The Changeling
by Walter Besant · English · Gutenberg #49035 · 494,534 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Changeling
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Changeling
Author: Walter Besant
Release date: May 23, 2015 [eBook #49035]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49035
Credits: Produced by Shaun Pinder, Diane Monico, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive and HathiTrust.org)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHANGELING ***
THE CHANGELING
NOVELS BY SIR WALTER BESANT & JAMES RICE.
Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each; post 8vo., boards, 2s. each;
cloth, 2s. 6d. each.
READY MONEY MORTIBOY.
BY CELIA'S ARBOUR.
MY LITTLE GIRL.
THE CHAPLAIN OF THE FLEET.
WITH HARP AND CROWN.
THE SEAMY SIDE.
THIS SON OF VULCAN.
THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT.
THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY.
'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY.
THE MONKS OF THELEMA.
THE TEN YEARS' TENANT.
[asterism] There is also a LIBRARY EDITION of the above Twelve
Volumes, handsomely set in new type on a large crown 8vo. page, and
bound in cloth extra, 6s. each; and POPULAR EDITIONS of THE GOLDEN
BUTTERFLY, and of ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN, medium 8vo., 6d.
each; cloth, 1s. each.
NOVELS BY SIR WALTER BESANT.
Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d. each; post 8vo., boards, 2s. each;
cloth, 2s. 6d. each.
ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN. 12 Illusts. by BARNARD.
THE CAPTAINS' ROOM. With Frontispiece by E. J. WHEELER.
ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR. With 6 Illustrations by HARRY FURNISS.
DOROTHY FORSTER. With Frontispiece by CHARLES GREEN.
UNCLE JACK, and other Stories.
CHILDREN OF GIBEON.
THE WORLD WENT VERY WELL THEN. 12 Illusts. by FORESTIER.
HERR PAULUS: His Rise, his Greatness, and his Fall.
THE BELL OF ST. PAUL'S.
FOR FAITH AND FREEDOM. Illusts. by FORESTIER and WADDY.
TO CALL HER MINE. With 9 Illustrations by A. FORESTIER.
THE HOLY ROSE. With Frontispiece by F. BARNARD.
ARMOREL OF LYONESSE. With 12 Illustrations by F. BARNARD.
ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER. With 12 Illusts. by C. GREEN.
VERBENA CAMELLIA STEPHANOTIS. Frontis. by GORDON BROWN.
THE IVORY GATE.
THE REBEL QUEEN.
BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. 12 Illustrations by HYDE.
IN DEACON'S ORDERS. With Frontispiece by A. FORESTIER.
THE REVOLT OF MAN.
THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN.
THE CITY OF REFUGE.
Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. each.
A FOUNTAIN SEALED. With Frontispiece by H. G. BURGESS.
THE CHANGELING.
THE CHARM, and other Drawing-room Plays. By SIR
WALTER BESANT and WALTER H. POLLOCK. With
50 Illustrations by CHRIS HAMMOND and JULE
GOODMAN. Crown 8vo., cloth gilt, gilt edges, 6s.; blue
cloth, plain edges, 3s. 6d.
FIFTY YEARS AGO. With 144 Illustrations. Crown 8vo., cloth,
5s.
THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. Portrait. Cr. 8vo, cloth,
6s.
LONDON. With 125 Illustrations. Demy 8vo., cloth extra, 7s.
6d.
WESTMINSTER. With Etched Frontispiece by F. S.
WALKER, R.E., and 130 Illustrations by WILLIAM
PATTEN, etc. Demy 8vo., cloth, 7s. 6d.
SOUTH LONDON. With Etched Frontispiece by F. S.
WALKER, R.E., and 118 Illustrations. Demy 8vo., cloth,
gilt top, 18s.
SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON. Frontispiece. Cr. 8vo., linen, 3s.
6d.
GASPARD DE COLIGNY. With a Portrait. Crown 8vo., art linen,
3s. 6d.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C.
THE CHANGELING
BY
WALTER BESANT
AUTHOR OF
"ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN," "A FOUNTAIN SEALED," ETC.
[Illustration]
A NEW EDITION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1899
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WAS IT SUBSTITUTION? 1
II. THE ONLY WITNESS GONE 15
III. THE THREE COUSINS 23
IV. THE CONSULTING-ROOM 46
V. GUEST NIGHT 57
VI. THE OLD LOVER 73
VII. THE MASTER OF THE SITUATION 84
VIII. THE COUSINS 92
IX. ONE MORE 110
X. COUSIN ALFRED'S SECRET 116
XI. THE DOCTOR'S DINNER 126
XII. THE OTHER CHILD OF DESERTION 143
XIII. A MIDNIGHT WALK 157
XIV. THE FIRST MOVE 169
XV. TWO JUMPS AND A CONCLUSION 185
XVI. A WRETCH 199
XVII. THE SECOND BLOW 210
XVIII. A GRACIOUS LADY 222
XIX. A CABINET COUNCIL 241
XX. JOHN HAVERIL CLEARS UP THINGS 253
XXI. "TO BE OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE" 265
XXII. THE CLAN AGAIN 276
XXIII. ONE MORE ATTEMPT 290
XXIV. A HORRID NIGHT 300
XXV. THE FIRST MOTHER 313
XXVI. THE SECOND MOTHER 322
CHAPTER THE LAST. FORGIVENESS 336
THE CHANGELING.
CHAPTER I.
WAS IT SUBSTITUTION?
"Pray be seated, madam." The doctor offered his visitor a chair.
Then he closed the door, with perhaps a more marked manner than one
generally displays in this simple operation. "I am happy to inform
you," he began, "that the arrangements--the arrangements," he repeated
with meaning, "are now completed."
The lady was quite young--not more than twenty-two or so--a handsome
woman, a woman of distinction. Her face was full of sadness; her
eyes were full of trouble; her lips trembled; her fingers nervously
clutched the arms of the chair. When the doctor mentioned the
arrangements, her cheek flushed and then paled. In a word, she
betrayed every external sign of terror, sorrow, and anxiety.
"And when can I leave this place?"
"This day: as soon as you please."
"The woman made no objections?"
"None. You can have the child."
"I have told you my reasons for wishing to adopt this child"--he had
never asked her reasons, yet at every interview she repeated them:
"my own boy is dead. He is dead." There was a world of trouble in the
repetition of the word.
The doctor bowed coldly. "Your reasons, madam," he said, "are
sufficient for yourself. I have followed your instructions without
asking for your reasons. That is to say, I have found the kind of
child you want: light hair and blue eyes, apparently sound and
healthy; at all events, the child of a sound and healthy mother. As
for your reasons, I do not inquire."
"I thought you might like----"
"They are nothing to do with me. My business has been to find a child,
and to arrange for your adoption of it. I have therefore, as I told
you, arranged with a poor woman who is willing to part with her child."
"On my conditions?"
"Absolutely. That is--she will never see the child again; she will not
ask who takes the child, or where it is taken, or in what position of
life it will be brought up. She accepts your assurance that the child
will be cared for, and treated kindly. She fully consents."
"Poor creature!"
"You will give her fifty pounds, and that single payment will
terminate the whole business."
"Terminate the whole business? Oh, it will begin the whole business!"
"There are many reasons for adoption," the doctor continued,
returning to the point with which he had no concern. "I have read in
books of substituting a child--introducing a child--for the sake of
keeping a title, or an estate, or a family."
The lady answered as if she had not heard this remark. "The mother
consents to sell her child! Poor creature!"
"She accepts your conditions. I have told you so. Go your way--she
goes hers."
The lady reflected for a moment. "Tell me," she said,--"you are a man
of science,--in such an adoption----"
"Or, perhaps, such a substitution," interrupted the doctor.
"Is there not danger of inherited vice, or disease?"
"Certainly there is. It is a danger which you must watch in educating
the child. He may inherit a tendency to drink: guard against it by
keeping him from alcohol of any kind. He may show physical weakness;
watch him carefully. But nine-tenths of so-called hereditary disease
or vice are due to example and conditions of life."
"If we do not know the character of the parents--they may be
criminals. What if the child should inherit these instincts?"
The doctor, who had been standing, took a chair, and prepared himself
to argue the point. He was a young man, with a strong jaw and a square
forehead. He had a face and features of rude but vigorous handling;
such a face as a noble life would make beautiful in age, and an
ignoble life would make hideous. Every man has as many faces as there
are years of his life, and we heed them not; yet each follows each
in a long procession, ending with the pale and waxen face in the
coffin--that solemn face which tells so much.
"There is," he said, "a good deal of loose talk about heredity. Some
things external are hereditary--face, eyes, figure, stature, hands,
certainly descend from father to son; some diseases, especially those
of the nervous kind; some forms of taste and aptitude, especially
those which are artistic. Things which are not natural, but acquired,
are never hereditary--never. If the boy's father is the greatest
criminal in the country, it won't hurt him a bit, because he is taken
away too early to have observed or imitated. The sons are said to
take after the mothers; that is, perhaps, because they have always
got the models before them. In your case, you will naturally become
the child's most important model. Later on, will come in the male
influence. If there is, for instance, a putative father----"
"There will be, of course, my husband."
The doctor bowed again. Then there was a husband living. "He will
become the boy's second model," he said. "In other words, madam, the
vices of the boy's parents--if they have vices--will not affect him in
the least. Gout, rheumatism, asthma, consumption,--all these things,
and many more, a child may inherit; but acquired criminality, never.
Be quite easy on that point."
"My desire is that the child may become as perfect a gentleman at all
points as his--as my husband."
"Why should he not? He has no past to drag him down. You will train
him and mould him as you please--exactly as you please."
"You have not told me anything about the mother, except that she is in
want."
"Why should you learn her name, or she yours?"
"I have no desire to learn her name. I was thinking whether she is the
kind of woman to feel the loss of her child."
The doctor, as yet inexperienced in the feminine nature, marvelled at
this sympathy with the mother whose child the lady was buying.
"Well," he said, "she is a young woman--of respectable character, I
believe; good looking; in her speech something of a cockney, if I
understand that dialect."
"The more respectable she is, the more she will feel the loss of her
child."
"Yes; but there is another consideration. This poor creature has a
husband who has deserted her."
"Then her child should console her."
"Her husband is a comedian--actor--singing fellow,--a chap who asks
for nothing but enjoyment. As for wife and children, they may look out
for themselves. When I saw him, I read desertion in his face; in his
wife's face, it was easy to read neglect."
"Poor creature!"
"Now he's gone--deserted her. Nothing will do but she must go in
search of him. Partly for money to help her along, partly because the
workhouse is her only refuge, she sells her baby."
The lady was silent for a while, then she sighed. "Poor creature!
There are, then, people in the world as unhappy as I myself?"
"If that is any consolation, there are. Well, madam, you now know the
whole history; and, as it doesn't concern you, nor the child, best
forget it at once."
"Poor mother!"
She kept harping on the bereavement, as though Providence, and not she
herself, was the cause.
"I have told her that the boy will be brought up in ease--affluence
even"--the lady inclined her head--"and she is resigned."
"Thank you. And when----?"
"You would like to go up to London this afternoon? Well, I will
myself bring the child to the railway station. Once more, as regards
heredity. If the child should inherit his mother's qualities, he will
be truthful and tenacious, or obstinate and perhaps rather stupid; if
his father's, he will be artistic and musical, selfish, cold-hearted,
conceited."
"He might inherit the better qualities of both."
"Ah, then he will be persevering, high-principled, a man of artistic
feeling--perhaps of power,--ambitious, and desirous of distinction. I
wish, madam, that he may become so perfect and admirable a young man."
He rose. "I have only, I think, to receive the money which will start
this poor woman on her wild-goose chase. Thank you. Ten five-pound
notes. I will take care that the woman has it at once."
"For your own trouble, Dr. Steele?"
"My fee is three guineas. Thank you."
"I shall be on the platform or in the train at a quarter before three.
Please look about for an Indian ayah, who will receive the child.
You are sure that there will never be any attempt made to follow and
discover my name?"
"As to discovery," he said, "you may rest quite easy. For my own
part, my work lies in this slum of Birmingham; it is not likely that
I shall ever get out of it. I am a sixpenny doctor; you are a woman
of society: I shall never meet you. This little business will be
forgotten to-morrow. If, in the future, by any accident I were to meet
you, I should not know you. If I were to know you, I should not speak
to you. Until you yourself give me leave, even if I should recognize
you, I should not speak about this business."
"Thank you," she said coldly. "It is not, however, likely that you
will be tempted."
He took up an open envelope lying on the table--it was the envelope in
which the lady had brought the notes,--replaced them, and put them in
his pocket. Then he opened the door for the lady, who bowed coldly,
and went out.
* * * * *
A few days before this, the same lady, with an Indian ayah, was
bending over a dying child. They sent for the nearest medical man. He
came. He tried the usual things; they proved useless. The child must
die.
The child was dead.
The child was buried.
The mother sat stupefied. In her hand she held a letter--her
husband's latest letter. "In a day or two," he said, "my life's
work will be finished. In a fortnight after you get this, I shall be
at Southampton. Come to meet me, dear one, and bring the boy. I am
longing to see the boy and the boy's mother. Kiss the boy for me;"
and so on, and so on--always thinking of the boy, the boy, the boy!
And the boy was dead! And the bereaved father was on his way home!
She laid down the letter, and took up a telegram. Already he must be
crossing the Alps, looking forward to meeting the boy, the boy, the
boy!
And the boy was dead.
The ayah crouched down on a stool beside her mistress, and began
whispering in her own language. But the lady understood.
As she listened her face grew harder, her mouth showed resolution.
"Enough," she said; "you have told me enough. You can be silent?--for
my sake, for the sake of the sahib? Yes--yes--I can trust you. Let me
think."
Presently she went out; she walked at random into street after street.
She stopped, letting chance direct her, at a surgery with a red lamp,
in a mean quarter. She read the name. She entered, and asked to see
Dr. Steele, not knowing anything at all about the man.
She was received by a young man of five and twenty or so. She stated
her object in calling.
"The child I want," she said, "should be something like the child I
have lost. He must have light hair and blue eyes."
"And the age?"
"He must not be more than eighteen months or less than a year. My own
child was thirteen months old. He was born on December 2, 1872."
"I have a large acquaintance in a poor neighbourhood," said the
doctor. "The women of my quarter have many babies. If you will give me
a day or two, I may find what you want." He made a note--"Light hair,
blue eyes; birth somewhere near December 2, 1872,--age, therefore,
about thirteen months."
At a quarter before three in the afternoon a woman, carrying a baby,
stood inside the railway station at Birmingham. She was young, thinly
clad, though the day was cold; her face was delicate and refined,
though pinched with want and trouble. She looked at her child every
minute, and her tears fell fast.
The doctor arrived, looked round, and walked up to her. "Now, Mrs.
Anthony," he said, "I've come for the baby."
"Oh! If it were not for the workhouse I would never part with him."
"Come, my good woman, you know you promised."
"Take him," she said suddenly. She almost flung him in the doctor's
arms, and rushed away.
Above the noise of the trains and the station, the doctor heard her
sobbing as she ran out of the station.
"She'll soon get over it," he said. But, as has already been observed,
the doctor was as yet inexperienced in the feminine heart.
* * * * *
About six o'clock that evening the lady who had received the baby had
arrived at her house in Bryanston Square.
"Now," she said, when she had reached the nursery, "we will have a
look at the creature--oh! the little gutter-born creature!--that is to
be my own all the rest of my life."
The ayah threw back the wraps, and disclosed a lusty boy, about a year
or fifteen months old.
The lady sat down by the table, and dropped her hands in her lap.
"Oh," she cried, "I _could_ not tell him! It broke my heart to watch
the boy on his deathbed: it would kill him--it would kill him--the
child of his old age, his only child! To save my husband I would do
worse things than this--far worse things--far worse things."
Among the child's clothes, which were clean and well kept, there
was a paper. The lady snatched it up. There was writing on it.
"His name"--the writing was plain and clear, not that of a wholly
uneducated woman--"is Humphrey. His surname does not matter. It begins
with 'W.'"
"Why," cried the lady, "Humphrey! Humphrey! My boy's own name! And
his surname begins with 'W'--my boy's initial! If it should be my own
boy!--oh! ayah, my own boy come back again!"
The ayah shook her head sadly. But she changed the child's clothes for
those of the dead child; and she folded up his own things, and laid
them in a drawer.
"The doctor has not deceived me," said the lady. "Fair hair, blue
eyes; eyes and hair the colour of my boy." The tears came into her
eyes.
"He's a beautiful boy," said the nurse; "not a spot nor a blemish,
and his limbs round and straight and strong. See how he kicks. And
look--look! why, if he hasn't got the chin--the sahib's chin!"
It was not much: a dimple, a hollow between the lower lip and the end
of the chin.
"Strange! So he has. Do you think, nurse, the sahib, his father, will
think that the child looks his age? He is to be a year and a quarter,
you know."
The ayah laughed. "Men know nothing," she said.
In a day or two the supposed parent returned home. He was a man
advanced in years, between sixty and seventy. He was tall and spare
of figure. His features were strongly marked, the features of a man
who administers and commands. His face was full of authority; his eyes
were as keen as a hawk's. He stepped up the stairs with the spring
of five and twenty, and welcomed his wife with the sprightliness of
a bridegroom of that elastic age. The man was, in fact, a retired
Indian. He had spent forty years or so in administrating provinces: he
was a king retired from business, a sovereign abdicated, on whose face
a long reign had left the stamp of kingcraft. It was natural that in
the evening of his life this man should marry a young and beautiful
girl; it was also quite natural that this girl should entertain, for
a husband old enough to be her grandfather, an affection and respect
which dominated her.
He held out both arms; he embraced his wife with the ardour of a
young lover; he turned her face to the light.
"Lilias!" he murmured, "let me look at you. Why, my dear, you look
pale--and worried! Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing--nothing--now you are home again."
"And the boy? Where is the boy?"
"He shall be brought in." The ayah appeared carrying the child.
"Here he is; quite well--and strong--and happy. Your son is quite
happy--quite happy----" Her voice broke. She sank into a chair, and
fell into hysterical sobbing and weeping. "He is quite--quite--quite
happy."
They brought cold water, and presently she became calmer. Then the
father turned again to consider the boy.
"He looks strong and hearty; but he doesn't seem much bigger than when
you carried him off six months ago."
"A little backward with his growth." The mother had now recovered.
"But that's nothing. He's made a new start already. Feel his fingers.
There's a grip! Your own living picture, Humphrey!"
"Ay, ay. Perhaps I would rather, for good looks, that he took after
his mother. Blue eyes, fair hair, and the family dimple in the chin."
* * * * *
When the doctor was left alone, he took the envelope containing the
bank-notes from his pocket, and threw it on his desk. Then he sat
down, and began to think over the situation.
"What does she do it for?" he asked. "Her own child is dead. There
is no doubt about that; her face is so full of trouble. She wants to
deceive her husband: at least, I suppose so. She will keep that secret
to herself. The ayah is faithful--that's pretty certain. There will
be no blackmailing in that quarter. A fine face she has"--meaning
the lady, not the ayah. "Hard and determined, though. I should like
to see it soften. I wish she had trusted me. But there, one couldn't
expect it of a woman of that temperament--cold, reserved, haughty; a
countess, perhaps. It's like the old story-books. Somebody will be
disinherited. This boy is going to do it. Nobody will ever find it
out. And that's the way they build up their fine pedigrees!"
* * * * *
The doctor was quite wrong. Nobody was to be disinherited; nor was
there an estate. This you must understand, to begin with. The rest I
am going to tell you.
"No clue," the doctor continued. "She is quite safe, unless she
were to meet me. No other clue. Nobody else knows." He took up the
envelope, and observed that it had part of an address upon it. All
he could read, however, was one word--"Lady." "Oho!" he said; "there
_is_ a title, after all. It looks as if the latter half were a 'W.'
There's a conspiracy, and I'm a conspirator! Humph! She's a beautiful
creature!"
He fell into meditation on that subject which is always interesting to
mere man--the face of a woman. Then his thoughts naturally wandered
off to the conversation he had held with that memorable face.
"I _should_ like, if I could, to learn how this job will turn out from
the hereditary point of view! Will that interesting babe take after
his father? Will he astonish his friends by becoming a low comedian?
Or will he take after his mother, and become a simple, honourable
Englishman? Or will he combine the inferior qualities of both, and
become a beautiful and harmonious blend, which may make him either a
villain of the deeper dye, or a common cold-blooded man of the world,
with a touch of the artist?"
CHAPTER II.
THE ONLY WITNESS GONE.
One afternoon, about eighteen years later, certain mourning-coaches,
returning home from a funeral, drew up before a house in Bryanston
Square. There were three coaches. From the first descended a young man
of twenty or thereabouts, still slight and boyish in figure. He had
been sitting alone in the carriage.
From the second came a middle-aged man of the greatest respectability,
to look at. He was so respectable, so eminently respectable, that he
could not possibly be anything but a butler. With him was a completely
respectable person of the other sex, who could be no other than a
housekeeper.
In the third carriage there were two young maid-servants in black, and
a boy in buttons. At the halting of the carriage they clapped their
handkerchiefs to their eyes, because they knew what was expected on
such an occasion; and they kept up this external show of grief until
they had mounted the steps and the door was shut. The page, who was
with them, had been weeping freely ever since they started; not so
much from unavailing grief, as from the blackness of the ceremony, and
the dreadful coffin, and the horror and terror and mystery of the
thing. He went up the stairs snuffling, and so continued for the rest
of the day.
The young gentleman mounted to the drawing-room, where his mother,
sitting in a straight, high chair, more like an office-chair than
one designed for a drawing-room, was dictating to a shorthand girl
secretary. The table was covered with papers. In the back drawing-room
two other girls were writing. For Lady Woodroffe was president of
one society, chairman of committee of another, honorary secretary
of a third; her letters and articles were on subjects and works of
philanthropy, purity, rescue, white lilies, temperance, and education.
Her platform advocacy of such works had placed her in the forefront of
civilizing women; she was a great captain in Israel, a very Deborah, a
Jael.
She was also, which certainly assisted her efforts, a very handsome
woman still, perhaps austere: but then her eloquence was of the severe
order. She appealed to the conscience, to duty, to responsibility,
to honour. If sinners quailed at contemplating the gulf between
themselves and the prophetess, who, like Jeremiah, had so little
sympathy with those who slide backwards and enjoy the exercise, it
was a perpetual joy to ladies of principle to consider an example so
powerful.
She was dressed in black silk, but wore no widow's weeds; her husband,
the first Sir Humphrey, had been dead four years.
The young gentleman threw himself into a chair. Lady Woodroffe nodded
to her secretary, who gathered up her papers and retreated to the
back drawing-room, closing the door.
"Well, mother," said the boy, carelessly, "we've buried the old woman."
"Yes. I hope you were not too much distressed, Humphrey. I am pleased
that you went to the funeral, if only to gratify the servants."
"How could I refuse to attend her funeral?--an old servant like that.
It's a beastly thing--a funeral,--and a beastly nuisance."
"We must not forget her services," the lady replied. "It was in return
for those services that I kept her here, and nursed her through her
old age. One does not encumber one's self with sick old women except
in such cases as this."
"No, thank goodness." The young man was in no gracious mood. "Give me
a servant who takes her wages and goes off, without asking for our
gratitude."
"Still, she was your nurse--and a good nurse."
"Too ostentatious of her affection, especially towards the end."
"She was also"--Lady Woodroffe pursued her own thoughts, which was her
way--"a silent woman; a woman who could be trusted, if necessary, with
secrets--family secrets."
"Thank goodness, we've got none. From family secrets, family
skeletons, family ghosts, good Lord, deliver us!"
"There are secrets, or skeletons, in every family, I suppose.
Fortunately, we forget some, and we never hear of others. You are
fortunate, Humphrey, that you are free from the vexation--or the
shame--or the shock--of family secrets, which mean family scandals.
Now, at all events, you are perfectly safe, because there is no one
living who can create a family ghost for you, or provide you with a
skeleton."
Humphrey laughed lightly. "Let the dead bury their dead," he replied.
"So long as I know nothing about the skeleton, it can go on grinning
in the cupboard, for aught I care.
"Did I tell you," the young man continued, after a pause, "of her last
words?"
"What last words?"
"I thought I had told you. Curious words they were. I suppose her mind
was wandering."
"Humphrey," said his mother, sharply, "what did she say? What words?"
"Well, they sent for me. It was just before the end. She was lying
apparently asleep, her eyes shut. I thought she was going. The nurse
was at the other end of the room, fussing with the tea-cups. Then she
opened her eyes and saw me. She whispered, 'Low down, low down, Master
Humphrey.' So I stooped down, and she said, 'Don't blame her, Master
Humphrey. I persuaded her, and we kept it up, for your sake. Nobody
suspects. All for your sake I kept it up,' Then she closed her eyes,
and opened them no more."
"What do you understand by those words, Humphrey?"
"Nothing. I cannot understand them. She was accusing herself, I
suppose, of something--I know not what. What did she keep up? Whom
did she persuade? But why should we want to know?"
"Wandering words. Nurses will tell you that no importance can be
attached to the last words when the brain wanders. Well, Humphrey,
while you were at the funeral I unlocked her drawers and examined the
contents. I found that she had quite a large sum of money invested.
One is not in good service for all these years without saving
something. There is a little pile of photographs of yourself at
various ages. I have put them aside for you, if you like to have them."
"I don't want them," he replied carelessly.
"I shall keep them, then. There is her wardrobe also. I believe she
had nephews and nieces and cousins in her native village in India.
All her possessions shall be sent out to them. Meanwhile, there is a
little packet of things which she tied up a great many years ago, and
has kept ever since. The sight of them caused me a strange shock. I
thought they had been long destroyed. They revived my memories of a
day--an event--certain days--when you were an infant."
"What things are these, then?"
"They were your own things--some of the things which you wore when you
were a child in arms, not more than a few months old."
"Oh, they are not very interesting, are they?"
"Perhaps not." Lady Woodroffe had in her lap a small packet tied up
in a towel or a serviette. She placed it on the table. "Humphrey, I
always think, when I look at old things, of the stories they might
tell, if they could, of the histories and the changes which might have
happened."
"Well, I don't know, mother. I am very well contented with things as
they are, though they might have given my father a peerage. As for
thinking of what they might have been, why, I might, perhaps, have
been born in a gutter."
"You might, Humphrey"--the widow laughed, which was an unwonted thing
in her--"you certainly might. And you cannot imagine what you would be
now, had you been born in a gutter."
"What's the good of asking, then?"
"Look at this bundle of your things."
"I don't want to look at them."
"No, I dare say not. But I do. They tell a story to me which they
cannot tell to you. I am glad the old woman kept them."
Lady Woodroffe untied the parcel, and laid open the things.
"The story is so curious that I cannot help looking at the things.
I have opened the bundle a dozen times to-day, since I found it.
I believe I shall have to tell you that story some day, Humphrey,
whether I like it or not."
"What story can there be connected with a parcel of socks and shoes?"
"To you, at present, none. To me, a most eventful story. The old
nurse knew the story very well, but she never talked about it. See,
Humphrey, the things are of quite coarse materials--one would think
they were made for that gutter child we talked about."
Her son stooped and picked up a paper that had fallen on the floor.
"'His name is Humphrey,'" he read. "A servant's handwriting, one would
think. What was the use of writing what everybody knew?"
"Perhaps some servant was practising the art of penmanship. Well"--she
tied up the parcel again--"I shall keep these things myself."
She put the parcel on the table, and presently carried it to her
room. Her son immediately forgot all about the old nurse's strange
last words, and the parcel of clothes, and everything. This was not
unnatural, because he presently went back to Cambridge, where there is
very little sympathy with the sentiment of baby linen.
When the door closed upon her son, his mother sprang to her feet.
"Oh!" she clasped her hands. Can we put her thoughts into words--the
thoughts that are so swift, into words that are so slow--the thoughts
that can so feebly express the mind with words that are so imperfect?
"I have never felt myself free until to-day. She is dead; she is
buried. On her death-bed she kept the secret. She never wrote it down;
she never told any one: had she written it I should have found it; had
she told any one I should have heard of it before now. And all, as she
said, for the sake of the boy. She meant her long silence. I feared
that at the last, when she lay a-dying, she might have confessed. I
sat in terror when I knew that the boy was at her death-bed. I thought
that when Sir Humphrey died, and the boy succeeded, she might have
confessed. But she did not. Good woman, and true! Never by a word, or
by a look, or by a sigh, did she let me know that she remembered."
She breathed deeply, as if relieved from a great anxiety.
"I have thought it all over, day after day. There is nothing that can
be found out now. The doctor would not recognize me. I suppose he is
still slaving at Birmingham; he did not know my name. The mother never
saw me. At last, I am free from danger! After all these years, I have
no longer any fear."
Over the mantel hung a portrait of her late husband.
"Humphrey," she said, talking to it familiarly, "I did it for your
sake. I could not bear that you should lose your boy. All for your
sake--all for your sake I screened the child from you. At least you
never knew that there is not--there has never been--the least touch of
your nobility in the gutter child. He is mean; he is selfish. He has
never done a kind action, or said a generous word. He has no friends,
only companions. He has already all the vices, but is never carried
away; he will become a sensualist, a cold and heartless sensualist. I
am sorry, Humphrey, truly sorry, my most noble and honourable husband,
that I have given you so unworthy a successor. Yet he is careful; he
will cause no scandal. So far, my husband, your name is safe."
CHAPTER III.
THE THREE COUSINS.
"Is it possible?" they repeated, gazing each upon each in the
triangular fashion.
Every incident in life is a coincident. That is to say, nothing
happens as one expects. The reason is that no one considers the
outside forces, which are unseen; very few, indeed, take into
consideration the inside forces, which are obvious. The trade of
prophet has fallen into decay, because we no longer believe in him; we
know that he cannot really prophesy the coincidence: to him, as to us,
the future is the unexpected. Wise folk, therefore, go about prepared
for anything: they carry an umbrella in July; they build more ships
when peace is most profound. The unexpected, the coincidence, gives to
life its chief charm: it relieves the monotony; it breaks the week,
so to speak. Formerly it might take the form of invasion, a descent
upon the coast: dwellers by the seaside enjoyed, therefore, the most
exciting lives possible. To-day it comes by telegraph, by post, by
postal express. The philosopher of tears says that the unexpected is
always disagreeable; he of smiles says that, on the whole, he has
received more good gifts unexpectedly than thwacks. Mostly however,
the opinion of the multitude, which is always right, is summed up in
the words of the itinerant merchant--the man with the barrow and the
oranges. "We expex a shilling," he says, "and we gits tuppence."
"Is it possible?"
These three people had arisen and gone forth that morning expecting
nothing, and lo! a miracle! For they were enriched, suddenly, and
without the least expectation, by the discovery that they were all
three of common kin. Imagine the boundless possibilities of newly
recovered cousinship! No one knows what may come out of it--an
augmentation of family pride, an increase of family griefs, the
addition of sympathy with the lowly, the shame and honour of ancient
scandals, more money perhaps, more influence perhaps. It may be a most
fortunate event. On the other hand---- But for the moment, these three
had not begun to consider the other side.
"Is it possible?" Well, it is sometimes best to answer a question by
repeating it. The place was a country churchyard; the time, a forenoon
in July. In the churchyard was a group of four. They were all young,
and two of them were of one sex, and two were of the other.
The girls were the first to arrive. They entered by a gate opening
into the churchyard from a small coppice on the north side.
One of the girls, evidently the leader, had in her face, her form,
her carriage, something of Pallas Athênê. She was grave--the goddess,
I believe, seldom laughed; she was one of those girls who can smile
readily and pleasantly, but are not anxious to hear good stories,
like the frivolous man at his club, and really saw very little to
laugh at even in the unexpectedness of men--nothing, of course, in
the ways of women. Her seriousness was sweet in the eyes of those who
loved her--that is to say, of all who had the privilege of knowing
her. Her head was large and shapely--a shapely head is a very lovely
thing in woman. Her figure matched her head in being large and full.
Her features were regular, her cheek was ample, like that of a
certain bronze Venus in the Museum. Her hair was light in colour, and
abundant, not of the feathery kind, but heavy, and easily coiled in
classical fashion. Her eyes were of that dark blue which is wickedly
said to accompany a deceitful nature. If this is ever true, it
certainly was not true of Hilarie Woodroffe. She was dressed in white,
as becomes a girl on a summer morning, with a rose at her throat for
a touch of colour. As a child of her generation, she was naturally
tall; and being, as she was, a girl of the highest refinement and
culture after such an education as girls can now command, and being,
moreover, much occupied with the difficulties and problems of the age,
she bore upon her brow an undoubted stamp of intellectual endeavour.
Twenty years ago, such a girl would have been impossible. If you are
still, happily, so young that you can doubt this assertion, read the
novels--the best and the worst--of that time.
Her companion showed in her face and her appearance more of Aphrodite
than the sister goddess. She looked as sprightly as L'Allegra herself;
of slighter figure than the other, she was one of those fortunate
girls who attract by their manner more than by their beauty. Indeed,
no one could call her beautiful; but many called her charming. Her
grey eyes danced and sparkled; her lips were always smiling; her head
was never still; her face was made for laughing and her eyes for joy;
her hair was of the very commonest brown colour--every other kind of
girl has that kind of hair, yet upon her it looked distinguished. The
dress she wore--she had designed and made it herself--seemed craftily
intended to set off her figure and her face and her eyes. In a word,
she was one of those girls--a large class--who seem born especially
for the delight and happiness of the male world. They are acting
girls, singing girls, dancing girls, even stay-at-home girls; but
always they delight their people or the public with their vivacity,
and their cheerfulness, and their sympathy. By the side of the other
girl she looked like an attendant nymph. I have always thought that it
would be a pleasing thing to detach from Diana's train one of those
attendant nymphs, whose undeveloped mind knew nothing but the narrow
round of duty; to run breathlessly after the huntress, or to bathe
with her in a cold mountain stream. I would take her away, and teach
her other things, and make her separate and individual. But the fear
of Dian has hitherto prevented me. Ladies-in-waiting, in other words,
must have a dull time of it.
Both girls, of course, were strong, healthy, and vigorous: they
thought nothing of twenty miles on a bicycle; they could row; they
could ride; they could play lawn tennis; they would have climbed the
Matterhorn if it had been within reach. They were such girls as we
have, somehow, without knowing how, without expecting it, presented
to modern youth, athletic and vigorous, of the last decade of the
nineteenth century.
"This is my churchyard, Molly," said Hilarie. "You have seen the
house--this place belongs to the house--and the whole of it belongs to
the family history."
"It must be very nice to have a pedigree," said Molly--"ancestors who
wore laced coats and swords, like the characters on the stage. My
people, I suppose, wore smock-frocks. I gather the fact because my
father never mentioned his father. Smocks go with silence."
"One would rather, I suppose, have a pedigree than not."
"Small shops, also, go with silence. I wonder why one would rather
have a grandfather in a smock than in a small shop."
"I will tell you something of the family history. Let us sit down on
this tombstone. I always sit here because you can see the church, and
the alms-houses, and the school, if you like to take them together.
So. Once there was a man named Woodroffe, who lived in this village,
seised of a manor, as they say. He was a small country gentleman, an
Armiger; I will show you his tomb presently, with his coat of arms.
This man--it was five hundred years ago--had four sons. One of them
stayed at home, and carried on the family descent; the second son was
educated by the Bishop, and rose to the most splendid distinction.
He actually became Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of
England. Now, the father of these lads had friends or cousins--they
came from the next village, where their descendants are living
still--in the City of London. So the two younger sons were sent up
to town and apprenticed, one to a mercer, and the other to a draper;
and one of these became Lord Mayor--think of that!--and the other,
Sheriff. There was a wonderful success for you! The effort seems to
have exhausted the family, for no one else has ever distinguished
himself. Stay; there was an Indian civilian of that name, who died
some time ago, but I don't know if he belonged to the family. My own
branch has always remained hopelessly undistinguished--squires, and
plain gentlemen, and Justices of the Peace. They hunted, flogged
vagabonds, and drank port. And, of course, after all these years, one
does not know what has become of the citizens' descendants."
"Still, Archbishop, Lord Mayor, and Sheriff--that ought to last a long
time."
"It has lasted a long time. Well, when they became old, these men
resolved to show their grateful sense of the wonderful success which
had been accorded to them. So they came back to their native village,
and they replaced the little church by a beautiful and spacious
church--there it is!"
Truly it was a great and noble church, of proportions quite beyond the
needs of a small village; its tower and spire standing high above all
the country round, its recessed porch a marvel of precious work. The
windows and the clerestory and the roof may be seen figured in all the
books on ecclesiastical architecture as the finest specimens of their
style.
"Yes, this church was built by these brothers. They walled the
churchyard--this is their old grey wall, with the wallflowers; they
built the lych-gate--there it is--in the churchyard; they founded a
school for the young--there it is"--she pointed to a small stone hall
standing in the north-west corner of the churchyard. It was of the
same period and of the same architecture as the church; the windows
had the same tracery; the buttresses were covered with yellow lichen:
a beautiful and venerable structure. From the building there came
a confused murmur of voices. "And on the other side of the church
they built an almshouse for the old--there it is"--she pointed to a
long low building, also of the same architecture. "So, you see, they
provided, in the same enclosure, a place of worship for the living, a
place of burial for the dead, a school for the young, and a haven of
rest for the old."
The sentiment of the history touched her companion, who looked about
her, and murmured--
"It seems a peaceful place."
"Everything in the place seems to belong to those four brothers:
the old house behind those trees, the broken cross at the gate, the
ruined college in the village, the very cottages, all seem to me to be
monuments of those four brothers."
"It is a beautiful thing owning such a house and such a place," said
the other. "But I prefer your gardens to your churchyard, Hilarie, I
confess."
Just then a young man, in a hired victoria, drove up to the gate and
descended, and looked about him with an indolent kind of curiosity. He
wore a brown velvet coat, had a crimson scarf with a white waistcoat,
carried a pince-nez on his nose, had sharp and somewhat delicate
features, carried his head high, and was tall enough to convey by that
attitude, which was clearly habitual, the assumption of superiority,
if not of disdain. And there was in him something of the artist. His
face was pale and clean shaven; his lips were thin; his hair was
light, with a touch of yellow in it; his eyes, when you could make
them out, were of a light blue, and cold. His figure was thin, and not
ungraceful. In a word, a young man of some distinction in appearance;
of an individuality certainly marked, perhaps self-contained, perhaps
selfish.
He walked slowly up the path. When he drew near the girls he raised
his hat.
"Am I right," he asked, "in thinking this to be Woodroffe Church?"
"Yes. It is Woodroffe Church."
"The church built by the Archbishop and his brothers?"
"This is their church. That is their school. That is their almshouse.
Would you like to go into the church? I have the key with me, and am
going in at once."
At this moment they were joined by another young man, whose entrance
to the churchyard was not noticed. He had been walking with light
elastic step along the middle of the road. A small bag was slung from
his shoulder by a strap; he carried a violin-case. His broad felt
hat, his brown tweed suit, his brown shoes, were all white with the
dust of the road. He passed the church without observing it; then
he remembered something, stopped, came back, and turned into the
churchyard.
He was quite a young man. His face was clean shaven--a mobile face,
with thin lips and quick blue eyes. His hair, as he lifted his hat,
was a light brown with a trace of yellow in it, growing in an arch
over his forehead. His step was springy, his carriage free. His
hair--longer than most men wear it,--the blue scarf at his throat, his
long fingers, made one think of art in some shape or other. Probably a
musician.
In the churchyard he looked about him curiously.
Then he turned to the group of three, and put exactly the same
question as that proposed by the first young man.
"May I ask," he said, "if this is Woodroffe Church?"
The attendant nymph jumped up. "Oh!" she cried. "It's Dick!"
"You here, Molly?" he asked. "I never expected----"
"Hilarie," said the girl, "this is my old friend Dick. We were
children together."
Hilarie bowed graciously. "I am pleased to know your friend," she
said. "I was just telling this other gentleman that this is Woodroffe
Church. We are going into the church: would you like to come too?"
Hilarie led the way, and opened the door of the south porch. Within,
restorers had been at work. The seats which replaced the old oaken
pews were machine-made, and new; they wanted the mellowing touch of
two hundred years, and even then they would be machine-made still. The
rood screen, as old as the Archbishop, was so polished and scraped,
that it looked almost as much machine-made as the seats. Even the
roof, after its scraping and painting, looked brand new. Yet they had
not destroyed all the antiquity of the church: there were still the
grey arches, the grey pillars, the grey walls and the monuments. There
were many monuments in the church; two or three tablets in memory of
former vicars; all the rest, shields, busts, and sculptured tombs, in
memory of bygone Woodroffes. A low recessed arch in the north wall
contained the figure of a Crusader. "He is one of the Woodroffes,"
said the guide. A recent tablet commemorated one who fell at the
Alma. "He was another of them," said the guide. "You are walking over
the graves of a whole family; they have been buried here from time
immemorial. Every slab in the aisle, and every stone in the chancel,
covers one of them."
In the north transept there stood a long low altar-tomb, with carvings
on the sides, and a slab of grey granite on the top. Formerly it
had been surrounded and covered by a white marble tabernacle richly
carved; this was now broken away and destroyed, except a few fragments
in the wall. The tomb itself was dilapidated; the granite slab was
broken in two, yet the inscription remained perfectly legible. It was
as follows:--
"Hic jacent
ROBERTUS WOODROFFE, Armiger,
et
HILARIS, Uxor Ejus,
Qui Robertus obiit Sep. 2, A.D. MCCCCXXXIX."
In the right-hand corner of the slab were the arms of the deceased.
"This tomb," said the guide, "was erected by the Archbishop, to the
memory of his father."
On the opposite side of the south transept one of the common
Elizabethan monuments was affixed to the wall. It represented figures
in relief, and painted. The husband and wife, both in high ruffs,
knelt before a desk, face to face. Below them was a procession of
boys and girls, six in number. Over their heads was a shield with a
coat-of-arms--the same arms as on the other tomb. The monument was
sacred to the memory of Robert Woodroffe, Knight, and Johanna his
wife. Beneath the figures was a scroll on which the local poet had
been allowed to do his worst.
"After thy Dethe, thy Words and Works survive
To shew thy Virtues: as if still alive.
When thou didst fall, fair Mercy shrieked and swoon'd,
And Charity bemoaned her deadly Wounde.
The Orphan'd Babe, the hapless Widow cry'd,
Ah! who will help us now that thou hast dyed?"
"They made him a knight," said the guide, "against his will. James
the First insisted on his assuming the dignity. It was the only
honour ever attained by any of this branch. They all stayed at home,
contented to make no noise in the world at all. Well, I think I have
shown you all the monuments."
"This is my ancestor," said the man with the violin-case, pointing to
the first tomb. "Not this one at all."
"Why, the elder Robert is my ancestor also!" said the first young man,
wondering.
"Good gracious! He is my ancestor as well!" cried Hilarie, in
amazement. "All these Woodroffes belong to me, and I to them."
"Your ancestor? Is it possible?" she added, turning from one to the
other.
"Is it possible?" the two men repeated.
"The Archbishop's elder brother is my direct ancestor," said Hilarie.
"He is buried here beneath this stone."
"Mine was Lord Mayor Woodroffe," said the first young man. "He was
buried in the Church of All Hallows the Less, where his tomb was
destroyed in the Fire."
"And mine was the Sheriff," said the second young man. "He was buried
in St. Helen's, where you may see his tomb to this day."
"Oh, it is wonderful!" Hilarie looked at her new cousins with some
anxiety. The first young man seemed altogether "quite:" well-dressed,
well-spoken, well-mannered, well-looking, of goodly stature, a
proper youth. In fact, proper in the modern sense. His turn-out was
faultless, and of the very day's--not yesterday's--mode. She turned
to the other. Circumstances, perhaps, were against him: the dust with
which he was covered; the shabby old bag hanging round his neck; his
violin-case. A gentleman does not travel on foot, carrying a violin.
Besides, his face was not the kind of face which comes out of Eton
and Trinity. It was a humorous face; there was a twinkle, or the fag
end of a smile, upon it. Such a girl as Hilarie would not at first
take readily to such a face. However, he looked quiet, and he looked
good-natured; his eyes, realizing the oddness of the situation, were
luminous with suppressed laughter.
"Molly," he said, "please tell this lady--your friend--who I am."
"Hilarie, this is Dick Woodroffe. I suppose you have never heard of
him. I never thought of his name being the same as yours. Dick is an
actor. He sings and plays, and writes comediettas; he is _awfully_
clever."
"Thank you, Molly. Add that I am now on tramp."
He looked with some contempt on the other young man.
"Since you are my cousin, Mr. Woodroffe, I hope we shall be friends."
Hilarie shook hands with him. "My name is Hilarie Woodroffe, and I am
descended from the eldest brother. The old house, which I will show
you presently, has remained with us. And you--are you really another
cousin?"
She turned to the first comer.
"I hope so. My name is Humphrey Woodroffe."
"Oh, this is delightful! May I ask what your branch has been doing all
these years?"
"I have a genealogy at home. We have had no more Lord Mayors or
Archbishops. A buccaneer or two; a captain under Charles the First;
a judge under William the Third; and an Anglo-Indian, my father, now
dead, of some distinction."
"Your branch has done more creditably than mine. And yours, Cousin
Dick?"
He laughed. "We went down in the world, and stayed there. Some of us
assisted in colonizing Virginia, in the last century, by going out in
the transports. There is a tradition of highwaymen; some of us had
quarters permanently in the King's Bench. I am a musician, and a mime,
and a small dramatist. Yet we have always kept up the memory of the
Sheriff."
"Never mind, Dick," said Molly; "you shall raise your branch again."
He shook his head. "There is not so much staying power," he said, "in
a Sheriff as in a Lord Mayor."
Hilarie observed him curiously. "Why," she said, "you two are
strangely alike. Do you observe the resemblance, Molly?"
"Yes. Oh yes!"--after a little consideration. "Mr. Humphrey is taller
and bigger. But they certainly _are_ alike."
"Good Heavens! It is wonderful. The same coloured hair, growing in the
same manner; the same eyes. It is the most extraordinary instance of
the survival of a type."
The young men looked at each other with a kind of jealousy. They
resented this charge of resemblance.
"Like that bounder?" said the look of the young man of clubs.
"Like this Piccadilly masher?" was the expression on the speaking
countenance of the man on tramp.
"After five hundred years." Hilarie pondered over this strange
coincidence. "Let us go back to the churchyard."
At the porch she paused, and bade them look round. "Tell me," she
said, "if you have ever seen a place more beautiful or more peaceful?"
The amplitude of the churchyard was in harmony with the stateliness
of the church. An ancient yew stood in one corner; the place was
surrounded by trees; the steps of the old Cross were hollowed by the
feet of many generations; beyond the quiet mounds the dark trees with
their heavy foliage made a fitting background; two or three of the
bedesmen stood at their door, blinking in the sunshine.
"The almshouse is a reading-room now," said Hilarie. "The old people
have quarters more commodious for sleeping, but they come here all day
long to read and rest."
They stood in silence for a while.
The swifts flew about the tower and the spire; the lark was singing
in the sky, the blackbird in the coppice. The air was full of soft
calls, whispers-twitters of birds, the humming of insects, and the
rustle of leaves. From the schoolroom came the continuous murmur of
children's voices. Another old man passed slowly along the path among
the graves towards the almshouse: it seemed as if he were choosing his
own bed for a long sleep. Everything spoke of life, happy, serene, and
peaceful.
"I am glad you came here," said Hilarie. "It is your own. When you
know it you will love everything in it--the church and the churchyard,
the trees and the birds, the old men and the children, the living and
the dead."
Her eyes filled with tears. Those of the man with the violin-case
softened, and he listened and looked round. Those of the other showed
no response--they were resting with admiration upon the other girl.
"Come"--Hilarie returned to the duty of hostess,--"let me show you the
house--the old, old house--where your ancestors lived."
She led the way to the gate by which she had entered. She conducted
them along a path under the trees into a small park. In the middle of
the park were buildings evidently of great age. They were surrounded
by a moat, now dry, with a bridge over it, and beyond the bridge a
little timbered cottage which had taken the place of gate tower and
drawbridge. Within was a garden, with flowers, fruit, and vegetables,
all together. And beyond the garden was the house. And surely there is
no other house like unto it in the whole country. In the middle was
a high-roofed hall; at either end were later buildings; beyond these
buildings, at one end, was a low broad tower, embattled. The windows
of the hall were the same as those of the church, the school, and the
almshouse.
"You cannot wonder," said the girl, "that I love to call this house
my own--my very own. There is nothing in the world that I would take
in exchange for this house. Come in, Cousin Humphrey," she said
hospitably. "And--and--my other cousin, Cousin Dick. Besides, you are
a friend of Molly's. Come in. You are both welcome."
She opened the door. Within, the great hall had a stone bench running
all round; the high-pitched roof was composed of thick beams, black
with age; the floor was boarded; the daïs stood raised three or four
inches for the high table; the circular space was still preserved
beneath the lantern, where the fire was formerly made.
"Here lived Robert," said the chatelaine, "with his four sons. There
was no floor to the hall then. The servants took their meals with the
master, but below him. The men slept on the floor. This was the common
living-room." She led the way to the north end. "Here was the kitchen,
built out beyond the hall"--there were signs of women-servants--"and
above it"--she led the way up a rude stair--"the solar of three or
four rooms, where the lord and lady slept, and the daughters, and the
women-servants. At the other end"--she led them to the south end of
the hall--"was the lady's bower, where the lady with her maids sat at
their work all day. And beyond is the tower, where the men-at-arms,
our garrison, lay."
These rooms were furnished. "They are our sitting-rooms." Three or
four girls now rose as Hilarie entered the room. She presented her
cousins to them. "My friends," she said, simply. "Here we live; we
take our meals in the hall. Our servants sleep in the gate-house; we
in the solar. Confess, now, my newly-found cousins, is it not a noble
house?"
She showed them the tower and the dungeon and the guard-room, all
belonging to the Wars of the Roses. And then she led them back to the
hall, where a dainty luncheon was spread on a sideboard. The high
table was laid for about a dozen. The girls, to whom the cousins
had been presented, trooped in after them. At the lower table stood
the servants, the coachman and grooms, the gardener and his staff,
the women-servants, the wives and children of the men. All sat down
together at their table, which ran along the middle of the hall.
Before Hilarie's chair, in the middle of the high table, stood an
ancient ship in silver; ready for her use was a silver-gilt cup, also
ancient; silver cups stood for each of her guests.
"We all dine together," she said--"my friends and I at our table, my
servants below; we are one family. My ancestors"--her cousins sat
on each side of her--"dined in this fashion. There is something in
humanity which makes those friends who break bread together."
"It is like a picnic five hundred years back," said Humphrey. "I have
heard talk, all my life, about this place. My father always intended
to visit it, but at last grew too old."
Hilarie watched her two guests. The taller, Humphrey, had the
manners of society; he seemed to be what the world, justly jealous,
allows to be a gentleman. Yet he had a certain coldness of manner,
and he accepted the beauty of this ancient place without surprise or
enthusiasm.
"What are you by profession, Cousin Humphrey?" she asked.
"Nothing, as yet; I have been travelling since I left Cambridge." He
laid his card before her--"Sir Humphrey Woodroffe."
"You have the title from your father. I hope you will create new
distinctions for yourself."
"I suppose," he said coldly, "that I shall go into the House. My
people seem to want it. There are too many cads in the House, but it
seems that we cannot get through the world without encountering cads."
He looked through his hostess, so to speak, and upon the third cousin,
perhaps accidentally.
"You certainly cannot," observed the third. "For instance, I am
sitting with you at luncheon."
"You will play something presently, Dick, won't you?"
Molly, sitting on the other side of the table, saw a quick flush upon
her friend's cheek, and hastened to avert further danger. One may be a
cad, but some cads are sensitive to an openly avowed contempt for cads.
Dick laughed. "All right, Molly. What shall I play? Something serious,
befitting the place? Luncheon is over--I will play now, if you like."
He looked down the hall. "That, I suppose, is the musicians' loft?"
"That is the musicians' gallery. It is a late addition--Elizabethan, I
believe."
"The musicians' gallery? Well, Miss Woodroffe, I am the music. Let me
play you something in return for the fine ancestors you have given me,
and for your gracious hospitality."
He took up his violin-case, to which he had clung with fidelity,
marched down the hall, climbed up into the gallery, and began to tune
his fiddle.
"Hilarie," Molly said, "Dick plays in the most lovely way possible. He
carries you quite out of yourself. That is why everybody loves him so."
However, the artist, standing up alone in the gallery, struck a chord,
and began to play.
I suppose that the magic belonged to the fiddle itself. It is
astonishing what magical powers a fiddle may possess. This was the
most sympathetic instrument possible. It was a thought leader or
inspirer. The moment it began, all the listeners, including the
servants below the salt, sat upright, their eyes fixed upon the
gallery, rapt out of themselves.
Hilarie, for her part, saw in a vision, but with a clearness and
distinctness most marvellous, her ancestor Robert with Hilarie his
wife. They were both well-stricken in years; they were standing in
the porch with their eldest son, his wife and children, to receive
their visitors. And first, across the drawbridge, rode the great Lord
Archbishop and Lord Chancellor, followed by his retinue. When the
Archbishop dismounted, the old man and his wife, and the son, and his
wife, and his children went on their knees; but the Archbishop bade
them rise, and kissed his parents lovingly. Meantime, the pages and
the varlets were unloading pack-horses and pack-mules, because the
Archbishop would not lay upon his father so great a charge as the
entertainment of his following. And she saw next how the Lord Mayor
and the Sheriff, his brother, rode up side by side, the Sheriff a
little behind the Mayor, and how they dismounted and knelt for their
father's blessing; and so all into the hall together, to take counsel
for the great things they were minded to do for their native village.
Hilarie turned to her cousin on the right. "Cousin," she said, still
in her dream, "we must think of our forefathers, and of what they did.
We must ask what the Archbishop would have done in our place."
But her cousin made no reply. He was looking with a kind of wonder at
Molly. Had the man never seen an attractive girl before? He had; but
out of a thousand attractive girls a man may be attracted by one only.
And the music went on. What was it that the musician played? Indeed, I
know not; things that awakened the imagination and touched the heart.
"No one knows," said Molly, "what he plays; only he makes one lost to
everything."
As for herself, she had a delicious dream of going on the tramp with
Dick, he and she alone--he to play, and she---- But when she was about
to tell this dream, she would not confess her part in the tramp.
The music was over; the fiddle was replaced in its case; the musician
was going away.
In the porch stood Hilarie. "Cousin," she said, "do you go on tramp
for pleasure or for necessity?"
"For both. I must needs go on tramp from time to time. There is a
restlessness in me. I suppose it is in the blood. Perhaps there was a
gipsy once among my ancestors."
"But do you really--live--by playing to people?"
"He needn't," said Molly; "but he must. He leaves his money at home,
and carries his fiddle. Oh, heavenly!"
"Why not? I fiddle on village greens and in rustic inns. I camp among
the gipsies; I walk with the tramps and casuals. There is no more
pleasant life, believe me!"
He began to sing in a light, musical tenor--
"When daffodils began to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
The lark that tirra-lirra chants
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay."
"You are a strange man," said Hilarie. "Come and see me again."
"I am a vagabond," he replied, "and my name is Autolycus."
Dick took off his hat and bowed low, not in Piccadilly style at all;
he waved his hand to Molly; he glared defiance at Humphrey, who
loftily bent his head; and then, catching up his violin-case, he
started off with a step light and elastic.
Humphrey, the other cousin, half an hour later, stood beside his
carriage.
"I must congratulate myself," he said, "on the good fortune which has
presented me to the head of my family."
"To two cousins, say."
"Oh! I fancy we shall not see much of Autolycus. Meanwhile, since you
kindly grant me permission, I hope to call upon you again."
"I shall be very pleased."
As he drove away, his last look was not on Hilarie, but on the girl
beside her--the girl called Molly--the nymph attendant. Some, the
goddess charms; but more, the nymph attendant.
"What was she doing with all those girls?" he asked. "Making a home
for them, or some such beastly nonsense, I suppose."
CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSULTING-ROOM.
The doctor's servant opened the door noiselessly, almost stealthily,
and looked round the room.
There were half a dozen people waiting. One was an ex-colonial
governor, who had been maintaining the empire with efficiency in many
parts of the world for thirty years, and was now anxious to keep
himself alive for a few years in the seclusion of a seaside town, if
certain symptoms could be kept down. There was a middle-aged victim
to gout; there was an elderly sufferer from rheumatism; there was
an anæmic girl; there was a young fellow who looked the picture of
health; and, sitting at one of the windows, there was a lady, richly
dressed, her pale face, with delicate features of the kind which do
not grow old, looking anxious and expectant.
They were all anxious and expectant: they feared the worst, and hoped
the best. One looked out of window, seeing nothing; one gazed into the
fireplace, not knowing whether there was a fire in it; one turned over
the pages of a society journal, reading nothing; all were thinking
of their symptoms. For those who wait for the physician, there is
nothing in the whole world to consider except symptoms. They have got
to set forth their symptoms to the physician. They have to tell the
truth, that is quite clear. Still, the plain truth can be dressed up a
little; it can be presented with palliatives. A long course of strong
drinks may figure as a short course of weak whisky-and-soda. Perhaps
the danger, after all, is not so grave. Patients waiting for the
doctor are like persons waiting to be tried for life. Can a man take
any interest in anything who awaits his trial for life--who hopes for
an acquittal, but fears a capital sentence?
The doctor's manservant looked round the room, and then glided like a
black ghost across the thick carpet. He stopped before the lady in the
window.
"Sir Robert, madam, will see you."
There are some who maintain that the success of this eminent
physician, Sir Robert Steele, M.D., F.R.S., is largely due to the
virtues of his manservant. Certainly this usher of the chamber, this
guardian of the portal, this receiver of those who bring tribute, has
no equal in the profession. In his manner is the respect due to those
who know where the only great physician is to be found. There is also
an inflexible and incorruptible obedience to the laws of precedence,
or order of succession. Thirdly, there is a soft, a velvety, note
of sympathy in his voice, as one who would say, "Be of good cheer,
sufferer; I bring thee to one who can relieve. Thou shalt not suffer
long."
The rest of the patients looked at each other and sighed. He who would
follow next sighed with increasing anxiety: his fate would soon be
known. He who had yet to wait several turns sighed with impatience.
It is hard to be tormented with anxiety as well as with pain. Those
symptoms again! They may be the final call. Did Christiana, when the
call came, repair first, in the greatest anxiety, to a physician! Or
they may be only passing clouds, so to speak, calling attention to the
advance of years.
The doctor, in his consulting-room, held a card in his hand--"Mrs.
John Haveril." The name was somehow familiar to him. He could not
remember, at the moment, the associations of the name. A physician,
you see, may remember, if he pleases, so many names. To every man's
memory belongs a long procession of figures and faces, with eyes and
voices. But most men work alone. Think of the procession in the memory
of a physician, who all day long sees new faces and hears new voices!
"Haveril." He knew the name. Was she the wife of a certain American
millionaire, lately spoken of in the papers?
"The doctor, madam, will see you."
The lady rose and followed him. All the patients watched her with
the same kind of curiosity as is shown by those waiting to be tried
towards the man who is called to the honours of the dock. They
observed that she was strangely agitated; that she walked with some
difficulty; that she tottered as she went; that her lips trembled, and
her hands shook.
"Locomotor ataxis," whispered one. "I myself----"
"Or perhaps a break-up of the nervous system. It is my own----"
But the door was shut, and the patients in waiting relapsed into
silence.
The lady followed the manservant, who placed a chair for her and
withdrew.
Instead of sitting down, the patient stepped forward, and gazed into
the doctor's face. Then she clasped her hands.
"Thank God," she cried; "he is the man!"
"I do not understand, madam. I see so many faces. The name--is it an
American name?"
"You think of my husband. But I am English-born, and so is he."
"Well, Mrs. Haveril, even the richest of us get our little disorders.
What is yours?"
"I have been very ill, doctor; but it was not for that that I came
here."
"Then, madam, I do not understand why you do come here."
"You don't remember me? But I see that you don't." Her trembling
ceased when she began to speak. "Yet I remember you very well. You
have changed very little in four and twenty years."
"Indeed?"
"I heard some people at the hotel talking about you. They said you
were the first man in the world for some complaints. And I remembered
your name, and--and--I wondered if you were the man. And you are the
man."
"This is a very busy morning, madam. If you would kindly come to the
point at once. What do you want with me?"
"Doctor, I once had a child--a boy--the finest boy you ever saw."
"It is not unusual," the doctor began, but stopped, because the
woman's face was filled with a great trouble. "But pray go on, madam."
"I had a boy," she repeated, and burst into a flood of tears.
The doctor inclined his head. There is no other answer possible when a
complete stranger bursts into tears from some unknown cause.
"I lost the boy," she proceeded. "I--I--I lost the boy."
"He died?"
She shook her head. "No. But I lost my boy," she repeated. "My husband
deserted me. I was alone in a strange town. My relations had cast me
off because I married an actor. I was penniless, and I could find no
work. I sold the boy to save him from the workhouse, and to get the
money to follow my husband."
"Good Heavens! I remember! It was at Birmingham. Your husband's name
was--was----?"
"His professional name was Anthony."
"True--true. I remember it all. Yes--yes. The child was taken by a
lady. I remember it perfectly. And you are the deserted wife, and the
rich American is your husband?"
"No. I followed my husband from place to place; but I had to cross
the Atlantic. I came up with him in a town in a Western State. When I
found him, he got a divorce for incompatibility of temper. I lost both
my husband and my child, and neither of them died."
"Oh! And then--then you came back to look for the boy?"
"No; I married John Haveril. It was before he made his money."
"And now you come to me for information about the child, who must be a
man by this time?"
"I've never forgotten him, doctor. I never can forget him. Every day
since then I have thought of him. I said, 'Now he's six; now he's
ten; now he's twenty.' And I've tried to think of him as he grew up.
Always--always I have had the boy in my mind."
"Yes; but surely---- Perhaps you had no more children?"
"No; never any more. And last spring I fell ill--very ill. I was----"
"What was the matter?"
She told him the symptoms.
"Yes; nerves, of course. Fretting after the child."
"You know. The American doctor did not. Well, and while I was lying in
my dark room, I had a dream. It came again. It kept on coming. A dream
which told me that I should see my child again if I came to London. So
my husband brought me over."
"And you think that you will find your child?"
"I am sure that I shall. It is the only thing that I have prayed for.
Oh, you need not warn me about excitement; I know the danger. I don't
care so very much about living; but I want that dream to come true. I
must find the boy."
"You might as well look for him at the bottom of the sea. Why, my dear
lady, your boy was intended to take the place of a dead child; I am
sure he was. I know nothing at all about him. There is no clue--no
chance of finding the child."
"Do you know nothing?"
"Upon my honour, madam, I cannot even guess. The lady did not give me
her name, and I made no inquiries."
"Oh!" Her face fell. "I had such hopes. At the theatre, yesterday, I
saw a young man who might have been my son--tall, fair, blue-eyed. Oh,
do you know nothing?"
"Nothing at all," he replied decidedly. "And you came here," he went
on, "remembering my name, and wondering whether it was the same man?
Well, Mrs. Haveril, it _is_ the same man, and I remember the whole
business perfectly. Now go on."
"Where is that child, doctor?"
"I say that I don't know. I never did know. The lady gave me the
money, received the child at the railway station. You brought it to
the waiting-room. She had an Indian ayah with her, and the train
carried her off, baby and all. That is all I can tell you."
Mrs. Haveril sighed. "Is that all?"
"Madam, since such precautions were taken, it is very certain that no
one knew of the matter except the lady herself, and she will certainly
not tell, because, as I have already told you, the case looked like
substitution, and not adoption."
"What can I do, then?"
"You can do nothing. I would advise you to put the whole business out
of your head and forget it. You can do nothing."
"I cannot forget it: I wish I could. The wickedness of it! Oh, to give
away my own child only to run after that villain!"
"My dear lady, is it well to allow one single episode to ruin your
life? Consider your duty to your second husband. You should bring him
happiness, not anxiety. Consider your splendid fortune. If the papers
are true, you are worth many millions."
"The papers are quite true."
"You yourself are still comparatively young--not more than five and
forty, I should say. Time has dealt tenderly with you. When I knew
you, in Birmingham, you were a girl still, with a delicate, beautiful
face. How could your husband desert you? Your face is still delicate
and still beautiful. You become the silks and satins as you then
became your cottons. Resign yourself to twenty years more of happiness
and luxury. As for that weakness of yours, it will vanish if you avoid
excitement and agitation. If not--what did your American adviser warn
you?"
She rose reluctantly. "I cannot forget," she said. "I must go on
remembering. But the dream was true. It was _sent_, doctor; it was
sent. And the first step, I am sure and certain, was to lead me here."
* * * * *
After a solitary dinner, Sir Robert sat by the fire in his
dining-room. A novel lay on a chair beside him. Like many scientific
men, he was a great reader of novels. For the moment, he was simply
looking into the fire while his thoughts wandered this way and that.
He had seen about twenty patients in the course of the day, and
made, in consequence, forty guineas. He was perfectly satisfied
with the condition of his practice; he was under no anxiety about
his reputation: his mind was quite at ease concerning himself from
every point of view. He was thinking of this and of that--things
indifferent--when suddenly he saw before him, by the light of the four
candles on the table, the ghost of a date. The figures, in fact, stood
out, luminous, against the dark mahogany of his massive sideboard.
"December 2, 1872." He rubbed his eyes; the figures disappeared; he
lay back; the figures came again.
"It's a trick of memory," he said. "What have I done to-day that could
suggest this date?" The only important event of the day was the visit
of his old patient, and the reminder about a certain adoption in which
he had taken a part. Was the date connected with that event?
He got up and went into his consulting-room. There, on a shelf among
many companions, he found his note-book of 1874. He remembered. The
time was winter; it was early in the year. He turned over the pages;
he came to his notes. He read these words: "Child must have light
hair, blue eyes; age--must be born as nearly as possible to December
2, 1872, date of dead child's birth."
"That's the date, sure enough," he said. "And the brain's just been
working round to it, without my knowledge--of its own accord--started
by that poor woman. Humph!"
He put back the note-book, and returned to the dining-room.
He sat down by the fire again, crossed his feet, lay back, took up the
novel, and prepared for a comfortable hour.
In vain. That business of the adoption came back to him. The letters
on the page melted into dissolving views: he saw the poor woman crying
over the child, and clutching at the money which would save the boy
from the workhouse and carry her to her husband; he saw the Indian
ayah taking the child from him, and the lady bowing coldly from the
railway carriage. "A lady through and through," said the doctor.
The torn envelope was addressed to "Lady----" She was a woman of
title, then. He got up; on the bookshelves of the dining-room was a
Red Book.
"Now," he said, "if I go right through this book from beginning to
end, and if I should find the heir to something or Lord Somebody, born
on December 2, 1872, I shall probably come upon the victim of this
conspiracy--if there has been a conspiracy."
Luckily he began at the end, at the letter Z. Before long, under the
fourth letter from the end, he read as follows:--
"Woodroffe, Sir Humphrey Arundale, second baronet;
born at Poonah, December 2, 1872; son of Sir Humphrey
Armitage Woodroffe, first baronet, G.C.B., G.C.M.G.,
formerly Lieut-Governor of Bengal, by Lilias, daughter
of the fifteenth Lord Dunedin. Succeeded his father in
1888. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Is a captain in the Worcestershire Militia. Residence,
Crowleigh, Worcestershire, and Bryanston Square, London.
Clubs, 'Junior United,' 'Travellers,' and 'Oriental.'"
"That's my man!" cried the doctor, with some natural excitement. "I
believe I've found him. Then there _has_ been substitution, after all,
and not adoption! But, good Lord! it's Lady Woodroffe! Lady Woodroffe!
It's the writer and orator and leader! Oh, purity! Oh, temperance! Oh,
charity! What would the world say, if the world only knew?"
He threw the book aside and sat down. "I told that woman," he
reflected, "that I knew nothing about the lady who carried off her
child. Well, I did not know then. But I do know now. Must I tell her?
Why disturb things? She can never find out. Let her go back to her
adopted land. And as for this--this substitution--I promised solemnly
that I would not speak about the business, even if I were to chance
upon that lady, without her leave. My dear Mrs. Haveril, go home to
America and forget the boy who is now the second baronet. Go home; it
will be best for your health. 'The first step,' she said. Strange! The
first step. But not for you, dear lady, not for you."
CHAPTER V.
GUEST NIGHT.
"I am glad to see you again, Cousin Humphrey."
It was two months after the meeting in the churchyard. Hilarie's house
was full; her guests overflowed into the village. It was, in fact, the
first guest night of the season.
"This is the beginning of Term," she said. "You shall make
acquaintance with the college."
"I have heard something about your college." He looked round the room,
which was the lady's bower, as if in search of some one.
"You can take me in, and I will tell you more about it during dinner."
There were more than the house-party. The place is within an hour of
Victoria, and a good many friends of the students had come out by
train to see what the college was like; what it meant; and if it had
come to stay.
A new social experiment always draws. First, it attracts the social
wobblers who continually run after the last new gospel. Then it
attracts those who watch social experiments from the outside. Thirdly,
it attracts the New Woman herself; those who are curious about the
New Woman; and those who hate the New Woman. Lastly, it attracts
those who are always in search of material for "copy." For all these
reasons, the guests present wore that expression of countenance
called, by their friends, "thoughtful;" it should rather be called
"uncertain." They looked about curiously, as if to find traces of
the experiment in the furniture, on the walls, in the students'
dresses; they listened in order to catch the note of the experiment
in the air; they cast suspicious looks to right and to left, as
expecting something to be sprung upon them. To be invited at all was
to make them realize that they were in the very van and forefront of
contemporary intellect; it also imposed upon them the difficult task
of pronouncing a judgment without a "lead." Now, without a lead these
philosophers are uncertain. Hence the aspect and appearance of the
guests this evening. They did not know what to think or what to say of
the college--no one had yet given them a lead; they were uncertain,
and they would be expected to pronounce a judgment.
The oracle who waits for a "lead" is common among us; he takes himself
seriously; he is said by his friends to have "made the most" of
himself: not that he has distinguished himself in any way, but he has
made the best out of poor materials, and he would have made himself a
good deal bigger and better had the materials been richer. As it is,
he reads all the thoughtful papers in all the magazines; he writes
thoughtful papers of his own, which he finds a difficulty in placing;
he sometimes gets letters into the papers giving reasons why he,
being a very little man, cannot agree with some great man. This makes
his chin to stick out. He even contrives to get people to read his
letters, as if it matters a brass farthing whether he agrees or does
not agree. Over a new social experiment, once he has got a "lead,"
this oracle is perfectly happy.
"We will talk presently," said Hilarie, turning to welcome new guests.
Humphrey stepped aside, and looked on while the room filled up. The
students, he remarked, who were all dressed in white, with ribbons
of their own individual choice, appeared to be a cheerful company of
damsels. To be sure, cheerfulness belongs to their time of life, and
to the profession of student, about which there should cling a certain
lawless joyousness--a buoyancy not found in the domestic circle, a
touch of the barrack, something of the camp, because they are recruits
in the armies that fight against ignorance and prejudice. These
white-robed students were full of cheerfulness, which bubbled over in
laughter and happy faces. One is told that in some colleges there are
students entirely given over to their studies, who wear dowdy dresses,
who push back their hair anyhow behind their spectacles, who present
faces of more than possible thoughtfulness. Here there were none such;
none were oppressed with study.
Rightly considered, every college for young persons should be
interesting. We have forgotten that there used formerly to be colleges
for old persons; for priests, as Jesus Commons and the Papey on London
Wall; for physicians; for surgeons; for serjeants-at-law; for debtors,
as the Fleet; for the decayed, as an almshouse; for criminals,
as Newgate; for paupers, as the workhouse. A college for girls is
naturally more interesting than one for young men: first, because
they are girls; next, because the male college contains so much that
is disquieting,--ambition and impatience, with effort; strenuous
endeavour to conciliate Fame, a goddess who presents to all comers
at first a deaf ear, eyes that see nothing, and a trumpet silently
dangling at her wrist; the resolution to compel Fortune, even against
her will, to turn round that wheel which is to bear them up aloft.
The strength of these ambitions stimulates the air--you may note this
effect in any of the courts at Cambridge. One remembers, also, that in
most cases Fame, however persistently wooed, continues to dangle the
silent trumpet; while Fortune, however passionately invoked, refuses
to turn the wheel; and that the resolution and determination of the
petitioner go for nothing. One observes, also, that the courts of
the colleges are paved with shattered resolutions, which make a much
better pavement than the finest granite. One remembers, also, that
there are found in the young man's college the Prig and the Smug, the
Wallower, the Sloth, the Creeping Thing, and the Contented Creature.
But pass across the road to the Woman's College. Heavens! what
possibilities are there! What ambitions are hers! For her field is not
man's field, though some pretend. Not hers to direct the throbbing
engine, and make that thing of steel a thing of intelligence; not hers
to command a fleet; not hers to make the laws. She does not construct
lighthouses; she does not create new sciences; she does not advance
the old; she never invents, nor creates, nor advances; she receives,
she adapts, she distributes. How great are her possibilities! Though
she neither creates nor invents, she may become a queen of song,
a queen of the stage, a great painter, a great novelist, a great
poet--great at artistic work of every kind. Or, again, while her
brother is slowly and painfully working his way up, so that he will
become a Q.C. at forty, a Judge at sixty, the girl steps at once by
marriage into a position that dazzles her friends, and becomes a queen
of society, a patron of Art, a power in politics. Far be it from me to
suppose that the maidens of any college dream of possibilities such
as these. Perhaps, however, the possibilities of maidenhood are never
quite forgotten. There is another possibility also. Every great man
has a mother. Do maidens ever dream of the supreme happiness of having
a great man for a son? Which would a woman prefer, the greatest honour
and glory and distinction ever won by woman for herself, or to be the
mother of a Tennyson, a Gordon, a Huxley?
"Now, my cousin," said Hilarie. "The dinner is served."
So two by two they went into the old hall. It had been decorated
since the summer. The lower part was covered with tapestry; the upper
part was hung with armour and old weapons. There were also portraits,
imaginary and otherwise, of women wise and women famous. Queen
Elizabeth was there, Joan of Arc was there, George Sand, George Eliot,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Austen, Grace Darling, Rosa Bonheur,
and many others. The male observer remarked, with a sense of omission,
the absence of those queens of beauty whose lamentable lives make
history so profoundly interesting. Where were Rosamond, Agnes Sorel,
La Vallière, Nell Gwynne? Alas! they were not admitted.
"The house," said the president, taking her seat, "is much larger than
it looks. With the solar and the lady's bower and the tower, we have
arranged dormitories for forty and half a dozen sitting-rooms, besides
this hall, which is used all day long."
The musicians' gallery had been rebuilt and painted. It contained
an organ now and a piano, besides room for an orchestra. Six of
the students were sitting there with violins and a harp, ready to
discourse soft music during the banquet. There were three tables
running down the hall, with the high table, and all were filled with
an animated, joyous crowd of guests and residents.
"I want to interest you in my college," Hilarie began, when they were
seated.
Humphrey examined the menu. He observed that it was an artistic
attempt--an intelligent effort at a harmony. If only the execution
should prove equal to the conception!
"At present, of course, we are only beginning. What are you yourself
doing, however?"
"I follow--humbly--Art. There is nothing else. I paint, I write verse,
I compose."
"Do you exhibit?"
"Exhibit? Court the empty praises or the empty sneers of an ignorant
press? Never! I show my pictures to my friends. We confide our work
to each other."
Hilarie smiled, and murmured something inaudible.
"And we keep the outer world outside. You, I fear"--he looked down the
room--"admit the outer world. You lose a great deal. For instance, if
this mob was out of your lovely house, I might bring my friends. It
would be an ideal place for our pictures and our music, and for the
acting of our plays."
"I fear the mob must remain." Hilarie began to doubt whether her
college would appeal, after all, to this young man.
"What we should aim at in life," the artist continued, "is Art without
Humanity."
"I should have said that Humanity is the basis of all Art."
Her cousin shook his head. "Not true Art--that is bodiless. I fear you
do not yet belong to us."
"No; I belong to these girls, who are anything but bodiless."
"Your college, I take it, has something to do with helping people?"
"Certainly."
"My own view is that you cannot help people. You may give them things,
but you only make them want more. People have got to help themselves."
"Did you help yourself?"
"Oh, I am born to what my forefathers acquired. As for these girls, to
whom you are giving things, you will only make them discontented."
The president of the college looked round the hall. There were forty
white frocks encasing as many girls, students at her college, and as
many guests. There was a cheerful ripple of talk; one thought of a
dancing sea in the sunlight. There were outbursts of laughter--light,
musical; one thought of the white crests of the waves. In the
music-gallery the girls played softly and continuously; one thought
of the singing of birds in the coppice. The dinner was already half
finished. There is a solid simplicity about these guest nights. A
short dinner, with jellies, ices, and puddings, most commends itself
to the feminine heart.
"Let me tell you my design, at least. I saw that in this revolution
of society, going on so rapidly around us, all classes of women are
rushing into work."
"A woman who works ceases to be a woman," Humphrey spoke and shuddered.
"I think of my great-grandmother Hilarie, wife of Robert, who lies
buried in our church. She sat with her maids in the lady's bower and
embroidered. She administered everything--the food and the drink and
the raiment. She made them all behave with decency. She brought up the
children, and taught them right and wrong. Above all, she civilized.
To-day, as yesterday and to-morrow and always, it is the duty of woman
to civilize. She is the everlasting priestess. This is therefore a
theological college."
Her cheek flushed, her eye brightened. She turned her head, as if
suspecting that she had said too much. Her cousin seemed not to have
heard; he was, in fact, absorbed in partridge.
"Now that all women want to work, will they continue to civilize?
I know not yet how things may go. They all want to work. They try
to work, whether they are fit for it or not. They take men's work
at a quarter the pay. I know not how it will end. They turn the men
adrift; they drive them out of the country, and then congratulate
themselves--poor fools! And for themselves, I chiefly dread their
hardening. The woman who tries to turn herself into a man is a
creature terrible--unnatural. I know the ideal woman of the past. I
cannot find the ideal woman of the present."
"There isn't any."
"If we surrender the sacerdotal functions, what have we in exchange?"
"I don't know." The manner meant, "I don't care;" but Hilarie hardly
observed the manner.
"I cannot alter the conditions, cousin. That is quite true. But there
are some things which can be done."
Hilarie went on, at this point, to tell a story, for one who could
read between the lines--which her cousin certainly could not--of a
girl dominated partly by a sense of responsibility and duty; one
who, being rich, must do something with her wealth, partly by that
passion for power which is developed in some hearts--not all--by
the possession of wealth; and partly by a deep sympathy with the
sufferings and sorrows of her impecunious sisters.
There are always, as we know, at every moment of life, two courses
open to us--the right and the wrong; or, if the choice is not so
elementary, the better and the worse. But there comes to those of the
better sort one supreme moment when we seem to choose the line which
will lead to honour, or the line which will lead to obscurity. To
the common sort the choice is only apparent, not real; men and women
are pushed, pulled, dragged, shoved, either in the way of fortune or
in the way of failure, by circumstances and conditions beyond our
control. To them there is no free will. When the time of repentance
arrives, we think that we choose freely. The majority cannot choose;
their lives are ordered for them, with their sins and their follies.
They might choose, but they are not able; they cannot see before them
or around them. A fog lies about their steps; they stumble along with
the multitude, getting now and then a pleasant bit, now and then a
thorny bit. Some walk delicately along a narrow way, which is grassy
and flowery, where the babbling brooks run with champagne, and the
spicy breezes are laden with the fragrance of melons, peaches, and
roast lamb. Some march and stagger along the broad way, thirsty and
weary, where there is no refreshment of brooks or of breezes. It is an
unequal world.
Such a supreme moment came to Hilarie after long consideration.
"I thought," she explained, "that if the Archbishop and his brethren
were living to-day, they would do something for the women who work."
Her cousin slowly drank a glass of champagne. "Yes?" he asked, without
much affectation of interest.
"I thought that if the Archbishop were living, he would like to found
a college--not for priests, nor for old villagers, but for girls; not
to teach anything, but to give them a place where they can go and
stay. In this college we do not teach anything. There are no lectures.
We need not do any work unless we please. Every girl does exactly what
she pleases: some study, some paint--not after your school, I fear;
some practise music; in fact, they do just what they please. I believe
that at least a dozen are writing novels, two or three are writing
verse, one or two are working for examinations. In the evening we
amuse ourselves."
"You give them all this?"
"Certainly. They come here whenever they please, and they can stay
here for three months, or more if there is necessity. In three words,
my cousin, I maintain an establishment of forty guests, and I fear I
shall have to increase the number."
"And what's the good of it?"
"When the Archbishop built his school, he argued, first, that
education is good even for the swineherd; next, that with education
follow manners; and, thirdly, that it was good for himself to give.
So, you see, it is good for the girls to get the rest and quiet;
living thus all together in a college raises their standard of
thought and manners; and, thirdly, it is good for me, as it was the
Archbishop, to give."
"I do not feel myself any call to give anybody anything."
"Meantime, I keep before myself the great function of woman. She is, I
say, the eternal priestess. She compels men into ways of gentleness
and courtesy; she inspires great thoughts. By way of love she leads to
the upper heights. But you do not feel these things."
"I do not, I confess."
"If the girls must work, I want them ever to keep before themselves
the task laid upon them. They have hitherto civilized man from the
home; they must now civilize him from the workshop. That, my cousin,
is the meaning of this college."
"You've got some rather pretty girls in the place," said Humphrey.
"Oh, pretty! What has that to do with it?"
The music ceased. There was a general lull. The guests all leaned back
in their chairs. The president knocked with her ivory hammer, and they
all returned to the lady's bower.
In the drawing-room Humphrey left the president to the people who
pressed in upon her, and wandered round the room, looking, apparently,
for some one. Presently he discovered, surrounded by a company of
men, the girl who was called Molly. She, too, was dressed in white,
and wore a cherry-coloured ribbon round her neck; a dainty damsel she
looked, conspicuous for this lovely quality of daintiness among them
all. At sight of her the young man coloured, and his eye brightened;
then his face clouded. However, he made his way to her. She stepped
out of the circle and gave him her hand.
"It is a week and more," he whispered, "since I have seen you. Why not
say at once that you don't care about it any longer?"
"You are welcome to the college, Sir Humphrey," she replied aloud.
"Confess that it is a pretty sight. The president was talking to you
about it all dinner-time. I hope that you are interested."
"I think it is all tomfoolery," he replied ungraciously; "and a waste
of good money too."
"Hilarie wants money to make happiness. You do not look in the best of
tempers, Humphrey."
"I am not. I couldn't get enough to drink, and I have had to listen to
a lot of stuff about women and priestesses."
"Good stuff should not be thrown away, should it? Like good pearls."
"I want to talk to you--away from this rabble. Where can we go?"
"I will take you over the college." She led the way into the library,
a retired place, where she sat down. "Do you ask how I am getting on?"
"No, I don't." He remained standing. "You'll never go on the stage
with my consent."
"We shall see." By her quick dancing eye, by her mobile lips, by
the brightness of her quaint, attractive face, which looked as if
it could be drawn into shapes like an india-rubber face, she belied
his prophecy. "Besides, Hilarie wants me to become a tragic actress.
Please remember, once more, Humphrey, that what Hilarie wishes I must
do. I owe everything to Hilarie--everything."
"You drive me mad with your perverseness, Molly."
"I am going to please myself. Please understand that, even if I were
engaged to you, I would keep my independence. If you don't like that,
take back your offer. Take it back at once." She held out both her
hands, as if she was carrying it about.
"You know I can't. Molly, I love you too much, though you are a little
devil."
"Then let me alone. If one is born in a theatre, one belongs to a
theatre. I would rather be born in a theatre than in a West End
square. Humphrey, you make me sorry that I ever listened to you."
"Well, go and listen to that fiddler fellow who calls you Molly. Curse
his impudence!"
"Oh, if you had been only born differently! You belong to the people
who are all alike. You sit in the stalls in a row, as if you were made
after the same pattern; you expect the same jokes; you take the same
too much champagne; you are like the pebbles of the seashore, all
rounded alike."
"Well, what would you have?"
"The actors and show folk--my folk--are all different. As for kind
hearts, how can you know, with your tables spread every day, and your
champagne running like water? There's no charity where there's no
poverty."
"I don't pretend to any charity."
"It is a dreadful thing to be born rich. You might have been so
different if you had had nothing."
"Then you wouldn't have listened to me."
"Thank you. Listening doesn't mean consenting."
"You cannot withdraw. You are promised to me."
"Only on conditions. You want me to be engaged secretly. Well, I
won't. You want me to marry you secretly. Well, I won't."
"You are engaged to me."
"I am not. And I don't think now that I ever shall be. It flattered
me at first, having a man in your position following around. I should
like to be 'my lady.' But I can't see any happiness in it. You belong
to a different world, not to my world."
"I will lift you into my world."
"It looks more like tumbling down than getting lifted up. There is
still time, however, to back out. If you dare to maintain that I ever
said 'Yes,' I'll say 'No' on the spot. There!"
This sweet and loving conversation explains itself. Every one will
understand it. The girl lived in a boarding-house, where she took
lessons from an old actress in preparation for the stage. From time to
time she went to stay with her friend--her benefactress--who had found
her, after her father's death, penniless. At her country house she
met, as we have seen, her old friend Dick, and the other cousin. The
second meeting, outside the boarding-house, which the latter called,
and she believed to be, accidental, led to other meetings. They were
attended by the customary results; that is, by an ardent declaration
of love. The girl was flattered by the attentions of a young man of
position and apparent wealth. She listened to the tale. She found,
presently, that her lover was not in every respect what a girl expects
in a lover. His ideas of love were not hers. He turned out to be
jealous, but that might prove the depth and sincerity of his love;
suspicious, which argued a want of trust in her; ashamed to introduce
her to his own people; anxious to be engaged first and married next,
in secrecy; avowedly selfish, worshipping false gods in the matter
of art and science; and, worst of all, ill-tempered, and boorish in
his ill temper. Lastly, she was, at this stage, rapidly making the
discovery that not even for a title and a carriage and a West End
square ought she to marry a man she was unable to respect.
"We will now go back to the lady's bower," she said. "This talk,
Humphrey, will have to last a long while."
CHAPTER VI.
THE OLD LOVER.
"My dear Dick!" Molly ran into the dining-room of her dingy
boarding-house, which was also the reception-room for visitors. "At
last! I thought you were never coming to see me again."
"It has been a long summer. I only came home last night."
"Sit down, and let me look at you." She put him in a chair, and turned
his face to the light, familiarly holding it by the chin. "You look
very well, Dick. You are browned by the summer's sun, that's all."
She released his chin, and lightly boxed his ears. They had always
been on very friendly terms, these two.
"Well, Dick, tell me about your summer. Has it been prosperous? Have
you had adventures?" She laughed, because she knew very well the kind
of adventures that this young man desired.
"Adventures come to the adventurous, Molly."
"Oh, how I envied you that day when you turned up among the tombs,
covered all over with dust, looking so fit and going so free! If I
were only a man, to go off with you on the tramp!"
"I wish you were, Molly. We would go off together. I've often thought
of it. You should carry a mandoline; I would stick to the fiddle. We
would take a room at the inn, and have a little show. You should dance
and sing and twang the mandoline. I should play the fiddle and do the
patter. We should have a rare time, Molly."
"We should, oh, we should! Do you remember that time when daddy let me
go with him, and you came too?"
"I do. I remember how charming you looked, even then! You were about
fourteen; you wore a red flannel cap. You used to take off your shoes
and stockings whenever we came to a brook, and wade in it with your
pretty bare feet."
"And we rested on the trunks of trees in the woods, and had dinner in
the open. And you talked to all the gipsies in their own language.
And one night we sat round their fire, and had some of their stew
for supper. Oh! And we listened to the birds, and made nosegays of
honeysuckle. And the people came to the inn at night while you played
the fiddle, and daddy sang comic songs and did conjuring tricks. Oh,
what a time it was!"
"And you danced. Don't forget your dance, Molly. I taught you that
dance."
The girl laughed merrily. Then she threw herself into the attitude
common to all dancing-girls in all ages and all countries--the arms
held out and the foot pointed.
"I haven't forgotten it, Dicky. I only wish I could forget it." She
sighed. "It would be better for me if I could."
"If we _could_ go away together, Molly!" He took her hand and held it.
"Don't, Dick, don't! You make me feel a longing for the road and the
country."
"There's nothing like it, Molly darlin', nothing! When the summer
comes, I'm off. All the winter I live in a lonely flat, and am
respectable."
"As respectable as you can be, Dick."
"Well, I put on dress clothes and get engagements. I don't mind, so
that in summer I can be a tramp and a rogue and a vagabond."
"Not a rogue, Dick."
"I was born behind the scenes in a circus at St. Louis before my
worthy parent ran away from his wife. It's in the blood, I suppose. I
don't care, Molly, what they say." He sprang to his feet, and began to
walk about. "There is no life like it. We don't want money; we don't
try to be gentlefolk. We're not cooped up in cages. All we've got to
do is to amuse the people. We're not stupid; we're not dull. We're
not selfish; we are contented with a little. We're never tired of it.
We're always trying some new business. My poor Molly, you're out of
it. Pity, pity!" He sat down again, shaking his head. "And you born to
it--actually born to it!"
"Well, I'm to have the next best thing to it. I'm to be an actress, at
any rate."
"An actress! Well, that's something. Tell me about it, Molly."
"A serious actress--a tragic actress. It's all settled. I'm to show
the world the real inwardness of Shakespeare. I'm to be the light and
lamp of all other actresses. I'm to be another Siddons."
"You another Siddons? Oh, Molly!" He laughed, but not convincingly.
The part of the scoffer was new to him. "You, with that face, with
those lips, with those eyes? My child, you might be another Nelly
Farren, but never another Siddons."
The girl laughed too; but only for a moment. Then she became serious.
"It's got to be, Dick. Don't tempt me. Don't make me unhappy. It would
grieve Hilarie awfully if I failed or changed my mind--which is her
mind."
"My cousin Hilarie hasn't the complete disposal of your life, has she?"
"She ought to have, because she saved my life. What should I have
done, Dick, when daddy died and left me without a penny? There are
relations about, I dare say; but I don't know where. My only chance
was to get in somewhere. You were away. What could I do? Eighteenpence
a night to go on----"
"No, no; not with that crew, Molly."
"There Hilarie found me. And she thinks she is doing the best thing in
the world for me when she gets me taught to be a tragedy queen."
"You shall be a great actress, Molly. You shall rake in fifty pounds a
week, and you shall wear long chains of diamonds, if you like."
"I've got ambition enough, if that counts for anything. I like that
part of it where the great actress sweeps across the stage, with all
the people shouting and clapping. Why, when daddy took me to the
pit, and I used to watch the leading lady marching majestically--like
this--with her long train, sweeping it back--so--I resolved to be an
actress. And when she spoke the lines, I didn't care twopence about
the sense, if they had any; I was thinking all the time how grand she
looked, and how splendid it must be to have all the world in love with
you."
"You shall have it, Molly--if you like, that is. You were always ready
to think about fellows being in love with you, were you not?"
"Why not? The stories and the plays and the songs are all about love.
A girl can't help wanting all the world to be in love with her. At the
theatre I used to see love and admiration on every man's face. The
women's faces were not so full of love, I noticed."
"Oh, you noticed that, did you? At so early an age? Wonderful!"
"And now, Dick, now, you see, I've found out that it means work; and
after all the work it may mean failure. Sometimes I think--Dick, I
don't mind saying everything to you--girls who are beautiful--like me,
in my way--were never intended to work; they were to be rewarded for
their good looks by--you know--the prince, Dick."
"Sometimes it comes off," Dick replied thoughtfully. "There was
Claribel Winthrop--Jane Perks her real name was--in one of my country
companies; she married a young lord. But she worked desperately hard
for it. All of us looked on and backed her up. It might come off that
way; but I should be sorry, Molly. You're born for better things; you
ought to have an empty purse."
"What should you say, Dick, if it was to come off that way?"
"Is there a young lord, then? Already?" He changed colour.
"He isn't a lord, but he is not far off, Dick; and I can have him if I
like."
"What sort of a fellow, Molly? Oh, be very careful. It is the devil
and all if he isn't the right sort. Do you like him?" His face twisted
as if he could not find it in his heart to like him.
"He's a baronet. He's young. He wants to conceal things. His mother
doesn't like show folk. He thinks most people are cads. He's rich."
"You don't mean to say it's that cousin of mine--not Sir Humphrey?"
She nodded her head. "You don't like him, I know. I'm afraid he's got
a temper, and I don't know if I shall be able to put up with him."
"You haven't promised, have you?"
"He says I have. But I haven't, really. I am always reminding him that
there is still time to draw back. But, Dick, think! To have plenty of
money! To be independent!"
Dick groaned. "It's the greatest temptation in the world. Eve's apple
was made of gold, and after she'd got it she couldn't eat it. You
think of that, Molly. You can't eat a golden apple. Now, I could give
you a real delicious Ribstone pippin." He sat down beside her, and
took her hand again. "It's very serious, my dear." It is the manner
of the stage to address the ladies so. It means nothing. Whether it
is also the manner to take their hands, I know not. "You must be very
careful, Molly. Will my other cousin, Hilarie, advise?"
"It's a secret, so far. But don't think about it, Dick. I've got to
please Hilarie first. The young man will have to be considered next."
"Well, if there's nothing fixed---- Molly, I don't like the fellow, I
own. I don't like any of the lot who talk about outsiders and cads, as
if they were a different order. Still, if it makes you happy--Molly,
I swear there's nothing I wouldn't consent to if it would make you
happy." The tears stood in his eyes.
"My dear Dick," she said. "There's nobody cares for me so much as
you." And the tears stood in her eyes as well.
The young man let go her hand, and stood up. "That's enough, Molly--so
long as we understand. Now tell me about the studies. Are you really
working?"
"Really working. But, oh, Dick, my trouble is that the harder I work
the more I feel as if it isn't there. I do exactly what I am told to
do, and it doesn't come off."
"But when you used to sing and dance----"
"Oh, anybody could make people laugh."
The actor groaned. "She says--anybody! And she can do it! And they put
her into tragedy!"
"Whenever I try to feel the emotion myself, it vanishes, and I can
only feel myself in white satin, with a long train sweeping to the
back of the stage, and all the house in love with me."
"This is bad; this is very bad, Molly."
"See, here, Dick, I'm telling you all my troubles. I am studying the
part of Desdemona--you know, Desdemona who married a black man. How
could she?--and of course he was jealous. I've got to show all kinds
of emotion before that beast of a husband kills me."
"It's a fine part--none finer. Once I saw it played magnificently.
She was in a travelling company, and she died of typhoid, poor thing!
Yes, I can see her now." He acted as he spoke. "She was full of
forebodings; her husband was cold; her distress of mind was shown in
the way she took up trifles, and put them down again; she spoke she
knew not what, and sang snatches of song; in her eyes stood tears; her
voice trembled; she moved about uneasily; she clutched at her dress in
agitation.
"'The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow.'"
"Why," cried the girl, "you make me feel it--you--only with talking
about it! And I--alas! Have I any feeling in me at all, Dick?"
"Oh yes, it's there--it's there all right. There's tragedy in the most
unpromising materials, if you know how to get at it. I think a woman's
got to be in love first. It's a very fine thing for an actress to fall
in love--the real thing, I mean. Then comes jealousy, of course. And
after that, all the real tragedy emotions."
"Oh, love!" the girl repeated with scorn.
"Try again now; you know the words."
Molly began to repeat the lines--
"My mother had a maid called Barbara;
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad,
And forsook her; she had a song of 'Willow.'"
She declaimed these lines with certain gestures which had been taught
her. She broke off, leaving the rest unfinished.
The effect was wooden. There was no pity, no sorrow, no foreboding in
the lines at all. Dick shook his head.
"What am I to say to Hilarie?" she asked.
Dick passed his fingers through his hair. Then he sat down again, and
began to laugh--laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
"You a tragedy queen!" he said. "Not even if you were over head and
ears in love. Now, on the other hand, if I had my fiddle in my hand,
and were to play--so--that air which you remember"--he put out his
legs straight and sat upright, and pretended the conduct of a fiddle
and bow--"could you dance, do you think, as you used to dance two
years ago?"
She stood before him, seeming to listen. Then she gently moved her
head as if touched by the music. Then she raised her arms and began to
dance, with such ease and grace and lightness as can only belong to
the dancer born.
"Thank you, Molly." He stood up as if the music was over. "We shall
confer further upon this point--and other points. When may I come
again to visit Miss Molly Pennefather?"
He caught her head in his hands and kissed her gaily on her
forehead--after all, he had no more manners than can be expected of a
tramp--and vanished.
"If Dick could only play 'Desdemona'!" she murmured, looking after him
at the closed door. "Why, he actually _looked_ the part. I suppose
he has been in love. If I could only do it so!" She imitated his
gestures, and broke out into singing--
"The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow."
"No," she said; "it won't do. I don't feel a bit like Desdemona. I
am only myself, and I am filled with the most unholy longing for
money--for riches, for filthy lucre, which we are told to despise."
Her eyes fell upon a newspaper, folded and lying on the floor. It had
probably dropped out of Dick's pocket. She took it up mechanically,
and opened it, expecting nothing. The sheet was one of the gossipy
papers of the day, full of personal paragraphs. She glanced at it,
thinking of the paragraphs about herself and her grand success, which
would probably never appear, unless she could transform herself.
Presently her eye caught the word "millionaire," and she read--
"Among the _nouveaux riches_--the millionaires of the
West--we must not, as Englishmen, forget to enumerate Mr.
John Haveril, who has made his money partly by transactions
in silver-mines, and partly by the sudden creation of a
town on his own lands. He is said to be worth no more than
two or three millions sterling, so that he is not in the
very front rank of American rich men. Still, there is a
good deal of spending, even in so moderate a fortune. Mr.
Haveril is by birth an Englishman and a Yorkshireman. He
was born about sixty years ago, and emigrated about the
year '55. His wife is also of English origin, having been
born at Hackney. Her maiden name was Alice Pennefather."
Molly looked up in bewilderment. "There can't be two people of that
name!" she said. She went on with the paper--
"They have no children to inherit their wealth. They have
arrived in London, and have taken rooms at the Hôtel
Métropole."
That was all. She put the paper on the table. "Alice Pennefather!
Why, she must be the Alice who disappeared--Dad's first cousin! But
Alice married an actor named Anthony; Dad gave her away. He often
wondered what had become of her. This Mr. Haveril is a second husband,
I suppose. And now she's a millionairess! I think I might go and call
upon her at the Hôtel Métropole. I will."
CHAPTER VII.
THE MASTER OF THE SITUATION.
The lady looked at the card. "Sir Richard Steele, M.D., F.R.S.," and
in the corner, "245, Harley Street, W."
"Who is Sir Richard Steele?"
Her visitor came upstairs. He stood before her and bowed.
"I was right," he said. "I remember your face perfectly. But you do
not appear to remember me, Lady Woodroffe."
"Indeed, Sir Richard. But if you will refresh my memory----"
"I have to recall to you an incident in your life which happened four
and twenty years ago."
"That is a long time ago." So far she suspected nothing.
"Yes; but you cannot have forgotten it. I have called, Lady Woodroffe,
against my wish, to remind you of a certain adoption of a child a few
days after the death of your own boy, at Birmingham, just about four
and twenty years ago. It is impossible that you have forgotten the
incident. I see that you have not." For the suddenness of the thing
fell upon her like a paralytic stroke. She sat motionless, with parted
lips and staring eyes. "You have not forgotten it," he repeated.
"Sir," she said, forcing herself to speak, "you talk of things of
which I know nothing. What child? What adoption? Why do you come here
with such a story?"
"Let me remind you again. You were passing through Birmingham with
your child and an Indian ayah. The child was taken ill, and died. You
called at my surgery--I was then a small general practitioner in a
poor quarter of Birmingham--you asked me if I could procure a child
for adoption. I understood that it was, perhaps, for consolation; I
guessed that it was, perhaps, for substitution. You told me that the
child was to have light hair and blue eyes; and for age it was to
correspond tolerably nearly with that of your own lost child, whose
birth-date you gave me--December the 2nd, 1872. I have the date in my
note-book. Now do you remember anything about it?"
"Nothing," she replied, with pale face and set lips; "nothing."
"I found you out, only yesterday, by means of this date. I was
reminded of the date, and I suspected substitution. I therefore looked
through the Red Book, and I came to the name of the present baronet.
He was born, it is stated, on December 2, 1872--the exact date on
which your own child was born. I looked out your address; I am here.
I remember you perfectly. And I now find that my suspicions were
correct."
"Do you accuse me of substituting a strange child for my own?" She
spoke in words of indignation, but in a voice of terror.
"I merely state what happened--a transaction in which I took part.
That is all, so far."
"Where is your proof? I deny everything. Prove what you say."
"It is very easy. I recognize in you the lady who conducted the
business with me. I took the child myself to the railway station. I
gave the child to the ayah, who took it to the carriage in which you
were sitting."
"Proof! What kind of proof is that? You look in the Red Book, you find
a date, and you make up a story."
"A man in my position does not make up stories. I am no longer a
general practitioner; I am one of the leaders of my profession. I am
no longer either obscure or poor. I have nothing whatever to gain by
telling this story."
"Then, sir, why do you come to me with it at all?"
"Partly out of curiosity. I was curious to ascertain whether chance
had directed me to the right quarter. I am satisfied on that score.
Partly I came in order to warn you that the story may possibly be
brought to light."
"How? how?"
"Since you are not concerned, it doesn't matter, does it? I may as
well go." But he did not move from his chair.
"So far as I am concerned, there is no truth in it."
"In that case, I can do nothing except to tell the person who is
inquiring what I know. I can send her to you. Consider again,
if you please. There is no reason for me to hide my share in the
transaction--not the least. And if you continue to declare that you
are not the purchaser of the baby, I am freed from the promise I made
at the time, to maintain silence until you yourself shall think fit to
release me from my promise."
"Who is inquiring, then?"
"Is the story true?"
The lady hesitated; she quailed. The physician looked her in the face
with eyes of authority. His voice was gentle, but his words were
strong.
"You must confess," he said, "or I shall leave you. If you continue
to deny the fact, I repeat that I shall feel myself absolved from my
promise."
"It is true," she murmured, and buried her face in her hands.
"I only wanted the confirmation from your own lips. Now, Lady
Woodroffe, be under no anxiety. I hope that this is the only occasion
on which we shall discuss a subject naturally painful to you."
She sat without reply, abashed and humiliated.
"I remember," he said, "speaking to you then on the subject of
heredity. Let me ask you if the boy has turned out well?"
"No. He turned out badly."
"About his qualities, now. His father was artistic in a way. He could
sing, play, and act."
"This boy plays pretty well; he makes things which he calls songs,
and smudges which he calls paintings. He is a prig of bad art, and
consorts with other young prigs."
"His mother was, I remember, tenacious, honest, and careful."
"The boy is obstinate and ill-conditioned."
"Her qualities in excess. His father was handsome, selfish, and
unprincipled."
"The boy is also handsome, selfish, and unprincipled."
"Humph! You speak bitterly, Lady Woodroffe."
"You know what I am, what I write, what I advocate."
"The whole world knows that."
"Imagine, then, what I suffer daily. Oh, how strong must be the force
of hereditary vice when it breaks out after such an education!"
"It should make you a little more lenient, Lady Woodroffe. Your last
papers on the exceeding wickedness of man would be less severe if you
looked at home."
"This is my punishment. I must bear it till I die. But"--she turned
sharply on her accomplice--"he must remain where he is. There must be
no scandal. I cannot face a scandal. But for that he should have gone,
long ago, back to his native kennel."
"Let him remain. No one but you can turn him out."
"Doctor--Sir Richard--can I really trust you?"
"Madam, hundreds of people trust me. I am a father confessor. I know
all the little family secrets. This is only one secret the more. It
is interesting to me, I confess, partly because I was concerned in
the business, and partly because I was curious to know what kind of
man would emerge from this boy's birth, and his education, and the
general conditions of his life."
"I may rely upon that promise?"
The doctor spread out his hands. "Other people do rely upon my
secrecy: why not you?"
"And you will not tell the boy? For that matter, if you tell him, I
would just as soon that you told the whole world."
"I have long since promised that I would reveal the matter to no one
unless you gave me leave."
She sighed. She leaned her head upon her hand. She sighed again.
"Let it be so," she said. "Consider me, then, as one of your patients.
Let me come to you with this trouble of mine, which disturbs me night
and day. It is not repentance, because I would do it again and again
to shield that good and great man, my late husband, from pain. No; it
is not repentance; it is fear of being found out. It is not the dread
of seeing this young man turned out of the position he holds--I care
nothing about him--it is fear of being found out myself."
"Madam, you can never be found out. There is only one person who knows
the lady in question, and that is myself. I have only to continue
the attitude which, till yesterday, was literally true--that I knew
nothing about the lady, neither her name, nor her place of residence,
nor anything at all--and you are perfectly safe. No one can find out
the fact; no one even can suspect it."
"How has the question arisen, then? What do you mean by inquirers?"
"There is only one inquirer at present. She is certainly an important
inquirer, but she is only one."
"She! Who is it?"
"The mother of the child."
"Quite a common creature, was she not?"
"I don't know what you call common; say undistinguished, born in the
lower middle class--a nursery governess, married to a comedian first,
and to an American adventurer next, who is now a millionaire. She
called upon me, and began to inquire."
"Well, but what does she know?"
"Nothing, except that she parted with her boy when she was poor, and
she would give all the world to get him back now that she is rich."
"He would not make her any happier. I can assure her of that."
"Perhaps not. She saw a young man somewhere, who reminded her of her
husband. This made her remember things. She heard my name mentioned,
and came to see if I was the man she knew in Birmingham."
"And then?"
"All I could say was--truthfully--that I knew nothing about the lady."
"What will she do?"
"I don't know. But she can discover nothing. Believe me, she can do
nothing--nothing at all. It was well, however, to warn you--to tell
you. The young man she saw may have been your son. It was at the
theatre."
"He goes a good deal to the theatre--to see the girls on the stage."
"His true father was also, I believe, inclined that way. The best way,
I take it, if I may advise----"
"Pray advise."
"One way, at least, would be to take the bull by the horns and bring
them together. When she finds that the young man so like her husband
is your son, she will at least make no further investigation in this
direction."
"Do what you like," said the lady, sinking back in her chair. "I
desire nothing except to avoid a scandal--such a scandal, Sir Richard;
it would kill me."
"There shall be no scandal. The secret is mine." Sir Richard rose. "I
promise, once more, to keep this secret till you give me permission to
reveal it."
"Will you ever have to ask my permission?"
"On my honour, I believe not. I cannot conceive any turn of the wheel
which would make such a permission desirable."
"My death, perhaps, might set you free; and it would rid society of a
pretender."
"No. For then the scandal would be doubled. Your husband's name
would be charged with the thing as well as your own. Rest easy, Lady
Woodroffe. I will make her acquainted, however, with the young man."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COUSINS.
The hall of a West End hotel on a fine afternoon, even in October, not
to speak of June, is a spectacle of pious consolation in the eyes of
those who like the contemplation of riches. Many there are on whose
souls the sight of wealth in activity, producing its fruits in due
season, pours sweet and balmy soothing. All those lovely costumes
flitting across the hall, the coming and the going of the people in
their carriages, the continual arrival of messengers with parcels, the
driving up to the hotel or the driving off, the hotel porters, the
liveries, the haughty children of pride and show who wear them--these
things in a desert of longing illustrate what wealth can give, and
how much wealth is to be envied; these things make wealth appear
boundless and stable. Surely one may take such wealth as this to the
halls of heaven! Inexhaustible it must be, else how could the hotel
bills be paid? The magnificent person in uniform, with a gold band
round his cap, makes wealth all-powerful as well as beautiful, else
how could he receive a wage at all adequate to his appearance and his
manners? The noble perspective of white tables through the doors on
the right, and of velvet sofas through the doors on the left, proves
the illimitable nature of the modern wealth of the millionaire, else
how could those sumptuous dinners be paid for? The American accent
which everywhere strikes the ear further indicates that the wealth
mostly belongs to another country, which makes the true philanthropist
and the altruist rejoice. "Non nobis, Domine," he chants, "but to our
neighbours and our cousins." So long as there is accumulated wealth,
which enables us to run these big hotels, and to maintain these costly
costumes, and to keep these messengers on the trot, why should we
grumble? All the world desires wealth. It is only at such places as
the entrance-hall of a great hotel that the impecunious can really see
with their own eyes, and properly understand, what great riches can
actually do for their possessor. What can confer happiness more solid,
more satisfying, more abiding, than to buy your wife a costume for two
hundred guineas, and to live in such a hotel as this, with the whole
treasures of London lying at your feet, and waiting for your choice?
About half-past four, when the crush of arrivals was greatest, and the
talk in the hall was loudest, another carriage and pair deposited at
the hotel an elderly couple. The man was tall and thin; his features
were plain, but strongly marked; his hair was grey, and his beard,
which he grew behind his chin, was also grey. You may see men like
him in face and figure, and in the disposition of his beard behind
his chin, in every Yorkshire town--in fact, he was a Yorkshireman by
birth, though he had spent the last forty years of his life in the
Western States. His face was habitually grave; he spoke slowly. This
man, in fact, was one of that most envied and enviable class--the rich
American. In those lists which people like so much to read, the name
of John Haveril was generally placed about halfway down, opposite
the imposing figures 13,000,000 dollars. Reading these figures,
the ordinary average Briton remarked, "Dollars, sir; dollars. Not
pounds sterling. But still, two millions and a half sterling. And
still rolling, still r-r-r-rolling!" The city magnate, reading them,
sighs and says, "He cannot spend a quarter of the income. The rest
fructifies, sir--fr-r-r-ructifies!"
John Haveril arrived at this pinnacle of greatness by methods which I
believe are perfectly well understood by everybody who is interested
in the great mystery of making money. It is a mystery which is
intelligible, easy, and open to everybody. Yet only a very few--say,
one in twenty millions--are able to practise the art successfully. A
vast number try to cross that stormy sea which has no chart by which
they can navigate their barques; rocks strike upon them and overwhelm
them; hurricanes capsize and sink them. Disappointment, bankruptcy,
concealment for life, flight, ruin, cruel misrepresentation, even
open trial, conviction, sentence, and imprisonment are too often the
consequences when persons who, perhaps, possess every quality except
one--or all the qualities but one or two--in imperfection. Corners,
rings, trusts, presidencies, the control of markets, monopolies, the
crushing of competition, the trampling down of the weaker, disregard
of scruple, tenderness, pity, sympathy, belong to the success which
ought to have made John Haveril happy.
The fortunate possessor of thirteen millions--dollars--got out of the
carriage when it stopped. He looked round him. On the steps of the
hotel the people drew back, hushed and awed. "John Haveril!" he heard,
in whispers. He smiled. It is always a pleasure _monstrari digito_.
He marched up the steps and into the hall, leaving his wife to follow
alone.
This lady, whom we have already met in the doctor's consultation-room,
was dressed in the splendour that belonged to her position. It is
useless to have thirteen millions of dollars if you do not spend
some of them in proclaiming the fact by silks and satins, lace and
embroidery, chains of gold and glittering jewels. Mr. Haveril liked to
see his wife in costly array. What wife would not willingly respond
to such a pleasing taste in a husband? On this point, at least,
the married couple's hearts beat as one--in unison. Mrs. Haveril,
therefore, ought to have enjoyed nothing so much as the triumphal
march across the hall, with all the people gazing upon her as the
thrice happy, the four times happy, the pride of her country, the
millionairess.
I do not think that she ever, under any circumstances, got the full
flavour out of her wealth. You have seen her with the doctor; a
constant anxiety weighed her down; she was weak in body and troubled
in mind. She was no happier with the millions than if they had been
hundreds. Moreover, she was always a simple woman, contented with
simple ways--one to whom footmen, waiters, and grand dinners were a
weariness. With her pale, delicate face, and sad soft eyes, she looked
more like a nun in disguise than a woman rolling in gold.
Their rooms were, of course, on the first floor; such rooms, so
furnished, as became such guests. Parcels, opened and unopened,
were lying about on the tables and chairs, for they had only as yet
been two or three days in London, and, therefore, had only begun to
buy things. Tickets for theatres, cards of visitors, invitations to
dinner, had already begun to flow in.
A waiter followed them upstairs, bearing a tray on which were cards,
envelopes with names, and bits of paper with names. Mrs. Haveril
turned them over.
"John," she said, "I do believe these are my cousins. They've found us
out pretty soon."
It was, in fact, only the day after the arrivals were put in the
papers.
John turned over the cards. "Humph!" he said. "Now, Alice, before
these people come, let us make up our minds what we are going to do
for them. What brings them? Is it money, or is it love?"
"I'm afraid it's money. Still, when one has been away for five and
twenty years, it does seem hard not to see one's cousins again.
'Tisn't as if we came back beggars, John."
"That's just it. If we had, we shouldn't have been in this hotel. And
they wouldn't be calling upon us."
"They're all waiting down below."
"Let 'em wait. What are we to do, Alice? They want money. Are you
going to give 'em money?"
"It isn't my money, John. It's yours."
"'Tis thine, lass," the Yorkshireman replied. "If 'tis mine, 'tis
thine. But leave it to me." He turned to the waiter who had been
present, hearing what was said with the inscrutable face of one who
hears nothing, "Send all these chaps and women up," he said. "Make 'em
come up--every one. And, Alice, sit down and never move. I'll do the
talking."
They came up, some twenty in number. One of the blessings which attend
the possession of great wealth is its power in bringing together
and uniting in bonds of affection the various members of a family.
Branches long since obscure and forgotten come to the light again;
members long since supposed--or hoped--to be gone away to the Ewigkeit
appear alive, and with progeny. They rally round the money; the
possessor of the money becomes the head of the family, the object of
their most sincere respect, the source of dignity and pride to the
whole family.
They trooped up the broad staircase, men and women, all together. They
were old, and they were young; they presented, one must acknowledge,
that kind of appearance which is called "common." It is not an
agreeable thing to say of any one, especially of a woman, that he--or
she--has a "common" appearance. Yet of Mrs. Haveril's cousins so
much must be said, if one would preserve any reputation for truth.
The elder women were accompanied by younger ones, their daughters,
whose hats were monumental and their jackets deplorable: the ladies,
both old and young, while waiting below, sniffed when they looked
around them. They sniffed, and they whispered half aloud, "Shameful,
my dear! and she only just come home!"--deploring the motives which
led the others, not themselves, to this universal consent. The men,
for their part, seemed more ashamed of themselves than of their
neighbours. Their appearance betokened the small clerk or the retail
tradesman. Yet there was hostility in their faces, as if, in any
possible slopping over, or in any droppings, from the money-bag, there
were too many of them for the picking up.
They stood at the door, hesitating. The splendour of the room
disconcerted them. They had never seen anything so magnificent.
Mrs. Haveril half rose to greet her cousins. Beside her stood her
husband--of the earth's great ones. At the sight of this god-like
person an awe and hush fell upon all these souls. They were so poor,
all of them; they had all their lives so ardently desired riches--a
modest, a very modest income--as an escape from poverty with its
scourge, that, at the sight of one who had succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams, their cheeks blanched, their knees trembled.
One of them boldly advanced. He was a man of fifty or so, who,
though he was dressed in the black frock which means a certain
social elevation, was more common in appearance, perhaps, than any
of the rest. His close-set eyes, the cunning in his face, the hungry
look, the evident determination which possessed him, the longing and
yearning to get some of the money shown in that look, his arched back
and bending knees, proclaimed the manner of the man, who was by nature
a reptile.
He stepped across the room, and held out his hand. "Cousin Alice," he
said softly, even sadly, as thinking of the long years of separation,
"I am Charles--the Charlie of your happy childhood, when we played
together in Hoxton Square." He continued to hold her hand. "This is,
indeed, a joyful day. I have lost no time in hastening here, though at
the sacrifice of most important business--but what are my interests
compared with the reunion of the family? I say that I have lost no
time, though in the sight of this crowd my action might possibly be
misrepresented."
"You are doing well, Charles?" asked Mrs. Haveril, with some
hesitation, because, though she remembered the cousinship, she could
not remember the happy games in Hoxton Square.
"Pretty well, Alice, thank you. It is like your kind heart to ask.
Pretty well. Mine is a well-known establishment. In Mare Street,
Hackney. I am, at least, respectable--which is more than some can say.
All I want," he stooped and whispered, "is the introduction of more
capital--more capital."
"We cannot talk about that now, Cousin Charles." Mrs. Haveril pushed
him gently aside; but he took up a position at her right hand, and
whispered as each came up in turn.
The next was a man who most certainly, to judge by his appearance, was
run down pretty low. He was dressed in seedy black, his boots down at
heel, his tall hat limp.
He stepped forward, with an affectation of a laugh. "I am your cousin
Alfred, Alice. Alf, you know." She did not remember; but she offered
him her hand. "I had hoped to find you alone. I have much to tell
you."
"A bankrupt, Alice," whispered Charles. "Actually a bankrupt! And in
this company!"
"If I am," said Fortune's battered plaything, "you ought to be, too,
if everybody had his rights."
Cousin Charles made no reply to this charge. Do any of us get our
deserts? The bankrupt stepped aside.
Then a pair of ladies, old and young, stepped forward with a pleasing
smile.
"Cousin Alice," said the elder, "I am Sophy. This is my daughter. She
teaches in a Board school, and is a credit to the family, as much as
if she had a place of business in Mare Street, I'm sure."
"Pew-opener of St. Alphege, Hoxton," whispered Cousin Charles.
And so on.
While the presentation was going on, a young lady appeared in the
door. She saw the crowd, and held back, not presenting herself. She
was none other, in fact, than Molly. Strange that a little difference
in dress and in associates should make so great a difference in a
girl. Molly was but the daughter of a tenth-rate player, yet she was
wholly different from the other girls in the room. She belonged to
another species of humanity. It could not be altogether dress which
caused this difference. She looked on puzzled at first, then she
understood the situation, and she smiled, keeping in the background,
waiting the event.
When they were all presented, Mrs. Haveril turned to her husband.
"John," she said, "these are my cousins. Will you speak to them, and
tell them that we are pleased to see them here?"
John Haveril possessed three manners or aspects. The first was
the latest. It was the air and carriage and voice of one who is
in authority, and willing to exercise it, and ready to receive
recognition. A recently created peer might possess this manner. The
second was the air and carriage and voice of one who is exercising his
trade. You may observe this manner on any afternoon near Capel Court.
The third manner was quite different. It was his earliest and youngest
manner. In this he seemed to lose interest in what went on, his eyes
went out into space, he was for the time lost to the place and people
about him.
On this occasion John Haveril began with the first manner--that of
authority.
"Cousins," he said, "you are welcome. I take it you are all cousins,
else you wouldn't have called. You don't look like interviewers. My
wife is pleased to see you again, after all these years--five and
twenty, I take it."
There was a general murmur.
"Very well, then. Waiter, bring champagne--right away--and for the
whole party. You saw, ladies and gentlemen, a paragraph in the papers
about Mr. and Mrs. John Haveril. Yes, and you have come in consequence
of that notice. Very well."
"That's true," cried Cousin Charles, unable to resist the expression
of his admiration. "To think that we should stand in the presence of
millions!"
"And so you've come, all of you," said John of the thirteen millions,
"to see your cousin again. Out of love and affection?"
"Some of us," said Cousin Charles. "I fear that others," he cast one
eye on the bankrupt and one on the pew-opener, "have come to see what
they can get. Humanity is mixed, Mr. Haveril. You must have learned
that already. Mixed."
"Thank ye, sir. I have learned that lesson."
"To see our cousin Alice once more, to desire, Mr. Haveril, to see
you--to gaze upon you--is with some of us, laudable, sir--laudable."
"Quite so, sir. Highly laudable."
"As for me," said the bankrupt, abashed, "I did hope to find Cousin
Alice alone."
"And if Mr. Charles Pennefather," said the pew-opener, "means that he
wants nothing for himself, let him go, now that he has seen his Cousin
Alice! Let him go on down-trodding them poor girls in his place of
business."
At this point, when it seemed likely that the family would take
sides, the waiter appeared, bearing in his arms--I use the word with
intention--a Jeroboam of champagne. He was followed by two boys,
pages, bearing trays; and on the trays were glasses.
A Jeroboam! The sight of this inexhaustible vessel suggests
hospitality of the more lavish: generosity of the less calculating:
it contains two magnums and a magnum contains two bottles. Can one
go farther than a Jeroboam? There are legends and traditions in one
or two of the older hotels--those which flourished in the glorious
days of the Regent--of a Rehoboam, containing two Jeroboams. But
I have never met in this earthly pilgrimage with a living man who
had gazed upon a Rehoboam. At the sight of the Jeroboam all faces
softened, broadened, expanded, and began to slime with a smile not to
be repressed. Cousin Charles thrust his right hand into his bosom, and
directed his eyes, as if for penance, to the cornice.
"Now," said Mr. Haveril, "you came here to see your cousin again.
You shall drink her health--all of you. Here she is. Not so hale and
hearty as one could wish; but alive, after five and twenty years, or
thereabouts. Now, boys, pass it round."
The glasses went round--the wine gurgled and sparkled. Cousin Charles
gave the word.
"Cousin Alice!" he cried. "All together--after me!" He raised his
glass. "Cousin Alice!" He emptied it at one draught.
"I think," said the pew-opener, in an audible whisper to her daughter,
"that it would have been more becoming to offer port wine. I don't
think much of this fizzy stuff."
"Hush! mother." The daughter had more reading, if less experience.
"This is champagne. It's rich folks' drink, instead of beer."
The waiter and the boys went round again. The second glass vanished,
without any toast. Eyes brightened, cheeks flushed, tongues were
loosened.
"Cousin Alice," said the bankrupt, emboldened. "If I could see you
alone----"
"Don't see him alone," whispered Cousin Charles. "Don't see anybody
alone. They all want your money. They are leeches for sucking and
limpets for sticking. Turn 'em over to me. I'll manage the whole lot
for you. Very lucky for you, Cousin Alice, that I did call, just this
day of all days, to stand between you and them."
But Cousin Alice made no answer. And they all began whispering
together, and the whisper became a murmur, and the murmur a babble,
and in the babble voices were raised and charges were made as of
self-seeking, pretence, hypocrisy, unworthy motives, greed of gain,
deception, past trickeries, known meannesses, sordidness, and so
forth. And there was a general lurch forward, as if the cousins would
one and all fall upon Alice and ravish from her, on the spot, her
husband's millions.
But Cousin Charles, self-elected representative, stepped forward and
held up his hand.
"We cannot part," he said. "It is impossible for you to leave me with
my Cousin Alice----"
"Ho!" cried the pew-opener, "you alone with Cousin Alice!"
"See you alone, Alice," whispered the bankrupt, on whose weak nerves
and ill-nourished brain the champagne was working.
"--without drinking--one more toast. We _must_ drink," he said, "to
our cousin's illustrious, noble, and distinguished husband. Long
may he continue to enjoy the wealth which he so well deserves and
which none of us envy him. No, my friends, humble and otherwise,
none of us envy him. Mr. Haveril, sir, I could have wished that the
family--your wife's family--which is, as you know, one of eminent
respectability--an ancient family, in fact, of Haggerston----"
"Grandmother was a laundress," said the pew-opener. "Everybody knows
that all the Haggerston people were washer-women in the old days."
"--had been better represented on this occasion by a limited
deputation of respectability--say, by myself, without the appearance
of branches, which should not have been presented to you, because we
have no reason to be proud of them." He glanced at the decayed branch.
"Sir, we drink your prolonged health and your perpetual happiness. We
are proud of you, Mr. Haveril. The world is proud of you."
With a murmur, partly of remonstrance with the speaker's arrogance and
his insinuations against their respectability; and partly meant for a
cheer, the family drank the health of Mr. John Haveril.
"Thank ye," he said, with no visible emotion. "Now, take another
glass--send it round, waiter--while I say something. It's just this."
As he spoke his manner insensibly changed. He became the man of
business, hard as nails. "I take it that some of you are here to see
your cousin again, and some of you are here to get what you can, and
some for both reasons. It's natural, and I don't blame anybody. When a
body's poor, he always thinks that a rich man can make him rich, too.
Well, he can't--not unless he makes over half his pile. And I'll tell
you why. A chap is poor because he's foolish or lazy. Either he can't
see the way or he won't stir himself. You can't help a blind man--nor
you can't help a lazy man. If you give either of them what he wants,
he spends it all, and then holds out his hand and asks for more." The
bankrupt dropped his head, and sank into a chair. The champagne helped
him to apply this maxim to his own case. "The best thing that can be
done for any one is to dump him down in a new country where he'll sink
or swim. You, sir," he pointed a minatory finger to Cousin Charles,
"you would like more capital, would you?"
"Not in the presence of this multitude, Mr. Haveril," Cousin Charles
replied.
"Those who want capital, either here or anywhere else, have got to
make it for themselves."
"So true--so true," said Cousin Charles. "Listen to this, all of you."
"Make it for themselves. Same as I did. How much capital had I to
start with? Just nothing. Whatever you want, make it for yourself by
your own smartness. There's nothing else in the world to get a man
along but smartness. In whatever line you are, cast about for the
prizes in that line and look out for opportunities. If you can't see
them, who can help you? As for you, sir," he addressed the bankrupt,
"you want money. Well, if I give you money you will eat it up, and
then come for more. What's the use, I ask any of you?"
He looked round. Nobody answered. Cousin Charles, perspiring at the
nose, murmured faintly, "So true--so true," but not with conviction.
Some of the women wiped away a tear--they had taken four glasses of
champagne, but fortunately a waiter does not quite fill up the glasses.
"Not one of you would be a bit the better off, in the long run, if I
gave him a thousand pounds."
"Not to give, but to advance," said Cousin Charles.
"Not a bit the better off," John Haveril repeated. "Not a bit. We've
got to work in this world--to work, and to think, and to lay low,
and to watch. Those who can do nothing of all this had better sit
down quiet in a retired spot. My friends, there's nothing shameful in
taking a back seat. Most of the seats are in the back. Make up your
mind that such is your lot, and you may be happy, though you've got
no money. I've been poor, and now I'm rich. Seems to me I was just as
happy when I was poor and looking out."
He paused for a moment.
"Alice doesn't want to throw you over. What then? Why--this. Any one
of you who came to ask for something may do it in writing. Let him
send me a letter--and tell me all about it. If it's a thing that will
do you no harm, I'll do it for you. But I don't expect it is, only to
feel that you've got somebody who'll give you what you ask for just
because you ask for it. Why, there can't be in all the world anything
worse for him. Remember that you've got to work for a living, to begin
with; harder if you make your fortune, and harder still if you want to
keep it. That's the dispositions of Providence, and I'm not going to
stand in the way of the Lord. Go home, then. Take example by me, if
you can. But if you came to coax dollars out of Alice, give it up."
The audience looked at each other ruefully. They did not know what
to say in reply. Nor did they know how to get off. Nobody would move
first. Cousin Charles stepped forward.
"Mr. Haveril," he said, "in the name of the family, worthy or
unworthy, as the case may be; greedy or disinterested, as it may be; I
thank you. Whatever words may drop from you, sir, will be treasured.
What you have said are golden words. We shall, I hope, write them down
and engrave them on the marble tombstones of our hearts. They will be
buried with us. My friends," he addressed the family, "you can go."
"Not without you," said the pew-opener--"you and your respectability."
"Some of us will prepare that little note, I dare say--I fear so,
Mr. Haveril," Cousin Charles went on. "In business, as you know,
the introduction of capital is not a gift nor a charity; but I will
explain later on, when these have gone."
"Not without you," said the lady pew-opener, planting her umbrella
firmly on the carpet.
There was so much determination in her face that Cousin Charles
quailed; he bent, he bowed, he submitted.
"On another, a more favourable occasion, then, when we can be
private," he said. "Good-bye, Cousin Alice. You look younger than
ever. Ah, if these friends present could remember you as I can,
in the spring-time of youth and beauty, among the laurels and the
laburnums and the lilacs of Hoxton Square! Love's young dream, cousin;
love's young dream." He grasped her hand, his voice vibrating with
emotion. "Alice," he said, "on Sunday evenings we gather round us a
little circle at South Hackney. Intellect and respectability. Supper
at eight. I shall hope to see you there soon and often."
He then seized Mr. Haveril's hand. "If I may, sir--if I may."
"You may, sir--you may." He held out a hand immovable, like a
sign-post.
"As men of business--men of business--we shall understand each other."
"Very like, very like," said Mr. Haveril, with distressing coldness.
He had fallen into his third manner, and his eyes were far off. He
spoke mechanically.
Cousin Charles clapped his hat on his head and walked out. He was
followed by the lady pew-opener, who called out after him over the
broad balustrade--
"You and your respectability, indeed! Go and sweat your shop-girls!
You and your respectability!"
CHAPTER IX.
ONE MORE.
"They are all gone, John," said Alice. "Oh, what a visit! I am
ashamed! I never thought my people could have gone on so! As for
Cousin Charles, he's just dreadful!"
One was left. The unfortunate bankrupt, overcome by the champagne, was
asleep in his chair. John Haveril dragged him up by the collar.
"Now then, you, sir! What do you mean by going to sleep here?"
The unfortunate rubbed his eyes and pulled himself together. Presently
he remembered where he was.
"Cousin Alice," he said, "are we alone?" He whispered confidentially.
"They all want your money--particularly Charles. He's the most
grasping, greedy, cheeseparing, avaricious, unscrupulous, bully of a
cousin that ever had a place of business. Don't give him anything.
Give it to me. I'm starving, Alice. I haven't eaten anything all day.
It's true. I've got no work and no money."
"John, give him something."
"It's no good," said John. "He'll only eat it, and then ask for more."
"But give him something. Let him eat it."
John plunged his hand into his pocket. After the manner of the
eighteenth century, it was full of gold.
"Well, take it." He transferred a handful to the clutch of the poor
wretch. "Take it. Go and eat it up. And don't come back for more."
The man took it, bowed low, and shambled off. It made Alice ashamed
only to see the attitude of the poor hungry creature, and the
abasement of poverty.
"Well, Alice," said John, "we've seen the last of the family, until
their letters begin to come in. Halloa! Who's this?"
For John became aware of the girl who had been standing beside the
door, unnoticed. When all were gone, she stepped in lightly.
"Mrs. Haveril," she said--"I ought to call you Cousin Alice, but I
am afraid you have had cousins enough. My name is Pennefather--Molly
Pennefather."
"Why, I was a Pennefather--same as Charles, who's just gone out, and
the ragged wretch who was Cousin Alfred."
"Yes; and others of the truly dreadful people who have just gone out.
I don't know any of them. Fortunately, they wouldn't have anything to
do with my poor old dad, because he disgraced the family and went on
the stage. If they hadn't been so haughty, I might have had to know
them now."
"Your father? Is he Willy Pennefather?"
"He was. But he died five years ago."
"He died? Poor Willy! Oh, John, if you'd known my cousin Will! How
clever he was! And how bright! Dead, is he?"
"He was never a great success, you know, because he couldn't settle
down. And at last he died. And I---- Well, I'm studying for the stage
myself."
"Oh, you are Willy's daughter! My dear, you look straight. But there's
been such a self-seeking----"
"I don't want your money, indeed!"
"Oh, but have you got money, my dear?"
"No; but some day I suppose I shall have--by my Art. That's the way
to talk about the profession nowadays. Well, I mean that I don't want
your money, Cousin Alice."
"If you haven't got any money and don't want any----" John began.
"You see, we are not all built like Mr. John Haveril," she
interrupted, with a sweet smile. "Art, I am told, makes one despise
money. When I am furnished with my Art, I dare say I shall despise
money."
"Oh, coom now, lass!" From time to time, but rarely, John Haveril
became Yorkshire again. "Despise the brass?"
"Not the people who have the brass. That is an accident."
"I don't know about accidents."
"Well, you've got money; once you hadn't. You're John Haveril all the
same--see? Besides, it's quite right that some people should have
money. They can take stalls at theatres. If you will let me be friends
with you, Mr. Haveril, and won't look so dreadfully suspicious----"
"Well, I don't care," he said. "You look as if----"
"As if I was telling the truth. Shake hands, then."
Mrs. Haveril gave her a hand, and then, looking in her face, threw her
arms round her neck.
"My dear child," she said, "you're the very picture of your
father--Cousin Will. I thought there must be some one in the family
fit to love." She hugged and kissed the girl with a sudden wave of
affection. "Oh, Molly, my dear, I am sure I shall love you!"
"I'm so glad. Well, may I call you Alice? I will tell you what
theatres to go to. Oh, I shall make myself very useful to you!"
She clasped her hands, laughing--a picture of youth and truth and
innocence. "Some time or other you shall see _me_ on the stage."
"We get lots of actors out in the West--and actresses too. Some of
them are real lovely," said John Haveril.
She laughed. "Oh! There are actresses and actresses. And some elevate
their Art, and some degrade it. Now, let me see. Oh, father is dead,
poor dear! I told you. And the rest of the family---- Well, you saw
for yourself, cousin, they are not exactly the kind of people for a
person of your consideration. You should lend them all some money--not
much--and make them promise to pay it back on a certain day--next
Monday week, at ten o'clock. It's a certain plan. Then you'll have no
further trouble with them. Otherwise, they'll crowd round you like
leeches."
"I can't let my own flesh and blood starve."
"Starve! Rubbish! They won't starve! What have they been doing while
you've been away? Unless you encourage them not to work." And now she
sank gracefully upon a footstool, and took her cousin's hands. "Oh,"
she said, "it is so nice to have a relative of whom one may be proud,
after all those cousins. Oh, it must be a dreadful thing to have such
lots of money! Why, I've got nothing!"
"You've had no champagne," said Cousin John, lifting his Jeroboam.
"Thank you, Cousin John, I don't drink champagne. Well, now, what can
I do for you this afternoon?"
"I don't know, my dear. We neither of us know much about London, and
we just wander about, for the most part, or drive about, and wonder
where we are."
The girl jumped up. "Order a carriage and pair instantly. I shall
drive you round and show you the best shops. You are sure to want
something. As for me, remember that I want nothing. An actress appears
in costume which the management finds. You, however, Alice, are
different. You must dress as becomes your position."
* * * * *
"My dear child," said Alice, in the very first shop, "you _must_ let
me give you a dress--you really must."
"I don't want it, I assure you," she laughed. "But if it pains you not
to give me one, why, I will take it."
She _did_ take it. That evening there arrived at the boarding-house,
addressed to Miss Pennefather, first a bonnet, for which five guineas
would be cheap; a dress, the price of which the male observer could
not even guess; a box of kid gloves, a mantle, and two or three pairs
of boots.
"And, oh," said the girl, when she left the hotel that night, "what a
_lovely_ thing it is to feel that there will be no horrid mercenary
considerations between us! You will admire my Art, but I shall not
envy your money. Cousin John, admit that I am better off than you--one
would rather be admired than envied."
She reached home. In her room lay the parcels and the packages. She
opened them all. She put on the bonnet, she stroked the soft stuff
with a caressing palm, she gazed upon the gloves, she held up the
boots to the light.
"Am I a dreadful humbug?" she said. "I must be--I must be. What would
Dick say? But one cannot---- No, one cannot refuse. I am not a stick
or a stone. And Cousin Alice actually enjoyed the giving! But no
money. Molly, you must not take their money."
CHAPTER X.
COUSIN ALFRED'S SECRET.
It was a few days later, in the forenoon. John Haveril was gone into
the City on the business of keeping together what he had got--a
business which seems to take up the whole of a rich man's time and
more, so that he really has no chance of looking for the way to the
kingdom of heaven. His wife sat at the window of her room in the
hotel, contemplating the full tide of life below. She was not in the
least a philosopher--the sight of the people, and the carriages, and
the omnibuses, did not move her to meditate on the brevity of life as
it moves some thinkers. It pleased her; she thought of places where
she had lived in Western America, and the contrast pleased her. Nor
was she moved, as a poet, to find something to say about this tide of
life. The poet, you know, looks not only for the phrase appropriate,
but for the phrase distinctive. Mrs. Haveril had never heard of such a
thing. She only thought that there was nothing like it in the Western
States, and that she remembered nothing like it in the village of
Hackney. Molly was lying on the sofa, reading a novel.
One of the hotel pages disturbed her dreamery, which was close upon
dropping off, by bringing up in a silver salver a dirty slip of paper,
on which was written in pencil--
"Mr. Alfred Pennefather. For Mrs. Haveril. Bearer waits."
"Is it a man in rags? Is he a disgrace to the hotel?"
"Well, ma'am, he _is_ in rags. As for his being a disgrace--he says
he's your cousin." Here he laughed, holding the silver salver before
his mouth.
"I wouldn't laugh at a poor man, if I were you. Why," said Mrs.
Haveril, drawing a bow at a venture, "you've got cousins of your own
in the workhouse. Send him up, right away," she added.
The man came in. The page shut the door quickly behind him, to conceal
the figure of rags not often seen in that palatial place.
It was Alfred the Broken; strange to say, though it was less than
a week since he had received that gift of golden sovereigns, the
appearance of the man was as seedy as ever; his hat--a ridiculously
tall silk hat with a limp brim--can anything look more forlorn?--his
coat with ragged wrists; his boots parting from the soles; a ragged
and decayed person, more ragged, more decayed, than before.
"Well?" the lady's voice was not encouraging. "You came here last week
with the rest of them."
"I did, Alice--I did."
"You had champagne with the rest; you heard what my husband had to
say: when the rest were gone, he gave you money. What have you done
with that money? What do you want now?"
"I want to have a quiet talk with you."
The man had that sketchy irresolute face which foretells, in certain
levels of life, social wreck. Not an evil face, exactly--the man with
the evil face very often gets on in life--but with a weak face. You
may see such a face any day in a police-court. First, it is a charge
connected with the employer's accounts, then it is generally a charge
of petty robbery. The last case I saw myself was one of boots snatched
from an open counter. Between the first charge and the second there
is a dreadful change in the matter of clothes; but there is never
any change in face. As for Alfred Pennefather, one could understand
that he had once been the gay and dashing Alf among his pals; that he
had heard the midnight chimes ring; that he knew by experience the
attractions of the public billiard-room, and the joys of pool; that
he read the sporting papers; that he put a "bit" on his fancy; that
whatever line of life he might attempt, therein he would fail; and
that repeated failures would place him outside the forgiveness of his
friends. For repeated misfortunes, as well as repeated follies, we can
never forgive.
"You can talk," said his cousin. "This--young lady"--she was going to
say "cousin of yours"--"does not count. Go on."
"I hoped, the other day, Alice, to find you alone. In that crowd of
greedy impudent beggars and flatterers, I could not. I assure you I
was ashamed of being in such company. As for Cousin Charles, if it had
not been for you----"
"Go on to something else, please. You all came for what you could
get; now, what do you want?"
"I'll sit down." He took the most comfortable chair in the room, and
stretched out his legs. "This is the lap of luxury. Alice, you're a
happy woman."
"Oh! Go on."
"The world has been against me, Alice, from the beginning. Look at
these boots. Ask yourself whether the world has not been against me.
Don't believe what they say. Scandalous, impudent liars, all of them,
especially Charles. No fault of mine. No, Alice. It's the world."
"What do you want, again?"
"I want an advance."
"Then do what my husband told you--write to him. What has become of
the money he gave you? Is that spent already?"
"Don't call it spent, Alice. Debts paid, common necessaries bought."
"Debts! Who would trust you? Necessaries! Why, you are shabbier than
ever."
"Well, I can prove to you, Alice, that the money was well laid out."
When, after many days, the man at the bottom of the ladder gets a few
pounds in gold, the first temptation is to make a night of it. What?
We are not money-grabbers. To-morrow for a new rig-out; to-morrow
for the weary business of finding employment; to-night for joy and
the wine-cup. When the morrow dawns the wine-cup still lingers in
the brain--but the gold pieces--where are they? Gone as a dream--a
splendid dream of the night. Thus, after a little sleep and a little
slumber, poverty cometh again as a robber: and want as an armed man.
"Don't let's talk about money spent," he said cheerfully. "Let's talk
about the future. I'm right down at the bottom of the ladder, Alice.
Help me up."
If a man says that he is at the bottom of the ladder, he generally
speaks the truth. It is one of those little things about which we are
agreed not to tell lies. And when he asks to be helped up, he always
speaks with sincerity.
"I have no money of my own."
"You've things that make money." His eyes fell on a bracelet lying on
the table.
Alice shook her finger at him. "Cousin Alfred," she said, "if you mean
that I am going to give you my husband's presents for you to take to
a pawnbroker, I will have you bundled out of the house. Now, tell me
what you came for, before I ring the bell for the waiter."
He began to cry. He really was underfed and very miserable. "Oh! she's
got a hard heart--and all I want is forty pounds--for the good will
and stock-in-trade of a tobacconist--to become a credit to the family."
"I have no money of my own," Alice repeated. "If that is all you have
to say, go away. My husband may come back at any moment."
"He won't. I watched. He's gone into the City on the top of a 'bus.
With all his money, rides outside a 'bus. He's gone, and I mean,
Alice----"
Molly rose and put down her novel. Then she advanced and seized the
man, taking a combined handful of shirt-collar and coat-collar, which
she twisted in her strong hand. He spread out his legs and hands; he
struggled; the grip tightened; he rolled over; the coat-collar came
off in her hand.
"Get up and go, you miserable creature!" she cried.
He rose slowly.
"Go!" said Molly.
"No coat-collar would stand such treatment," he said. "Pay me for the
damage you have done to my wardrobe."
"Give him a shilling, Molly, and let him go."
"Wait a minute--wait a minute. Oh, don't be violent, Alice! I've got
a secret. If you knew it, you'd give me money. I'll sell it for forty
pounds."
"Sell it to my husband."
He got up feeling for his injured coat-collar. "This girl's so
impetuous. May I sit down again?"
"No," said Molly. "Stand. If you don't tell your secret in two
minutes, out you go."
"It's about your marriage, Alice. You were married about twenty-six
years ago--it was in 1871, I remember. You married a play-acting
fellow--Anthony by name----"
"That's no secret."
"Which wasn't his real name, but his theatrical name. His real name
was Woodroffe."
"That is no secret, either."
"Your family wouldn't stand by you, being proud of their connections,
although the only gentleman of the lot was myself--and I was in a
bank."
"Oh, get on to your secret!"
"But, Cousin Will--Charles's brother--he stood by you, because he was
in the play-acting line himself, and he got the boot, too, from the
family. Will gave you away. You were married in South Hackney Church.
After the wedding you went away. Will met me that same day; I remember
I was a little haughty with him, because a bank clerk can't afford to
know a common actor. He told me about it."
"What is your secret?"
"Two or three years later I met Will again, and borrowed something off
him. Then he told me you had gone off to America."
"That is no secret."
"I'm coming to the secret. Don't you be impatient, Alice. It's my
secret, not yours. Now, then. About fifteen years ago, I met a fellow
at a billiard-table. He wouldn't play much, and he had some money, and
so I thought--well--I got him to lodge with us. Mother kept lodgings
in Myddleton Square in those days. He came; he said his name was
Anthony, and he was a comedian from the States. We are coming to the
secret now. Well, he stayed with us there a few weeks, and I took some
money off him at pool; but he never paid his rent, and went away."
"Go on."
"That was your husband, Alice--your husband, I say--your husband." His
voice fell to a mysterious whisper.
"Well; and why not?"
"Well--if you will have it--I'll say it out loud. That was your
husband. You married John Haveril because you thought your husband
was dead. Perhaps you hoped he would never find you out. Very well.
He's alive still. I've seen him. That's my secret."
"I care nothing whether he is alive or dead."
"That's bluff. He's alive, I say; and I know where he is at this very
minute."
"Now you have told your secret, you may go," said Molly.
"I tell you," said Alice, "that I do not care to know anything at all
about that man."
"Well--but--if he is living, how can you be anybody else's wife?
Look here, Alice. I'm telling the truth. John Anthony, whose name
is Woodroffe, is in London. Last week I met him by accident, but he
doesn't remember me. We were engaged in the same occupation. Why
should I conceal the poverty to which I am reduced by the hard hearts
of wealthy friends? We were carrying boards in Oxford Street. At night
we used the same doss-house."
"I tell you that I do not wish to hear anything about that man. If he
is in poverty and wickedness, he deserves it."
"Wouldn't you help him now?"
"I tell you I have no money."
"But this man is your husband."
"I tell you again, I do not want to know anything about the man."
"Well, I can go and tell him that you're here, rolling in gold. Forty
pounds I want, and then I'll become a credit to the family--as a
tobacconist. Else you shall have your husband back again. I've only
to set him on to you."
"I don't want your secret."
"Not to keep your husband from finding you out? Have you no heart,
Alice?"
Molly pointed to the door. "Out!" she ordered. "Out, this instant!"
He turned away reluctantly. "I thought better of you, Alice. Well,
it's a wicked world. Go straight, and you go downhill. Chuck your
respectability, and you're like the sparks that fly upward. When I
came here the other day, I thought I was coming to see a respectable
woman."
"Out!" Molly advanced upon him.
He placed a chair in front of him. "I know where your husband is--in
the Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary; that's where he is. I shall go
to him. 'Anthony,' I shall say, 'your wife's over here--with another
man.'"
Molly threw the chair down, and rushed at him.
He fled before the fire and fury of those eyes.
* * * * *
"Molly dear," Alice asked, "am I hard-hearted? I have not a spark of
feeling left for that man; it moved me not in the least to hear of his
wretched plight. He is to me just a stranger--a bad man--suffering
just punishment."
"But his name is Woodroffe. That is strange, is it not?"
"Yes; his name is Woodroffe. He belonged, he always said, to a highly
respectable family. That fact did not make him respectable."
"I wonder if he is any relation to Dick--my old friend, Dick
Woodroffe. He's a musician now, and singer, too, and his father was a
comedian before him."
"Well, dear, I don't know. As for that man in the infirmary, I dare
say John will go and see if anything can be done for him. He deserted
me first, and divorced me afterwards, Molly, twenty-four years
ago--for incompatibility of temper. That is the kind of man he is."
CHAPTER XI.
THE DOCTOR'S DINNER.
The secret of success is like the elixir of life, inasmuch as
that precious balsam used to be eagerly sought after by countless
thousands; and because, also like the elixir, it continually eludes
the pursuer. One man succeeds. How? He does not know, and he does
not inquire. A thousand others, who think they are as good, fail.
Why? They cannot discover. But each of the thousand failures is
ready to show you a thousand reasons why this one man has succeeded.
First of all, he has really not succeeded; secondly, his success is
grossly exaggerated; thirdly, it is a cheap success--the unsuccessful
are especially contemptuous of a cheap success--they would not,
themselves, condescend to a cheap success; fourthly, it is a
success arrived at by tortuous, winding, crooked arts, which make
the unsuccessful sick and sorry to contemplate--who would desire a
success achieved by climbing up the back stairs? If a man writes, and
succeeds in his writings, so that ordinary people flock to read him,
he succeeds by his vulgarity. Or, he succeeds by his low tastes--who,
that respects himself, would pander to the multitude? Or, he succeeds
by vacuity, fatuity, futility, stupidity--what self-respecting writer
would sink to the level of the fatuous and vacuous? He succeeds with
an A, because he is Asinine; with a B, because he is Bestial; with a
C, because he is Contemptible; and so on through the alphabet. Similar
reasons are assigned when a man succeeds as a Painter, a Sculptor,
a Preacher, a Lawyer. Now, Sir Robert Steele is one of the most
successful physicians of the day. His success is easily understood and
readily accounted for, on the principles just laid down, by those of
his profession who have not by any means achieved the same popularity.
He humours his patients--every one knows that; he has a soft voice and
a warm hand--he makes ignoble profit out of both. Above all, he asks
his patients--some of them--to the most delightful dinners possible.
The latter charge has a foundation in fact: he does ask a few of his
more fortunate patients to dinner. More than this, he gives them a
dinner much too artistic for most of them to understand. To bring Art
into a menu, to invent and build up a dinner which shall be completely
artistic in every part, a harmonious whole; one course leading
naturally to the next; a dinner of one colour in many tints; the wine
gurgling like part of an orchestra, is a gift within the powers of
very few. Sir Robert's reputation as a physician is justly, at least,
assisted by his reputation as a great poetic creator of the harmonious
dinner.
I think, having myself none of the _gourmet's_ gifts, that the
possession of them must cause continual and poignant unhappiness. It
is like the endowment of the critical faculty at its highest. Nothing
pleases wholly. When the critic of the menu dines out, alas, what
false notes, what discords, what bad time, what feeble rendering, what
platitude of conception, he must endure! Let us not envy his gifts,
let us rather continue to enjoy, unheeding, dinners which would be
only a prolonged torture to the sensitive soul of the perfect critic.
The doctor made his selections carefully from his patients and
friends. He knew all the amusing people about town, especially
those benefactors to their kind who consent to play and sing for
after-dinner amusement; he knew all the actors, especially those who
do not take themselves too seriously; he knew the men who can tell
stories, sing songs, and are always in good temper. He loved them as
King William loved the red deer; he esteemed them higher than princes;
more excellent company than poets; more clubable than painters. Among
his friends of the profession was Mr. Richard Woodroffe, whom the
doctor esteemed even above his fellows for his unvarying cheerfulness
and his great gifts and graces in music and in song. Him he invited
to dinner on a certain evening, partly on account of these gifts
and partly for another reason--the other guests were the Haverils,
who would be useless in conversation; Miss Molly Pennefather, their
cousin, who would not probably prove a leader in talk; Sir Humphrey
Woodroffe, whom he invited for reasons which you know--and others, yet
conscious beforehand that the young man would be out of his element
and perhaps sulky; and two _umbræ_, persons of no account--mere
patients--to make up the number of eight, the only number, unless it
is four, which is permissible for a dinner-party. For the menu there
was only one person to be considered; Dick, for instance, would eat
tough steak with as much willingness as a Chateaubriand; Mr. Haveril
knew not one dish from another; Humphrey, whom he had met at his
mother's table, would be the only guest capable of understanding a
dinner. Moreover, Humphrey would have to be conciliated by the dinner
itself, to make up for the company. The doctor therefore prepared
a dinner of a few _plats_ harmonized with the desire of pleasing a
young man who was most easily approached, he had already discovered,
by means of any one, or any group, of the senses. Dinner, as every
artistic soul knows, appeals to a group of the senses, which is the
reason why civilized man decorates his tables. Those unhappy persons
to whom dinner is but feeding might as well serve up a single dish on
one wine-case and sit down to it on another.
The reason, apart from his social qualities, why Sir Robert invited
Richard Woodroffe to the dinner was not unconnected with a little
conversation held at a smoking concert a few nights before. It was a
very good smoking concert; a highly distinguished company was present;
and the performers were all professionals.
Richard did his "turn," and then took a seat beside Sir Robert.
"I haven't seen you since last June, Dick, have I?"
"I've been on tramp."
"What do you go on tramp for?"
"Because I must when the summer comes. I can't stay in town--I take
the fiddle and sling a hand-bag over my shoulders and go off."
"Where do you go?"
"Anywhere. First by train twenty miles or so out of London, and then
plunge into the country at random."
"You tramp along the road. And then?"
"Well--you see--the real point is that I take no money with me--only
enough for the first day or two--five shillings or so. The fiddle pays
my way. I play for bed and supper in a roadside inn. The people of the
village come to hear; sometimes I play and sing; sometimes I play for
them to dance; then I collect the coppers; next day I go on."
"It sounds delightful for your audience. For me, listening to you is
sufficient; as for the rest----"
"It's more delightful than you can believe. Why, I know all the
gipsies and their language; sometimes I camp with them. And I know
most of the tramps. Some excellent fellows among the tramps. And
there's no dress-coat and no dinner-parties."
"What do you mean by saying that you must go?"
"Well, I don't know. It's something in the blood. It's heredity, I
suppose. My father was a vagabond before me----"
"Did he also go on the tramp?"
"Well, he was always moving on. He was an actor--of sorts. Some of
them still remember him over here, though he went to America five and
twenty years ago."
"Do I remember him? Was his name Woodroffe?"
"His stage name was Anthony--John Anthony. His real name was
Woodroffe."
"Anthony!" The doctor sat up. "Anthony? I have heard that name. Oh
yes; I remember. Anthony! Strange! Only the other day----" he broke
off.
"Did you hear that name coupled with any--creditable incident?"
"No--no, not very; it was in connection with a--a former wife.... How
old are you, Dick?"
"I am two and twenty."
"Yes. I remember the case now--it was four and twenty years ago. One
is always getting reminders. Dick, there's a young fellow of your
name--a baronet--son of an Anglo-Indian; are you any relation to him?"
"I've met him. We are very distant cousins, I believe. The more
distant the better."
"You don't like him? Well, he isn't quite your sort, is he? All the
same, Dick, come and dine with me next Tuesday. You will meet him;
but that won't matter. I expect some American people as well--rich
people--_nouveaux riches_--the woman is interesting, the man is plain.
They bring a girl with them--a girl, Miss Molly Pennefather. What's
the matter?" For Dick jumped.
"Molly? I know Molly!--bless her! I'll come, doctor, even if there
were twenty Sir Humphreys coming too. And after dinner I'll sing for
you, if you like."
Now you understand why this selection was made. For the first time
in his life, Sir Robert invited a company which could not possibly
harmonize. There would be no talk worth having, his wine would be
wasted, his _cuisine_ would meet with no appreciation. But he would
have them all before him--mother, son, stepson--if Richard could be
called a stepson--half-brothers; and the master of the situation would
study on the spot an illustration of heredity, unsuspected by the
patients themselves.
Mrs. Haveril arrived, clothed chiefly in diamonds. Why not? Her
husband liked her to wear those glittering things which help to make
wealth attractive, otherwise we might all be contented with poverty.
But the pale lady's delicate, nun-like face would have looked better
without them. With her came Molly, now her daily companion. The girl
was dressed, for the first time in her life, as in a dream--a dream
of paradise; she wore such a frock, with such trimmings, as makes a
maiden, if by happy chance she sees it in a window, gasp and yearn for
the unattainable, yet go home thankful for having seen it; and humbled
by the sense of personal unworthiness. Yet, what says the poet?
"Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Else what's a heaven for?"
The girl wore the dress with as little self-consciousness as one would
expect. It was such a dress as she had seen upon the stage--elaborate,
dainty, decorated; perhaps a little too old for her; but, then, an
actress must be excused for a little exaggeration. Her _rôle_ this
evening was not a speaking part; she was only a lady of the court;
meanwhile, she was on the stage, and it pleased her to find that her
audience admired, though they could not applaud.
"I have invited to meet you," said the doctor, "two distant cousins;
they bear the same name, and are of the same descent, but their
families have gone off in different channels, I understand, for some
hundreds of years. It is not often that people can claim cousinship
after so long a separation. One of them is the only son of the late
Sir Humphrey Woodroffe, a distinguished Anglo-Indian----"
"Woodroffe?" Alice asked. "It was my first husband's name."
"Very possibly he, too, was a cousin. The other is a young fellow
called Richard Woodroffe."
"Again the name," said Alice.
"Yes; the distant cousin. He is a musician and a dramatist in a small
and clever way."
"Dick is my oldest friend," said Molly.
"I am very glad, then, that he is coming to-night."
Sir Robert considered this young lady more attentively, because a girl
who was Dick Woodroffe's oldest friend must be a young lady out of
the common. There was, he observed, something certainly uncommon in
her appearance, something which might suggest the footlights. Any old
friend of Dick Woodroffe must suggest the footlights.
"It is strange," said the doctor, "to have three of our small party
belonging to the same name."
The other guests arrived. The last was Humphrey. He looked round
the room with that expression of cold and insolent curiosity which
made him so much beloved by everybody. "Outsiders all," that look
expressed. He greeted Dick with a brief nod of astonished recognition,
as if he had not expected to meet him in a drawing-room. He stared at
Mrs. Haveril's diamonds, and he smiled with some astonishment, but yet
graciously, on Molly.
"You are properly dressed to-night," he whispered. "I have never seen
you looking so well."
"Doctor," said Mrs. Haveril, as he led her down the stairs, "I wish I
could go and sit in a corner."
"Why? You are trembling! What is the matter?"
"I feel as if I was in a dream. It is the sight of these two young
men. One is the young man I saw at the theatre--the young man I
told you of--so like my husband; the other is like him, too, but
differently. I am haunted to-night with my husband's face."
"It is imagination. You have been thinking too much about certain
things. Their name is the same as your husband's. Probably he, too, if
you knew, was a distant cousin."
"It's not imagination; it is the fact."
"I am sorry you are so disturbed; but, above all, do not agitate
yourself," he whispered, as they entered the dining-room.
"I will keep up, doctor; but it's dreadful to sit with two living
images of your first husband."
From the ordinary point of view, the dinner was not so great a success
as some of those given at this house. The conversation flagged. Yet,
below the surface, everybody was interested. Humphrey took in Molly,
but Dick sat on the other side of her, and told her stories about his
last tramp; Humphrey, therefore, became sulky, and absorbed wine in
quantities. Alice gazed at the two young men--her husband's eyes,
her husband's mouth, her husband's voice, her husband's hair, in both
of them--both like unto her first husband, yet both unlike; they were
also like unto each other, yet unlike. She heard nothing that was
said; she listened to the voice, she saw the eyes, and she was back
again, after all those years, with that vagrant man, that vagabond
in morals, as well as in ways, the man who so cruelly used her, the
comedian and stroller.
The doctor also watched the two young men. They had, to begin with,
many points of resemblance; they were alike, however, as brothers
who often differ in disposition as much as strangers. The elder of
the two--the doctor considered Mrs. Haveril--took after his mother,
and was serious, at least. He thought of Lady Woodroffe's remarks
about him: "Selfish." Yes; there was a way of eating his food and
absorbing his wine that betokened a selfish pleasure in the food
above the delights of society and conversation. He did not converse;
he sat glum. "Ill-conditioned and bad-tempered," Lady Woodroffe
said. The selfishness, and probably the bad temper, he inherited
from the father. From his education he obtained, of course, the air
of superiority, which, like the Order of the Garter, has nothing to
do with intellect or achievement, or distinction. From his education
also his features had probably acquired a certain manner which we call
aristocratic.
He kept his guest in something like good temper by asking his opinion,
pointedly, as if he valued his judgment, on the champagne. He had
little talks with him on vintages and years and brands, in which
the young man was as wide as most youths at the club where champagne
flows. And he asked Sir Humphrey's opinion on the _plats_, and let the
others feel that his opinion carried weight, so that his guest forgot
something of Molly's perverseness in listening to her neighbour's
stories, and of the intolerable nuisance of sitting down to dinner
with such a company.
He turned to the other cousin--Dick. This fellow, like unto Humphrey,
was yet so much unlike him that, to begin with, his face was as
undistinguished as was his cousin's mind. Yet a clever face, capable
of many emotions. He was full of life and talk, he was interested in
everything, he could listen as well as talk--a young man of sympathy.
The artistic side of him came from his father, as did also the nomad
side of him; the sympathy and kindliness and honesty came to him from
his unknown mother--one supposed.
As for John Haveril, he was chiefly engaged in considering the girl
who had thus unexpectedly come into his life to cheer it with her
brightness and her grace. I have never found any man so old or so
self-made as to be insensible to the charms of sprightly maidenhood
and youthful beauty. John Haveril was quite a homely person; he had
not been brought up to think of beauty, and lovely dress, and charming
airs and graces as belonging to himself in any way. It is this sense
of being outside the circle which makes working men apparently deaf
and blind to beauty adorned and cultivated. Why admire or think upon
the unattainable? They might as well yearn after the possession of an
ancient castle and noble name as after beauty decorated and set off.
And now this girl belonged to them. He himself and his wife were only
happy when this girl was with them; she came every day to see them;
she drove out with them, took them to see things, taught them what
to admire and what to buy, dined with them, consented graciously to
accept their gifts, but refused their money.
At all events, she refused to take any. Yet she liked the things that
money can buy--lovely frocks, gloves, hats, ribbons, laces, gold
chains, and bracelets, and necklaces. To him contempt for money,
combined with love of what only money can buy, seemed incongruous. The
contempt was only a phrase. Molly had been taught that Art ought to
despise wealth; she had not been taught to despise the things artistic
that money can buy. The rich man chuckled to think how much money can
be spent upon a girl who despises it. He was pleased to make the girl
happy by heaping unaccustomed treasures on her gratified shoulders.
It was pleasant to be generous to a bright, happy, smiling girl, who
kept him alive, and made him forget the burden of his riches. And as
he thought of these things he fell into his third manner--that of the
gardener--and his eyes went off into space.
After dinner Molly sat down to the piano and began to sing, in a full,
flexible contralto, an old ditty about love and flowers, taught her
by Dick himself, who possessed a treasure-house full of such songs,
new and old, and of all countries, and in all languages. There is but
one theme fit for a song--the theme of youth and love, and the sweet
season of roses.
Humphrey stood listening. To this young man, perhaps to others, the
effect of Molly's singing, as of her presence and of her voice and of
her eyes, was to fill his mind with visions. They came to him in the
shape of dancing-girls with tambourines and castanets. When a girl is
endowed with the real faculty of singing, she may create in the minds
of those who hear, those visions which best fit their inclinations
and their natures. To this young man came the troop of dancing-girls,
because his disposition inclined him that way: they sang as they
danced, and they threw up white arms to a music of wild and reckless
joy; they filled him with the longing, the yearning, for the delirium
of youth and rapture which seizes every young man from time to time,
and sometimes possesses him all the days of his youth, and casts
him out long before his youth is over to the husks among the swine.
Others, more fortunate, feel the yearning, too, but they make of it a
stimulus and an incentive. There is no such rapture beneath the sky
as young men dream of; yet the vision may make them poets, and may
strengthen them for endeavour; and it may fill them with the worship
of woman, which is the one thing needful for a man. Humphrey, wholly
filled and possessed by this rapture, would not be cast forth to the
husks, because--oh! sordid reason--his mother would pay his debts.
Alas! poor Molly! and she so ignorant. She had no such vision--girls
never do. When young men reel and tremble with the vision of rapture
inconceivable, girls have to be contented with a mild happiness. To
them there comes no dream of gleaming arms--no imagined magic of voice
and eyes and face. There is no such thing as a Prodigal daughter;
the humble _rôle_ of the Prodigal Girl is to minister, as with the
white arms and the castanets, to the service of the Prodigal Son; for
which she, too, has to go out presently to sit with the swine, and to
maintain a precarious existence on the husks.
Molly had no such vision: yet by the mere power of her voice she could
awaken this vision in the mind of a listener. It is a power which
makes an actress; makes a queen; makes a lady of authority; whom all
obey to whom that power appeals.
Molly, I say, had no respect at all for the flowery way; she could
not understand, nor did she ask, why young men should want to dance
hand-in-hand with the girls; nor why they like to crown their heads
with roses; nor why they drink huge draughts of the wine that fizzeth
in the cup, to make their heads as light as their feet.
She created, however, quite a different vision in the mind of the
other young man. Dick knew all about the flowery way, and, in fact,
despised it. You see, he belonged to the "service;" he played the
fiddle for the dancers; like those who gather the roses, polish the
floor, lay the cloth, open the champagne, cook the dishes, decorate
the rooms, and write the songs; he belonged to the Show. The flowery
way was nothing to him but a Show; the white arms amused him not; the
soft cheeks he knew were painted; the smiles and the laughing looks
were practised at rehearsals. As for Molly, she was his companion and
a helpmeet; one to whom he would impart and give with all that he had,
and who would in return love and cherish him. What is the Flowery way
compared with the way of Love? This, and nothing else, is the real
reason why the Show folk are so different from the other folk; there
is no illusion to them; they are the paid dancers, makers of rosy
wreaths, musicians and singers of the Flowery way.
Molly's song, therefore, opened another kind of vision to Master
Richard. All he saw was a long road shaded with hills, and Molly in
the middle of it marching along with him, singing as she went, and
carrying the fiddle.
When the song was finished, Molly got up.
"May I sing you one of my own songs?" Humphrey asked her, paying no
attention to the rest.
He sat down and struck a note and began a song. It had no melody;
it was without a beginning and without an end; the words told
nothing, neither a story nor a sentiment; like the music to which
they were set, they began in the middle of a sentence and ended with
a semicolon. His voice was good enough, but uncultivated. When he
finished, he closed the piano, as if there was to be no more music
after him.
"It is music," he said coldly, "of the advanced school. I am proud to
belong to the music of the future--the true expression of Art in song."
"I will show you"--Richard opened the piano and took his place--"I
will show you something of the music of the present."
With vigorous and practised fingers he ran up and down the notes; then
he struck into an air--light, easy, catching, and began to sing the
"Song of the Tramp"--one of his vagabond songs.
Mrs. Haveril sat watching the two young men. When Dick began, the
other one turned away sullenly, and began to look into a portfolio of
etchings, with the air of one who will not listen.
"Doctor," she whispered, "that young man sings and plays exactly like
my husband. It might be the same. He would sit down and sing just
that same way, as if nothing ever happened and nothing mattered. I
wonder how men can go on like that, with age and sickness and the end
before them. Women never can. Oh, how like my husband he is! The other
is not like him in manner; not a bit; yet in face--oh, in face--and
voice--and eyes--and hair! It is wonderful!"
"One can hardly expect the son of Sir Humphrey Woodroffe to be
altogether like a comedian."
"Yet," she repeated, "so like him in face and everything; I cannot get
over it."
Just then Humphrey looked up. There was just a moment--what was it?--a
turn of the face; a look in the eyes, that made the doctor start.
"Heavens!" he thought. "He's exactly like his mother!"
Dick finished. John Haveril walked over to the piano before he got up.
"Mister," he said, "I like it. I find it cheerful. If you could see
your way, now, to look in upon us of an evening, I think you might do
good to my wife, who's apt to let her spirits go down. Come and sing
to us."
"I will, with pleasure. When shall I come?"
"Come to-morrow evening. Come every evening, if you like, young
gentleman. My wife doesn'
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/49035