"Yes, Fanny Lambert. I told you she hid her jewels before she hung herself. When people see her she is always beckoning them to follow her. We found James insensible one night on the landing upstairs; he told us next morning he had seen her, and she had beckoned him to follow her, and after that he remembered nothing more."
"A sure sign there were spirits in the house."
"Wasn't it? But why, do you think, does she beckon people?"
"Perhaps she beckons people to show them where the jewels are hidden."
"Oh!" cried Fanny; "why did we never think of that before? Of course that is the reason—and they are worth two hundred thousand pounds. We must have the panels in the corridor taken down. I'll make father do it to-morrow. Two hundred thousand pounds: what is that a year?"
"Ten thousand."
"Fancy father with ten thousand a year!" Mr Bevan shuddered. "We can have a steam yacht, and everything we want. I feel as if I were going mad," said Miss Lambert, with the air of a person who had often been mad before and knew the symptoms.
The door opened and Susannah appeared with the punch things. "Susannah, guess what's happened—never mind, you'll know soon. Have you got the lemon and the sugar? That is right."
And Miss Lambert, forgetting for a moment fortune, turned her attention to the manufacturing of punch.
Susannah withdrew, casting her eyes over Fanny and Charles as she went, and seeming to draw her under-lip after her.
When the door was shut, Miss Lambert looked into the punch bowl to see if it was clean, and, having turned a huge spider out of it, went to the sideboard.
"You are not going to make punch in this great thing?"
"I am," said Fanny, returning with a bottle in each hand and one under her arm.
"Go on," said Charles resignedly. "May I smoke?"
"Of course, smoke. Open me this champagne."
"You are not going to put champagne in punch?"
"Everything is good in punch. Father learned how to make it in Moscow, when he was dining with the Hussars there. After dinner a huge bowl was brought in, and everything went in—champagne, whisky, brandy, all the fruit from the dessert; then they set it on fire, and drank it, burning."
"Has your father ever made punch like that?"
"No, but now I've got him away, I am going to try."
Pop went the champagne cork, and the golden wine ran creaming into the bowl.
"Now the brandy."
"But this will be cold punch."
"Yes, it's just as good; milk punch is always cold."
"I'm blest if this is milk punch," said Mr Bevan, as he looked fearfully into the bowl; "but go on."
"I am going as quick as I can," she replied. Then the whisky went in, and half a tumblerfull of curaçoa also, the lemon cut in slices and the peaches that remained.
"I haven't anything more to throw in," said Fanny, casting her eye over the sardines and the ox tongue. "We ought to have grapes and things; no matter, stir it up and set it on fire, and see what it tastes like."
"But, my dear child," said the horrified Charles, as he stirred the seething mixture with the old silver ladle into whose belly a guinea had been beaten. "You surely don't expect me to drink this fearful stuff? I thought you were making it for fun."
"You taste it and see, but set it on fire first."
He struck a match.
"It won't catch fire!" he cried. "Knew it wouldn't."
"Well, taste it cold; it smells delicious."
She plucked a rose from the vase and strewed the petals on the surface of the liquid to help the taste, whilst Mr Bevan ladled some into a glass.
"It's not bad, 'pon my word it's not bad; the curaçoa seems to blend all the other flavours together, but it's fearfully strong."
"Wait"—she ran to the sideboard for a bottle of soda water.
"Mix it half and half, and see how it tastes."
"That's better."
"Then we'll take it into the library, it's more comfortable there. You carry the bowl, and I will bring the candles."
"What are these?" asked Mr Bevan, as he removed some papers from the library table to make room for the punch bowl.
"Oh, some papers of father's."
"The Rorkes Drift Gold Mines."
"Yes," she said, glancing over his shoulder. "I remember now; those are the things I am to get a silk dress out of when they go to twenty. Father is mad over them; he says nothing will stop them when they begin to move, whatever that means."
"Well, they have moved with a vengeance, for only yesterday I heard they had gone into liquidation."
"All the good luck seems coming together," said Fanny with a happy sigh, as Charles went to the window and looked out at the moon, rising in a cloudless sky over the forsaken garden and ruined tennis ground. "Not that it matters much if we get those jewels whether the old mines go up or down; still, no matter how rich one becomes, more money is always useful."
"Yes, I suppose it is," said he, looking with a troubled but sentimental face at the moon. "Tell me, Fanny, do you know much about the Stock Exchange?"
"Oh, heaps."
"What do you know?"
"I know that Brighton A's are called Doras—no, Berthas—no, I think it's Doras—and Mexican Railways are going to Par, and the Kneedeep Mines are going to a hundred and fifty, and father has a thousand of them he got for sixpence a share, and he gave me fifty for myself, but I'm not to sell them till they go to a hundred. Aren't stockbrokers nice-looking, and always so well dressed? I saw hundreds of them one day father left me for a moment in Angel Court whilst he ran in to see his broker—Oh yes! and the bears are going to catch it at the next settlement."
"Do you know what 'bears' are?"
"No," said Fanny, "but they're going to catch it whatever they are, for I heard father say so—Oh, what a moon! I am sure the fairies must be out to-night."
"You don't mean to say you believe in such rubbish as fairies?"
"Of course I believe in them; not here in Highgate, perhaps, for there are too many people, but in woods and places."
"But there are no such things, it has been proved over and over again; no one believes in them nowadays."
"Did you never see the mushrooms growing in rings? Well, how could they grow like that if they were not planted, and who'd be bothered planting umbrella mushrooms in rings but the fairies?"
"Does your father believe in them?"
"Never asked him, but of course he does; every one does—even Susannah."
She went to the table and blew out the candles.
"What are you doing now?"
"Blowing out the lights; it's so much nicer sitting in the moonlight. Fill your glass and sit down beside me."
"Extraordinary child," thought Mr Bevan, doing as he was bid, whilst she opened the window wide to "let the moon in."
Other things came too, a night moth and a perfume of decaying leaves, the souls of last year's sun-flowers and hollyhocks were abroad to-night; the distant paddock seemed full of cats, to judge by the sounds that came from it, and bats were flickering in the air. The voice of Boy-Boy, metallic and rhythmical as the sound of a trip hammer, came from a distant corner of the garden where he had treed a cat.
"Quick," said Fanny, drawing in her head and pulling her companion by the arm, "and you'll be in time to see our tortoise."
Charles regarded the quadruped without emotion.
"I don't see the necessity for such frightful haste."
"Still, if you'd been a moment sooner the moonlight would have been on him; he was shining a moment ago like silver. Do you know what a tortoise is? it's a sign of age. You and I will be some day like that tortoise, without any teeth, wheezing and coughing and grubbing along; and may-be we will look back and think of this night when we were young—Oh, dear me, I wish I were dead!"
"Why, why, what's the matter now—Fanny?"
"I don't want to grow old," pouted Miss Lambert.
"When two people grow old together," began Mr Bevan in whose brain the punch was at work, "they do not notice the—that is to say, age really does not matter. Besides, a woman is only as old as she feels—I mean as she looks."
The fumes of the punch of a sudden took on themselves a form as of the pale phantom of Pamela Pursehouse, and the phantom cried, "Begone, flee from temptation whilst you may."
Before him the concrete form of Miss Lambert sitting in the corner of the window-seat and bathed in moonlight, said to him, "Hug me."
Her eyes were resting upon him, then she gazed out at the garden and sighed.
Charles took her hand: it was not withdrawn. "I must be going now," he said.
She turned from the garden and gazed at him in silence.
A few minutes later, feeling clouds beneath his feet and all sorts of new sensations around his heart, he was walking down the weed-grown avenue, Boy-Boy at his heels barking and snarling, satisfied no doubt by some preternatural instinct that do what he might he would not be kicked.
Ere he had reached the middle of the avenue he heard a voice calling, "Cousin Charley!"
"Yes, Fanny."
"Come back soon!"
CHAPTER II THE GOD FROM THE MACHINE
"The Laurels, 11 p.m.
"I have been going to write for the last few days, but have been so busy. I could go on the picnic to-day if it would suit you I'll call at the studio at one o'clock. If you can't come, send me a wire. Oh, I forgot to say Mr Hancock came home the other day with me and had a long talk with father, and Mr Bevan called to-day and was awfully jolly, and I'll tell you all about it when we meet. Give my love to Mr Verneede.
"In haste to catch the post.
"P.S.—I'm in such good spirits. F. L."
It was the morning after the day on which Mr Bevan had called at "The Laurels." Leavesley was in bed, and reading the above, which had come by the early post, and which Belinda had thrust under his door, together with a circular and a bill for colours.
"Hurrah!" cried Mr Leavesley, and then "Great Heavens!" He jumped out of bed, and rummaged wildly in his pockets. He found seven and sixpence in silver, and a penny and a halfpenny in coppers, a stump of pencil, a tramway ticket with a hole punched in it, and a Woodbine cigarette packet containing one cigarette. He placed the money on the wash-hand-stand, then he sat for a moment on the side of his bed disconsolate.
The most beautiful day that ever dawned, the most beautiful girl in the world, a chance of taking her up the river, and seven and six to do it on!
He curled his toes about. Yesterday, in a fit of righteousness, he had paid a tailor two pounds ten on account. He contemplated this great mistake gloomily. Wild ideas of calling on Mark Moses & Sonenshine and asking for the two pounds ten back crossed his mind, to be instantly dispelled.
The only two men in London who could possibly help him with a loan were, to use a Boyle-Rochism, in Paris. Mrs Tugwell, his landlady, was at Margate, and he was in the middle of his tri-monthly squabble with his uncle. He called up the ghost of his aunt Patience Hancock, and communed with her just for the sake of self-torture, and the contemplation of the hopeless.
Then he rang his bell, which Belinda answered.
"Breakfast at once, Belinda."
"Yessir, and here's another letter as hes just come," she poked a square envelope under the door. Leavesley seized it with a palpitating heart; it was unstamped, and had evidently been left in by hand.
"This is the God from the Machine," he thought. "There's money in it, I know. It always happens like this when things are at their worst."
We all have these instincts at times: the contents of an unopened letter or parcel seem endowed with a voice; who has not guessed the fateful news in a telegram before he has broken open the envelope, even as Leavesley guessed the contents of the letter in his hand?
He tore it open and took out a sheet of paper and a pawnbroker's duplicate. The letter ran:—
"NO. 150A KING'S ROAD,
"OVER THE BACON SHOP.
"Dear Leavesley,—I am in bed, not suffering from smallpox, croup, spinal meningitis, or any wasting or infectious disease. I am in bed, my dear Leavesley, simply for want of my trousers. Robed in Jones' long ulster, which reacheth to my heels, I took the aforesaid garments yester-even after dusk to my uncle. If help does not come they will have to take me to the workhouse in a blanket. I enclose duplicate. Three and sevenpence would release me and them.
"'The die is castAnd this is the last.'"From
The Captain.
'P.S.—If you have no money send me the 'Count of Monte Cristo'—you have a copy; or the 'Multi-Millionaire.' I have nothing to read but a Financial News of the day before yesterday."
Leavesley groaned and laughed, and groaned again. Then he got into his bath and splashed; as he splashed his spirits rose amazingly.
The Captain's letter had electrified the Bohemian part of his nature; instead of depressing him it had done the reverse. Here was another poor devil worse off than himself. Leavesley had six pair of trousers.
The Captain, in parenthesis let me say, has no part in this story. He wasn't a captain, he was a relic of the South African War, a gentleman with a taste for drink, amusing, harmless, and amiable. I only introduce him on account of the telepathic interest of his letter, or rather of the way in which Leavesley divined its contents.
"Seven and sixpence—I mean seven and sevenpence halfpenny, is not a bit of use," said the painter to himself when he had finished breakfast, "so here goes."
He put three and sevenpence in an envelope with the pathetic duplicate, addressed it to Captain Waring, rang for Belinda; and when that much-harried maid-of-all-work appeared, told her to take it as soon as she could to Captain Waring, down the road over the bacon shop, also to call at Mr Verneede's and ask him to come round at twelve.
Then he reached down a finished picture, wrapped it in brown paper, put the parcel under his arm and started off.
He took a complication of omnibuses, and arrived in Wardour Street about half-past nine.
"Mr Fernandez is gone to the country on pizzines," said the Jew-boy slave of the picture dealer, who came from the interior of the gloomy shop like a dirty gnome, called forth by the ring of the door bell.
"Oh, d——n!" said Leavesley.
"He's gone on pizzines," replied the other.
"Where's he gone to?"
"Down in the country."
"Look here, I want to sell a picture."
"Mr Fernandez is gone on pizzines."
"Oh, dash Mr Fernandez! Is there no one here I can show the thing to? He knows me."
"There's only me," said the grimy sphinx.
"Can you buy it?"
"No, I ain't no use for buying. Mr Fernandez is gone on——"
"Oh, go to the devil!"
"This is a nice sort of thing," said Leavesley to himself as he stood in Wardour Street perspiring. "There's nothing for it now but a frontal attack on uncle."
He made for Southampton Row, reaching the office at ten o'clock, about five minutes after James Hancock.
Hancock was dealing with his morning correspondence. A most unbendable old gentleman he looked as he sat at his table before a pile of letters, backed by the numerous tin boxes Leavesley knew so well. Boxes marked "The Gleeson Estate," "Sir H. Tempest, Bart," etc. Boxes that spoke of wealth and business in mocking tones to the unfortunate artist, who felt very much as the grasshopper must have felt in the presence of the industrious ant. Despite this he noticed that his uncle was more sprucely dressed than usual, and that he had on a lilac satin tie.
Hancock looked at his nephew over his spectacles, then through his spectacles, then he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead.
"Good morning, uncle."
"Good morning."
"I just looked in," said Leavesley, in a light-hearted way, "as I was going by, to see how you were."
This was a very bad opening.
"Sit down," said Hancock. "Um—I wasn't aware that there was anything the matter with me."
"You were complaining of the gout last time."
"Oh, bother the gout!" said the old gentleman, who hated to be reminded of his infirmity. "It isn't gout—Garrod says it's Rheumatoid Arthritis."
Leavesley repented of having played the gout gambit.
"—Rheumatoid Arthritis. Well, what are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm painting."
"Are you selling?" said Hancock, "that's more to the point."
"Oh yes, I'm selling—mildly."
"Um!"
"I sold two pictures quite recently."
"I always told you," said the lawyer, ignoring the last statement in a most irritating way, and speaking as if Leavesley were made of glass and all his affairs were arranged inside him for view like damaged goods in a shop window—"I always told you painting doesn't pay. If you had come into the office you might have got on well; but there you are, you've made your bed, and on it you must lie," then in a voice three shades gloomier, "on it you must lie."
Leavesley glanced at the office clock, it pointed to quarter past ten, and Fanny was due at one.
"I had a little business to talk to you about," he said. "Look here, will you give me a commission?"
"A what?"
"A commission for a picture."
"And five pounds on account," was in his brain, but it did not pass his tongue.
"A picture?" said Hancock. "What on earth do I want with pictures?"
"Let me paint your portrait."
Hancock made a movement with his hand as if to say "Pish!"
"Well, look here," said Leavesley, with the cynicism of despair, "let me paint Bridgewater, let me paint the office, whitewash the ceilings, only give me a show."
"I would not mind the money I have spent on you," said Hancock, ignoring all this, "the bills I have paid, if, to use your own expression, there was any show for it; but, as far as I can see, you are like a man in a quagmire, the only advance you are making, the only advance visible to mortal eye, is that you are getting deeper into debt;" then two tones lower, "deeper into debt."
"Well, see here, lend me a fiver," cried Leavesley, now grown desperate and impudent.
James Hancock put his fingers into the upper pocket of his waistcoat, and Leavesley's heart made a spring for his throat.
But Mr Hancock did not produce a five-pound note. He produced a small piece of chamois leather with which he polished his glasses, which he had taken off, in a reflective manner.
"I'm awfully hard up for the moment, and I have pressing need of it. I don't want you to give me the money, I'll pay it back."
Mr Hancock put on his glasses again.
"You come to me as one would come to a milch cow, as one would come to a bank in which he had a large deposit."
He put his hand in his breast-pocket and took out a note-case that seemed simply bursting with bank-notes.
"Now if I accommodate you with a five-pound note I must know, at least, what the pressing need is you speak of."
"I want to take a girl up the river, for one thing," answered his nephew, who could no more tell him a lie about the matter, than he could steal a note from that plethoric note-case.
James Hancock replaced the case in his pocket and made a motion with his hands as if to say "that ends everything."
Leavesley rose to go.
"I'd have paid you it back. No matter. I'm going to write a book, and make money out of it. I'll call it the 'Art of Being an Uncle.'"
Hancock made a motion with his hands that said, "Go away, I want to read my letters."
"Now, look here," said Leavesley, with his hand on the door handle, and inspired with another accession of impudence, "if you'd take ten pounds and put it in your pocket, and come with me and her, and have a jolly good day on the river, wouldn't it be better than sitting in this stuffy old office making money that is no use to any one—you can only live once."
"Go away!" said his uncle.
"I'm going. Tell me, if I went round to aunt would she accommodate me, do you think?"
"Accommodate you to make a fool of yourself with a girl? I hope not, I sincerely hope not."
"Well, I'll try. Good day."
"Good day."
Leavesley went out, and shut the door. Then he suddenly turned, opened the door and looked in.
"I say, uncle!"
"Well?" replied the unfortunate Mr Hancock, in a testy voice.
"Did you never make a fool of yourself with a girl?"
The old gentleman grew suddenly so crimson that his nephew shut the door and bolted. He little guessed how àpropos that question was.
CHAPTER III TRIBULATIONS OF AN AUNT
He had scarcely gone a hundred yards down Southampton Row, when he heard his name called.
"Mr Frank!"
He turned. Bridgewater was pursuing him with something in his hand.
"Mr James told me to give you this."
Leavesley took the envelope presented to him, and Bridgewater bolted back to the office like a fat old rabbit, returning to its burrow.
In the envelope was a sovereign wrapped up in a half sheet of notepaper.
"Well, of all the meannesses!" said the dutiful nephew, pocketing the coin. "Still, it's decent of the old boy after my cheeking him like that. I have now one pound four. I'll go now and cheek aunt."
Miss Hancock was in; she had a handkerchief tied round her head, a duster in her hand; she had just given the cook warning and was in a debatable temper. She was also in a dusting mood. She had plenty of servants, yet the inspiration came on her at times to tie a handkerchief round her head and dust.
"Well?" she said, as she led the way into the dining-room, and continued an attack she was making on the sideboard with her duster.
Leavesley had scarcely the slightest hope of financial assistance from this quarter. Patience had given him half-a-crown for a birthday present once when he was a little boy, and then worried it back from him and popped it into a missionary box for the Wallibooboo Islanders.
He never forgot that half-crown.
"I've come round to borrow some money from you," he said.
Patience sniffed, and went on with her dusting. Then suddenly she stopped, and, duster in hand, addressed him.
"Are you never going to do anything for a living? Have you no idea of the responsibilities of life? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going for a holiday in the country if I can scrape up money enough."
"You won't scrape it up here," said his aunt, continuing her dusting; then, for she was as inquisitive as a mongoose: "And what part of the country do you propose to take a holiday in?"
"Sonning-on-Thames."
"And where, may I ask, is Sonning-on-Thames?"
"It's on the Thames. See here, will you lend me five pounds?"
"Five what?"
"Pounds."
"What for?"
"To take a girl for a trip to Sonning-on-Thames."
Miss Hancock was sweeping with her duster round a glass arrangement made to hold flowers, in the convulsion incident on this statement she upset the thing and smashed it, much to Leavesley's delight.
He made for the door, and stood for a moment with the handle in his hand.
"I'm awfully sorry. Can I help you to pick it up?"
"Go away," said Miss Hancock, who was on her knees collecting the fragments of glass; "I want to see nothing more of you. If you are lost to respectability you might retain at least common decency."
"Decency!"
"Yes, decency."
"I don't know that I've said anything indecent, or that there is anything indecent in going for a day on the river with a girl. Well, I'm going——" A luminous idea suddenly struck him. He knew the old maid's mind, and the terror she had of the bare idea of her brother marrying; he remembered the spruce appearance of his uncle that morning and the lavender satin necktie. "I say——"
"Well?"
"Talking of girls, how about uncle and his girl?"
"What's that you say!"
"Nothing, nothing; I oughtn't to have said anything about it. Well, I'm off."
He left the room hurriedly and shut the door, before she could call him back he was out of the house.
His random remark had hit the target plumb in the centre of the bull's-eye, and could he have known the agitation and irritation in the mind of his aunt he would have written off as paid his debt against the Wallibooboo Islanders.
The river was impossible now, and the whole thing had shrunk to luncheon at the studio and a visit to Madame Tussaud's or the Tower.
He reached the studio before twelve, and there he found waiting for him Mr Verneede and the Captain.
The Captain was in his trousers; he had come to show them as a proof of good faith and incidentally to get a glass of whisky. Leavesley gave him the whisky and sent him off, then he turned to Verneede.
"The whole thing has bust up. Miss Lambert is coming at one to go up the river and I have no money. Stoney broke; isn't it the deuce?"
"How very unfortunate!" said Mr Verneede. "How very unfortunate!"
"Unfortunate isn't the name for it."
"Did Miss Lambert write?"
"Yes—Oh, she told me to remember her to you, sent her love to you."
"Ah!"
"I've only got one pound four."
"But surely, my dear Leavesley—one pound four—why, it is quite a little sum of money."
"It's not enough to go up the river on—three of us."
"Why go up the river?"
"Where else can we go?"
"I have an idea," said Mr Verneede. "May I propound it?"
"Yes."
"Have you ever heard of Epping Forest?"
"Yes."
"Why not go there and spend a day amidst the trees, the greenery, the blue sky, the——"
"What would it cost?"
"A fractional sum; one takes the train to Woodford."
Leavesley reached for an A.B.C. guide and plunged into details.
"There are hamlets in the forest, where tea may be obtained in cottages at a reasonable cost——"
"We can just do it, I think," said Leavesley, who had been making distracted calculations on paper. He darted to the bell and rang it.
"Belinda," he said, when the slave of the bell made answer, "there's a lady coming here to luncheon, have you anything in the house?"
Belinda, with a far-away look in her eyes, made a mental survey of the larder, twiddling the door-handle to assist thought.
"There's a pie, sir, and sassiges, and a cold mutton chop. There's half a chicken——"
"That'll do, and get a salad. I'll run out and get some flowers and a bottle of claret."
CHAPTER IV THE DAISY CHAIN
They were seated in a dusty glade near a road, near Woodford, and they had lost Verneede.
The loss did not seem to affect them. Fanny had picked some daisies and was making a chain of them. Leavesley was making and smoking cigarettes.
"But what I can't make out," said Leavesley—"This fellow Bevan, you said he was a beast, and now you seem quite gone on him."
"I'm not," said Fanny indignantly.
"Well, I can only judge from your words."
"I'm not!"—pouting.
"Well, there, I won't say any more. He stayed to luncheon, you said?"
"Yes," defiantly, "and tea and supper; why shouldn't he?"
"Oh, I don't see why he shouldn't, only it must have been a visitation. I should think your father was rather bored."
Fanny said nothing, but went on with her chain.
"What sort of looking fellow is he?"
"He's very nice-looking; at least he's rather fat—you know the sort of man I mean."
"And awfully rich?"
"Awfully."
Leavesley tore up grass leisurely and viciously.
"Your uncle is awfully rich too, isn't he?" asked Miss Lambert after a moment's silence.
"Yes; why?"
"I was only thinking."
"What were you only thinking?"
"I was thinking if I had to marry one or the other, which I'd chose."
Leavesley squirmed with pleasure: that was one for Bevan. He instinctively hated Bevan. He, little knowing the mind of Miss Lambert, thought this indecision of choice between his uncle and another man an exquisitely veiled method of describing the other man's undesirability.
"Marry uncle," he said with a laugh. "And then we can all live together in Gordon Square, uncle, and you, and I, and aunt, and old Verneede. The house would hold the lot of us."
"And father."
"Of course," said Leavesley, thinking she spoke in fun, "and a few more—the Captain: you don't know the Captain; he's a treasure, and would make the menagerie quite complete."
"And we could go for picnics," said Fanny.
"Rather!"
She had finished her daisy-chain, and with a charming and child-like movement she suddenly leaned forward and threw it round his neck.
"Oh, Fanny," he cried, taking both her little hands in his, "what's the good of talking nonsense? I love you, and you'll never marry any one but me."
Fanny began to cry just like a little child, and he crept up to her and put his arm round her waist.
"I love you, Fanny. Listen, darling, I love you——"
"Don't—don't—don't!" sobbed the girl, nestling closer to him at each "don't."
"Why?"
"I was thinking just the same."
"What?"
"That I——"
"That you——?"
"Don't!"
"That you love me?"
Silence interspersed with sobs, then—
"I don't love you, but I—could——"
"What?"
"Love you—but I mustn't."
Leavesley heaved a deep sigh of content, squeezed her closer and rocked her slightly. She allowed herself to be nursed like this for a few heavenly moments; then she broke away from him, pushed him away.
"I mustn't, I mustn't—don't!—do leave me alone—go away." She increased the distance between them. Tears were on her long black lashes—lashes tipped with brown—and her eyes were like passion flowers after rain—to use a simile that has never been used before.
Leavesley had got on his hands and knees to crawl closer towards her, and the intense seriousness of his face, coupled with the attitude of his body, quite dispelled Miss Lambert's inclination to weep.
"Don't!" she cried, laughing in a helpless sort of way. "Do sit down, you look so funny like that."
He collapsed, and they sat opposite to each other like two tailors, whilst Fanny dried her eyes and finished up her few remaining sobs.
A brake full of trippers passed on the road near by, yelling that romantic and delightful song
"They're happy," said Fanny, listening with a rapt expression as though she were listening to the music of the heavenly choir. "I wish I was them."
"Fanny," said her lover, ignoring this comprehensive wish, "why can't you care for me?"
"I do care for you."
"Yes, but why can't you marry me?"
"We're too poor."
"I'll be making lots of money soon."
"How much?"
"Oh, four or five hundred a year."
"That's not enough," said Fanny with a sigh, "not nearly enough."
Leavesley gazed at the mercenary beauty before him. Had he miscalculated her? was she after all like other girls, a daughter of the horse leech?
"I'd marry you to-morrow," resumed she, "if you hadn't a penny—only for father."
"What about him?"
"I must help him. I must marry a rich man or not marry at all. There——"
"Do you care for him more than me?"
"Yes."
Leavesley sighed, then he broke out: "But it's dreadful, he never would ask you to make such a sacrifice——"
"Father?"
"Yes."
"He! why, he doesn't care a button. He believes in people marrying whoever they like. He'd like me to marry you. He said only the other day you'd make a good husband because you didn't gamble or drink, and you had no taste for going to law."
Leavesley's face brightened, he got on his hands and knees again preparatory to drawing nearer.
"Sit down," said Fanny, drawing away.
"But if you love me," said the lover, collapsing again into the sitting posture.
"I don't."
"What!"
"Not enough to marry you. I could if I let myself go, but I've just stopped myself in time. I can't ever marry you."
"But, look here——"
"Yes?"
"Suppose you do marry a rich man, I don't see how it will benefit your father."
"Won't it! I'll never marry a man who won't help father, and he wants help. Oh! if you only knew our affairs," said Miss Lambert, picking a daisy and looking at it, and apparently addressing it, "the hair would stand up on the top of your head."
"Are they so bad as all that, Fanny?"
"Bad isn't the word," replied Miss Lambert, plucking the petals from the daisy one by one. "He loves me—he loves me not—he loves me—he loves me not—he loves me."
"Who?"
"You."
He got on his hands and knees again.
"Sit down."
"But, see here, listen to me: are you really serious in what you have just said?"
"I am."
"Well, promise me one thing: you won't marry any one just yet."
"What do you mean by just yet?"
"Oh, till I have a chance, till I strike oil, till I begin to make a fortune!"
"How long will that be?" asked Miss Lambert cautiously.
"I don't know," replied the unhappy painter.
"If the Roorkes Drift Mines would only go up to two hundred," said the girl, plucking another daisy, "I'd marry you; father has a whole trunkful of them. He got them at sixpence each, and if they went to two hundred they'd be worth half a million of money."
"Is there any chance, do you think?" asked Leavesley brightening. He knew something of stock exchange jargon. The Captain was great on stock exchange matters, when he was not occupied in pawning his clothes and sending wild messages to his friends for assistance.
"I think so," said Fanny. "Mr Bevan said they were going into Liqui——something."
"Liquidation."
"Yes—that's it."
Leavesley sighed. An old grey horse cropping the grass near by came and looked gloomily at the humans, snorted, and resumed his meal.
"What's the time?" asked Miss Lambert, putting on her gloves. Leavesley looked at his watch.
"Half-past six."
"Gracious! let's go; it will take us hours to get home." She rose to her feet and shook her dress.
"I wonder where old Mr Verneede can be?" said the girl, looking round as though to find him lurking amidst the foliage. "It's awful if we've lost him."
"We have his ticket, too," said Leavesley. "He's very likely gone back to the station; if we don't find him there I'll leave his ticket with the station-master."
He rose up, and the daisy-chain round his neck fell all to pieces in ruin to the ground.
They found Mr Verneede waiting for them at the station, smelling of beer, and conversing with the station-master on the weather and the crops.
At Liverpool Street, having seen Miss Lambert into an omnibus (she refused to be seen home, knowing full well the distance from Highgate to Chelsea), Leavesley, filled with a great depression of spirits, went with Verneede and sat in pubs, and smoked clay pipes, and drank beer.
This sorry pastime occupied them till 12.30, when they took leave of each other in the King's Road, Leavesley miserable, and Verneede maudlin.
"She sent me her love," said Mr Verneede, clinging to his companion's hand, and working it like a pump handle. "Bless you—bless you, my boy—don't take any more—Go—bless you."
When Leavesley looked back he saw Mr Verneede apparently trying to go home arm-in-arm with a lamp-post.
PART III
CHAPTER I AN ASSIGNATION
So, it would seem from the artless confession of Miss Lambert, that Patience Hancock had only too much reason for her fears: the lilac silk necktie had not been bought for the edification of Bridgewater and the junior clerks.
That the correct James Hancock had fuddled himself with punch, told droll stories, and lent Mr Lambert twenty pounds, were facts so utterly at variance with the known character of that gentleman as to be unbelievable by the people who knew him well.
Not by people well acquainted with human nature, or the fact that a grain of good-fellowship in the human heart exhibits extraordinary and radium-like activity under certain conditions: the conditions induced by punch and beauty and good-fellowship in others, for instance.
One morning, after the day upon which he had refused to assist Frank Leavesley to "make a fool of himself with a girl," James Hancock arrived at his office at the usual time, in the usual manner, and, nodding to Bridgewater as he had nodded to him every morning for the last thirty years, passed into the inner office and closed the door.
The closing of the door was a new departure; it had generally been left ajar as an indication that Bridgewater might come in whenever he chose, to receive instructions and to consult upon the morning letters.
The expression on Bridgewater's face when he heard the closing of the door was so extraordinarily funny, that one of the younger clerks, who caught a glimpse of it, hastily stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth and choked silently behind the lid of his desk.
Quarter of an hour passed, and then the door opened.
"Bridgewater!"
The old gentleman stuck his pen behind his ear and answered the summons.
James Hancock was seated at his desk. On it lay an envelope addressed in a lady's handwriting; he covered the envelope with a piece of blotting paper as Bridgewater entered.
"I'm going out this morning, Bridgewater, on some private business."
"Out this morning?" echoed Bridgewater in a tentative tone.
"Yes; I leave you in charge."
"But Purvis, Mr James, Purvis has an appointment with you at twelve."
"Oh, bother Purvis! Tell him to call to-morrow, his affair will wait; tell him the deed is not drawn and to come again to-morrow."
"How about Isaacs?"
"Solomon Isaacs?"
"Yes, Mr James."
"What time is he coming?"
"Half-past eleven."
"Tell him to come to-morrow."
"I'm afraid he won't. I'm——"
"If he won't," said Mr Hancock with some acerbity, "tell him to go to the devil. I don't want his business especially—let him find some one else. Now see here, about these letters."
He went into the morning letters, dictating replies to the more important ones and leaving the rest to the discretion of his clerk.
"And, Bridgewater," said Mr Hancock, as the senior clerk turned to depart, "I am expecting a lady to call here at half-past ten or quarter to eleven: show her in, it's Miss Lambert."
"You have had no word from Mr Charles Bevan, sir, since he called the other day?"
"Not a word. He is a very hot-headed young man; he inherits the Bevan temper, the Bevan temper," reiterated James Hancock in a reflective tone, tapping his snuff-box and taking a leisurely pinch. "I remember his father John Bevan at Ipswich, during the election, threatening to horsewhip my father; then when he found he was in the wrong, or rather that his own rascally solicitor was in the wrong, he apologised very handsomely and came to us. The family affairs have been in our hands ever since, as you know, and, though I say it myself, they could not have been in better."
"May I ask, Mr James, how affairs are with the Lamberts?—a sweetly pretty young lady is Miss Lambert, and so nice spoken."
"The Lamberts' affairs seem very much involved; but you know, Bridgewater, I have nothing to do with their affairs. I called to see Mr Lambert purely as a friend. It would be very unprofessional to call otherwise. D——n it!" suddenly broke out old Hancock, as if some one had pricked him with a pin, "a man is not always a business man. I'm getting on in life. I have money enough and to spare. I've done pretty much as I liked all my life, and I'll do so to the end; yes, and I'd break all the laws of professional etiquette one after the other to-morrow if I chose."
Bridgewater's amazed face was the only amazed part of his anatomy; he was used to these occasional petulant outbursts, and he looked on them with equanimity.
Hancock had been threatening to retire from business for the last ten years, to retire from business and buy a country place and breed horses. No one knew so well as Bridgewater the impossibility of this and the extent to which his master was bound up in his business—the business was his life.
He retired, mumbling something that sounded like an assent, and going to his desk put the letters in order.
Mr Hancock, left to himself, took a letter from his breast-pocket. It was addressed in a large careless hand to
"James Hancock, Esq.
Gordon Square.
It ran:—
"Dear Mr Hancock,—I'll be delighted to come to-morrow; I haven't seen the Zoo for years, not since I was quite small. No, don't trouble to come and fetch me, I will call at the office at half-past ten or quarter to eleven, that will be simpler.—Yours very sincerely,
"Fanny Lambert."
"I'll be hanged if it's simpler," grumbled James Hancock, as he returned the letter to his pocket. "Why in the name of all that's sacred couldn't she have let me call?—the clerks will talk so. No matter, let them—I don't care."
"Miss Lambert," said Bridgewater, opening the door.
Mr Hancock might have thought that Spring herself stood before him in the open doorway, such a pleasing and perfect vision did Miss Lambert make. She was attired in a chip hat, and a dress of something light in texture and lilac in colour, and, from the vivacity of her manner and the general sprightliness of her appearance, seemed bent upon a day of pleasure.
"I'm so awfully sorry to be so soon," said Miss Lambert. "It's only twenty minutes past ten; the clocks have all gone wrong at home. James broke out again yesterday; he went out and took far, far too much; isn't it dreadful? I don't know what we are to do with him, and he wound up the clocks last night, and I believe he has broken them all, at least they won't go. Father has gone away again; he is down in Sussex paying a visit to a Miss Pursehouse, we met her in Paris. She asked me to come too, but I had to refuse because my dressmaker—I mean, Susannah couldn't be left by herself, she smashes things so. She fell on the kitchen stairs this morning, bringing the breakfast things up—are you busy? and are you sure I'm not bothering you or interfering with clients and things? I arrived here really at ten minutes past ten, and walked up and down outside till people began to stare at me, so I came in."
"Not a bit busy," said Mr Hancock; "delighted you've come so early. Is that chair comfortable?"
"Quite, thanks."
"Sure you won't take this easy-chair?"
"No, no; this is a delightful chair. Who is that nice old man who showed me in?"
"Bridgewater, my chief clerk. Yes, he is a very good sort of man Bridgewater; he's been with us now a number of years."
"I like him, because he always smiles at me and looks so friendly and so funny. He's the kind of man one feels one would like to knit something for; a—muffler or mittens. I will, next Christmas, if he wouldn't be offended."
"Offended! Good heavens, no, he'd be delighted—perfectly delighted, I'm sure, perfectly. Come in!"
"A telegram, sir," spoke Bridgewater's voice. He always "sir'd" his master in the presence of strangers.
"Excuse me," said Mr Hancock, putting on his glasses and opening the telegram. He read it carefully, frowned, then smiled, and handed it to Fanny.
"Am I to read it?" said the girl.
"Please."
Fanny read:—
"I relinquish fishing-rights. Make the best terms with Lambert you can.—Bevan."
"Isn't it nice of him?" she said without evincing any surprise; "he told me he would when he called."
"Told you he would?"
"Yes."
"When did you see Mr Bevan?"
"Why, he called—didn't I tell you?—oh no, I forgot—he called, and he was awfully nice. Quite the nicest man I've met for a long time. He stayed to luncheon and tea and supper."
"Was your father at home?"
"No."
"I would rather this had not happened," said Mr Hancock in a slightly pained voice. "Mr Bevan is a gentleman for whom I have great respect, but considering the absence of your father, the absence of a host—er—er—conventionalities, um——"
"Oh, he didn't seem to mind," said Fanny; "he knew father was away, and took us just as we were. He's awfully rich, I suppose, but he was just as pleasant as if he were poor—came marketing and carried the basket; and, I declare to goodness, if I had known we had such a jolly cousin before, I'd have gone and hunted him up myself in the—'Albany,' isn't it?"
"Mr Bevan lives in the 'Albany,'" said the lawyer. "It is a bachelors' residence, and scarcely a place—scarcely a place for a—er—lady to call—no, scarcely a place for a lady to call. However, what's done is done, and we must make the best of it."
"If I had only thought," said Fanny, who had not been listening to the humming and hawing of Mr Hancock, "I'd have asked him to come with us to-day. Gracious! it's just eleven. Shall we go?"
Mr Hancock took his hat and umbrella, opened the door, and they passed out.
CHAPTER II THE EMOTIONS OF MR BRIDGEWATER
Mr Bridgewater's emotions, when he saw his principal following the pretty Miss Lambert, were mixed.
He saw through the whole thing at once: she had come by appointment, and they were going somewhere together.
Now, on the day when he had called to lunch with Patience Hancock, and look over the lease of the Peckham House, the Peckham House had not been once mentioned; the whole conversation, conducted chiefly by Miss Hancock, concerned the welfare of her brother. She hinted at certain news, supposed to have been received by her, that a designing woman had her eye on her treasure; she implored her listener to let her know if he saw any indication of the truth of these reports. "For you know, Bridgewater," said she, indicating that the decanter was at his side, and that he might help himself to his third glass of port, "there is no fool like an old fool," to which axiom Bridgewater giggled assent.
He promised to keep a "sharp look-out," and inform her of what he saw from time to time. And it did not require a very sharp look-out to see what he saw this morning.
As we have indicated, his emotions were mixed. Fanny's face, her "sweetly pretty face," appealed to him; that she had fascinated Mr James, he felt sure; that he ought instantly to inform Miss Hancock he felt certain; that he had a lot of important letters to write and business to transact with Mr Purvis and Mr Isaacs were facts. Between these facts and these fancies the old man sat scratching his head with the stump of his pen, staring at the letters before him, and pretending to be busy. Born in the age of valentines and sentiment, he had carried along with him through life a "feeling" for the other sex; to be frank, the feeling was compounded mainly of shyness, but not altogether. I doubt if there lives a man in whose life's history there exists not a woman in some form or other, either living and active in the present, or dead and a memory—a leaf in amber.
In old Bridgewater's brain there lived, keeping company with other futilities of youth, a girl. The winters and the springs of forty-five years had left her just the same, red-cheeked and buxom, commonplace, pretty, with an undecided mouth, and a crinoline. As he sat cogitating, this old mental daguerreotype took on fresh colours. He saw the sunlight on a certain street in Hoxton, and heard the tinkle of a piano, long gone to limbo, playing a tune that memory had in some mysterious way bound up with the perfume of wall-flowers.
He remembered a Christmas card that pulled out like a concertina: a shocking production of art which gave a vista of a garden in filigree paper leading to a house.
A feeling of tenderness possessed him. Why should he move in a matter that did not concern him? He determined to remain neutral, and, with the object of dismissing the matter from his mind, turned to his letters.
But this kindly, though inferior being was dominated by a strong and active intelligence, and that intelligence existed in the brain of a woman.
Whilst he made notes and dictated to a clerk, this alien intelligence was voicing its commands in the sub-conscious portions of his brain. He began to hesitate in his dictation and to shuffle his feet, to pause and to dictate nonsense. Then rising and taking his hat, he asked Mr Wolf, his second in command, to take charge, as he had business which would keep him away for half an hour—and made for the door. In Southampton Row he walked twenty yards, retraced his steps, paused, blew his nose in a huge bandana handkerchief, and then, travelling as if driven by clockwork well wound up, he made for Gordon Square.
The servant said that Miss Hancock was dressing to go out, and invited him into the cave-like dining-room. She then closed the door and left him to the tender mercies of the place.
Decision was not the most noteworthy characteristic of Mr Bridgewater, nor tact. He stood, consulting the clock on the mantelpiece, yet, had you asked him, he could not have told you the time. Having come into the place of his own volition he was now endeavouring to get up volition enough to enable him to leave.
"Well, Bridgewater?" said a voice. The old man turned. Miss Hancock, dressed for going out, stood before him.
"Why, I declare, Miss Patience!" said Bridgewater, as if the woman before him was the very last person on earth he expected to see.
"You have found me just in time, for I was going out. I am in a hurry, so I won't ask you to sit down. Can I do anything for you?"
Bridgewater rubbed his nose.
"It's about a little matter, Miss Patience."
"Yes?"
"A little matter concerning Mr James."
"Yes?"
"I am afraid—I am afraid, Miss Patience, there is—well—not to put too fine a point upon it—a lady."
"What is this you say, Bridgewater? But sit down."
"A lady, Miss Patience."
"You've said that before—what lady, and what about her?" The recollection of Leavesley's words shot up in her brain.
"Dear me, dear me! I wish I hadn't spoken now. I'm sure it's nothing wrong. I think, very possibly, I have been mistaken."
"John Bridgewater," said Miss Hancock, "you have known me from my childhood, you know I hate shuffling, come to the point—there is a lady—well, I have known it all along, so you need not be afraid to speak. Just tell me all you know. You are very well aware that no one cares for Mr James as much as I do. You are very well aware that some men need protecting. You know very well there is no better-hearted man in the world than my brother."
"None indeed."
"And you know very well that he is just the man to fall a victim to a designing woman. Think for a moment. What would a woman see in a man of his age, except his money."
"Very true; though I'm sure, Miss Patience, no man would make a better husband for a woman than Mr James."
"Oh, don't talk nonsense! When a man arrives at his age, he is too old to be made into a husband, but he is not too old to be made into a fool. Now tell me all you know about this affair. First of all, what is the—person's name?"
"The person I suspect, Miss Patience, though indeed my suspicions may be wrong, is a Miss Lambert."
"Surely not any relation of the Highgate Lamberts?"
"The daughter, Miss Patience."
"That broken-down lot! Good heavens! Are you sure?"
"Perfectly sure."
"The daughter of the man who is fighting with Mr Bevan about the fish pond?"
"Stream."
"It's the same. Well, go on."
"Miss Fanny Lambert called some time ago on Mr James. She called in distress about the action. Mr James interviewed her, and discovered that her father was in a very bad way, financially speaking. He took pity on them——"
"Idiot!"
"——and called at Highgate to see Mr Lambert. He became very friendly with Mr Lambert. Then Miss Fanny Lambert called again."
"What about?"
"I don't know. And to-day, this morning, she called again."
"Called at the office this morning?"
"Yes."
"What did she call for?"
Bridgewater was silent.
"I repeat," said Miss Hancock, speaking as an examiner might speak to a candidate, "I repeat, what did she call for? You surely must have some inkling."
"I am afraid she called about nothing. I'm afraid so, very much afraid so."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm afraid, Miss Patience, it was an assignation."
"How long did she stay?"
"About twenty minutes; but that is not the worst."
"Go on."
"They went out together."
"How long was my brother out with her?"
"He hasn't come back; he has gone for the day—told me to take charge of the office."
"You mean they went out together like that and you did not follow them to see where they went?"
"Yes."
"Oh, you idiot!"
"How could I, Miss Patience?"
"How could you—yes, that's just it. How could you, when you had such a chance, let it slip through your fingers?"
"But the office?"
"The office—why, you have left the office to come round here. If you could leave it to come here, surely you could have left it for a more important purpose. Well, you may take this from me: soon there will be no office to leave. It's quite possible that if Mr James makes a fool of himself, he'll leave business and do what he's always threatening to do—go in for farming. When a man once begins making a fool of himself, he goes on doing so, the appetite comes with eating. Well, you had better go back to the office and remember this for your own sake, for my sake, for Mr James' sake, keep your eyes open. If you get another chance, follow them."
Bridgewater left the house walking in a very depressed manner. In Oxford Street he entered a bar and had a glass of sherry and a biscuit. As he left the bar, who should he see but James Hancock—James Hancock, and Fanny side by side. They were looking in at a shop window.