course I will, and it really is most awfully kind of you," he said.
Norton Ward went off to a consultation with a smile of mingled pity and
amusement still on his lips.
His invitation to dinner really pleased Arthur very much, not only as a
sign of friendship, but for its own sake. He had found his early days in
London lonely--in depressing contrast with the full social life of
school and Oxford. The glowing anticipations with which imagination had
invested his coming to the metropolis had not stood the test of
experience. For some young men family connections, or notable
achievements and high reputation, provide a ready-made place in London.
Others possessed of ample means can make a pretty good one for
themselves speedily. But Arthur's university career, though creditable
and to him delightful in the highest degree from its teeming fulness of
interests, had not been conspicuous; he had no powerful friends, and he
was very poor. After his chambers were paid for, and his share in Henry,
and his lodgings in Bloomsbury Street, there was left not much margin
beyond the necessities of life--food, raiment, and tobacco. The theatre,
even the pit, could not be indulged in often. He had many solitary
evenings. When it was fine, he often walked the streets; when it was wet
he read--and often stopped reading to wish that something would happen.
His vague and restless longings took no form more definite than
that--wanting something to happen. He was in London, he was young, he
was ready--and nothing happened! Consequently an invitation to dinner
was a prize in the daily lottery of life.
When he got back to his 'diggings' in the evening, he found a letter
from home. His mother and sister had continued to live on in the old
house at Malvern Wells after the death of his father, who had enjoyed a
fairly good practice as a doctor there, but dying comparatively early
had left a slender provision for his family. Mrs. Lisle preferred to be
poor, since poor she had to be, in a place where she was already known
and respected. The school too was a great attraction; there Arthur had
been educated as a day boy, and thence had proceeded to Oxford with an
exhibition, to which he added a second from his college, thus much
easing the family finances, and indeed rendering Oxford possible. There
had been talk of his people's migrating to London and making a home for
him there, but in fact none of the three had been zealous for the
change. Mrs. Lisle was frail and clung to her accustomed hills and
breezes; Anna had her friends, her circle, her church work, her local
importance; and Arthur was at that time too full of those glowing
anticipations of London life to press the project of a family villa
somewhere in the suburbs and a season-ticket to take him out of town at
the precise hour of the evening when town began to be amusing.
For all that, he was an affectionate son and brother, and he smiled
sympathetically over Anna's home gossip. Only the postscript made him
frown rather peevishly. It ran: "Mother wants to know whether you have
called on the Godfrey Lisles _yet_!"
Mother wanted to know that in pretty nearly every one of her own and
Anna's letters; hence the italics which distinguished Anna's "yet." And
the answer still had to be in the negative. Why should he call on the
Godfrey Lisles? He knew his mother's answer; a thoroughly maternal
answer it was. Godfrey Lisle, though only a distant cousin, was the head
of the house, squire of Hilsey Manor, the old family place, and a man of
considerable wealth--altogether, in fact, the Personage of the family.
Most families have a Personage, to them very important, though varying
infinitely in significance or insignificance to the world outside. On
the whole the Lisle Personage was above the average from the outside
point of view, and Mrs. Lisle's anxiety that her son should pay him
proper attention, and reap therefrom such advantage as might accrue, was
no more than natural.
But to Arthur all the reasons why he ought to call on his cousin were
reasons why he could not do it. Just as, while Mr. O'Sullivan was
arguing, his imagination was picturing what a young fool Pretyman, J.,
would soon be thinking him, so here, whenever the question of this call
arose, the same remorselessly active faculty rehearsed for him all the
aspects in which he would appear to the Godfrey Lisles--a poor relation,
a tiresome duty, a country cousin, a raw youth--Oh, in fine and in the
end, a Bore of purest quality and great magnitude! That, and nothing
else, the Godfrey Lisles would think him.
Still, if his mother persisted, the thing might have to happen. He had a
vision of himself watching the Godfrey Lisles out of their house, and
then diving across the road to deposit furtive cards with the butler. A
funny vision, but with him quite capable of turning into reality!
His brow cleared as he took up a second letter which awaited him. He
knew the hand:
"DEAR MR. LISLE,
"Do drop in to-morrow evening after dinner. We shall be having
cards and perhaps a little music. About 9.30. Do as you like about
dressing.
"Yours sincerely,
"MARIE SARRADET."
The Sarradets lived in Regent's Park--rather far from any Underground
station. "I'll dress if it's fine, and not if it's wet," thought Arthur.
The balance of profit and loss as between paying a cab-fare on the one
hand and taking the shine out of his patent leathers on the other
presented a problem of constant difficulty in connection with his
evening gaieties.
CHAPTER II
MISS SARRADET'S CIRCLE
A hundred and fifty years ago or thereabouts a certain Jacques Sarradet
had migrated from his native Lyons and opened a perfumer's shop in
Cheapside. The shop was there still, and still a Sarradet kept it, and
still it was much esteemed and frequented by City men, who bought
presents or executed commissions for their wives and daughters there. To
folk of fashion the Bond Street branch was better known, but which was
the more profitable only the master knew. Together, at all events, they
were very profitable, and the present Mr. Clement Sarradet was a warm
man--warmer than he let the world know, or even his own family, so far
as he could keep the knowledge from them. He had preserved his French
frugality, and, although his house in Regent's Park was comfortably and
hospitably conducted, the style in which he lived was a good deal less
sumptuous than English notions would have considered his income to
warrant. He had preserved too, in spite of mixed marriages in the family
history, something of his French air, of the appearance of a prosperous
_bon bourgeois_, with his short thick-set figure, his round paunch, his
stiff upstanding white hair (he had married late in life and was now
over sixty), his black brows and moustache, and his cheeks where blue
and red seemed, after a tussle, to have blended harmoniously into a
subdued purple.
Something French, though differently French, survived also in his
cherished daughter Marie, writer of the note already set forth, and
mistress of the house in Regent's Park since her mother's death five
years ago. Here it was manner rather than looks (she was a brunette, but
not markedly); she had a vivacity, a provocativeness, a coquetry, which
in less favoured races often marks a frivolous or unstable character,
but in the French finds no difficulty in blending with and adorning
solid good sense, sturdy business-like qualities, and even sometimes a
certain toughness of tissue more certainly valuable than attractive.
The evening party to which Arthur Lisle had been bidden was drawing to
its close. They had played cards; they had had some music; they had
ended up with a couple of "topping" comic songs from Joe Halliday, and
they were still laughing over these as they munched sandwiches and
sipped, according to sex, lemonade or whisky-and-soda. Mr. Sarradet
watched them benevolently, thinking them a very pleasant set of young
people, and admiring the way in which his daughter exercised a pretty
dominion over this little band of chosen friends. The two girls, Mildred
Quain and Amabel Osling, openly acknowledged her leadership; the men
deferred to her, not only as the hostess (a position which she generally
occupied), but as the centre of attraction and the deviser of pleasures,
the organiser of visits to theatres and concerts, and of their
lawn-tennis at the Acton ground in the spring and summer. But there was
a touch of shrewd anxiety in his watching. Young men were wont to aspire
to more than friendship where they found metal attractive to their eyes.
Mr. Sarradet was ambitious for his daughter.
"Next Monday, then, we'll all meet at His Majesty's," Marie
announced--or commanded. She turned to Joe Halliday. "You get the
tickets. And anybody who likes can come back here to supper afterwards."
"Splendid, dear!" said Amabel Osling, a dark girl with large eyes and a
rather intense manner; she wore what might be described as an art-frock.
"An evening out, an evening out!" chanted Joe Halliday, a big young
fellow with a shock of light brown hair and a manner of exuberant
good-nature and heartiness.
"I'm afraid I can't come," said Arthur Lisle apologetically.
"Why not, Mr. Lisle?" Marie's voice sounded certainly disappointed,
perhaps rather resentful.
"I'm dining out."
Sidney Barslow looked at him with a smile, in which Arthur detected an
ironical flavour. Between these two members of the circle there was, in
truth, no love lost. Barslow resented in Arthur a superiority of
breeding which all his own vanity could not enable him to ignore. Arthur
found this handsome fellow, with his carefully sleek hair, his bold
challenging eyes, his lady-killerish airs, in the end a 'bounder' with
only a veneer of elegance; all the same he wished he had half Barslow's
easy assurance and self-confidence.
"Oh, Learned Counsel is dining out?" In the Sarradet circle, being of
the Bar was felt to be enough of a distinction to warrant a little
chaff. "May one ask who with? The Lord Chancellor perhaps?"
They all laughed. "Presently, presently!" said Joe, patting Arthur's
head. "The lad will make his way in society."
"Don't be an ass, Joe." But Arthur liked Joe as much as he disliked
Barslow, and his protest was quite free from annoyance.
"Don't you want to tell us who it is, Mr. Lisle?" asked Amabel.
"Well, I don't suppose you'll be any the wiser; it's the man whose
chambers I share--Norton Ward."
Now, as it chanced, Mildred Quain's uncle lived in the suburban
constituency which Norton Ward was 'nursing' and was of the same
political colour as the prospective candidate. Mildred had heard the
candidate speak at the opening of a bazaar--and had seen the Honourable
Mrs. Norton Ward perform the ceremony.
"You are among the swells, Mr. Lisle!" said Mildred, and proceeded to
describe the extreme political and social eminence of the Norton Wards.
Arthur, who had gratefully accepted his invitation as a human kindness,
was amused at finding it regarded as a promotion, as a cause for
congratulation and envy; he grew afraid that his mention of it might be
taken for a boast.
"I think it was pure charity on Norton Ward's part," he laughed. "I
expect he thought I was lonely."
"I dare say. He couldn't be expected to know about the likes of us,"
said Barslow.
"Oh, shut up, Sidney!" cried Joe Halliday. "Can't Arthur go out to
dinner without your permission?"
A sudden flush spread over Barslow's face; he glared angrily at Joe. Mr.
Sarradet had taken up the evening paper, and noticed nothing; but all
the rest were conscious that a storm threatened the serenity of the
gathering. On a trivial occasion latent jealousies had leapt to light.
Marie looked round her company with a smile which included all and
betrayed no partisanship. "We'll choose another night for His
Majesty's," she said. "That's quite simple. Then we can all go. And now
shall we have one more song before we break up? One more from you, Joe!"
As they moved towards the piano, she contrived to touch the irate Mr.
Barslow lightly on the arm, to give him an arch glance, and to
murmur--very low--the word "Silly!" Mr. Barslow's brow cleared
wonderfully.
She wanted no quarrel and was confident of her ability to prevent one.
If one came, she would have to be arbiter; she would have to take sides,
and that must almost certainly mean the loss of one of her
friends--either Sidney Barslow or Arthur Lisle. She did not want to lose
either, for each had an attraction for her--an attraction not of mere
solid friendship such as bound her to Joe Halliday, but an appeal of man
to woman. Barslow's boldness, his challenge, his powerful virility drew
one side of her nature with a strong magnet; to what was 'second-class'
and tawdry in him she was not, by birth or breeding, very sensitive
herself. On the other hand she knew that Arthur Lisle was, and admired
him because he was. Nay, in a sense she was afraid of him because he
was; if she did or said anything in his eyes amiss--if she shewed too
much favour to Sidney Barslow, for instance--he might feel about her
much as he did about the man himself. She knew all about Barslow, and
all about what Barslow felt for and about herself; it was very familiar,
one might say inherited, ground. With regard to Arthur Lisle all this
was different; he was still, in spite of their apparent intimacy, _terra
incognita_. Though he constantly frequented the house, though from a
chance acquaintance of her brother's he had grown into a familiar
friend, though they were fast comrades, even though she knew that he
admired her, there was so much about him which she vaguely divined to be
there, but could not value or analyse--notions, instincts, spots of
sensitiveness, to which she remained really a stranger. How strong were
they, what was their verdict on her, what their influence on him? Would
a tide of admiration or passion sweep them all away? Or would they make
such a tide impossible, or, even if it came, dam its course with
impalpable insurmountable obstacles? In fine, would he, in spite of any
feeling for her that he might have, hold her "out of the question"?
He was the last to leave that night--as he often was, for the solitude
of his lodgings had no attraction for him--and she went with him to the
door. The stars shone now over Regent's Park, and they lingered a moment
in astronomical conversation. Then she gave him her hand, saying:
"I'm so sorry about Monday. But you must tell me all about your party
afterwards!"
"I don't suppose there'll be anything to tell. Well, Mildred Quain may
be interested, because of her uncle!"
"I shall be interested too--though not because of my uncle," she said
with a laugh and a fleet upward glance at him. "I consider I've
introduced you to London society, and I take a maternal interest in you,
Mr. Lisle."
"Why do you say 'Mr. Lisle' to me? You always say 'Joe' and 'Sidney' to
the others."
"So I do. I don't know!"
"Well, then, don't do it," laughed Arthur. "It makes me jealous, you
know."
She looked at him for a moment, not now in provocation, rather in
thought, perhaps in puzzle. "It needn't do that, anyhow," at last she
said.
"Is it then a mark of respect?" he asked banteringly, finding pleasure
in the perplexed little frown which persisted on her pretty face.
"Well, I speak of you as I feel about you, and I can't say any more,"
she answered, half laughing, but protesting too that this sort of
inquisition was unfair.
"You shall do as you like then! What you do is always right." He spoke
affectionately and held out his hand to her again.
She did not give him hers. She drew back a little, blushing. "Ah, if you
really thought that!" After a pause, she said rather sharply, "Why don't
you like Sidney Barslow?"
"I don't exactly dislike him, but sometimes he----" He waved his arm,
wanting a word.
"Grates?" she suggested briefly.
"Thank you," said Arthur with a laugh. "Just every now and then,
perhaps!"
She stood there a moment longer with an expression on her face which was
new to him there; she looked as if she wanted to say something or ask
him something, but did not dare. Though her lips smiled, there was
appeal, almost timidity, in her eyes. But she turned away with no more
than "Well, good-night."
Scores of times in the last year-and-a-half, since he had come to know
her, he had called her "a good sort" for all the kindness and friendship
she had shewn him; he had conceived for her, and her clever capable
ways, an amused admiration. After these feelings there had grown up in
him, by familiarity, a sort of mental friendship for her face and figure
too. He never reckoned her beautiful or even very pretty, but she had a
piquancy of face and a grace of figure which had gradually become very
pleasant to him. That she was physically attractive had been an
after-thought, but, when once it had come, it stayed. To-night he was
particularly conscious of it, perhaps because of the air of timidity or
self-distrust which softened her, and, softening her, flattered in him
the latent masculine pride.
Though not entirely, he had been to a large extent free from boyish
flirtations and philandering. The necessity of hard work, shyness and
fastidiousness, bodily temperament, had all combined to keep him out of
such things. One passion of a glorious Oxford summer term he had counted
the real thing and remembered even now with a tender exultation; for the
girl's heart had been touched, though not to the point of defying either
prudence or propriety--even had he ventured to urge such courses. Save
for this episode, now remote since such age quickly, he was in essence a
stranger in the field of love. He did not recognise nor analyse the
curious little stir which was in him as he walked home that night--the
feeling of a new gaiety, a new joyfulness, a sense of something
triumphant and as it were liberated and given wings. He did not even get
so far as to associate it explicitly and consciously with Marie
Sarradet, though he did know that never had she seemed a dearer friend
or a more winning girl than she had that night. He stood by the brink of
the spring of love, but had not yet drunk of it nor recognised the hand
that had led him there.
The girl had gone back to her father and mixed him his 'night-cap' of
hot toddy, as her custom was. While he sipped it, she stood beside him,
looking down into the fire, still and meditative. Presently she became
aware of his bright beady eyes set on her with a glance
half-apprehensive, half-amused; she interpreted it easily.
"A long time saying good-night, was I, Pops? And you think I've been
flirting? Well, I haven't, and I couldn't have if I'd wanted to. Mr.
Lisle never flirts. Joe pretends to sometimes, and Sidney--does. But Mr.
Lisle--never!"
"That needn't mean that a man has no serious intentions," Mr. Sarradet
opined.
She smiled. "With the English I think it does. We're not quite English,
even after all this time, are we? At least you and I aren't; Raymond is,
I think."
"Raymond's a goose, English or not," said the father impatiently. "He's
in debt again, and I have to pay! I won't leave my business to a
spendthrift."
"Oh, he'll get over it. He is silly but--only twenty-two. Pops!"
"And at twenty you've as shrewd a head as I know on your shoulders! Get
over it he must or----!" An indignant gulp of his 'night-cap' ended the
sentence.
"If you let him go in for something that he liked better than the
business----" she began.
"What business has he not to like the business! It's kept us in
comfort for a hundred and fifty years. Isn't it good enough for
him? It's been good enough for me and my forefathers. We've known
what we were; we've never pretended to be anything else. We're
honest merchants--shop-keepers. That's what we are."
"Have patience, dear, I'll talk to him," she promised gently, and
soothed the old fellow, whose bark was worse than his bite.
"Well, he'll come to me for a cheque once too often, that's all," he
grumbled, as he kissed his daughter and took himself off to bed.
"Honest merchants--shop-keepers. That's what we are." The words echoed
through Marie Sarradet's head. It was easy to smile at them, both at
their pride and at their humility, easy to call ideas of that kind quite
out of date. But what if they did represent a truth, irrelevant perhaps
nowadays for public or political purposes, but having its relevance and
importance in personal relations, in its influence on mind and feeling?
This was the direction her thoughts took, though she found no words, and
only dim ideas by which to grope. Presently the ideas grew concrete in
the word which she had herself suggested to Arthur Lisle and he had
accepted with alacrity. Sidney Barslow 'grated' on Arthur. It was not
impossible to see why, though even this she acknowledged grudgingly and
with a sense of treachery--she herself found so much to like in Sidney!
Exactly! There she seemed to lay her finger on the spot. If she liked
Sidney, and Sidney grated on Arthur Lisle so badly--the question which
she had not dared to ask at the door rose to her lips again--"Do I
grate?" And was that why Arthur Lisle never flirted? Never with her, at
least--for that was all she could really know on the subject.
CHAPTER III
IN TOUCH WITH THE LAW
Arthur Lisle arrived on the pavement in front of Norton Ward's house in
Manchester Square five minutes before the time for which he was invited,
and fifteen before that at which he would be expected to arrive.
Painfully conscious of this fact, he walked first down Duke Street, and
then back up Manchester Street, trying to look as if he were going
somewhere else. Nor did he venture to arrive at his real destination
until he had seen three vehicles deposit their occupants at the door.
Then he presented himself with the air of having hurried a little, lest
he should be late. None of this conduct struck him as at all unusual or
ridiculous; not only now but for long afterwards it was his habit--the
habit of a nervous imaginative man.
The party was not a large one--only twelve--and it was entirely legal in
character. Besides host and hostess there were three couples--two
barrister couples and one solicitor couple. One of the couples brought a
daughter, who fell to Arthur's lot. Arthur got on very well with his
girl, who was fortunately an enthusiast about lawn-tennis; she
interested without absorbing him; he was able to be polite without
ceasing to watch the two people who really arrested his attention, his
hostess and--most strangely, most wonderfully!--Mr. Justice Lance. For
at half-past eight the old Judge, by his arrival, completed the party.
A catalogue of Mrs. Norton Ward's personal attractions would sound
commonplace enough. She had small features, was fair, rather pretty,
rather pale, and rather short; there seemed no more to say. But she
possessed a gracious candour of manner, an extreme friendliness and
simplicity, a ready merriment, and together with these a complete
freedom from self-consciousness. Somehow she struck Arthur as a highly
refined, feminised, etherealised counterpart of Joe Halliday--they were
both such good human creatures, so superlatively free from 'nonsense' of
all sorts. He took to her immensely from the first moment and hoped very
much that she would talk to him a little after dinner. He felt sure that
he could get on with her; she did not alarm or puzzle him; he knew that
he had "got her right."
When Norton Ward moved, according to ritual, into his wife's vacant
place beside Mr. Justice Lance, he beckoned to Arthur to come and sit on
the Judge's other side and introduced him. "You just missed the pleasure
of hearing his maiden argument the other morning, Judge," he added,
laughing slyly at Arthur, who had not got over the surprise of
encountering Lance, J., as a private--and harmless--individual.
"Ah, I remember--a case of yours! But O'Sullivan wouldn't give Mr. Lisle
a chance!"
He spoke in the same soft, rather weary voice that he had used in court;
with his sparse white hair he looked older than when he was in his wig;
he was very carefully dressed, and his thin fine hands wore a couple of
rather ornate rings. He had keen blue eyes and a large well-shaped nose.
"I don't know that Lisle was altogether sorry! The first time! Even you
remember the feeling, I dare say?"
"Nervous? Was that it, Mr. Lisle?" He smiled faintly. "You must remember
that we're much inured to imperfection." He looked on the young man with
a pleasant indulgence, and, at the same time, a certain attention.
"You always remember our frailty, but there are others!" said the host.
"Ah, ah! I sat with my Brother Pretyman, so I did! Perhaps he does
forget sometimes that one side must be wrong. Hence the unpopularity of
litigation, by the way."
Arthur was gaining his ease; the friendliness of both his companions
helped him; towards the Judge he was particularly drawn; he felt that he
would be all right before Lance, J., in future--if only Pretyman, J.,
were elsewhere! But, alas, a question was enough to plunge him back into
trouble. Norton Ward had turned to talk to his other neighbour, but Sir
Christopher Lance spoke to him again.
"Are you any relation to Godfrey Lisle? Lisle of Hilsey, you know."
"Yes, Sir Christopher, I'm--I'm a distant cousin."
"Well, I thought you had something of the family look. I've not had the
pleasure of seeing you at his house--in town, I mean--I haven't been to
Hilsey lately."
"I--I've never been there," Arthur stammered. He was blushing very red.
Here he was, up against this terrible business of the Godfrey Lisles
again--and just as he had begun to get along so nicely!
His confusion, nay, his distress, could not escape the Judge. "I hope I
haven't made a _faux pas_, Mr. Lisle? No quarrel, or anything of that
sort, I hope?"
"No, sir, but I don't know them. I haven't called yet," Arthur blurted
out; he seemed to himself to be always having to blurt it out.
Sir Christopher's eyes twinkled, as, following the host's example, he
rose from the table.
"If I were you, I should. You don't know what you're missing."
Upstairs Mrs. Norton Ward was better than Arthur's hopes. She showed him
at once that she meant to talk to him and that she expected to like
doing it.
"I'm always friends with everybody in Frank's chambers," she said, as
she made him sit by her. "I consider them all part of the family, and
all the glory they win belongs to the family; so you must make haste and
win glory, if you can, for us!"
"I'm afraid I can't win glory," laughed Arthur. "At least it doesn't
look like it--at the Bar."
"Oh, win it anyhow--we're not particular how--law, politics, literature,
what you like! Why, Milton Longworth was Frank's pupil once--for a
month! He did no work and got tipsy, but he's a great poet now--well,
isn't he?--and we're just as proud as if he'd become Attorney-General."
"Or--well--at all events, a County Court Judge!" Arthur suggested.
"So just you do it somehow, Mr. Lisle, won't you?"
"I'll try," he promised, laughing. "The other day I heard of you in your
glory. You sounded very splendid," he added.
Then he had to tell her all about how he had heard, about Mildred Quain,
and so about the rest of the circle in Regent's Park. His shyness
vanished; he gave humorous little sketches of his friends. Of course she
knew Sarradet's shop, and was amused at this lifting of the veil which
had hidden the Sarradet private life. But being the entirely natural
creature she was, talking and thinking just as one of her class
naturally would, she could not help treating the Sarradets as something
out of her ordinary experience, as something rather funny--perhaps also
instructive--to hear about, as social phenomena to be observed and
studied. Without her own volition or consciousness her mind naturally
assumed this attitude and expressed it in her questions and comments;
neither were cruel, neither malicious, but both were absolutely from the
outside--comments and questions about a foreign country addressed to a
traveller who happened to have paid a visit there; for plainly she
assumed, again instinctively, that Arthur Lisle was no more a native of
that country than herself. Or he might almost have been an author
presenting to an alert and sympathetic reader a realistic and vivacious
picture of the life of a social class not his own, be it what is called
higher or lower, or just quite different.
Whatever the gulf, the difference, might be--broad or narrow, justly
felt or utterly exaggerated--Arthur Lisle would have been (at
twenty-four) more than human not to be pleased to find himself, for Mrs.
Norton Ward, on the same side of it as Mrs. Norton Ward. She was
evidently quite genuine in this, as she seemed to be in everything. She
was not flattering him or even putting him at his ease. She talked to
him as "one of ourselves" simply because that seemed to her what he
undoubtedly was--and what his friends undoubtedly, though of course
quite blamelessly, were not.
They were thus in the full swing of talk--Arthur doing most of it--when
the Judge came across the room and joined them. Arthur at once rose, to
make way, and the lady too seemed to treat his audience as finished,
although most graciously. But the Judge took hold of his arm and
detained him.
"Do you know, Esther," he said, "that this young man has, by right of
kinship, the _entrée_ to the Shrine? And he doesn't use it!"
"What?" she cried with an appearance of lively interest. "Oh, are you
related to the Godfreys, Mr. Lisle?"
Arthur blushed, but this time less acutely; he was getting, as the Judge
might have put it, much inured to this matter of the Godfrey Lisles.
"Don't ask him questions about it; for some reason or another he doesn't
like that."
"I don't really think my cousin Godfrey would care about----"
"Not the least the point, is it, Esther?" said the Judge with a twinkle.
"Not the least, Sir Christopher. But what's to be done if he won't go?"
"Oh, you must manage that." He squeezed Arthur's arm and then let it go.
Here, plainly, though no less graciously than from the hostess, was his
dismissal. Not knowing any of the other women, he drifted back to the
girl who was enthusiastic about lawn-tennis.
The Judge sat down and stretched out his shapely thin hands towards the
fire; his rings gleamed, and he loved the gleam of them. To wear them
had been, from his youth, one of his bits of daring; he had, as it were,
backed himself to wear them and not thereby seem himself, or let them
seem, vulgar. And he had succeeded; he had been called vain often, never
vulgar. By now his friends, old and young, would have missed them sadly.
"What do you make of that boy, Esther?" he asked.
"I like him--and I think he's being wasted," she answered promptly.
"At our honourable profession?"
"You and Frank are better judges of that."
"I don't know. Hardly tough enough, perhaps. But Huntley was just such a
man, and he got pretty well to the top. Died, though, not much past
fifty. The climb killed him, I think."
"Yes, Frank's told me about him. But I meant wasted in his own life, or
socially, or however you like to put it. He's told me about his friends,
and----"
"Well, if you like him enough, you can put that right, Esther."
"I like him, but I haven't much time for young men, Sir Christopher.
I've a husband, you may remember."
"Then turn him over where he belongs--to Bernadette."
She raised her brows a little, as she smiled at him.
"Oh, the young fellow's got to get his baptism of fire. It'll do him
good."
"How easily you Judges settle other people's fortunes!"
"In the end, his not going to his cousin's house is an absurdity."
"Well, yes, so it is, in the end, of course," she agreed. "It shall be
done, Sir Christopher."
While his fortunes were thus being settled for him--more or less, and as
the future might reveal--Arthur was walking home, well pleased with
himself. The lady's friendliness delighted him; if he did not prize the
old Judge's so highly, he had the sense to perceive that it was really a
more valuable testimonial and brought with it more substantial
encouragement. From merely being kind to him the Norton Wards had come
to like him, as it seemed, and their liking was backed by Sir
Christopher's endorsement. He did not regard these things from a worldly
point of view; he did not think of them as stepping-stones, or at any
rate only quite indirectly. They would no doubt help him to get rid of,
or at least to hold in subjection, his demon of self-distrust; but still
more would they comfort him and make him happy. The pleasure he derived
from Mrs. Norton Ward's liking, and the Judge's approval, was in quality
akin to the gratification which Marie Sarradet's bearing had given him a
few nights ago in Regent's Park; just as that had roused in him a keener
sense of Marie's attractiveness, so now he glowed with a warm
recognition of the merits of his new friends.
Walking home along Oxford Street, he had almost reached the corner of
Tottenham Court Road when his complacent musings were interrupted by the
sight of a knot of people outside the door of a public-house. It was the
sort of group not unusual at half-past eleven o'clock at night--a man, a
woman on his arm, a policeman, ten or a dozen interested spectators,
very ready with advice as Londoners are. As he drew near, he heard what
was passing, though the policeman's tall burly figure was between him
and the principal actor in the scene.
"Better do as she says and go 'ome, sir," said the policeman soothingly.
"'Ome, _Sweet_ 'Ome!" murmured somebody in tones of fond reminiscence.
"Yes, do now. You don't really want it, you know you don't," urged the
lady in her turn.
"Whether I want it or not----"
At the sound of this last voice Arthur started into quick attention and
came to a halt. He recognised the full tones, now somewhat thickened,
with their faint but unmistakable suggestion of the Cockney twang.
"Whether I want it or not----" The man spoke slowly, with an effort
after distinctness which was obvious but not unsuccessful--"I've a right
to have it. He's bound to serve the public. I'm--I'm member of the
public."
"'Ad enough for two members, _I_ should sye," came in comment from the
fringe of the group.
"That's it! Go 'ome now," the policeman suggested again, infinitely
patient and persuasive.
The man made a sudden move towards the door of the public-house where an
official, vulgarly known as the 'chucker out,' stood smiling on the
threshold.
"No, sir, you _don't_!" said the policeman, suave but immensely firm,
laying a hand on his arm.
"The officer's quite right. Do come along," again urged the lady.
But the movement towards the public-house door, which revealed to Arthur
the face of the obstinate lingerer, showed him to the lingerer
also--showed Arthur in his evening uniform of tall hat, white scarf, and
silk-faced coat to Sidney Barslow in his 'bowler' hat of rakish cut, and
his sporting fawn-coloured coat, with the big flower in his buttonhole
and his stick with a huge silver knob. The stick shot out--vaguely in
Arthur's direction.
"I'm a gentleman, and, what's more, I can prove it. Ask that
gentleman--my friend there----"
Arthur's face was a little flushed. His mind was full of those terrible
quick visions of his--a scuffle on the pavement, going bail for Sidney
Barslow, giving evidence at the Police Court. "A friend of the prisoner,
Mr. Arthur Lisle, Barrister, of Garden Court, Middle Temple"--visions
most terrible! But he stood his ground, saying nothing, not moving a
limb, and meeting Barslow's look full in the eyes. All the rest were
staring at him now. If he remained as he was they would take it as a
denial of Barslow's claim to acquaintance. Could he deny it if Barslow
challenged him? He answered--No.
But some change of mood came over Sidney Barslow's clouded mind. He let
his stick fall back to his side again, and with an angry jerk of his
head said:
"Oh, damn it, all right, I'm going! I--I was only pulling your leg."
"That's right now!" applauded the policeman. "You'd better take 'im in a
taxi, miss."
"And put a ticket on 'im, in case 'e falls out, miss," some friendly
adviser added.
Arthur did not wait to see the policeman's excellent suggestion carried
into effect. The moment that Sidney Barslow's eyes were off him, he
turned quickly up a by-street, and took a roundabout way home.
He had much to be thankful for. The terrible visions were dissipated.
And--he had not run away. Oh, how he had wanted to run away from the
danger of being mixed up in that dirty job. He thanked heaven that he
had stood his ground and looked Barslow in the face.
But what about the next time they had to look one another in the
face--at the Sarradets' in Regent's Park?
CHAPTER IV
A GRATEFUL FRIEND
Marie's remonstrance with her brother was not ill-received--Raymond was
too amiable for that--but it was quite unsuccessful. Just emerged from
an exhaustive business training on the latest lines at home and abroad,
able (as he pointed out in mingled pride and ruefulness) to correspond
about perfumes in French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and to talk
about them in three of those languages, he declared openly not for a
lifetime of leisure but for an hedonistic interval. Further, he favoured
a little scattering of money after so much amassing.
"If Pops," he observed, "would only go back to his Balzac, he would see
how much harm and sorrow this perpetual money-grubbing causes among the
business classes of our beloved France. In England a more liberal spirit
prevails, and after a hundred and fifty years we ought to be able to
catch it. In fact I have caught it, Marie."
"You have; and you'll catch something else--from Pops--if you don't look
out," said Marie, who could not help smiling at the trim, spry, gay
little fellow. Like herself, he was dark and lively, but of the two she
was the manager, the man of business.
"Besides it does the house good. 'Who's that?' they ask. 'Young
Sarradet.' 'What, the scent and soap people?' 'The same.' 'Dashed fine
business that!'" He enacted the dialogue with dramatic talent. "As an
advertisement I'm worth all my debts, dear sister."
Marie was too much amused to press her point further. "You rather remind
me of Bob Sawyer," she remarked. "But, anyhow, be here oftener in the
evenings, if you can. That'll go a long way towards pacifying Pops. When
you're away, he sits thinking of the money you're spending. Besides, he
does like to have you here, you know."
"You tell me when Amabel Osling is coming, and I'll be here."
"I'm glad you like Amabel. She's pretty, isn't she?"
"She's all right. Otherwise I didn't think it was very lively."
"N-no. It was hardly one of our best evenings," Marie admitted
reluctantly.
It hadn't been--that first meeting of her circle after Arthur Lisle's
dinner party. They had all been there, including Raymond, whose
exchanges of wit and chaff with Joe Halliday were generally of
themselves enough to make the evening a success. It had not been a
success--at least from the moment of Arthur's arrival. Mildred Quain had
started off about the party at once; her curiosity concerning the Norton
Wards was insatiable--she seemed to be working up a regular cult of
them. Marie herself had been benevolently inquisitive too, hoping to
hear that Arthur had had a grand time and made a great impression. But
the topic had seemed distasteful to Arthur, he tried to get away from it
directly; when the persevering Mildred dragged him back, his replies
grew short and his manner reserved; he seemed ill at ease. As for Sidney
Barslow, as soon as ever Arthur and his party came on the scene, he
turned sulky--indecently sulky. It was painful as well as absurd, and it
got worse when Joe Halliday, trying (in justice let it be said) to
lighten the atmosphere by jocularity, suggested, "And, after it all, I
suppose some beautiful lady took you to your humble home in her
six-cylinder car?" Arthur answered dryly, with a pointed ignoring of the
joke, "I walked home by Oxford Street." Joe, still persevering, asked,
"No romantic adventures on the way?" "Nothing out of the common," Arthur
replied in a cool hard voice which was very rare in his mouth, but
meant, Marie knew, serious displeasure. In fact she was just going to
make some laughing apology for the catechism through which he had been
put when Sidney Barslow, who had been glowering worse and worse every
minute, suddenly broke out:
"There's an end of the thing, at all events, at last!" And he looked at
Arthur, as it seemed to her, with a curious mixture of anger and fear, a
sort of snarling defiance.
"It was not I who introduced the subject or was responsible for its
continuance," said Arthur, in the iciest of all his cool voices. "That
you must do me the justice to admit, Barslow."
Then an awful pause--even Joe gravelled for a joke--and the most obvious
clumsy resort to "a little more music"! The strains failed of soothing
effect. On the one side a careful but disdainful courtesy, on the other
a surly defiance--they persisted all the evening, making everybody
uncomfortable and (as Marie shrewdly guessed) inquisitive. This was
something much worse, much more pronounced, than mere 'grating.' There
was, on Sidney's side at least, an actual enmity; and Arthur, noting it,
treated it with contemptuous indifference.
"Have you had a row with Sidney about anything?" she managed to whisper
to Arthur.
"No."
"Have you said anything to annoy him, do you think?"
He looked straight into her eyes. "I haven't spoken to him since we were
last here."
Sidney she did not venture to approach in confidence; he was altogether
too dangerous that night. She did not know the occasion which had fanned
a smouldering hostility into flame, which had changed a mere 'grating'
of the one on the other, an uncongeniality, into feelings much stronger
and more positive. Even had she known it, perhaps she was not well
enough versed in the standards and the moods of men to understand all
that it carried with it. Sidney Barslow was not particularly ashamed of
what had happened to him in itself: in suitable company he would have
found it a story he could tell and be sure of a humorous sympathy; there
was nothing to be remorseful or miserable about. As long as a man did
his work and earned his 'screw' (and Sidney held a good position in a
wholesale linen-merchant's business and was doing well) he was entitled
to his amusements--if you like, his dissipations--while he was young at
all events. If indiscretions marked them, if one sometimes tumbled over
the line, that was in the nature of the case. He would not have minded
an encounter with Joe Halliday outside that public-house in the
least--no, nor even with young Raymond Sarradet, Marie's brother though
he was. Nay, he would not much have minded being seen even by Arthur
Lisle himself; for if Arthur had been shocked, Sidney would, in all
sincerity, have dubbed him a milksop; the man who would be shocked at a
thing like that was certainly a milksop. He was not even afraid of
Arthur's betraying him to Marie--not because he thought his enemy above
that, but because he had an easy confidence that he could put the matter
right with Marie, and a strong doubt whether women objected to that sort
of thing so much as they were in the habit of pretending; in their
hearts they like a man to be a man, Sidney would have told himself for
comfort.
The poison lay elsewhere. Under the influence of his liquor and the
stress of his plight--wanting to prove to the policeman, to the
'chucker-out,' to the interested bystanders, that he was not a common
tap-room frequenter but a 'gentleman'--he had let himself appeal for his
warrant of gentility to the man whom he had derided for thinking himself
so much (if you please!) a gentleman. Arthur Lisle's acquaintance was to
prove to bystanders, policeman, and chucker-out, that he, Sidney
Barslow, though drunk and in queer company, was yet a gentleman! And how
had the appeal been received? He could not charge Arthur with cutting
him, or leaving him in the lurch. He hated far worse the look he had
seen in his enemy's eyes as they gazed steadfastly into his--the
fastidious repulsion and the high contempt. True, on the sight of them
he had withdrawn his appeal; he had preferred to accept defeat and
humiliation at the hands of chucker-out and constable; but the fact of
the appeal having been made remained with all its damning admission of
inferiority. And that look of contempt he had seen again when Arthur
Lisle, in answer to Joe Halliday's clumsy jokes, replied in his cool
proud voice that, as he walked home by Oxford Street, he had met with
"nothing out of the common." He had met a common fellow with a common
woman, and, as was common, the common fellow was drunk. With all the
sharpness wherewith humiliation pricks a man, with all the keenness
wherewith hatred can read the mind of an enemy, he pointed for himself
the meaning of Arthur's careless-sounding words.
He was in a rage, not only with Arthur Lisle, but with himself and his
luck--which had indeed been somewhat perverse. Lashing himself with
these various irritants, he soon produced another sore spot--Marie
Sarradet's behaviour. He was an older friend than Arthur; she had, he
declared, backed Arthur up in his airy insolence; he swore to himself
that he had seen her smile at it. At any rate she had not backed him up;
to a man in a rage, or several rages, it was enough--more than enough
for a man of his temper, to whom the desire for a woman was the desire
for a mastery over her. And in the end he could not believe that that
fragile whipper-snapper with his hoity-toity effeminate ways (the point
of view is Sidney's) could be weighed in the balance against his own
manly handsomeness, his dashing gallantry; why, he knew that he was a
conqueror with women--knew it by experience!
Marie and Raymond, Amabel Osling and himself had made up a four to play
lawn-tennis on the hard courts at Acton. They had enjoyed their game and
their tea. He and Marie had won after a close match, and were in a good
humour with themselves. He was forgetting his grievance against her. She
liked him playing games; he was a finely built fellow and looked really
splendid in his white flannels; if he ordered her about the court like a
master, it was a legitimate sway; he knew the game and played well.
When, after tea, the other two sauntered off--for an open and unashamed
flirtation--Marie had never felt more kindly towards him; she had really
forgiven the bearishness of his behaviour, and was prepared to tell him
so after a little lecture, which, by the way, she quite looked forward
to giving; for she too was fond of domination. She started leading up to
the lecture.
"You seem to have found something since we last met, Sidney. I'm glad of
it."
"What do you mean?" he asked carelessly, as he filled his pipe. He did
not see her drift.
"Hadn't you mislaid something the other night?" Her dark eyes were
dancing with mockery, and her lips twitched.
Now he looked at her suspiciously. "I don't understand."
"You might. I'm referring to your temper."
"I'm not aware that I said anything rude to you. If I did, I apologise."
"I'm not speaking of myself, but of my friends--my guests."
He leant his arm on the table which stood between them. "Meaning Mr.
Arthur Lisle?"
"The smoke of your pipe blows in my face when you lean forward like
that."
"Sorry!" He laid his pipe down beside him. "Well, the fact is, I'm about
fed up with Lisle."
And Arthur Lisle was much in the same case--allowing for the difference
of expression--as to Sidney! Marie smiled, but her brow wrinkled. "Sorry
you don't like him, but it costs nothing to be polite."
"Well, all I can say is that I shall be very much obliged if you'll ask
us on different evenings."
"That's assuming that I'm going to ask you on any evenings at all."
She thought this smart flick of her whip would bring him to reason.
"Oh, perhaps Lisle's going to be there every evening?"
"Any evening that he likes, Pops and I will be very pleased to see
him--with or without an invitation." She relented a little; he looked
angry and obstinate, but he looked handsome too. "You too, if you won't
be silly. Why do you dislike him so much?"
He could not give her the whole reason; he gave what he could. "I see
his game. He's always trying to come the swell over me and the rest of
us."
"I'm sure he doesn't mean to; it's just----"
"His naturally aristocratic manner?" he sneered.
Marie sat up straight and looked composedly at him. By now she was
angry--and she meant to hurt. "That's exactly it, Sidney," she said,
"and it's a pity everybody hasn't got it."
She did hurt sorely. He had no code to keep him from hitting back, and
his wrath was fierce. "Where did you learn so much about aristocratic
manners? Behind the counter?"
She flushed hotly; tears came in her eyes. He saw what he had done, and
was touched to a sudden remorse.
"Oh, I say, Marie, I didn't mean----!"
"I shan't forget that," she said. "Never!"
He shrugged his shoulders and stuck his pipe back in his mouth. He was
ashamed, but obstinate still. "You brought it on yourself," he grumbled.
"Yes, I forgot that I wasn't talking to a gentleman."
He made one more effort after reconciliation. "Look here, Marie, you
know what I think of you----"
"Yes, I do--you've just told me."
"Damnation!" he muttered, pulling at his pipe. Marie, looking carefully
past him, began to put on her gloves. Thus Amabel and Raymond found
them--with things obviously very wrong. Amabel diagnosed an offer and a
refusal, but Raymond thought there must be even more behind his sister's
stormy brow and clouded eyes. The journey back was not cheerful.
Marie was indeed cut to the quick. Even to herself it was strange how
deeply she was wounded. The Sarradets had never been ashamed of the
shop; rather they had taken an honourable pride in it and in the growth
of its fortunes from generation to generation. Yet Sidney Barslow's gibe
about the counter was to her now unforgivable. It brought into coarse
and vivid relief her secret doubts and fears. It made her ask whether
she, having made a friend of the man who had used a taunt like that,
must not have something about her to justify it. It set her on fire to
put an utter end to her friendship and association with Sidney
Barslow--and thereby to prove to herself that, whatever her manners
might be they were at least too good for such company as his.
Hitherto pretty equally balanced between the two young men, or at all
events wistfully anxious that friendship with Arthur should not make
impossible her old and pleasant comradeship with Sidney--in whom she
found so much that she liked--she became now Arthur's furious partisan.
With him and his cause she identified herself. She declared that it was
purely for his sake, and not at all in the interest of her own
domination and authority, that she had rebuked Sidney, and for his sake
solely that she had suffered insult. By a natural turn of feeling she
asked in her heart for a reward from him, a recognition of her
championship, gratitude to her for having preferred him to his would-be
rival; if he were not at least a little pleased and proud, she would
feel disappointment and humiliation.
But he would be. And why? Because that was the right thing for him to
be, and now in her eyes, at this moment, he could do no wrong. Sidney
was all wrong, therefore Arthur must be all right. She could not bring
herself to doubt it. And, being all right, he must do and feel all the
right things. So he would--when he knew what she had done and suffered
for him. Her heart cried out that somehow (as delicately as possible, of
course) he must be made to know, to know the full extent of her service
and her sacrifice; he must know the insult she had received; and he must
consider it as great and wanton an insult as she did.
So her feelings formulated their claim upon him, with an instinctive
cunning. It was a claim to which no chivalrous-minded man could be
insensible; it was one that would appeal with commanding force to Arthur
Lisle's impulsive generosity.
"For you I have quarrelled with my old friend--for you I have endured
insult." What could he answer save that in him she should find a better
friend, that his appreciation should efface the insult?
"Don't be afraid to come. There will be nobody here that you don't like
this time." With these words her next invitation to Arthur Lisle ended.
He read them with a quick grasp of her meaning--of the essential part of
it at least. She was on his side! He was glad. Neither for his own sake,
nor for the sake of the idea that he had of her, would he easily have
endured that she should be on Sidney Barslow's side and against him.
Although she did not know what he knew, and had not seen what he had
seen, her instincts and her taste were right! He looked forward eagerly
to letting her perceive, in some way or other, that he recognised this,
to congratulating her somehow on it, to sealing the pact of a natural
alliance between them. How he would do this, or how far he might seem to
go in the course of doing it, or what further implications might be
involved in such a bond between man and maid, his young blood and his
generous impulses did not pause to ask. It was the thing to do--and he
wanted to do it.
CHAPTER V
THE TENDER DIPLOMATIST
The coming of the Easter legal vacation set Arthur free for the time
from professional hopes and fears. He was due on a visit to his mother
and sister at Malvern, but excused himself at the last moment. It was
not in him to leave London. The Temple indeed he forsook, but he abode
in his lodgings and spent his spare time with the Sarradets. Amabel
Osling was staying with them, and Raymond was now in close attendance on
her. There were two young couples, then, ready for lawn-tennis, for
theatres, for concerts, or any other diversion. Yet pleasantest of all
were the walks in Regent's Park on the offdays, when nothing special had
been arranged, but Arthur would happen to stroll up to the Broad Walk,
and Marie would chance to be giving her dog a run. Then they would
saunter about together, or sit on a seat in the spring sunshine, talking
of all manner of things--well, except of the particular form which
Sidney Barslow's rudeness had taken. Somehow, in the end, Marie never
could bring herself to tell him that and ask him to be indignant about
it. She left the enormity vague and undefined; it was really none the
less effective left like that, just as provocative of reprobation for
the sinner and sympathy for the ill-used friend. And it was safer to
leave it like that; she could never rid herself of the fear that the
actual thing, if revealed, might appear to Arthur rude indeed--rough,
ill-mannered, as much of all this as one could conceive--but not so
overwhelmingly absurd and monstrous as it ought to seem, as the demands
of her uneasy heart required that he should find it.
For she could hardly believe in what looked now like coming to pass. She
had known him for a long time--more than a year--as a good friend but
rather a reserved one; cordial and kind, but keeping always a certain
distance, actually, if without intention, maintaining a barrier round
his inner self, refusing to abandon the protective aloofness of a proud
and sensitive nature. Was he changing from this to the opposite
extreme--to that most open, intimate, exposed, and unprotected creature,
a lover? Well as she had known him, she had not thought of him as that.
But her mind fastened on the idea eagerly; it appealed to more than one
side of her nature.
"As a rule I just can't talk about myself," he said once. "How is it
that I can to you?"
"It's because I love you, and in your heart you know it," she wanted to
say, but she answered, laughing, "I've always been rather a good
listener."
"If you tell most people a single thing about yourself, they bombard you
with a dozen silly questions. Now you never do that."
"That's because I'm afraid of you, if you only knew it," she wanted to
say, but she answered merrily, "I find out more by my way in the end,
don't I?"
For every step forward his feelings had taken, hers had taken ten. She
knew it and was not ashamed; she gloried in it. From the moment she had
come over to his side, making herself his champion and asking for his
gratitude in return, her heart had brooked no compromise. Hers was a
mind quick of decision, prompt in action. To romance she brought the
qualities of business. A swift rush of feeling had carried her to the
goal; she watched him now following in her steps, and was tremulously
careful not to anticipate by an iota the stages he had yet to pass. She
marvelled that she had not loved him from the beginning, and almost
convinced herself that she had. She could scarcely persuade herself to
accept even now the signs of his nascent love.
Thus in truth, though all unknown to him, she did the wooing. Her answer
was ready before his question. She watched and waited with a passivity
that was to a man of his disposition her best lure. Some of this fine
caution she learnt from her observation of him, and some of it from
Sidney Barslow's taunt. She subdued her natural coquetry lest, even in
eyes the most unfriendly and malicious, it should seem forwardness. She
gave always just a little, little less than his words and eyes asked.
Schooling herself after this fashion, modelling her behaviour to what
she conceived to be his ideals, she sought to win him. If she succeeded
she would achieve not only her heart's desire, but a great triumph over
those disturbing doubts. His approval would, she felt, set on her the
stamp that she longed to wear--the social diploma to which she aspired.
A fine slap in the face for Sidney Barslow it would be, for instance!
Arthur's generous impulse, the desire to show himself a warm and
grateful friend to his champion, was merged now in a great and absorbing
contentment. It prevented him from considering how an engagement and a
marriage would consort with his prospects and his career; it narrowed
his vision of his own life and mind to the present moment. He had got
what he had been pining for--that intimate and (so to say) ministering
sympathy which a man perhaps can get, and certainly can ask, from a
woman only. That had been a need so great that its satisfaction seemed
to satisfy all the needs of his being, and deluded him into thinking
that all his instincts and aspirations asked no more than this, that his
keen appetite for beauty could be fed on her vivacious prettiness, that
all his impulses, wayward, fanciful, sometimes extravagant, could be
lulled to sleep by the spell of her shrewd and pleasant common sense. It
made him forget that the prime function of a lover and his supreme
expression lie in giving, and that the woman truly makes the man in love
with her when she makes him give all he has and think that he is giving
brass for gold. But if this it is to be a lover, Arthur Lisle was no
lover now; if this it is to be a lover, Marie Sarradet had never seen
and scarce imagined one.
But the spring sunshine, the impulses of youth, the ministering sympathy
blinded his eyes. He seemed to have all because he liked so much that
which he had. Gaily and happily, with that fine gallantry which she so
admired, on he came, step by step. She grew secure.
By now father and brother were on the alert. They had canvassed the
matter in all its bearings. Raymond was Arthur's enthusiastic adherent.
Old Mr. Sarradet affected reserve and doubt; he complained that the
suitor was far from rich. But in his heart he was delighted at the
prospect. He admired Arthur, he believed in his abilities, he thought
the marriage would be a "step up" for his darling daughter--and perhaps
for her family. Above all he saw the time draw near when he should enjoy
the greatest pleasure that he had to look forward to in life--surprising
Marie by the handsome dimensions of her dowry. He hugged the thought of
it; he loved her, and he knew she was a good woman of business. It would
be a great moment when she saw in him, at one and the same moment, a
more munificent father and a cleverer man of business than ever she had
thought. Incidentally the disclosure might cause Master Raymond to
realise what very considerable things he stood to lose if he did not
mind what he was about. The old fellow had no real thought of
disinheriting his son, but he loved the power his money gave him, and
would now and again flourish the sword that he would have been most loth
to use.
So all things promised bravely--Marie, the tender diplomatist, held a
winning hand and was playing it well. Leave her to the skill that her
heart taught her, and the game was won!
Among the accidents of life are relatives appurtenant to but ordinarily
outside of the family circle. Mr. Sarradet owned one--an elder
sister--in his eyes, by early memory and tradition, exceptionally
endowed with the knowledge of the way to look after girls, and the
proper things to be done in the interest of their dignity and virtue.
She came up from Manchester, where she lived, to have her teeth seen
to--not that there were not excellent dentists in Manchester, but her
father had always gone to Mr. Mandells of Seymour Street and she had a
fancy to go to Mr. Mandells's son (of Seymour Street still)--and stayed
with her brother from Friday to Tuesday. Having seen what she saw, and
had her doubts, and come to her own conclusions, she sat up late on
Monday night, sat up till Arthur Lisle had departed and Marie was
between the sheets, and even Raymond had yawned himself on to bed; and
then she said abruptly to her brother Mr. Sarradet:
"It's a settled thing, I suppose, though it's not announced yet?"
Mr. Sarradet passed his hand over his hair-brush of a head, and pulled
his moustache perplexedly. "I suppose it is," he answered lamely, quite
conscious that Mrs. Veltheim possessed knowledge and commanded
deference, but conscious also that, up to now, matters had gone on very
well without her.
"You suppose!" said the lady. The two words carried home to a conscience
hitherto guiltily easy. But Mrs. Veltheim left nothing to chance; she
rammed the charge in. "If dear Marie had a mother!"
She alarmed the cautious old _bourgeois_--to the point of protesting
that he felt no alarm whatever.
"He's a gentleman." He took a sip at his toddy. "No girl in the world
has more self-respect." Another sip ended in "Perfect confidence!"
vaguely murmured.
"Young men are young men."
"Not at all! I don't believe it of him for a minute." His protest was
against the insinuation which even an identical proposition may carry.
"I rescued my Harriet just in time!"
"Damn your Harriet, and I wish you'd go back to Manchester!" It was not
what he said to his respected sister. "Cases differ," was the more
parliamentary form his answer took.
But the seed was sown before Mrs. Veltheim did go back to Manchester. It
germinated in the cautious suspicious soul of the old shopkeeper, so
trustful of a man's credit till the breath of a suspicion blew upon it,
then so acute to note every eddying current of the air. He grew minded
to confront Arthur Lisle with the attitude of Mrs. Veltheim--a lady for
whom Arthur, on the strength of one evening's acquaintance, had
conceived a most profound aversion.
She was a fat woman--broad, heavy, fair and florid, married to an
exceedingly prosperous German. To Mr. Sarradet her opinion was, like her
person, weighty; not always agreeable, but never unimportant. To Arthur
she was already--before ever he had conceived of her as having or being
entitled to have an opinion about him, his sentiments, or his
intentions--an appreciable drawback, though not a serious obstacle, to
the alliance which he was contemplating. He was, in fine, extremely glad
that she and her husband, whom he defined and incarnated with all his
imagination's power of vividness, lived in Manchester. If they too had
dwelt in Regent's Park, it would not have been the same place to him.
Collateral liabilities would have lurked round every corner.
By now, and notwithstanding a transitory disturbance created by the
revelation of Mrs. Veltheim, Arthur's mind had subconsciously chosen its
course; but emotionally he was not quite ready. His feelings waited for
a spark to set them in a blaze--such a spark as might come any moment
when he was with Marie, some special note of appeal sounded by her, some
quick intuition of him or his mood, raising his admiration and
gratitude, even some especially pretty aspect of her face suddenly
striking on his sense of beauty. Any one of these would serve, but one
of them was needed to change his present contentment into an impulse
towards something conceived as yet more perfect. The tender shrewd
diplomatist divined pretty well how things stood; she would not hurry or
strive, that way danger lay; she waited, securely now and serenely, for
the divine chance, the happy coincidence of opportunity and impulse. It
was bound to come, and to come now speedily. Alas, she did not know that
clumsy hands had been meddling with her delicate edifice!
Two days after Mrs. Veltheim had gone back to Manchester, old Sarradet
left his place of business early, travelled by omnibus from Cheapside to
the corner of Bloomsbury Street, and presented himself at the door of
Arthur's lodgings. Arthur was at home; Marie had told him that she would
not be able to meet him in Regent's Park that afternoon, as some
shopping business called her elsewhere, and he was lounging through the
hours, not (as it happened, and it does happen sometimes even when a man
is in love) thinking about her much, but rather about that problem of
his legal career which the waning of the vacation brought again to his
mind. The appearance of Mr. Sarradet--who had never before honoured him
with a visit--came as something of a surprise.
"As I was passing your corner, I thought I'd look in and see if you were
coming up to our place this afternoon," Mr. Sarradet explained.
"Because, if so, we might walk together."
Arthur said that he understood that Marie would be out, and therefore
had not proposed to pay his friends a visit that day.
"Out, is she? Ah, yes!" He smiled knowingly. "You know what she's doing
better than her father does!" He was walking about the little room,
looking at Arthur's pictures, photographs, and other small possessions.
"Well, you'll be coming again soon, I expect?"
"I expect so, if you'll have me," said Arthur, smiling.
Mr. Sarradet took up a photograph. "That's a nice face!"
"It's my mother, Mr. Sarradet."
"Your mother, is it? Ah, well now! And she lives at----? Let me see! You
did mention it."
"At Malvern--she and my sister."
"Your sister? Ah, yes! Unmarried, isn't she? Have you no other brothers
or sisters?"
Under these questions--and more followed, eliciting a good deal of
information about his family and its circumstances--Arthur's face
gradually assumed its distinctively patient expression. The patience was
very closely akin to endurance--in fact, to boredom. Why did the fussy
old fellow worry him like that? Instinctively he hardened himself
against Sarradet--against Sarradet's implied assertion of a right to ask
him all these questions. Perhaps he knew that this resentment was not
very reasonable. He felt it, none the less. To put him in any way to the
question, to a test or a trial, was so entirely contrary to what had
been Marie's way.
"And you're practising at the Bar, Mr. Lisle, eh?"
The infusion of obstinacy in the patience grew stronger. "I'm what is
commonly called a briefless barrister."
Now old Sarradet knew that--and did not mind it under the circumstances.
But the thought of that dowry was too much for him. He could not resist
a little flourish. "Briefless! Oh, come, don't say that!" He pursed up
his lips and shook his head humorously.
"It's unfortunately the case, Mr. Sarradet. I hope it won't always be
so, of course."
"We must hope that, we must all hope that!" said Sarradet, rubbing his
hands slowly together. "And in any case we none of us know what fortune
has in store for us, do we?" He smiled, looking at Arthur with an
interrogative air. He thought he had given the young man a lead, a good
cue on which to speak. Arthur said nothing, and Sarradet's smile
gradually vanished, being replaced by a look of some perplexity. He did
not know how to go on; Mrs. Veltheim had told him what to do but had not
told him how to do it. There was an awkward silence. Sarradet had taken
up his hat and stood in the middle of the room, fingering it and eyeing
Arthur with an air that seemed almost furtive. "Well, I must be going,"
he said at last.
Arthur moved towards the door of the room and opened it. Sarradet
stepped into the hall, saying, "Perhaps you'll be looking in on us
to-night?"
"Thanks awfully, but I've arranged to go to the theatre with a man
to-night."
"To-morrow then?" Sarradet's tone sounded persistent.
Arthur had meant to look in to-morrow. It had been a pleasant prospect.
Why was the old fellow making an obligation, a duty, of it?
"Yes, I'll come to-morrow," he said, rather curtly.
"Ah, that's right, that's right!" Arthur had opened the hall door by
now. Sarradet took his hand and pressed it hard. "That'll be good news
for Marie, won't it?" He had at last got a little nearer to what Mrs.
Veltheim wanted.
"I'm very much flattered by your putting it like that." Arthur was still
distant and defensive.
But Sarradet was desperate now--he must get out what he wanted to say
before the door was shut on him. "Oh, nonsense! Come, Mr. Lisle, as man
to man, we understand one another?"
The question was out at last. If he had put it a quarter of an hour
earlier, Arthur Lisle would have answered it to his satisfaction,
however little he relished its being put. But now it was not fated to
have an answer. For on the very moment of its being put, there came
interruption in a form which made the continuance of this momentous
conversation impossible.
A barouche with a pair of fine bay horses, a barouche on Cee-springs,
sumptuously appointed, clattered up the street and to the common
amazement of the two men stopped at the door. The footman sprang down
from the box and, touching his hat to a lady who occupied the carriage,
waited for her instructions. But she paid no heed to him. She leant over
the side of the carriage and looked at the two men for a moment.
Sarradet took off his hat. Arthur Lisle just stared at the vision, at
the entire vision, the lady, the carriage, the footman--the whole of it.
The lady's face broke into a bright smile of recognition.
"I came to call on Mr. Arthur Lisle. You must be Arthur, aren't you?"
she said.
No, there was no possibility of Mr. Sarradet's getting his question
answered now.
CHAPTER VI
A TIMELY DISCOVERY
When Arthur ran down the step and across the pavement, to take the hand
which his visitor held out to him over the carriage door, Mr. Sarradet
bowed politely, put his hat on, and turned on his heel. He was consumed
with curiosity, but he had no excuse for lingering. He walked up
Bloomsbury Street and along the east side of Bedford Square. But then,
instead of pursuing a north-westerly course towards his home, he turned
sharply to the right and, slackening his pace, strolled along Montague
Place in the direction of Russell Square. He went about twenty yards,
then turned, strolled back to the corner of Bedford Square and peered
round it. He repeated these movements three or four times, very slowly;
they consumed perhaps six or seven minutes. His last inspection showed
the carriage still at the door, though neither the lady nor Arthur was
visible. Evidently she was paying a call, as she had intimated; no
telling how long it might last! "Well, I must go home," thought Mr.
Sarradet, as he strolled slowly towards the east once more. He turned
and walked briskly back. Just as he reached again the corner from which
he had taken his observation, he made a sudden backward jump. He was
afraid that he was caught! For the barouche dashed by him at a rapid
trot, and in it sat the lady and Arthur Lisle. They did not see him;
their heads were turned towards one another; they appeared to be
engrossed in a lively conversation. The carriage turned westward, across
Bedford Square; Sarradet watched it till it disappeared round the corner
into Tottenham Court Road.
"That's quick work!" thought Mr. Sarradet; and in truth, if (as the
visitor's words implied) she had never seen Arthur Lisle before, the
acquaintance was going forward apace. Who could she be? He was vaguely
troubled that Arthur Lisle should have--or make--a friend like that. The
barouche somehow depressed him; perhaps it put him a little out of
conceit with the dimensions of that precious dowry; it looked so rich.
And then there had been the reserve, the distance, in Arthur's manner,
his refusal to follow up leads and to take cues, and the final fact that
the important question had (even though it were by accident) gone
unanswered. All these things worked together to dash Mr. Sarradet's
spirits.
He told Marie about his visit to Arthur. She was rather surprised at a
sudden fancy like that (for so he represented it) taking hold of him,
but her suspicions were not roused. When he went on to describe the
arrival of the other visitor she listened with natural and eager
interest. But the old fellow, full of his perplexities, made a false
step.
"She was in the house nearly ten minutes, and then--what do you think,
Marie?--they drove away together!"
"In the house ten minutes? Where were you all that time?"
"I was--er--strolling along."
"You must have strolled pretty slowly. Where did they overtake you,
Pops?"
He grew rather red. "I can't remember exactly----" he began lamely.
She knew him so well; his confused manner, telling that he had something
to conceal, could not escape her notice.
"I believe you waited round the corner to see what happened! Why did you
spy on him like that?"
"I don't see any particular harm in being a little curious about----"
But she interrupted him. His spying after the carriage threw suspicion
on his motives for his visit too. "Didn't you really go and see Mr.
Lisle about anything in particular?"
"Anything in particular, my dear? What do you mean? I asked him to drop
in to-morrow----"
"Did you talk about me?"
"Oh, well, you were mentioned, of course."
She leant her arm on the mantelpiece and looked down at him gravely. He
read a reproachful question in her glance, and fidgeted under it. "Have
you been meddling?" was what her gravely enquiring eyes asked. "Meddling
as well as spying, Pops?"
He was roused to defend himself. "You've got no mother, Marie, and----"
"Ah!" she murmured, as a quick flash of enlightenment came. That was
Aunt Louisa's phrase! She saw where it came from in a minute; it had
always supplied Mrs. Veltheim with a much desired excuse for
interfering. She went on in a hard voice--she was very angry--"Did you
ask Mr. Lisle his intentions?"
"Of course not. I--I only took the opportunity of finding out something
about his people, and--and so on. Really, I think you're very
unreasonable, Marie, to object----" and he wandered or maundered on
about his paternal rights and duties.
She let him go on. She had no more to say about it--no more that she
could say, without revealing her delicate diplomacy. She would do that
to nobody alive; she had never stated it explicitly even to herself.
There she left the affair, left the last word and a barren show of
victory to her father. How much mischief he had done she would find out
later--perhaps to-morrow, if Arthur Lisle came. But would he--now? It
was the effect of her father's meddling she feared, not that matter of
the lady's visit. She knew that he had other friends than themselves.
Why shouldn't one of them come and take him for a drive? It was Mrs.
Norton Ward, very likely. Her quarrel with her father about his meddling
even prevented her from asking what the visitor was like; whatever he
might do, she at least would show no vulgar curiosity.
Yet it was the coincidence of the visit with the meddling that did the
mischief. Without the first, the second would have resulted in nothing
worse than a temporary annoyance, a transitory shock to Arthur's
feelings, which a few days' time and Marie's own tact would have
smoothed over. As it was, his distaste for old Sarradet's inquisition,
an angry humiliation at having the pistol held to his head, a romantic
abhorrence of such a way of dealing with the tenderest and most delicate
matters, a hideous yet obstinate suspicion that Marie might be privy to
the proceeding--all these set his feelings just in time for the
unexpected visit.
The visit had been delightful, and delight is an unsettling thing. As
Mrs. Godfrey Lisle--or Bernadette, as she bade him call her--purred
about his room (so he put it to himself), still more when she declared
for sunshine and carried him off to drive with her--in Regent's Park
too!--he had felt a sudden lift of the spirit, an exaltation and
expansion of feeling. The world seemed wider, its possibilities more
various; it was as though walls had been torn down from around
him--walls of his own choice and making, no doubt, but walls all the
same. This sensation was very vague; it was little more than that the
whole atmosphere of his existence seemed fresher, more spacious and more
pungent. He owned ruefully that the barouche, the Cee-springs, the bay
horses and the liveries, might have had something to do with his
pleasure; he knew his susceptibility to the handsome things of material
life--the gauds and luxuries--and ever feared to catch himself in
snobbishness. But the essential matter did not lie there; his company
was responsible for that--Bernadette, and the way she had suddenly
appeared, and whisked him off as it were on a magic carpet for a brief
journey through the heavens; it seemed all too brief.
"I came as soon as ever I could," she told him. "I got Esther Norton
Ward's letter about you after we'd gone to Hilsey for Easter, and we got
back only yesterday. But I had terrible work to get leave to come. I had
to go down on my knees almost! Cousin Arthur, you're in disgrace, and
when you come to see us, you must abase yourself before Godfrey. The
Head of the House is hurt because you didn't call!"
"I know. It was awfully wrong of me, but----"
"I understand all about it. But Godfrey's a stickler for his rights.
However Sir Oliver and I managed to bring him round ("Who's Sir Oliver?"
asked Arthur inwardly), and when you've eaten humble pie, it will be all
right. Do you like humble pie, Arthur?"
"No, I don't."
"No more do I." But she was smiling still, and he thought it was little
of that stuff she would have to consume. "You see, you made quite an
impression on Esther. Oh, and Sir Christopher came down for a week-end,
and he was full of your praises too." She put on a sudden air of
gravity. "I drove up to your door in a state of considerable excitement,
and I had a momentary fear that the fat man with the black moustache was
you. However it wasn't--so that's all right." She did not ask who the
fat man really was; Arthur was glad--all that could come later.
In fact she asked him no questions about himself. She welcomed him with
the glee of a child who has found a new toy or a new playmate. There was
no hint of flirtation, no effort to make a conquest; a thing like that
seemed quite out of her way. There was no pose, either of languor or of
gush. The admiration of his eyes, which he could not altogether hide,
she either did not notice or took as a matter of course--something
universal and therefore, from a personal point of view, not important.
On the other hand he caught her looking at him with interest and
critically. She saw that she was caught and laughed merrily over it.
"Well, I do feel rather responsible for you, you know," she said in
self-defence.
Life does do funny things all of a sudden! He drove with her past the
Sarradets' house. He seemed, for the moment, a world away from it. They
drove together for an hour; they arranged that he should come to lunch
on a day to be fixed after consultation with Godfrey--it appeared that
Godfrey liked to be consulted--and then she set him down in the
Marylebone Road. When he tried, rather stammeringly, to thank her, she
shook her head with a smile that seemed a little wistful, saying "No, I
think it's I who ought to thank you; you've given me an afternoon's
holiday--all to myself!" She looked back over her shoulder and waved her
hand to him again as she turned down Harley Street and passed out of
sight. When she was gone, the vision of her remained with him, but
vaguely and rather elusively--a memory of grey eyes, a smooth rich
texture of skin, mobile changeable lips, fair wavy hair--these in a
setting of the richest apparel; an impression of something very bright
and very fragile, carefully bestowed in sumptuous wrappings.
He went to the Sarradets' the next evening, as he had been bidden, but
he went with laggard steps. He could not do what seemed to be expected
of him there--not merely because it was expected, though that went for
something considerable, thanks to his strain of fastidious obstinacy,
but because it had become impossible for him to--his feelings sought a
word and found only a very blunt and ungracious one--to tie himself up
like that. His great contentment was impaired and could no longer absorb
him. His sober scheme of happiness was crumbling. His spirit was for
adventure. Finality had become suddenly odious--and marriage presents
itself as finality to those who are not yet married. If he had not been
ready for the plunge before, now he was a thousand times less ready.
The evening belied the apprehensions he had of it. There was a merry
party--Mildred Quain, Amabel Osling, Joe Halliday, and half-a-dozen
other young folk. And Mr. Sarradet was out! Dining at his club with some
old cronies, Marie explained. There were games and music, plenty of
chaff and a little horseplay. There was neither the opportunity nor the
atmosphere for sentiment or sentimental problems. In gratitude to fate
for this, and in harmony with what was his true inward mood behind and
deeper than his perplexity, Arthur's spirits rose high; he chaffed and
sported with the merriest. Marie was easy, cordial, the best of friends
with him--not a hint of anything except just that special and pleasant
intimacy of friendship which made them something more to one another
than the rest of the company could be to either of them. She was just as
she had always been--and he dismissed his suspicion. She had known
nothing at all of Mr. Sarradet's inquisition; she was in no way to blame
for it. And if she were innocent, why, then, was not he innocent also?
His only fault could lie in having seemed to her to mean what he had not
meant. If he had not seemed to her to mean it, where was his fault,--and
where his obligation? But if he acquitted Marie, and was quite disposed
to acquit himself, he nursed his grudge against old Sarradet for his
bungling attempt to interfere between friends who understood one another
perfectly.
Marie watched him, without appearing to watch, and was well content. Her
present object was to set him completely at his ease again--to get back
to where they were before Mrs. Veltheim interfered and her father
blundered. If she could do that, all would be well; and she thought that
she was doing it. Had Mrs. Veltheim and Mr. Sarradet been the only
factors in the case, she would probably have proved herself right; for
she was skilful and tenacious, and no delicacy of scruple held her back
from trying to get what she wanted, even when what she wanted happened
to be a man to marry. There that toughness of hers served her ends well.
When he said good-night, he was so comfortable about the whole position,
so friendly to her and so conscious of the pleasure she had given him in
the last few weeks, that he said with genuine ruefulness, "Back to the
Temple to-morrow! I shan't be able to play about so much!"
"No, you must work," she agreed. "But try to come and see us now and
then, when you're not too busy."
"Oh, of course I shall--and I'm not at all likely to be busy. Only one
has to stop in that hole--just in case."
"I mean--just when you feel like it. Don't make a duty of it. Just when
you feel inclined for a riot like this, or perhaps for a quiet talk some
afternoon."
This was all just what he wanted to hear, exactly how he wanted the
thing to be put.
Yes, but Mr. Sarradet would not always be so obliging as to be out! The
thought of Mr. Sarradet, whom he had really forgotten, suddenly recurred
to him unpleasantly.
"That's what I like--our quiet talks," she went on. "But you've only to
say the word, and we'll have company for you."
Her tone was light, playful, chaffing. He answered in the same vein.
"I'll send my orders about that at least twelve hours beforehand."
"Thank you, my lord," and, laughing, she dropped him a curtsey.
He left them still at their frolic and went home rather early. He had
enjoyed himself, but, all the same, his dominant sense was one of
relief, and not merely from the obligation which officious hands had
sought to thrust on him, regardless of the fact that he was not ready to
accept it and might never be. It was relief from the sense of something
that he himself had been doing, or been in danger of doing, to his own
life--a thing which he vaguely defined as a premature and ignorant
disposal of that priceless asset. Together with the youthful vanity
which this feeling about his life embodied, there came to him also a
moment of clear-sightedness, in the light of which he perceived the
narrow limits of his knowledge of the world, of life, even of himself.
He saw--the word is too strong, rather he felt somehow--that he had
never really wanted Marie Sarradet to share, much less to be the
greatest factor in, that precious, still unexplored life; he had really
only wanted to talk to her about it, with her to speculate about it, to
hear from her how interesting it was and might become. He wanted that
still from her. Or at all events from somebody? From her or another? He
put that question behind him--it was too sceptical. He wanted still her
interest, her sympathy. But he wanted something else even more--freedom
to find, to explore, to fulfil his life.
So it was that Mr. Arthur Lisle, by a fortunate combination of
circumstances on which he certainly had no right to reckon, found out,
just in time, that after all he had never been in love--unless indeed
with his own comely image, flatteringly reflected in a girl's admiring
eyes.
Poor tender diplomatist! But possibly she too might make her own
discoveries.
CHAPTER VII
ALL OF A FLUTTER
"Bernadette's got a new toy, Esther."
"I know it," said Mrs. Norton Ward, handing her visitor a cup of tea.
"Do you mean that you know the fact or that you're acquainted with the
individual?"
"The latter, Judith. In fact I sent him to her."
"Well, it was she who went to him really, though Godfrey made some
trouble about it. He thought the young man ought to have called first.
However they got round him."
"They? Who?"
"Why, Bernadette and Oliver Wyse, of course. And he came to lunch. But
Godfrey was quite on his high horse at first--stroked his beard, and
dangled his eye-glass, and looked the other way when he was spoken
to--you know the poor old dear when he's like that? Luckily the young
man could tell Leeds from Wedgwood, and that went a long way towards
putting matters right. Godfrey quite warmed to him at last."
"We like him very much, and I hope you did--even if you won't admit it.
He's got a room in Frank's chambers, you know."
"I didn't speak more than six words to him--he was up at the other end
of the table by Bernadette. But I liked the look of him rather. Of
course he was all of a flutter."
"Oh, I daresay," smiled Esther. "But I thought we ought to risk
that--and Sir Christopher felt quite strongly about it."
Judith Arden appeared to reflect for a moment. "Well, I think he ought
to be," she said judicially. "I wouldn't give much for a man who didn't
get into a flutter over Bernadette, at first anyhow. She must seem to
them rather--well, irresistible."
"She's wonderfully"--Esther Norton Ward sought for a word too--"radiant,
I mean, isn't she?"
"And there isn't a bit of affectation about her. She just really does
enjoy it all awfully."
"All what?"
"Why, being irresistible and radiant, of course."
"That's looking at it entirely from her point of view."
"What point of view do you suppose she looks at it from? That is, if she
ever looks at it at all. And why not? They ought to be able to look
after themselves--or keep away."
"I really think you're a very fair-minded girl," laughed Esther. "Very
impartial."
"You have to be--living with them as much as I do."
"Do you like it?"
Judith smiled. "The situation is saved just by my not having to do it.
If I had to do it for my bread-and-butter I should hate it like poison.
But, thank heaven, I've four hundred a year, and if I spend the summer
with them, it's because Godfrey and Margaret want me. The winter I keep
for myself--Switzerland part of the time, then Rome, or Florence. So I'm
quite independent, you see. I'm always a visitor. Besides, of course,
nobody could be more gracious than Bernadette; graciousness is part of
being irresistible."
"I really do think that being pretty improves people," said Esther.
"Well, as far as I can see, without it there wouldn't _be_ any
Bernadette," Judith remarked, and then laughed gently at her own
extravagance. "At any rate, she'd be bound to turn into something
absolutely different. Something like me even, perhaps!" She laughed
again, a low, pleasant, soft laugh, rather in contrast with the slightly
brusque tone and the satiric vein which marked her speech. The laugh
seemed to harmonise with and to belong to her eyes, which were dark,
steady, and reflective; the tone and manner to fall into line with the
pertness of her nose, with its little jut upwards, and with the scornful
turn of her upper lip. Her figure and movements perhaps helped the
latter impression too; she inclined to thinness, and her gestures were
quick and sometimes impatient.
"Come, you're not so bad," said Esther with her pleasant cordial
candour. "Now I'm quite insignificant."
"No, you're not. You've got the grand manner. I heard Godfrey say so."
Esther laughed both at the compliment and at the authority vouched in
support of it.
"Oliver Wyse was at lunch too on the occasion, was he? How is he getting
on?"
"Sir Oliver is still his usual agreeable, composed, competent, and, I'm
inclined to think, very wilful self."
"Patient, though?" The question came with a mischievous glance. Judith's
retort was ironic, both with eyes and tongue.
"I permit myself any amount of comment on character but no conjecture as
to facts. That's the distinction between studying human nature and
gossiping, Esther."
"Don't snub me! And the distinction's rather a fine one."
"No, gossip's all right for you, living outside the house. I live so
much inside it that I think it wouldn't be fair in me. And above all,
owing to the footing on which I'm there--as I've told you--I am
emphatically not a watch-dog."
"Where's the child?"
"She's down at Hilsey--with the old housekeeper Mrs. Gates--by doctor's
orders."
"Again! Have you any comment to make on the doctor's character?"
"I think you're being malicious. It's really better for the child to be
in the country. We're very busy, all of us, and very gay--a bustle all
the time. If she were here, she'd only be with a nurse in the Park or in
the nursery. And we're only just back from three weeks at Hilsey
ourselves."
"Yes, I think I was being malicious," Esther admitted. "I suppose we're
all jealous of Bernadette in our hearts, and talk like cats about her!
Well, you don't!"
"It would be ungrateful of me. She affords me a very great deal of
pleasure. Besides, she's my aunt."
"Well--by marriage."
"Oh yes, entirely by marriage," Miss Arden agreed with one of her
fleeting smiles. She implied that no other form of auntship would be, as
the advertisements say, "entertained" by Bernadette. "And even as to
that I have, by request, dropped the titles, both for her and Godfrey,"
she added.
Though Judith Arden was only just out of her teens, she was older in
mind and ways; she ranked herself, and was accepted, as contemporary
with women in the middle and later twenties, like Bernadette and Esther
Norton Ward. She had had to face the world practically by herself. An
epidemic of fever in an Italian town had carried off father and mother
when she was fifteen. She had got them buried, herself quarantined and
back to England, unaided, as she best could. That was a developing
experience. At home she came under the guardianship of her uncle,
Godfrey Lisle, which was much the same thing as coming under her own.
Godfrey was not practical; the care of a growing girl was hopelessly
beyond him. Judith put herself to school at Paris; that finished with,
she tried Cambridge for a term, and found it too like going back to
school. She kept house for a while with an old school-comrade, an
art-student, in Paris. The friend married, and she was by herself again.
A visit to Hilsey led to the sort of semi-attachment to the Godfrey
Lisle household which she described to Esther; from the position of a
"poor relation" she was saved by her four hundred pounds a year--her
mother's portion; the late Mr. Arden, author of books on art, and travel
in the interests of art, had left nothing but some personal debts
behind. To the maturity of her world-experience there was one exception;
she had never been in love; the transitory flirtations of ball-rooms and
studios had left her amused but heart-whole.
Her guardian had come by degrees to let himself be looked after by her a
good deal. The inheritor of an old family estate worth some ten thousand
pounds a year, Godfrey Lisle had been bred for a country squire, a local
man of affairs, or (given aptitude for the wider sphere) a politician;
such were the traditions of the Lisles of Hilsey. In him they found no
continuance. He was a shy quiet man, tall but rather awkward in person,
and near-sighted; his face was handsome and refined and, when he was not
embarrassed (he often was), his manner was pleasant, if too soft. But he
did not like society, and was shy with strangers; he would fumble with
the black ribbon from which his glasses hung, and look the other way, as
Judith had described. He was fond of beautiful things--pictures, china,
furniture--but had not the energy to make himself a real amateur of any
of them. His nature was affectionate--calmly affectionate, and the
affections were constant. Once, and once only, he had blazed into a
flame of feeling--when he courted Bernadette and in the early days of
his marriage with her. The beautiful penniless girl--she would have
stirred even a fish to romance; and it would not have been fair to call
Godfrey fish-like. But ardours were not really in his line; too soon the
rapturous lover subsided into the affectionate husband. Bernadette had
shown no signs of noticing the change; perhaps she did not wish to check
it. It may be that it coincided with a modification of her own feelings.
At any rate, thus acquiesced in, it had gone further. Little of
affection survived now, though they treated one another with the
considerate politeness of an extinct passion. He gave her everything
that she desired--even to the straining of his income; he was the only
person for whom she ever "put herself out." Here were reciprocal, if
tacit, apologies for a state of affairs which neither of them really
regretted.
She had loved him, though, once. She did not claim it as a merit; there
it was, a curious fact in her past life at which, in her rare moments of
introspection, she would smile. She had loved not only all that he
brought--ease, wealth, escape from sordidness; she had also loved him
for bringing them. Even now sometimes she would love the memory of him
as he had seemed in those days; then the considerate politeness would be
coloured by a pretty tenderness, a sort of compassionate affection as
for a man who had fallen from high estate, inevitably fallen but
blamelessly. However these recrudescences on the whole embarrassed
Godfrey Lisle, and Bernadette, laughing at herself, withdrew to a safe
distance and to her real interests. Godfrey was not one of the interests
of her life; he was only one of its conditions.
Into this household--though not, of course, below the surface of
it--Arthur Lisle now made joyful and tremulous entry. His eyes were in
no state to see clearly or to see far; they were glued to the central
light, and for him the light burned bright to dazzling. Behold the
vision that he saw--the vision of a Reigning Beauty!
It is a large party. There is no getting near her--at least no staying
near. The crush forces a man away, however politely. But perhaps a
far-off corner may afford a view, for a dexterous servant keeps clear a
space just in front of her, and the onlooker is tall. They all come and
speak to her, by ones and twos--ex-beauties, would-be beauties, rival
beauties; for the last she has a specially cordial greeting--sometimes,
if she knows them well, a word of praise for their gowns, always a quick
approving glance at them. The great ladies come; for them a touch of
deference, a pretty humility, a "Who am I that you should come to my
house?" air, which gracefully masks her triumphant sense of personal
power. The men come--all the young men who would adore if they might,
and are very grateful for their invitations; they pass quickly, each
with his reward of an indolent smile of welcome. The choice young men
come; them she greets with a touch of distance lest they should grow
proud in their hearts. No favour in them to come--far from it! Then an
old man, a friend. Mark now the change; she is daughter-like in her
affection and simplicity. Then perhaps a little stir runs through the
company, a whisper, a craning of necks. A great man is coming--for
beauty can draw greatness. There comes a massive white head--a ribbon
and star perhaps, or the plain black that gives, not wears, such
ornaments. He stays with her longer: there is no jostling now; the
dexterous servant delays the oncoming stream of guests. Royal
compliments are exchanged. It is a meeting between Potentates.
In some such dazzling colours may the ardent imagination of youth paint
the quite ordinary spectacle of a pretty woman's evening party, while an
old lady on one side of him complains that "everybody" is there, and an
old man on the other says that it is a beastly crush, or damns the
draught from a window behind him--lucky, perhaps, if he does not damn
the Potentates too, the one for keeping him from his bed, the other for
marching through rapine to dismemberment, or some such act of policy
plainly reprehensible.
Strange to think--it is Youth that holds the brush again--strange and
intoxicating--that this is the woman with whom he drives in the Park, of
whose family luncheon he partakes, with whom he had tea yesterday, who
makes a friend of him. She talked to him an hour yesterday, told him all
about that hard childhood and girlhood of hers, how she had scanty food
and coarse, had to make her own frocks and wash her own handkerchiefs;
she said that she feared the hard training had made her hard, yet hoped
with a sigh that it was not so, and seemed to leave the question to his
sovereign arbitrament. She had made the little narrow home she came from
real to him with cunning touches; she had made her leap of escape from
it so natural, so touching. Of what the leap had brought her she had
made light, had spoken with a gentle depreciation of the place her
beauty had won--"Such looks as I have helped, I suppose, besides
Godfrey's position"--and let him see how much more to her taste was a
quiet talk with a friend than all the functions of society. How much
better than the receiving of Beauties and Potentates was a quiet hour in
the twilight of her little den with Cousin Arthur!
Could it be the same woman? Yes, it was. There was the wonder and the
intoxication of it. He was quite unknown to all that throng. But to
himself he stood among them, eminent and superior. See, hadn't she
thrown him a glance--right across the room? Well, at any rate he could
almost swear she had!
Arthur Lisle--in the flesh at his cousin's evening party, in the spirit
anywhere you like--felt a hand laid on his arm. He turned to find Sir
Christopher Lance beside him.
"Ah, Mr. Lisle, aren't you glad you took my advice? I told you you were
missing something by not coming here. Don't you remember?"
"Yes, sir, but you see, I didn't know--I didn't quite understand what
you meant."
"You might have thought it worth while to find out," said the old man,
smiling. "As it was, I'm told you had to be fetched."
Arthur laughed shamefacedly but happily. That was already a standing
joke between him and Bernadette; hence the associations of it were
altogether pleasant.
Sir Christopher's way was not to spoil joy in the name of wisdom nor to
preach a safety that was to be won through cowardice. He saw the young
man's excitement and exaltation, and commended it.
"Take as much of this sort of thing as you can get," he counselled,
nodding his head towards the crowd and, incidentally, towards
Bernadette. "Take a good dose of the world. It'll do you good. Society's
an empty thing to people with empty heads, but not to the rest of us.
And the more you go about, and so on--well, the fewer terrors will my
Brother Pretyman possess for you."
Arthur Lisle caught at the notion eagerly. "Just what I've had in my own
mind, sir," he said gravely.
"I thought from the look of you that you had some such wise idea in your
head," said Sir Christopher with equal seriousness.
Arthur blushed, looked at him rather apprehensively, and then laughed.
The Judge remained grave, but his blue eyes twinkled distantly. _O mihi
praeteritos_--that old tag was running in his head.
"It's getting late; only bores stay late at large parties. Come and say
good-night to our hostess."
"Do you think we might?" asked Arthur.
Certainly he was all of a flutter, as Judith Arden said.
CHAPTER VIII
NOTHING VENTURE, NOTHING HAVE!
Arthur Lisle sat in his chambers with a copy of the current number of
the Law Reports (K.B.D.) before him and with utter discouragement in his
heart. This mood was apt to seize him in the mornings, after the nights
of gaiety which (obeying Mr. Justice Lance's advice) he eagerly sought.
To-day it was intensified by the fact that Bernadette had gone to Paris
for a fortnight. She bade him an affectionate, almost a tender,
farewell, but she went, and was obviously glad to go. Though he asked
nothing from her except to let herself be adored with a dog-like
adoration, a shamefaced wonder that she should be so glad to go hid in
his heart; mightn't she feel the loss of the adoration just a little
more? However there it was. And he had nothing to do. Also he was hard
up. The men he met at his parties had things to do and were doing
them--interesting things that they could talk to women about, things
they were actually doing, not mere hopes and dreams (such as had, not so
long ago, been good enough to talk to Marie Sarradet about). They were
making their marks, or, at least, some money. Talking of money, it was
annoying, indeed humiliating, not being able to ask Bernadette to lunch
at the resorts and in the style to which she was accustomed. He had done
this once, and the same afternoon had suddenly been confronted with an
appalling shininess in the back of his dress-coat; the price of the
lunch would pretty well have paid for a new coat. But there--if you gave
parties you could not have new coats; and what was the good of new coats
unless you could give parties? A vicious circle!
Stagnation! That was what his life was--absolute stagnation. No avenues
opened, there were no prospects. Stagnation and Vacancy--that's what it
was!
A strange contrast is this to the young man at the evening party? Nay,
no contrast at all, but just the other side of him, the complement of
the mood which had pictured Potentates and thrilled over the Reigning
Beauty. The more ardently youth gives one hand to hope, the more
fiercely despair clutches the other.
Suddenly--even as Martin Luther flung his inkpot at Satan--Arthur Lisle
with an oath seized the Law Reports (K.B.D.) and hurled them violently
from him--across the room, with all his force, at this Demon of
Stagnation and towards the door which happened to be opposite. They
struck--not the door--but the waistcoat of Henry who at that moment
opened it. Henry jumped in amazement.
"Beg your pardon, Henry. It slipped from my hand," said Arthur, grinning
in ill-tempered mirth.
"Well, I thought no other gentleman was with you," remarked Henry, whose
ideas of why one should throw books about were obviously limited. "A Mr.
Halliday is here, sir, and wants to know if you'll see him."
"Of course I will. Show him in directly." As Henry went out, Arthur
ejaculated the word "Good!"
Anybody would have been welcome--even Luther's Antagonist himself,
perhaps--to Arthur in that black mood of his. Joe Halliday was a
godsend. He carried cheerfulness with him--not of the order commended by
moralists and bred by patience out of trouble, but rather a spontaneous
hilarity of mind, thanks to which he derided the chances of life, and
paddled his canoe with a laugh through the rapids of fortune. Joe had no
settled means and he scorned any settled occupation. He preferred to
juggle with half a dozen projects, keeping all of them in the air at
once. He had something to sell and something to buy, something to find
or something to get rid of; something had just been invented, or was
just going to be; somebody needed money or somebody had it to invest.
And all the Somebodies and Somethings were supposed to pay a toll to Joe
for interesting himself in the matter. Generally they did; when they
failed to, he paddled gaily on to another venture--Cantabat vacuus. But
on the whole he was successful. The profits, the commissions, the
"turns" came rolling in--and were rolled out again with a festive and
joyous prodigality that took no thought for a morrow which, under the
guidance of an acute and sanguine intelligence, should not have the
smallest difficulty in providing for itself.
He bustled in and threw his hat on Arthur's table. "Morning, old chap.
Sorry to interrupt! I expect you're awfully busy? Yes, I see! I see!
Look at the briefs! Mr. Arthur Lisle--with you the Right Hon. Sir
Richard Finlayson, K.C., M.P.--300 guineas! Whew! Mr. Arthur Lisle--With
you----" He fingered the imaginary briefs, rolling his eyes at Arthur,
and scratching his big hooked nose with the other hand.
"Go to the devil, Joe," said Arthur, smiling, suddenly able to smile, at
the Demon of Stagnation as represented by his empty table. "Have a
cigarette?"
"The subject of my call demands a pipe," and he proceeded to light one.
"Have you got any money, Arthur?"
"I think you're roughly acquainted with the extent of my princely
income."
"Income isn't money. Capital is. Turn your income into capital, and
you've got money!"
"It sounds delightfully simple, and must work well--for a time, Joe."
"I've got a real good thing. No difficulty, no risk--well, none to speak
of. I thought you might like to consider it. I'm letting my friends have
the first chance."
"What is it? Gold, rubber, or a new fastener for umbrellas?" Arthur was
not a stranger to Joe's variegated ventures.
"It's a deal safer than any of those. Did you ever see _Help Me Out
Quickly_?"
"Yes. I saw it at Worcester once. Quite funny!"
"Well, a fellow who put five hundred into _Help Me Out Quickly_ drew
seventeen thousand in eighteen months and is living on it still. Arthur,
I've found a farce compared to which _Help Me Out Quickly_ is like the
Dead March in Saul played by the vicar's wife on a harmonium."
"And you want money to produce it?"
"That's the idea. Two thousand or, if possible, two thousand five
hundred. We could get the Burlington in the autumn--first-rate theatre.
Lots of fun, and mints of money! The thing only wants seeing, doesn't
it?"
"What's the use of talking to me, Joe? I haven't got----"
"We're all of us going in--quite a family affair! Raymond's in it, and
old Pa Sarradet has put a bit in for Marie. And Mildred's governor has
come in; and Amabel has begged a pony of her governor, and put it
in--just for a lark, you know. I'm in--shirt, and boots, and all. We're
all in--well, except Sidney. That chap's got no spunk."
The inference about Arthur, if he did not "come in," was sadly obvious
to himself, though Joe had not in the least meant to convey it. But that
did not much affect him. The idea itself filled him with a sudden, a
delicious, tingle of excitement. Lots of fun and mints of money! Could
there be a programme more attractive? Vacancy and Stagnation could not
live in the presence of that.
"Just for curiosity--how much more do you want, to make it up?" asked
Arthur.
"A thousand." Joe laughed. "Oh, I'm not asking you to put down all that.
Just what you like. Only the more that goes in, the more comes out." He
laughed again joyfully; his prophetic eyes were already beholding the
stream of gold; he seemed to dip that beak of his in it and to drink
deep.
Arthur knew what his income was only too well--also what was his present
balance at the bank. But, of course, his balance at the bank (twenty-six
pounds odd) had nothing to do with the matter. His mind ran back to
_Help Me Out Quickly_. How Mother, and Anna, and he had laughed over it
at Worcester! One or two of the "gags" in it were household words among
them at Malvern to this day. Now Joe's farce was much, much funnier than
_Help Me Out Quickly_.
"I know just the girl for it too," said Joe. "Quite young, awfully
pretty, and a discovery of my own."
"Who is she?"
Joe looked apologetic. "Awfully sorry, old fellow, but the fact is we're
keeping that to ourselves for the present. Of course, if you came in,
it'd be different."
The Law Reports still lay on the floor; Joe Halliday sat on the
table--Sacred Love and Profane, Stern Duty and Alluring Venture.
"I'm putting up five hundred. Be a sport, and cover it!" said Joe.
Something in Arthur Lisle leapt to a tremendous decision--a wild throw
with Fortune. "You can put me down for the thousand you want, Joe," he
said in quite a calm voice.
"Christopher!" Joe ejaculated in amazed admiration. Then a scruple, a
twinge of remorse, seized him for a moment. "That's pretty steep, old
chap--and nothing's an absolute cert!" Temperament triumphed. "Though if
there's one on God's earth we've got it!"
"In for a penny, in for a pound! Nothing venture, nothing have!" cried
Arthur, feeling wonderfully gleeful.
"But, I say, wouldn't you like to read it first?" Conscience's expiring
spark!
"I'd sooner trust your opinion than my own. I may read it later on, but
I'll put down my money first."
"Well, I call you a sport!" Joe was moved and put out his hand. "Well,
here's luck to us!"
Arthur had plunged into deep water, but it did not feel cold. He
suffered no reaction of fear or remorse. He was buoyant of spirit. Life
was alive again.
"Of course I shall have to sell out. I haven't the cash by me," he said,
smiling at the idea. The cash by him indeed! The cash that ought to keep
him, if need be, for six or seven years, pretty near a quarter of all he
had in the world, representing the like important fraction of his
already inadequate income. Why, now the income would be hopelessly
inadequate! His mind was moving quickly. What's the use of trying to
live on an inadequate income? While Joe was yet in the room, Arthur
formed another resolution--to realise and spend, besides Joe's thousand
(as his thoughts called it), another five hundred pounds of his money.
"By the time that's gone," said the rapidly moving mind, "either I shall
have made something or I shall have to chuck this--and thank heaven for
it!"
But all this while, notwithstanding his seething thoughts, he seemed
very calm, gently inhaling his cigarette smoke. Joe thought him the
finest variety of "sport"--the deadly cool plunger. But he also thought
that his friend must be at least a little better off than he had
hitherto supposed--not that he himself, having the same means as Arthur,
would not have risked as much and more without a qualm. But that was his
temper and way of living; he had never credited Arthur with any such
characteristics. However his admiration remained substantially
unchanged; many fellows with tons of money had no spunk.
"May I tell them in Regent's Park?" he asked. "It'll make 'em all sit
up."
"Tell them I'm in with you, but not for how much."
"I shall let 'em know you've done it handsome."
"If you like!" laughed Arthur. "How are they? I haven't seen them just
lately."
"They're all right. You have been a bit of an absentee, haven't you?"
"Yes, I must go one day soon. I say, Joe, who are your stockbrokers?"
Joe supplied him with the name of his firm, and then began to go. But
what with his admiration of Arthur, and his enthusiasm for the farce,
and the beauty and talent of the girl he had discovered, it was, or
seemed, quite a long time before he could be got out of the room. Arthur
wanted him to go, and listened to all his transports with superficial
attention; his real mind was elsewhere. At last Joe did go--triumphant
to the end, already fingering thousands just as, on his entrance, he had
so facetiously fingered Arthur's imaginary briefs. Arthur was left alone
with the Law Reports--still on the floor where they had fallen in
rebound from Henry's waistcoat. Let them lie! If they had not received
notice to quit, they had at least been put very much on their good
behaviour. "Prove you're of some use, or out you go!"--Arthur had
delivered to them his ultimatum.
So much, then, for his Stern Mistress the Law--for her who arrogated the
right to exact so much and in return gave nothing, who claimed all his
days only to consume them in weary waiting, who ate up so much of his
means with her inexorable expenses. She had tried to appease him by
dangling before his eyes the uncertain distant prospect that in the
space of years--some great, almost impossible, number of years--he would
be prosperous--that he would be even as Norton Ward was, with briefs
rolling in, "silk" in view, perhaps a candidature. It seemed all very
remote to Arthur's new impatience. He set his mistress a time-limit. If
within the time that it took him to spend that five hundred pounds--he
did not decide definitely how long it would be--she did something to
redeem her promises, well and good, he would be prepared to give her a
further trial. If not, he would be take himself, with his diminished
income, to fresh woods and pastures new, lying over the Back of Beyond
in some region unexplored and therefore presumed to be fertile and
attractive. He would indeed have no choice about the matter, since the
diminished income would no longer meet her exactions, and yet enable him
to live. A break with the Stern, and hitherto ungrateful, Mistress would
be a matter of compulsion. He was very glad of it.
What of that other--the Mistress of his Fancy, delicate sumptuous Cousin
Bernadette? Vaguely, yet with a true instinct, he felt that she was at
the back of this mood of his and the impulses it inspired. She was the
ultimate cause, Joe Halliday's sanguine suggestions but the occasion.
Had he not outbid Joe's daring with a greater of his own? She it was who
had stirred him to discontent, be it divine or a work of the Devil's;
she it was who braved him to his ventures. She showed him the kingdoms
of the world and the glory of them--or, at least, very tempting glimpses
thereof; would she not herself be his guide through them, conferring on
them thereby a greater glory? In return he was ready enough to fall down
and worship, asking for himself nothing but leave to kneel in the
precincts of the shrine, not touching so much as the hem of her garment.
In response to her beauty, her splendour, the treasure of her
comradeship, he offered a devotion as humble and unselfish as it was
ardent. But he burned to have an offering to lay at her feet--a venture
achieved, the guerdon of a tournament. The smaller vanities worked with
these high-flying sentiments. For her sake he would be comely and
well-equipped, point-de-vice in his accoutrements; not a poor relation,
client, or parasite, but a man of the world--a man of her world--on
equal terms with others in it, however immeasurably below herself. If
she thought him worthy of her favour, others must think him worthy too;
to which end he must cut a proper figure. And that speedily; for a
horrible little fiend, a little fiend clever at pricking young men's
vanity to the quick, had whispered in his ear that, if he went shabby
and betrayed a lack of ready cash, Cousin Bernadette might smile--or be
ashamed. Adoration must not have her soaring wings clipped by a vile
Economy.
All these things had been surging in him--confusedly but to the point of
despair--when he threw the Law Reports across the room and hit Henry in
the waistcoat; he had seemed caught hopelessly in his vicious circle,
victim beyond help to the Demon of Stagnation. Not so strange, then, his
leap for life and freedom, not so mad could seem the risks he took. Joe
Halliday had come at a moment divinely happy for his purpose, and had
found an audacity greater than his own, the audacity of desperation.
Arthur himself wondered not at all at what he had done. But he admired
himself for having done it, and was deliciously excited.
Before he left the Temple--and he left that day for good at one o'clock,
being by no means in the mood to resume the Law Reports--he wrote two
letters. One was to the firm whose name Joe had given him; it requested
them to dispose of so much of his patrimony as would produce the sum of
fifteen hundred pounds. The other was to his mother. Since it contained
some observations on his position and prospects, an extract from it may
usefully be quoted:--
"Since I last wrote, I have been considering what is the wisest thing to
do with regard to the Bar. No work has appeared yet. Of course it's
early days and I am not going to be discouraged too easily. The trouble
is that my necessary expenses are heavier than I anticipated; chambers,
clerk, circuit, etc., eat into my income sadly, and even with the
strictest economy it will, I'm afraid, be necessary to encroach on my
capital. I have always been prepared to do this to some extent,
regarding it as bread cast upon the waters, but it clearly would not be
wise to carry the process too far. I must not exhaust my present
resources unless my prospects clearly warrant it. Of course I shall come
to no hasty decision; we can talk it all over when I'm with you in the
summer. But unless some prospects do appear within a reasonable time, I
should be disposed to turn to something else while I still have enough
capital to secure an opening." ... "You were quite right, dear Mother,
about my calling on the Godfrey Lisles, and I was quite wrong--as usual!
I'm ever so glad I've made friends with them at last. They are both
delightful people, and they've got a charming house. I've been to
several parties there, and have met people who ask me to other houses,
so I'm getting quite gay. Cousin Godfrey is quiet and reserved, but very
kind. Cousin Bernadette is really awfully pretty and jolly, and always
seems glad to see me. She says she's going to launch me in society! I
don't object, only, again, it all costs money. Well, I think it's worth
a little, don't you?"
And there was a postscript: "Don't worry over what I've said about
money. I'm all right for the present, and--_between ourselves_--I've
already something in view--apart from the Bar--which is quite
promising."
"What a wise, prudent, thoughtful boy it is!" said the proud mother.
CHAPTER IX
A COMPLICATION
Bernadette Lisle's foray on the shops of Paris, undertaken in
preparation for the London season, was of so extensive an order as to
leave her hardly an hour of the day to herself; and in the evenings the
friends with whom she was staying--Mrs. and Miss Stacey Jenkinson,
Europeanised Americans and most popular people--insisted on her society.
So it was with the greatest difficulty that she had at last got away by
herself and was able to come to lunch.
"Though even now," she told Oliver Wyse, as they sat down together at
the Café de Paris, "it's a secret assignation. I'm supposed to be trying
on hats!"
"All the sweeter for secrecy, and I suppose we're not visible to more
than two hundred people."
He had a fine voice, not loud but full and resonant. There were many
things about him that Bernadette liked--his composure, his air of being
equal to all things, his face and hands browned by the sun in southern
climes, his keen eyes quickly taking in a character or apprehending a
mood. But most of all to her fancy was his voice. She told him so now
with her usual naturalness.
"It is pleasant to hear your voice again." She gave him a quick merry
glance. "Do you mind my saying that?"
"Yes, I hate compliments."
"I'm sorry." She was chaffing him, but she did it with a subtle little
touch of deference, quite unlike anything in her manner towards either
her husband or her new toy, Cousin Arthur. In this again she was, while
pretty, natural. Oliver Wyse was a dozen years her senior, and a
distinguished man. He had a career behind him in the Colonial Service, a
career of note, and was supposed to have another still in front of him
in the directorate of a great business with world-wide interests. To
take up this new work--very congenial and promising much wealth, which
had not hitherto come his way--he had bade farewell to employment under
Government. Some said his resignation had been hailed with relief since
he did not count among his many virtues that of being a very docile
subordinate. His representations were apt to be more energetic, his
interpretation of orders less literal, than official superiors at the
other end of the cable desired. So with many compliments and a Knight
Commandership of the appropriate Order he was gracefully suffered to
depart.
"But a jolly little lunch like this is worth a lot of meetings at
squashes and so on, isn't it? By the way, you didn't come to mine the
other day, Sir Oliver." (She referred to the party which Mr. Arthur
Lisle had attended.)
"I don't like squashes."
"Compliments and squashes! Anything else? I want to know what to avoid,
please." She rested her chin on her hand and looked at him with an air
of wondering how far she could safely go in her banter.
"I'm not sure I like handsome young cousins very much."
"I haven't any more--at least I'm afraid not! Even Arthur was quite a
surprise. I believe I should never have known of him but for Esther
Norton Ward."
"Meddling woman! For a fortnight after his appearance I was obviously
_de trop_."
"I was afraid he'd run away again; he's very timid. I had to tie him
tight at first."
"Suppose I had run away? You don't seem to have thought of that."
Her changeful lips pouted a little. "I might run after you, I shouldn't
after Arthur--and then I could bring you back. At least, could I, Sir
Oliver? Oh, dear, I've very nearly paid you another compliment!"
"I didn't mind that one so much. It was more subtle."
"I don't believe you mind them a bit, so long as they're--well,
ingenious enough. You've been spoilt by Begums, or Ranees, or whatever
they're called, I expect."
"That's true. You must find me very hard to please, of course."
"Well, there's a--a considering look in your eyes sometimes that I don't
quite like," said Bernadette. She laughed, sipped her wine, and turned
to her cutlet with good appetite.
She spoke lightly, jestingly, but she laid her finger shrewdly on the
spot. She charmed him, but she puzzled him too; and Oliver Wyse, when he
did not understand, was apt to be angry, or at least impatient. A man of
action and of ardour, of strong convictions and feelings, he could make
no terms with people who were indifferent to the things he believed in
and was moved by, and who ordered their lives--or let them drift--along
lines which seemed to him wrong or futile. He was a proselytiser, and
might have been, in other days, a persecutor. Not to share his views and
ideals was a blunder bordering on a crime. Even not to be the sort of
man that he was constituted an offence, since he was the sort of man of
whom the Empire and the World had need. Of this offence Godfrey Lisle
was guilty in the most heinous degree. He was quite indifferent to all
Oliver's causes--to the Empire, to the World, to a man's duty towards
these great entities; he drifted through life in a hazy æstheticism,
doing nothing, being profoundly futile. His amiability and faithful
affections availed nothing to save him from condemnation--old maids'
virtues, both of them! Where were his feelings? Had he no passion in
him? A poor, poor creature, but half a man, more like a pussy-cat, a
well-fed old pussy-cat that basks before the fire and lets itself be
stroked, too lazy to catch mice or mingle in affrays at midnight. An old
house-cat, truly and properly contemptible!
But inoffensive? No, not to Oliver's temper. Distinctly an offence on
public and general grounds, a person of evil example, anathema by
Oliver's gospel--and a more grievous offender in that, being what he
was, he was Bernadette's husband. What a fate for her! What a waste of
her! What emptiness for mind and heart must lie in existence with such a
creature--it was like living in a vacuum! Her nature must be starved,
her capacities in danger of being stunted. Surely she must be supremely
unhappy?
But to all appearances she was not at all unhappy. Here came the puzzle
which brought that "considering look" into his eyes and tinged it with
resentment, even while he watched with delight the manifold graces of
her gaiety.
If she were content, why not leave her alone? That would not do for
Oliver. She attracted him, she charmed his senses. Then she must be of
his mind, must see and feel things as he did. If he was bitterly
discontented for her, she must be bitterly discontented for herself. If
he refused to acquiesce in a stunted life for her, to her too the
stunted life must seem intolerable. Otherwise what conclusion was there
save that the fair body held a mean spirit? The fair body charmed him
too much to let him accept that conclusion.
"Enjoying your holiday from home cares?" he asked.
"I'm enjoying myself, but I haven't many home cares, Sir Oliver."
"Your husband must miss you very much."
She looked a little pettish. "Why do you say just the opposite of what
you mean? You've seen enough of us to know that Godfrey doesn't miss me
at all; he has his own interests. I couldn't keep that a secret from
you, even if I wanted to; and I don't particularly want. You're about my
greatest friend and----"
"About?"
"Well, my greatest then--and don't look as if somebody had stolen your
umbrella."
He broke into a laugh for an instant, but was soon grave again. She
smiled at him appealingly; she had been happier in the light banter with
which they had begun. That she thoroughly enjoyed; it told her of his
admiration, and flattered her with it; she was proud of the friendship
it implied. When he grew serious and looked at her ponderingly, she
always felt a little afraid; and he had been doing it more and more
every time they met lately. It was as though he were thinking of putting
some question to her--some grave question to which she must make answer.
She did not want that question put. Things were very well as they stood;
there were drawbacks, but she was not conscious of anything very
seriously wrong. She found a great deal of pleasure and happiness in
life; there were endless small gratifications in it, and only a few
rubs, to which she had become pretty well accustomed. Inside the fair
body there was a reasonable little mind, quite ready for reasonable
compromises.
They had finished their meal, which Bernadette at least had thoroughly
appreciated. She lit a tiny cigarette and watched her companion; he had
fallen into silence over his cigar. His lined bronzed face looked
thoughtful and worried.
"Oh, you think too much," she told him, touching his hand for an instant
lightly. "Why don't you just enjoy yourself? At any rate when you're
lunching with a friend you like!"
"It's just because I like the friend that I think so much."
"But what is there to think so much about?" she cried, really rather
impatiently.
"There's the fact that I'm in love with you to think about," he answered
quietly. It was not a question, but it was just as disconcerting as the
most searching interrogatory; perhaps indeed it differed only in form
from one.
"Oh, dear!" she murmured half under her breath, with a frown and a pout.
Then came a quick persuasive smile. "Oh, no, you're not! I daresay you
think me pretty and so on, but you're not in love." She ventured
further--so far as a laugh. "You haven't time for it, Sir Oliver!"
He laughed too. "I've managed to squeeze it in, I'm afraid, Bernadette."
"Can't you manage to squeeze it out again? Won't you try?"
"Why should I? It suits me very well where it is."
She made a little helpless gesture with her hands, as if to say, "What's
to be done about it?"
"You're not angry with me for mentioning the fact?"
"Angry? No. I like you, you see. But what's the use?"
He looked her full in the eyes for a moment. "We shall have to discuss
that later."
"What's the use of discussing? You can't discuss Godfrey out of
existence!"
"Not out of existence--practically speaking?"
"Oh, no! Nonsense! Of course not!" She was genuinely vexed and troubled
now.
"All right. Don't fret," he said, smiling. "It can wait."
She looked at him gravely, her lips just parted. "You do complicate
things!" she murmured.
"You'd rather I'd held my tongue about it?"
"Yes, I would--much."
"I couldn't, you see, any longer. I've been wanting to say it for six
months. Besides, I think I'm the sort of fellow who's bound to have a
thing like that out and see what comes of it--follow it to the end, you
know."
She thought that he probably was; there lay the trouble. The thing
itself was pleasant enough to her, but she did not want to follow it
out. If only he would have left it where it was--under the surface, a
pleasant sub-consciousness for them both, blending with their friendship
a delightful sentiment! Dragged into the open like this, it was very
hard to deal with.
"Can't you try and forget about it?" she whispered softly.
"Oh, my dear!" he muttered, laughing in a mixture of amusement and
exasperation.
She understood something of what his tone and his laugh meant. She gave
him a quick little nod of sympathy. "Is it as bad as that? Then my
question was stupid," she seemed to say. But though she understood, she
had no suggestion to offer. She sat with her brows furrowed and her lips
pursed up, thoroughly outfaced by the difficulty.
"You go back home to-morrow, don't you?" he asked.
"Yes. And you?"
"In a few days. I've not quite finished my business. Do you want me to
come to the house as usual?"
"Oh yes," she answered quickly, her brow clearing.
"In the hope that I shall get over it?"
"Yes."
"I shan't, you know."
"You can never tell. Godfrey was in love with me once. I was in love
with him too." Her expression plainly added what her lips refrained
from: "Isn't that funny?"
He shrugged his shoulders, in refusal to consider so distasteful a
subject. Her mind appeared to dwell on it a little, for she sat smiling
reflectively. She had recovered quickly from her alarmed discomfort; in
fact she seemed so at ease, so tranquil, that he was prompted to
say--saying it, however, with a smile--"I didn't introduce the topic
just to pass the time after lunch, you know." He paused and then added
gravely but simply, "I want you to look back on this as the greatest day
in your life."
Ever so slightly she shook her head. The room was nearly empty now; the
few who lingered were no less absorbed than themselves. He put his hand
on the top of her right hand on the table. "There's my pledge for life
and all I'm worth--if you will," he said.
At this she seemed moved by some feeling stronger than mere
embarrassment or discomfort. She gave a little shiver and raised her
eyes to his with a murmured "Don't!" It was as though she now, for the
first time, realised to some extent not only what he meant but what he
felt, and that the realisation caused her a deeper alarm. She sighed as
though under some weight and now, also for the first time, blushed
brightly. But when they were going to the door, she put her arm inside
his for a moment, and gave him a friendly little squeeze. When he looked
round into her face, she laughed rather nervously. "We're dear friends,
anyhow," she said. "You can walk with me to my hat shop, if you like."
"I won't come in," he protested, in a masculine horror that she liked.
"Nobody asked you. I expect to find Laura Jenkinson waiting for me
there. As it's your fault I'm so late, she'd be very cross with you."
They walked up the street together in silence for a little way. Then his
attention was caught by a wonderful gown in a shop-window and he turned
to her to point it out, with a laugh; he had determined to press her no
further that day. To his surprise he saw that her eyes were dim; a tear
trickled down her cheek.
"Why, Bernadette----!" he began in shocked remorse.
"Yes, I know," she interrupted petulantly. "Well, you frightened me.
I'm--I'm not used to things like that." Then she too saw the startling
frock. "Look at that, Sir Oliver! I don't believe I should ever dare to
wear it!"
"I fancy it's meant to appeal to ladies of another sort."
"Is it? Don't they wear just what we do? Well, just a little more so,
perhaps!" She stood eyeing the gown with a whimsical smile. "It is
rather naughty, isn't it?" She moved on again. He watched her face now.
She had wiped away the tear, no more came; she was smiling, not
brightly, but yet with a pensive amusement. Presently she asked him a
question.
"By what you said there--in the café, you know--did you mean that you
wanted me to run away with you?"
He was rather surprised at her returning to the subject. "I meant that I
wanted to take you away with me. There'd be no running about it."
"What, to do it,--openly?"
"Anything else wouldn't be at all according to my ideas. Still----" He
shrugged his shoulders again; he was not sure whether, under stress of
temptation, he would succeed in holding to his point.
She began to laugh, but stopped hastily when she saw that he looked
angry. "Oh, but you are absurd, you really are," she told him in a
gentle soothing fashion.
"I don't see that anybody could call it absurd," he remarked, frowning.
"Some good folk would no doubt call it very wicked."
"Well, I should, for one," said Bernadette, "if that's of any
importance."
She made him laugh again, as she generally could. "I believe I could
convince you, if that's the obstacle," he began.
"I don't suppose it is really--not the only one anyhow. Oh, here's the
shop!"
She stopped, but did not give him her hand directly. She was smiling,
but her eyes seemed large with alarm and apprehension.
"I do wish you'd promise me never to say another word about this." There
was no doubt of her almost pitiful sincerity. It made him very
remorseful.
"I wish to God I could, Bernadette," he answered.
"You're very strong. You can," she whispered, her face upturned to his.
He shook his head; now her eyes expressed a sort of wonder, as if at
something beyond her understanding. "I'm very sorry," he muttered in
compunction.
She sighed, but gave him her hand with a friendly smile. "No, don't be
unhappy about it--about having told me, I mean. I expect you couldn't
help it. _Au revoir_--in London!"
"Couldn't we dine, or go to the play, or something, to-night?" It was
hard to let her out of his sight.
"I'm engaged, and----" She clasped her hands for a moment as though in
supplication. "Please not, Oliver!" she pleaded.
He drew back a little, taking off his hat. Her cheeks were glowing again
as she turned away and went into the shop.
CHAPTER X
THE HERO OF THE EVENING
That same afternoon--the day before Bernadette was to return from
Paris--Marie Sarradet telephoned to Arthur asking him to drop in after
dinner, if he were free; besides old friends, a very important personage
was to be there, Mr. Claud Beverley, the author of the wonderfully funny
farce; Marie named him with a thrill in her voice which even the
telephone could not entirely smother. Arthur was thrilled too, though it
did cross his mind that Mr. Claud Beverley must have rechristened
himself; authors seldom succeed in achieving such suitable names as that
by the normal means. Though he was still afraid of Mr. Sarradet and
still a little embarrassed about Marie herself, he determined to go. He
put on one of his new evening shirts--with pleats down the front--and
one of his new white evening waistcoats, which was of extremely
fashionable cut, and sported buttons somewhat out of the ordinary; these
were the first products of the five hundred pounds venture. He looked,
and felt, very well turned-out.
Old Mr. Sarradet was there this time, and he was grumpy. Marie seized a
chance to whisper that her father was "put out" because Raymond had left
business early to go to a race-meeting and had not come back yet--though
obviously the races could not still be going on. Arthur doubted whether
this were the whole explanation; the old fellow seemed to treat him with
a distance and a politeness in which something ironical might be
detected; his glance at the white waistcoat did not look wholly like one
of honest admiration. Marie too, though as kind and cordial as possible,
was perhaps a shade less intimate, less at ease with him; any possible
sign of appropriating him to herself was carefully avoided; she shared
him, almost ostentatiously, with the other girls, Amabel and Mildred.
Any difference in Marie's demeanour touched his conscience on the raw;
the ingenious argument by which he had sought to acquit himself was not
quite proof against that.
Nothing, however, could seriously impair the interest and excitement of
the occasion. They clustered round Mr. Beverley; Joe Halliday saw to
that, exploiting his hero for all he was worth. The author was tall,
gaunt, and solemn-faced. Arthur's heart sank at the first sight of
him--could he really write anything funny? But he remembered that
humorists were said to be generally melancholy men, and took courage.
Mr. Beverley stood leaning against the mantelpiece, receiving admiration
and consuming a good deal of the champagne which had been produced in
his special honour. Joe Halliday presented Arthur to him with
considerable ceremony.
"Now we're all here!" said Joe. "For I don't mind telling you, Beverley,
that without Lisle's help we should be a long way from--from--well, from
standing where we do at present."
Arthur felt that some of the limelight--to use a metaphor appropriately
theatrical--was falling on him. "Oh, that's nothing! Anything I could
afford--awfully glad to have the chance," he murmured, rather
confusedly.
"And he did afford something pretty considerable," added Joe,
admiringly.
"Of course I can't guarantee success. You know what the theatre is,"
said Mr. Beverley.
They knew nothing about it--and even Mr. Beverley himself had not yet
made his bow to the public; but they all nodded their heads wisely.
"I do wish you would tell us something about it, Mr. Beverley," said
impulsive Amabel.
"Oh, but I should be afraid of letting it out!" cried Mildred.
"The fact is, you can't be too careful," said Joe. "There are fellows
who make a business of finding out about forthcoming plays and stealing
the ideas. Aren't there, Beverley?"
"More than you might think," said Mr. Beverley.
"I much prefer to be told nothing about it," Marie declared, smiling. "I
think that makes it ever so much more exciting."
"I recollect a friend of mine--in the furniture line--thirty years ago
it must be--taking me in with him to see a rehearsal once at the--Now,
let's see, what was the theatre? A rehearsal of--tut--Now, what was the
play?" Old Mr. Sarradet was trying to contribute to the occasion, but
the tide of conversation overwhelmed his halting reminiscences.
"But how do you get the idea, Mr. Beverley?"
"Oh, well, that may come just at any minute--anywhere, you know."
"Where did this one come?"
"Oh, I got this one, as it happens, walking on Hampstead Heath."
"Hampstead Heath! Fancy!" breathed Amabel Osling in an awed voice.
"And you went straight home and wrote it out?" asked Mildred Quain.
"Oh, I've got my office in the daytime. I can only write at nights."
"Bit of a strain!" murmured Joe.
"It is rather. Besides, one doesn't begin by writing it out, Miss
Quain." He smiled in condescending pity. "One has to construct, you
see."
"Yes, of course. How stupid of me!" said Mildred, rather crestfallen.
"Not a bit, Miss Quain. You naturally didn't realise"--Mr. Beverley
seemed genuinely sorry if he had appeared to snub her. "And I--I should
like to tell you all how much I--I feel what you're doing. Of course I
believe in the thing myself, but that's no reason why--Well, I tell you
I do feel it. I--I feel it really."
They had admired him before; they liked him the better for this little
speech. He came off his pedestal, and made himself one of them--a
co-adventurer. His hesitation and his blush revealed him as human. They
got a new and pleasantly flattering sense of what they were doing. They
were not only going to make money and have fun; they were helping
genius.
Joe raised his glass. "Here's luck to the Author and the Syndicate!"
"The what?" asked Amabel Osling. "I mean, what is a syndicate?"
"We are!" answered Joe with mock solemnity. "Fill your glasses--and no
heel-taps!"
They drank to Mr. Claud Beverley and their enterprising selves. Joe
clasped the author's hand. Mr. Beverley drained his glass.
"Here's luck!" he echoed. There was just a little shake in his voice;
the occasion was not without its emotions for Mr. Beverley. Never before
had he been the Hero of the Evening. His imagination darted forward to a
wider triumph.
Arthur was moved too. He felt a generous envy of Mr. Beverley, awkward
and melancholy as he was. Beverley was doing something--really off his
own bat. That was great. Well, the next best thing was to help--to be in
the venture; even that was making something of life. As he listened to
the talk and shared in the excitement, his embarrassment had worn away;
and old Sarradet himself had clinked glasses with him cordially.
Just on the heels of Mr. Beverley's "Here's luck!"--almost clashing with
it--came a loud ring at the front door.
"Why, who's that?" exclaimed Marie.
They heard the scurry of the maid's feet. Then came a murmur of voices
and the noise of the door closing. Then a full hearty voice--known to
them all except Mr. Beverley--said: "That's better, old chap! You're all
right now!"
The maid threw open the door of the room, and the festive and excited
group inside received a sudden shock that banished all thought of Author
and Syndicate alike. Very pale, very dishevelled, and seeming to totter
on his feet, Raymond Sarradet came in, supported by Sidney Barslow's
sturdy arm round his shoulders. Sidney was dishevelled too; his coat was
torn all down the front, his hat was smashed. He had a black eye, a cut
on the lip, and a swollen nose. They were a dismal battered pair.
"That's right, old chap! Here's a chair." Sidney gently deposited his
friend in a seat and looked round at the astonished company. "They gave
him a fair knock-out," he said, "but he's come round now." Then he spoke
to Marie directly. "Still I thought I'd better see him home--he's a bit
shaky."
"Oh, but you too!" she exclaimed. And to the maid she added: "Bring some
hot water and a sponge quickly--and towels, you know--Oh, and plaster!
Be quick!"
"What the devil is all this?" demanded old Sarradet, very red and very
bristly.
"They'd have had everything out of me, but for Sidney. Lucky if they
hadn't killed me!" said Raymond, resting his head on his hand. "Gad, how
my head aches!"
Amabel came and laid her hand on his forehead. "Poor boy! What can have
happened?"
"Give them some champagne, Joe. Oh, Sidney, you are hurt! Here's the hot
water! Now let me!"
Sidney gave himself up to Marie's ministrations. Amabel and Mildred
bathed Raymond's head with Eau-de-Cologne. Joe poured out champagne. The
other men stood about, looking as if they would like to do something,
but could not think of anything to do. In the course of the
ministrations the story gradually came out.
The two had gone to a suburban race-meeting together. Fortune favoured
Raymond, and he came away with considerably more money than he started
with. Three agreeable strangers got into their carriage, coming home.
Raymond joined them in a game of cards, Sidney sitting out. On arrival
at Waterloo the agreeable strangers proposed a "bite" together--and
perhaps another little game afterwards? Sidney tried to persuade Raymond
to refuse the invitation, but Raymond persisted in accepting it, and his
friend would not leave him. The story continued on familiar lines--so
familiar that Sidney's suspicions were very natural. There was the
"bite," the wine, the game--Sidney still not playing. There was the lure
of temporary success, the change of fortune, the discovery of the
swindling.
"Sidney was looking on, you know," said Raymond, "and he nudged me. I
had an idea myself by then, and I knew what he meant. So I watched, and
I saw him do it--the big one with the red hair--you saw him too, didn't
you, Sidney? Well, I was excited and--and so on, and I just threw my
cards in his face. The next minute they rushed us up into a corner and
went for us like blazes, the three of them. I did my best, but I'm only
a lightweight. The big chap gave me one here"--he touched the side of
his chin--"and down I went. I could call 'Murder!'--I wasn't
unconscious--but that's all I could do. And the three of them went for
Sidney. By Jove, you should have seen Sidney!"
"Rot!" came in a muffled tone from Sidney, whose lips were being bathed
and plastered.
"He kept them all going for the best part of five minutes, I should
think, and marked 'em too; gave 'em as good as he got! And I shouted
'Murder!' all the time. And that's what it would have been, if it had
gone on much longer. But the waiters came at last--we were in some kind
of a restaurant near Waterloo. I don't fancy the people were particular,
but I suppose they didn't want murder done there. And so they came, and
our friends made a bolt."
"But did nobody call the police?" asked Marie indignantly.
"Well," said Raymond, "they'd gone, you see, and----" He smiled weakly.
"It doesn't do any good to have that sort of thing in the papers,"
Sidney remarked.
"There you're quite right," said old Sarradet with emphasis. He came up
to Sidney and laid his hand on his shoulder. "Thank you, Barslow, for
looking after that young fool of mine," he added. "You showed great
courage."
"Oh, I don't mind a scrap, sir," said Sidney. "I like the exercise."
"Oh, Sidney!" murmured Marie, in a very low voice, not far from a sob.
The other girls clapped their hands; the men guffawed; Mr. Claud
Beverley made a mental note--Not a bad line that!
Amidst the clash of arms the laws are silent, and even the arts do not
go for much. Not Arthur's legal status nor yet his new elegance, no, nor
Mr. Claud Beverley's genius, had any more chance that evening. The girls
were aflame with primitive woman's admiration of fighting man--of
muscles, skill, and pluck. Joe was an amateur of the noble art and must
have every detail of the encounter. Old Sarradet fussed about, now
scolding his son, now surreptitiously patting him on the shoulder,
always coming back to Sidney with fresh praises and fresh proffers of
champagne. Marie took her seat permanently by the wounded warrior's
side, and delicately conveyed the foaming glass to his lacerated lips.
More than admiration was in her heart; she was a prey to severe remorse.
She had sent this man into banishment--a harsh sentence for a hasty
word. His response was to preserve her brother!
Marie would have been more or less than human if she had not, by now,
experienced a certain reaction of feeling in regard to Arthur Lisle. Her
resentment she kept for Mrs. Veltheim and her father, and their
bungling. Towards Arthur she remained very friendly, even affectionately
disposed. But a sense of failure was upon her, and there came with it a
diffidence which made her, always now, doubtful of pleasing him. Her old
distrust of herself grew stronger; the fear of "grating" on him was more
insistent. Thus her pleasure in his company was impaired, and she could
no longer believe, as she used, in his pleasure in being with her. She
thought she saw signs of uneasiness in him too sometimes--and she was
not always wrong about that. In the result, with all the mutual goodwill
in the world, there was a certain constraint. Save in such moments of
excitement as had arisen over Mr. Beverley and his farce, neither could
forget that there lay between them one of those uncomfortable things of
which both parties are well aware, but which neither can mention. It was
a consciousness which tended not indeed to hostility, but to separation.
Arthur's new preoccupations, resulting in his visits to Regent's Park
being much less frequent, intensified the feeling. Inevitably, as her
dreams day by day faded, some of the bright hues with which they had
decked Arthur Lisle faded from him also. He retained his own virtues and
attractions; but gradually again it became possible for there to be
other virtues and attractions in the world which were not his and which
might advance rival pretensions.
Her natural affinities with Sidney Barslow, checked and indeed wilfully,
if reluctantly, suppressed for the last few weeks, would have revived in
any event so soon as the counter-attraction lost its monopolising power.
The event of this evening--the dramatic and triumphant return of the
banished friend--brought them to a quick and vigorous life again. To
forgive was not enough. She burned to welcome and applaud--though still
with a wary uneasy eye on Arthur. Yet she was--perversely--glad that he
was there, that he should see what manner of man had suffered dismissal
for his sake. This desire to magnify in his eyes a sacrifice which had
proved useless was a subtle reproach to Arthur--the only one she
levelled against him.
He had been among the first to shake the warrior by the hand. "Splendid,
my dear fellow! Splendid!" he exclaimed with a genuine enthusiasm. "I
wish I'd been there too--though I should have been of jolly little use,
I'm afraid." His humility was genuine too; at that moment he would have
given a great deal to be as good a fighting man as Sidney Barslow.
Sidney gave his hand readily, but he looked apologetic amidst all his
glory. "Serves us right for taking up with those chaps and going to the
beastly place. But after the races sometimes, you know--." He was trying
to convey that such associates and such resorts were not habitual with
him. He was remembering that unhappy encounter in Oxford Street far more
painfully than Arthur.
"Why, that was all Raymond's fault, anyhow," Marie interposed
indignantly. "You couldn't desert him!"
But Arthur did remember the encounter and with some shame. If there were
occasions on which a man might not wish to know Sidney Barslow or to
vouch for his respectability, there were evidently others on which he
would be glad to have him by his side and to be recognised as entitled
to his friendly services. Very likely the latter were really the more
characteristic and important. At all events here he was to-night, a
gallant spirit, brave and gay in battle--no small part of what goes to
make a man. Arthur himself felt rather small when he remembered his
fastidious horror.
"We're all proud of you, Barslow," said old Sarradet in his most
impressive manner.
"We are, we are, we are!" cried Joe, and regardless of poor Raymond's
aching head, he sat down at the piano and thumped out "See the
Conquering Hero comes!"
Mr. Claud Beverley was robbed of the honours of the evening, but, to do
him justice, he took his deposition in good part. In fact, as he walked
home to those Northern Heights whence had come his wonderful
inspiration, he found and hailed yet another Hero of the Evening.
Neither Gifted Author nor Splendid Warrior!
"Put in as much as that, did he! Just made it possible! I should like to
do that chap a turn if I could!"
Joe Halliday--his heart opened by emotion and champagne--had told him
the Secret of the Thousand.
CHAPTER XI
HOUSEHOLD POLITICS
For the next three months--through the course of the London season, a
fine and prosperous one--Arthur Lisle played truant. The poison of
speculation was in his veins, the lust of pleasure in his heart;
romantic imaginings and posings filled his thoughts. The Temple saw
little of him. More than once Norton Ward would have offered him some
"devilling" to do, or some case to make a note on; but Henry reported
that Mr. Lisle was not at chambers. Norton Ward shrugged his shoulders
and let the thing drop; the first duty of an earnest aspirant in the
Temple is to be there--always waiting in the queue for employment. "You
can't help a man who won't help himself," Norton Ward observed to his
wife, who pursed up her lips and nodded significantly; she knew what she
knew about the young man's case. Informed of his missed chances by a
deferentially reproachful Henry, Arthur was impenitent. He did not want
to make notes on cases and to do devilling; not so much now because of
his terrors (though he still felt that Pretyman, J., was formidable) as
because his own interests were too enthralling; he had no time to spare
for the quarrels of John Doe and Richard Roe and the rest of the
litigious tribe. There were roads to fortune shorter, less arid and less
steep. Also there were green pastures and flowery dells, very pleasant
though they led nowhere in particular, peopled by charming companions,
enlivened by every diversion--and governed by a Fairy Queen.
In London an agreeable young man who has--or behaves as if he
had--nothing to do will soon find things to do in plenty. Arthur's days
were full; lunches, dinners, theatres, dances, tennis to play, cricket
and polo matches to watch, a race-meeting now and then, motor excursions
or a day on the river--time went like lightning in amusing himself and
other people. Everybody accepted so readily the view that he was a man
of leisure and wholly at their disposal that he himself almost came to
accept it as the truth. Only in the background lay the obstinate fact
that, in a life like this, even five hundred pounds will not last for
ever. Never mind! In the autumn there would come the farce. There was a
rare flavour in the moment when he wrote his cheque for a thousand
pounds, payable to the order of Joseph Halliday, Esquire. Joe had asked
for an instalment only, but Arthur was not going to fritter away the
sensation like that.
Of course Bernadette had first call on him, and she used her privilege
freely. At her house in Hill Street he was really at home; he was
expected to come without an invitation; he was expected to come in spite
of any other invitation, when he was wanted. He fetched and carried, an
abject delighted slave. She never flirted with him or tried to win his
devotion; but she accepted it and in return made a pet of him. Yet she
had no idea how immense, how romantic, how high-flying the devotion was.
She was not very good at understanding great emotions--as Oliver Wyse
might perhaps have agreed. So, if she had no designs, she had no caution
either; she was as free from conscience as from malice; or it might be
that any conscience she had was engaged upon another matter. Sir Oliver
had not yet returned to town, but soon he was coming.
Engrossed in Bernadette herself, at first Arthur paid little heed to the
other members of the household. Indeed he never became intimate with
Judith Arden during all this time in London. He liked her, and forgave a
satirical look which he sometimes caught directed at himself in
consideration of her amusing satirical remarks directed at other people;
and after all she could not be expected to appreciate the quality of his
devotion to Bernadette. But with Godfrey Lisle things gradually reached
a different footing. The shy awkward man began to put out feelers for
friendship. Amongst all who came and went he had few friends, and he
sought to make no more. Even Judith, as became her age and sex, was much
occupied in gaieties. He spent his days in his library and in walking.
But now he began to ask Arthur to join him. "If Bernadette can spare
you," he would say; or, to his wife, "If you don't want Arthur this
afternoon--" and so suggest a walk or a smoke together. He did not
succeed in conveying the impression that he would be greatly pleased by
the acceptance of his invitations. But he did give them, and that from
him was much.
"Do go," Bernadette would say, or "Do stay," as the case might be. "He
does like a talk so much." Strangely it appeared that this was the case,
provided he could get his talk quietly with a single person--and, it
must be added, though Arthur's eyes were not yet opened to this,
provided that the person was not his wife. From private conversation
with her he shrank, ever fearing that something might seem to be
demanded of him which he could not give. But he read and thought much,
and enjoyed an exchange of ideas. And he took to Arthur with the liking
a reserved man often has for one who is expansive and easy of access.
Arthur responded to his overtures, at first through a mixture of
obligation and good-nature, then with a real interest, to which
presently there was added a sympathy rather compassionate, a pity for a
man who seemed by nature unable to take the pleasures which lay so
plentiful around.
He fretted about money too--a thing pathetic to the eyes with which at
present Arthur looked on the world. But he did; he might be found
surrounded by account-books, rent-books, pass-books, puzzling over them
with a forlorn air and a wrinkled brow. It was not long before he took
Arthur into his confidence, in some degree at least, about this worry of
his.
"We spend a terrible lot of money; I can't think where it all goes," he
lamented.
"But isn't it pretty obvious?" laughed Arthur. "You do things in
style--and you're always doing them!"
"There's this house--heavy! And Hilsey always sitting there, swallowing
a lot!" Then he broke out in sudden peevishness: "Of course with
anything like common prudence----" He stopped abruptly. "I'm not blaming
anybody," he added lamely, after a pause. And then--"Do you keep within
your income?"
"I don't just now--by a long chalk. But yours is a trifle larger than
mine, you know."
"I can't do it. Well, I must raise some money, I suppose."
Arthur did not know what to say. The matter was intimate and delicate;
for there could be no doubt who was responsible, if too much money were
being spent.
"I'm sure if you--well, if you made it known how you feel----" he began.
"Yes, and be thought a miser!" His voice sank to a mutter just audible.
"Besides all the rest!"
So he had grievances! Arthur smiled within himself. All husbands, he
opined, had grievances, mostly unsubstantial ones. He could not believe
that Godfrey was being forced into outrunning his means to any serious
extent, or that he had any other grave cause for complaint. But, in
truth, Godfrey's trouble--money apart--was an awkward one. He was
aggrieved that he had not got what he did not want--his wife's
affection. And he was aggrieved that she did not want what he had no
desire to give her--namely, his. The state of things aggrieved him, yet
he had no wish--at least no effective impulse--to alter it. He felt
himself a failure in all ways save one--the provision of the fine things
and the pleasures that Bernadette loved. Was he now to be a failure
there too? He clung to the last rag of his tattered pride.
Yet often he was, in his shy awkward way, kindly, gracious, and anxious
to make his kinsman feel sure of a constant welcome.
"Coming too often?" he said, in reply to a laughing apology of Arthur's.
"You can't come too often, my dear boy! Besides you're a cousin of the
house; it's open to you of right, both here and at Hilsey. Bernadette
likes you to come too."
"Has she told you so?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"No, no, not in words, but anybody can see she does. We're too grave for
her--Judith and I--and so's Oliver Wyse, I think. She likes him, of
course, but with him she can't--er----"
"Play about?" Arthur suggested.
"Yes, yes, exactly--can't do that sort of thing, as she does with you.
He's got too much on his shoulders; and he's an older man, of course."
He was walking up and down his library as he talked. He stopped in
passing and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder for a moment. "It's good
of you not to grudge me a talk either, sometimes."
"But I like talking to you. Why do you think I shouldn't?"
Godfrey was at the other end of the room by now, with his back turned,
looking into a book.
"You've never seen Hilsey, have you? Would it bore you to come down for
a bit later on? Very quiet there, of course, but not so bad. Not for
longer than you like, of course! You could cut it short if you got
bored, you know."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid of my being bored. I should love it of all
things." Indeed the invitation filled him with delight and gratitude.
"It's jolly good of you, Godfrey, jolly kind, I think."
Godfrey murmured something like, "See how you like it when you get
there," sat down with his back still turned, and obliterated himself
with a large book.
He was certainly difficult to know, to get to close quarters with. If he
approached you at one moment, he shrank back the next; he seemed to live
in equal fear of advances and of rebuffs. It was difficult to know how
to take him, what idea to form of him. Plenty of negations suggested
themselves readily in connection with him, but positive qualities were
much harder to assign; it was easier to say what he was not than what he
was, what he did not like than what he did, what he could not do than
what he could. At all events what positive qualities he had did not help
him much in his life, and were irrelevant to the problems it presented.
By nature he was best made for a student, immured in books, free from
the cares of position and property, and from the necessity of
understanding and working with other people. Fate had misplaced him as a
wealthy man, burdened with obligations, cumbered with responsibilities.
He had misplaced himself as the husband of a brilliant and
pleasure-loving wife. He ought to have been a bachelor--the liabilities
of bachelors are limited--or the mate of an unpretending housewife who
would have seen to his dinner and sewn on his buttons. In an unlucky
hour of impulse he had elected to play Prince Charming to a penniless
Beauty; Prince Charming appearing in a shower of gold. Of all the charms
only the gold was left now, and the supply even of that was not
inexhaustible, though the Beauty might behave as if it were. He had
failed to live up to the promise of his first appearance, to meet the
bill of exchange which he had accepted when he married Bernadette. He
lacked the qualifications; ardour of emotion, power to understand and
value a nature different from his own, an intelligent charity that could
recognise the need in another for things of which he felt no need--these
he had not, any more than he possessed the force of will and character
which might have moulded the other nature to his own.
He met his failure with a certain dignity of bearing which all his
awkwardness could not efface. He did not carp at his wife or quarrel
with her; he treated her with consistent politeness and with a
liberality even excessive. He showed no jealousy of her preferences;
that she would ever give him cause for serious jealousy, fears for his
honour, had never yet entered his head; such matters did not lie within
the ordinary ambit of his thoughts. But the sense of failure had bitten
deep into his heart; his pride chafed under it perpetually. His life was
soured.
Arthur saw little of all this, and of what he did see he made light. It
is always the easiest and most comfortable thing to assume that people
are doing as they like and liking what they are doing. If Godfrey lived
apart from the life of the house, doubtless it was by his own choice;
and, if he had a grievance, it must just be about money. The paymaster
always has a grievance about money; he is Ishmael, with every man's and
every woman's hand against him--stretched out for more. A legitimate
occasion for a grumble--but it would be absurd to make much of it.
Besides what serious trouble could there be when Bernadette was so
radiant and serene, so gay and merry with himself and with Judith, so
gentle and friendly with her husband? There seemed no question of two
parties in the house--as there sometimes are in houses--with the one or
the other of which it was necessary for him to range himself. His
adoration for Bernadette in no way clashed with his growing affection
for her husband; rather she encouraged and applauded every sign of
greater intimacy between the men. It was with the sense of a triumph in
which she would surely share that he carried to her the news that
Godfrey--Godfrey himself, of his own accord--had invited him to Hilsey.
Of her cordial endorsement of the invitation he had, of course, no
doubt. Perhaps, after all, she had inspired it.
"Now don't say you put him up to it! That wouldn't be half such a
score," he said, laughing.
She seemed surprised at the news; evidently she had not taken any part
in the matter. She looked a little thoughtful, possibly even doubtful.
Judith Arden, who was sitting by, smiled faintly.
"No, I had nothing to do with it," said Bernadette. "And it really is a
triumph for you, Arthur." She was smiling again now, but there was a
little pucker on her brow. "When's your best time to come?" she asked.
"In the early part of August, if I may. I shall have to run up and see
mother afterwards, and I've got to be back in town in the middle of
September--for our production, you know."
Bernadette by this time had been told all about the great farce and the
great venture which had made it possible.
She appeared to consider something for a moment longer, so that Arthur
added, "Of course if it's not convenient to have me then, if you're full
up or anything----"
"Goodness no! There are twenty rooms, and there'll be nobody but
ourselves--and Oliver Wyse perhaps."
"I thought Sir Oliver was coming earlier, directly we go down?" said
Judith.
"He's coming about the seventeenth or eighteenth; but he may stay on, of
course. On the other hand he may not come, or may come later, after
all." She smiled again, this time as it were to herself. Sir Oliver's
visit to Hilsey had been arranged before she lunched with him in Paris
and might, therefore, be subject to reconsideration--by the guest, or
the hostess, or both. She had neither seen him nor heard from him since
that occasion; things stood between them just where they had been left
when she turned away and went into the hat-shop with glowing cheeks.
There they remained even to her own mind, in a state of suspense not
unpleasurable but capable of becoming difficult. It was just that
possibility in them which made her brow pucker at the thought of Sir
Oliver and Arthur Lisle encountering one another as fellow-guests at
Hilsey.
Arthur laughed. "Well, if he doesn't mind me, I don't mind him. In fact
I like him very much--what I've seen of him; it isn't much."
It was not much. Before Oliver Wyse went to Paris, they had met at Hill
Street only three or four times, and then at large dinner parties where
they had been thrown very little in contact.
"Oh, of course you'll get on all right together," said Bernadette.
"You've a lot in common with him really, I believe," Judith remarked.
Bernadette's lips twisted in a smile and she gave Judith a glance of
merry reproof. They were both amused to see how entirely the point of
the observation was lost on Arthur.
"I daresay we shall find we have, when we come to know each other
better," he agreed in innocent sincerity.
Bernadette was stirred to one of the impulses of affectionate tenderness
which the absolute honesty and simplicity of his devotion now and then
roused in her. His faith in her was as absolute as his adoration was
unbounded. For him she was as far above frailty as she was beyond
rivalry or competition. Without realising the immensity of either the
faith or the adoration, she yet felt that, if temptation should come, it
might help her to have somebody by her who believed in her thoroughly
and as it were set her a standard to live up to. And she was unwillingly
conscious that a great temptation might come--or perhaps it was better
to say that she might be subjected to a severe pressure; for it was in
this light rather that the danger presented itself to her mind when she
was driven to think about it.
She looked at him now with no shadow on her face, with all her usual
radiant friendliness.
"At any rate I shall be delighted to have you there, Cousin Arthur," she
said. She had managed, somehow, from the first to make the formal
"Cousin" into just the opposite of a formality--to turn it into a term
of affection and appropriation. She used it now not habitually, but when
she wanted to tell him that she was liking him very much, and he quite
understood that it had that significance. He flushed in pleasure and
gratitude.
"That's enough for me. Never mind Sir Oliver!" he exclaimed with a
joyful laugh.
"If it isn't an anti-climax, may I observe that I too shall be very glad
to see you?" said Judith Arden with affected primness.
Arthur went away in triumph, surer still of Bernadette's perfection,
making lighter still of Godfrey's grievances, dismissing Oliver Wyse as
totally unimportant; blind to all the somewhat complicated politics of
the house. They rolled off his joyous spirit like water off a duck's
back.
CHAPTER XII
LUNCH AT THE LANCASTER
On a day in July, when this wonderful London season was drawing near an
end, and the five hundred pounds had reached about half-way towards
exhaustion, Arthur Lisle gave himself and his friends a treat. He
invited the Syndicate--as they laughingly styled themselves--to lunch at
the Lancaster Hotel. There were some disappointing refusals. Mr.
Sarradet would not come; he was sulky in these days, for Raymond was
neglecting his father's perfumery and spending his father's money; the
integrity of the dowry was threatened, and old Sarradet had a very cold
fit about the prospects of the theatrical speculation. Sidney
Barslow--he was invited thanks to his heroic re-entry--pleaded work. The
author himself wrote that he would be unavoidably detained at "the
office"--Mr. Beverley was never more definite than that about the
occupation which filled the day-time for him. But Marie and Amabel came,
escorted by Joe Halliday, and they made a merry party of four. The girls
were excited at being asked to the Lancaster. Such sumptuous places,
though not perhaps beyond the Sarradet means, were quite foreign to the
thrifty Sarradet habits. Amabel was of the suburbs and patronised
"popular price" restaurants on her visits to town. Joe lived in grill
rooms. The balcony of the Lancaster seemed magnificent, and Emile, the
_maître d'hôtel_, knew Arthur quite well, called him by his name, and
told him what brand of champagne he liked--marks of intimacy which could
not fail to make an impression on Arthur's guests, and which Emile had a
tactful way of bestowing even on quite occasional patrons.
Joe Halliday made his report. Everything was in trim, and going on
swimmingly. The theatre was taken, a producer engaged, the girl who was
Joe's own discovery secured and, besides her, a famous comic actor who
could carry anything--anything--on his back. Rehearsals were to begin in
a month.
"By this time next year lunch at the Lancaster will be an every-day
event. Just now it can't be--so I'll trouble you for a little more fizz,
Arthur," said Joe, with his great jolly laugh.
"Don't count your chickens----!" said cautious Marie.
"A coward's proverb!" cried Arthur gaily. "Why, you lose half the fun if
you don't!"
"Even if we do fail, we shall have had our fun," Joe remarked
philosophically.
The others could hardly follow him to these serene heights. Amabel had
persuaded gold out of her "governor." Marie felt decidedly responsible
to old Sarradet; and the pledge that Arthur had given to fortune was
very heavy.
"If it becomes necessary, we'll try to feel like that," said Arthur,
"but I hope we shan't have to try."
"Of course we shan't," Amabel insisted eagerly. "How can it fail? Of
course it mayn't be quite such an enormous success as _Help Me_----"
"It'll knock _Help Me Out Quickly_ into a cocked hat," Joe pronounced
decisively. "Just see if it don't!" He turned to Marie. "Then what sort
of a smile shall we see on old Sidney's face?" He could not quite
forgive Sidney Barslow (hero as he was!) for having refused to "come
in."
"Sidney's a wise man about business and--and money. Wiser than we are
perhaps!" Marie smiled as she ate her ice.
"Sidney's developing all the virtues at a great pace," laughed Amabel.
"Under somebody's influence!"
Joe laughed too; so did Marie, but she also blushed a little. Arthur was
suddenly conscious of a joke which was new to him--something which the
other three understood but he did not. He looked at Joe in involuntary
questioning. Joe winked. He saw Marie's blush; it caused him a vague
displeasure.
"Yes," Joe nodded. "He is. Works like a horse and goes to bed at eleven
o'clock! I shouldn't be surprised if he turned up one fine day with a
blue ribbon in his coat!"
"Oh, don't be so silly, Joe," laughed Marie; but the laugh sounded a
little vexed, and the blush was not quite gone yet.
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Arthur.
"Joking apart, he has put the brake on. Jolly good thing too! He's such
a good chap--really."
Arthur was not ungenerous, but he could not help feeling that the
apotheosis of Sidney Barslow might be carried too far. The vision of the
scene in Oxford Street was still vivid in his mind; it would need a lot
of heroism, a lot of reformation, altogether to obliterate that, however
much he might agree to a gentler judgment of it.
"No, don't make a joke of it, Joe, anyhow not to Sidney himself," said
Marie, looking a little embarrassed still, but speaking with her usual
courage. "Because it's for our sake--well, mostly so, I think--that
he's--he's doing what he is. I told him that in the beginning he had led
Raymond into mischief, and that he ought to set him a better example
now. And he's trying--without much success, I'm afraid, as far as
Raymond is concerned." Her voice grew very troubled.
"I'm awfully sorry, Marie," Arthur murmured.
"Oh, I've no intention of rotting Sidney about it. If only because he'd
probably hit me in the eye!"
"Yes, we know his fighting powers," laughed Amabel in admiring
reminiscence. Her tone changed to one of regretful exasperation.
"Raymond is a goose!"
"But we mustn't spoil Mr. Lisle's party with our troubles," said Marie,
smiling again.
"Oh, come, I say, I'm not altogether an outsider!" Arthur protested with
a sudden touch of vehemence.
"Oh, no, not that," Marie murmured, with a little shake of her head; her
tone did not sound very convinced. Amabel giggled feebly. Joe covered a
seeming embarrassment by gulping down his coffee and pretending to find
it too hot. A constraint fell upon the party. Arthur wanted to make
himself thoroughly one with them in anxiety and concern over Raymond's
misdeeds--nay, even in admiration for Sidney Barslow's reformation; he
wanted to, if he could. Yet somehow he found no words in which to convey
his desire. Every phrase that came into his head he rejected; they all
sounded cold and unreal, somehow aloof and even patronising. Silence,
however awkward, was better than speeches like that.
It was one of Joe Halliday's chosen missions in life, and one of his
greatest gifts, to relieve occasions of restraint and embarrassment by a
dexterous use of humour. This social operation he now, perceiving it
necessary, proceeded to perform. Clapping his hand to his forehead in a
melodramatic manner, he exclaimed in low but intense tones, "Ask me who
I want to be! Who I want to be in all the world! Ask me quickly!"
He won his smiles. "What's the matter now, Joe?" asked Arthur; his smile
was tolerant.
"No, I'll tell you! Don't speak!" He pointed with his finger, past
Arthur, towards the other end of the room. "There he sits! A murrain on
him! That's the man! And how dare he lunch with that Entrancing
Creature?"
"Which one, Joe? Which one?" asked Amabel, immediately full of interest.
"There--behind Arthur's back. He can't see her. Good thing too! He
doesn't deserve to."
"I suppose I can turn round, if I want to--and if she's worth it. Is
she, Marie?"
"Is it the one in blue, Joe? Yes, she is. Awfully pretty!"
"Never saw such a corker in my life!" Joe averred with solemnity.
"Then round--in a careless manner--goes my head!" said Arthur.
"He woos her, I swear he woos her, curses on his mother's grave!" Joe
rode his jokes rather hard.
"We'd better not all stare at her, had we?" asked Marie.
"She's not looking; she's listening to the man," Amabel assured her.
Arthur turned round again--after a long look. He gave a little laugh.
"It's my cousin, Bernadette Lisle. Joe, you are an ass."
It was Bernadette Lisle; she sat at a little table with Oliver Wyse.
They had finished eating. Bernadette was putting on her gloves. Her eyes
were fixed on Oliver's face, her lips were parted. The scene of the Café
de Paris reproduced itself--and perhaps the topic. She had not seen
Arthur when he came in, nor he her. She did not see him now. She
listened to Sir Oliver.
"Your cousin! That! Introduce me--there may yet be time!" said the
indomitable Joe.
"Oh, shut up!" groaned Arthur, half-flattered however, though
half-peevish.
"She's very beautiful." Marie's eyes could not leave Bernadette. "And
so--so--well, she looks like something very very precious in china."
Arthur looked round again; he could not help it. "Yes, that is rather
it, Marie."
"Look--look at her hat, Marie!" came from Amabel in awed accents. Indeed
the visit to the hat-shop in Paris had not been without its fruit.
"Now is it fair--is it reasonable--for a fellow to have a cousin like
that? He might have a Queen like that, or a Dream like that, and I
shouldn't care. But a cousin! He knows the Vision! He's talked to it!
Heavens, he's probably lunched with it himself! And he kept it all dark
from us--oh, so dark!"
"Is it Mr. Lisle with her?" asked Amabel, quite innocently.
Arthur smiled. "No, I don't think you'd find Godfrey lunching here.
That's a man named Wyse. I've met him at their house."
"He's good-looking too," Amabel decided after a further survey.
A waiter brought Oliver Wyse his bill. When he turned to pay it,
Bernadette rose. The spell which had held her attention so closely was
broken. She looked round the room. Suddenly a bright smile came on her
lips, she spoke a hurried word to her companion, and came straight
across the room towards Arthur's table. She had recognised the back of
his head.
"She's coming here!" whispered Amabel breathlessly.
Arthur turned round quickly, a bright gleam in his eyes. He rose from
his chair; the next moment she was beside him, looking so joyful, so
altogether happy.
"Oh, Arthur dear, I am glad!" She did not offer to shake hands; she laid
her little hand on his coat-sleeve as she greeted him. "Did you see
me--with Sir Oliver?" But she did not wait for an answer. "Do let me sit
down with you for a minute. And mayn't I know your friends?" A waiter
hurried up with a chair, and Bernadette sat down by Arthur. "Why, what
fun this is! Cousin Arthur, I must have another ice." The gloves began
to come off again, while Arthur made the necessary introductions.
"Oh, but I know you all quite well!" exclaimed Bernadette. "You're old
friends of mine, though you may not know it."
Oliver Wyse, his bill paid, followed her with a leisurely step. He
greeted Arthur cordially and included the rest of the table in a bow. "I
gather you inten
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