CHAPTER 3
Since his return he had seen no one, and none of his friends knew where he had been. A call from some stray Hodiernal would be very unseasonable this Monday afternoon; but probably they were all enjoying their elegant leisure in regions remote from town. As the hour of Nancy’s arrival drew near, he sat trying to compose himself—with indifferent success. At one moment his thoughts found utterance, and he murmured in a strange, bewildered tone—‘My wife.’ Astonishing words! He laughed at their effect upon him, but unmirthfully. And his next murmur was—‘The devil!’ A mere ejaculation, betokening his state of mind.
He reached several times for his pipe, and remembered when he had touched it that the lips with which he greeted Nancy ought not to be redolent of tobacco. In outward respect, at all events, he would not fall short.
Just when his nervousness was becoming intolerable, there sounded a knock. The knock he had anticipated—timid, brief. He stepped hastily from the room, and opened. Nancy hardly looked at him, and neither of them spoke till the closing of two doors had assured their privacy.
‘Well, you had no difficulty in finding the place?’
‘No—none at all.’
They stood apart, and spoke with constraint. Nancy’s bosom heaved, as though she had been hastening overmuch; her face was deeply coloured; her eyes had an unwonted appearance, resembling those of a night-watcher at weary dawn. She cast quick glances about the room, but with the diffidence of an intruder. Her attitude was marked by the same characteristic; she seemed to shrink, to be ashamed.
‘Come and sit down,’ said Tarrant cheerfully, as he wheeled a chair.
She obeyed him, and he, stooping beside her, offered his lips. Nancy kissed him, closing her eyes for the moment, then dropping them again.
‘It seems a long time, Nancy—doesn’t it?’
‘Yes—a very long time.’
‘You couldn’t come on Sunday?’
‘I found my father very ill. I didn’t like to leave home till to-day.’
‘Your father ill?—You said nothing of it in your letter.’
‘No—I didn’t like to—with the other things.’
A singular delicacy this; Tarrant understood it, and looked at her thoughtfully. Again she was examining the room with hurried glance; upon him her eyes did not turn. He asked questions about Mr. Lord. Nancy could not explain the nature of his illness; he had spoken of gout, but she feared it must be something worse; the change in him since she went away was incredible and most alarming. This she said in short, quick sentences, her voice low. Tarrant thought to himself that in her too, a very short time had made a very notable change; he tried to read its significance, but could reach no certainty.
‘I’m sorry to hear all this—very sorry. You must tell me more about your father. Take off your hat, dear, and your gloves.’
Her gloves she removed first, and laid them on her lap; Tarrant took them away. Then her hat; this too he placed on the table. Having done so, he softly touched the plaits of her hair. And, for the first time, Nancy looked up at him.
‘Are you glad to see me?’ she asked, in a voice that seemed subdued by doubt of the answer.
‘I am—very glad.’
His hand fell to her shoulder. With a quick movement, a stifled exclamation, the girl rose and flung her arms about him.
‘Are you really glad?—Do you really love me?’
‘Never doubt it, dear girl.’
‘Ah, but I can’t help. I have hardly slept at night, in trying to get rid of the doubt. When you opened the door, I felt you didn’t welcome me. Don’t you think of me as a burden? I can’t help wondering why I am here.’
He took hold of her left hand, and looked at it, then said playfully:
‘Of course you wonder. What business has a wife to come and see her husband without the ring on her finger?’
Nancy turned from him, opened the front of her dress, unknotted a string of silk, and showed her finger bright with the golden circlet.
‘That’s how I must wear it, except when I am with you. I keep touching—to make sure it’s there.’
Tarrant kissed her fingers.
‘Dear,’—she had her face against him—‘make me certain that you love me. Speak to me like you did before. Oh, I never knew in my life what it was to feel ashamed!’
‘Ashamed? Because you are married, Nancy?’
‘Am I really married? That seems impossible. It’s like having dreamt that I was married to you. I can hardly remember a thing that happened.’
‘The registry at Teignmouth remembers,’ he answered with a laugh. ‘Those books have a long memory.’
She raised her eyes.
‘But wouldn’t you undo it if you could?—No, no, I don’t mean that. Only that if it had never happened—if we had said good-bye before those last days—wouldn’t you have been glad now?’
‘Why, that’s a difficult question to answer,’ he returned gently. ‘It all depends on your own feeling.’
For whatever reason, these words so overcame Nancy that she burst into tears. Tarrant, at once more lover-like, soothed and fondled her, and drew her to sit on his knee.
‘You’re not like your old self, dear girl. Of course, I can understand it. And your father’s illness. But you mustn’t think of it in this way. I do love you, Nancy. I couldn’t unsay a word I said to you—I don’t wish anything undone.’
‘Make me believe that. I think I should be quite happy then. It’s the hateful thought that perhaps you never wanted me for your wife; it will come, again and again, and it makes me feel as if I would rather have died.’
‘Send such thoughts packing. Tell them your husband wants all your heart and mind for himself.’
‘But will you never think ill of me?’
She whispered the words, close-clinging.
‘I should be a contemptible sort of brute.’
‘No. I ought to have—. If we had spoken of our love to each other, and waited.’
‘A very proper twelvemonth’s engagement,—meetings at five o’clock tea,—fifty thousand love-letters,—and all that kind of thing. Oh, we chose a better way. Our wedding was among the leaves and flowers. You remember the glow of evening sunlight between the red pine and the silver birch? I hope that place may remain as it is all our lives; we will go there—’
‘Never! Never ask me to go there. I want to forget—I hope some day I may forget.’
‘If you hope so, then I will hope the same.’
‘And you love me—with real, husband’s love—love that will last?’
‘Why should I answer all the questions?’ He took her face between his hands. What if the wife’s love should fail first?’
‘You can say that lightly, because you know—’
‘What do I know?’
‘You know that I am all love of you. As long as I am myself, I must love you. It was because I had no will of my own left, because I lived only in the thought of you day and night—’
Their lips met in a long silence.
‘I mustn’t stay past four o’clock,’ were Nancy’s next words. ‘I don’t like to be away long from the house. Father won’t ask me anything, but he knows I’m away somewhere, and I’m afraid it makes him angry with me.’ She examined the room. ‘How comfortable you are here! what a delightful old place to live in!’
‘Will you look at the other rooms?’
‘Not to-day—when I come again. I must say good-bye very soon—oh, see how the time goes! What a large library you have! You must let me look at all the books, when I have time.’
‘Let you? They are yours as much as mine.’
Her face brightened.
‘I should like to live here; how I should enjoy it after that hateful Grove Lane! Shall I live here with you some day?’
‘There wouldn’t be room for two. Why, your dresses would fill the whole place.’
She went and stood before the shelves.
‘But how dusty you are! Who cleans for you?’
‘No one. A very rickety old woman draws a certain number of shillings each week, on pretence of cleaning.’
‘What a shame! She neglects you disgracefully. You shall go away some afternoon, and leave me here with a great pile of dusters.’
‘You can do that kind of thing? It never occurred to me to ask you: are you a domestic person?’
She answered with something of the old confident air.
‘That was an oversight, wasn’t it? After all, how little you know about me!’
‘Do you know much more of me?’
Her countenance fell.
‘You are going to tell me—everything. How long have you lived here?’
‘Two years and a half.’
‘And your friends come to see you here? Of course they do. I meant, have you many friends?’
‘Friends, no. A good many acquaintances.’
‘Men, like yourself?’
‘Mostly men, fellows who talk about art and literature.’
‘And women?’ Nancy faltered, half turning away.
‘Oh, magnificent creatures—Greek scholars—mathematicians—all that is most advanced!’
‘That’s the right answer to a silly question,’ said Nancy humbly.
Whereat, Tarrant fixed his gaze upon her.
‘I begin to think that—’
He checked himself awkwardly. Nancy insisted on the completion of his thought.
‘That of all the women I know, you have the most sense.’
‘I had rather hear you say that than have a great fortune.’ She blushed with joy. ‘Perhaps you will love me some day, as I wish to be loved.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll tell you another time. If it weren’t for my father’s illness, I think I could go home feeling almost happy. But how am I to know what you are doing?’
‘What do you wish me to do?’
‘Just tell me how you live. What shall you do now, when I’m gone?’
‘Sit disconsolate,’—he came nearer—‘thinking you were just a little unkind.’
‘No, don’t say that.’ Nancy was flurried. ‘I have told you the real reason. Our housekeeper says that father was disappointed and angry because I put off my return from Teignmouth. He spoke to me very coldly, and I have hardly seen him since. He won’t let me wait upon him; and I have thought, since I know how ill he really is, that I must seem heartless. I will come for longer next time.’
To make amends for the reproach he had uttered in spite of himself, Tarrant began to relate in full the events of his ordinary day.
‘I get my own breakfast—the only meal I have at home. Look, here’s the kitchen, queer old place. And here’s the dining-room. Cupboards everywhere, you see; we boast of our cupboards. The green paint is de rigueur; duck’s egg colour; I’ve got to like it. That door leads into the bedroom. Well, after breakfast, about eleven o’clock that’s to say, I light up—look at my pipe-rack—and read newspapers. Then, if it’s fine, I walk about the streets, and see what new follies men are perpetrating. And then—’
He told of his favourite restaurants, of his unfashionable club, of a few houses where, at long intervals, he called or dined, of the Hodiernals, of a dozen other small matters.
‘What a life,’ sighed the listener, ‘compared with mine!’
‘We’ll remedy that, some day.’
‘When?’ she asked absently.
‘Wait just a little.—You don’t wish to tell your father?’
‘I daren’t tell him. I doubt whether I shall ever dare to tell him face to face.’
‘Don’t think about it. Leave it to me.’
‘I must have letters from you—but how? Perhaps, if you could promise always to send them for the first post—I generally go to the letter-box, and I could do so always—whilst father is ill.’
This was agreed upon. Nancy, whilst they were talking, took her hat from the table; at the same moment, Tarrant’s hand moved towards it. Their eyes met, and the hand that would have checked her was drawn back. Quickly, secretly, she drew the ring from her finger, hid it somewhere, and took her gloves.
‘Did you come by the back way?’ Tarrant asked, when he had bitten his lips for a sulky minute.
‘Yes, as you told me.’
He said he would walk with her into Chancery Lane; there could be no risk in it.
‘You shall go out first. Any one passing will suppose you had business with the solicitor underneath. I’ll overtake you at Southampton Buildings.’
Impatient to be gone, she lingered minute after minute, and broke hurriedly from his restraining arms at last. The second outer door, which Tarrant had closed on her entrance, surprised her by its prison-like massiveness. In the wooden staircase she stopped timidly, but at the exit her eyes turned to an inscription above, which she had just glanced at when arriving: Surrexit e flammis, and a date. Nancy had no Latin, but guessed an interpretation from the last word. Through the little court, with its leafy plane-trees and white-worn cobble-stones, she walked with bent head, hearing the roar of Holborn through the front archway, and breathing more freely when she gained the quiet garden at the back of the Inn.
Tarrant’s step sounded behind her. Looking up she asked the meaning of the inscription she had seen.
‘You don’t know Latin? Well, why should you? Surrexit e flammis, “It rose again from the flames.”
‘I thought it might be something like that. You will be patient with my ignorance?’
A strange word upon Nancy’s lips. No mortal ere this had heard her confess to ignorance.
‘But you know the modern languages?’ said Tarrant, smiling.
‘Yes. That is, a little French and German—a very little German.’
Tarrant mused, seemingly with no dissatisfaction.
CHAPTER 4
In her brother’s looks and speech Nancy detected something mysterious. Undoubtedly he was keeping a secret from her, and there could be just as little doubt that he would not keep it long. Whenever she questioned him about the holiday at Scarborough, he put on a smile unlike any she had ever seen on his face, so profoundly thoughtful was it, so loftily reserved. On the subject of Mrs. Damerel he did not choose to be very communicative; Nancy gathered little more than she had learnt from his letter. But very plainly the young man held himself in higher esteem than hitherto; very plainly he had learnt to think of ‘the office’ as a burden or degradation, from which he would soon escape. Prompted by her own tormenting conscience, his sister wondered whether Fanny French had anything to do with the mystery; but this seemed improbable. She mentioned Fanny’s name one evening.
‘Do you see much of her?’
‘Not much,’ was the dreamy reply. ‘When are you going to call?’
‘Oh, not at present,’ said Nancy.
‘You’ve altered again, then?’
She vouchsafed no answer.
‘There’s something I think I ought to tell you,’ said Horace, speaking as though he were the elder and felt a responsibility. ‘People have been talking about you and Mr. Crewe.’
‘What!’ She flashed into excessive anger. ‘Who has been talking?’
‘The people over there. Of course I know it’s all nonsense. At least’—he raised his eyebrows—‘I suppose it is.’
‘I should suppose so,’ said Nancy, with vehement scorn.
Their father’s illness imposed a restraint upon trifling conversation. Mary Woodruff, now attending upon Mr. Lord under the doctor’s directions, had held grave talk with Nancy. The Barmbys, father and son, called frequently, and went away with gloomy faces. Nancy and her brother were summoned, separately, to the invalid’s room at uncertain times, but neither was allowed to perform any service for him; their sympathy, more often than not, excited irritation; the sufferer always seemed desirous of saying more than the few and insignificant words which actually passed his lips, and generally, after a long silence, he gave the young people an abrupt dismissal. With his daughter he spoke at length, in language which awed her by its solemnity; Nancy could only understand him as meaning that his end drew near. He had been reviewing, he said, the course of her life, and trying to forecast her future.
‘I give you no more advice; it would only be repeating what I have said hundreds of times. All I can do for your good, I have done. You will understand me better if you live a few more years, and I think, in the end, you will be grateful to me.’
Nancy, sitting by the bedside, laid a hand upon her father’s and sobbed. She entreated him to believe that even now she understood how wisely he had guided her.
‘Tried to, Nancy; tried to, my dear. Guidance isn’t for young people now-a-days. Don’t let us shirk the truth. I have never been satisfied with you, but I have loved you—’
‘And I you, dear father—I have! I have!—I know better now how good your advice was. I wish—far, far more sincerely than you think—that I had kept more control upon myself—thought less of myself in every way—’
Whilst she spoke through her tears, the yellow, wrinkled face upon the pillow, with its sunken eyes and wasted lips, kept sternly motionless.
‘If you won’t mock at me,’ Stephen pursued, ‘I will show you an example you would do well to imitate. It is our old servant, now my kindest, truest friend. If I could hope that you will let her be your friend, it would help to put my mind at rest. Don’t look down upon her,—that’s such a poor way of thinking. Of all the women I have known, she is the best. Don’t be too proud to learn from her, Nancy. In all these twenty years that she has been in my house, whatever she undertook to do, she did well;—nothing too hard or too humble for her, if she thought it her duty. I know what that means; I myself have been a poor, weak creature, compared with her. Don’t be offended because I ask you to take pattern by her. I know her value now better than I ever knew it before. I owe her a debt I can’t pay.’
Nancy left the room burdened with strange and distressful thoughts. When she saw Mary she looked at her with new feelings, and spoke to her less familiarly than of wont. Mary was very silent in these days; her face had the dignity of a profound unspoken grief.
To his son, Mr. Lord talked only of practical things, urging sound advice, and refraining, now, from any mention of their differences. Horace, absorbed in preoccupations, had never dreamt that this illness might prove fatal; on finding Nancy in tears, he was astonished.
‘Do you think it’s dangerous?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid he will never get well.’
It was Sunday morning. The young man went apart and pondered. After the mid-day meal, having heard from Mary that his father was no worse, he left home without remark to any one, and from Camberwell Green took a cab to Trafalgar Square. At the Hotel Metropole he inquired for Mrs. Damerel; her rooms were high up, and he ascended by the lift. Sunk in a deep chair, her feet extended upon a hassock, Mrs. Damerel was amusing herself with a comic paper; she rose briskly, though with the effort of a person who is no longer slim.
‘Here I am, you see!—up in the clouds. Now, did you get my letter?’
‘No letter, but a telegram.’
‘There, I thought so. Isn’t that just like me? As soon as I had sent out the letter to post, I said to myself that I had written the wrong address. What address it was, I couldn’t tell you, to save my life, but I shall see when it comes back from the post-office. I rather suspect it’s gone to Gunnersbury; just then I was thinking about somebody at Gunnersbury—or somebody at Hampstead, I can’t be sure which. What a good thing I wired!—Oh, now, Horace, I don’t like that, I don’t really!’
The young man looked at her in bewilderment.
‘What don’t you like?’
‘Why, that tie. It won’t do at all. Your taste is generally very good, but that tie! I’ll choose one for you to-morrow, and let you have it the next time you come. Do you know, I’ve been thinking that it might be well if you parted your hair in the middle. I don’t care for it as a rule; but in your case, with your soft, beautiful hair, I think it would look well. Shall we try? Wait a minute; I’ll run for a comb.’
‘But suppose some one came—’
‘Nobody will come, my dear boy. Hardly any one knows I’m here. I like to get away from people now and then; that’s why I’ve taken refuge in this cock-loft.’
She disappeared, and came back with a comb of tortoise-shell.
‘Sit down there. Oh, what hair it is, to be sure! Almost as fine as my own. I think you’ll have a delicious moustache.’
Her personal appearance was quite in keeping with this vivacity. Rather short, and inclining—but as yet only inclining—to rotundity of figure, with a peculiarly soft and clear complexion, Mrs. Damerel made a gallant battle against the hostile years. Her bright eye, her moist lips, the admirable smoothness of brow and cheek and throat, bore witness to sound health; as did the rows of teeth, incontestably her own, which she exhibited in her frequent mirth. A handsome woman still, though not of the type that commands a reverent admiration. Her frivolity did not exclude a suggestion of shrewdness, nor yet of capacity for emotion, but it was difficult to imagine wise or elevated thought behind that narrow brow. She was elaborately dressed, with only the most fashionable symbols of widowhood; rings adorned her podgy little hand, and a bracelet her white wrist. Refinement she possessed only in the society-journal sense, but her intonation was that of the idle class, and her grammar did not limp.
‘There—let me look. Oh, I think that’s an improvement—more distingue. And now tell me the news. How is your father?’
‘Very bad, I’m afraid,’ said Horace, when he had regarded himself in a mirror with something of doubtfulness. ‘Nancy says that she’s afraid he won’t get well.’
‘Oh, you don’t say that! Oh, how very sad! But let us hope. I can’t think it’s so bad as that.’
Horace sat in thought. Mrs. Damerel, her bright eyes subduing their gaiety to a keen reflectiveness, put several questions regarding the invalid, then for a moment meditated.
‘Well, we must hope for the best. Let me know to-morrow how he gets on—be sure you let me know. And if anything should happen—oh, but that’s too sad; we won’t talk about it.’
Again she meditated, tapping the floor, and, as it seemed, trying not to smile.
‘Don’t be downcast, my dear boy. Never meet sorrow half-way—if you knew how useful I have found it to remember that maxim. I have gone through sad, sad things—ah! But now tell me of your own affairs. Have you seen la petite?’
‘I just saw her the other evening,’ he answered uneasily.
‘Just? What does that mean, I wonder? Now you don’t look anything like so well as when you were at Scarborough. You’re worrying; yes, I know you are. It’s your nervous constitution, my poor boy. So you just saw her? No more imprudences?’
She examined his face attentively, her lips set with tolerable firmness.
‘It’s a very difficult position, you know,’ said Horace, wriggling in his chair. ‘I can’t get out of it all at once. And the truth is, I’m not sure that I wish to.’
Mrs. Damerel drew her eyebrows together, and gave a loud tap on the floor.
‘Oh, that’s weak—that’s very weak! After promising me! Now listen; listen seriously.’ She raised a finger. ‘If it goes on, I have nothing—more—whatever to do with you. It would distress me very, very much; but I can’t interest myself in a young man who makes love to a girl so very far beneath him. Be led by me, Horace, and your future will be brilliant. Prefer this young lady of Camberwell, and lose everything.’
Horace leaned forward and drooped his head.
‘I don’t think you form anything like a right idea of her,’ he said.
The other moved impatiently.
‘My dear boy, I know her as well as if I’d lived with her for years. Oh, how silly you are! But then you are so young, so very young.’
With the vexation on her face there blended, as she looked at him, a tenderness unmistakably genuine.
‘Now, I’ll tell you what. I have really no objection to make Fanny’s acquaintance. Suppose, after all, you bring her to see me one of these days. Not just yet. You must wait till I am in the mood for it. But before very long.’
Horace looked up with pleasure and gratitude.
‘Now, that’s really kind of you!’
‘Really? And all the rest is only pretended kindness? Silly boy! Some day you will know better. Now, think, Horace; suppose you were so unhappy as to lose your father. Could you, as soon as he was gone, do something that you know would have pained him deeply?’
The pathetic note was a little strained; putting her head aside, Mrs. Damerel looked rather like a sentimental picture in an advertisement. Horace did not reply.
‘You surely wouldn’t,’ pursued the lady, with emphasis, watching him closely; ‘you surely wouldn’t and couldn’t marry this girl as soon as your poor father was in his grave?’
‘Oh, of course not.’
Mrs. Damerel seemed relieved, but pursued her questioning.
‘You couldn’t think of marrying for at least half a year?’
‘Fanny wouldn’t wish it.’
‘No, of course not,—well now, I think I must make her acquaintance. But how weak you are, Horace! Oh, those nerves! All finely, delicately organised people, like you, make such blunders in life. Your sense of honour is such a tyrant over you. Now, mind, I don’t say for a moment that Fanny isn’t fond of you,—how could she help being, my dear boy? But I do insist that she will be very much happier if you let her marry some one of her own class. You, Horace, belong to a social sphere so far, far above her. If I could only impress that upon your modesty. You are made to associate with people of the highest refinement. How deplorable to think that a place in society is waiting for you, and you keep longing for Camberwell!’
The listener’s face wavered between pleasure in such flattery and the impulse of resistance.
‘Remember, Horace, if anything should happen at home, you are your own master. I could introduce you freely to people of wealth and fashion. Of course you could give up the office at once. I shall be taking a house in the West-end, or a flat, at all events. I shall entertain a good deal—and think of your opportunities! My dear boy, I assure you that, with personal advantages such as yours, you might end by marrying an heiress. Nothing more probable! And you can talk of such a girl as Fanny French—for shame!
‘I mustn’t propose any gaieties just now,’ she said, when they had been together for an hour. ‘And I shall wait so anxiously for news of your father. If anything did happen, what would your sister do, I wonder?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know—except that she’d get away from Camberwell. Nancy hates it.’
‘Who knows? I may be able to be of use to her. But, you say she is such a grave and learned young lady? I am afraid we should bore each other.’
To this, Horace could venture only an uncertain reply. He had not much hope of mutual understanding between his sister and Mrs. Damerel.
At half-past five he was home again, and there followed a cheerless evening. Nancy was in her own room until nine o’clock. She came down for supper, but had no appetite; her eyes showed redness from weeping; Horace could say nothing for her comfort. After the meal, they went up together to the drawing-room, and sat unoccupied.
‘If we lose father,’ said Nancy, in a dull voice very unlike her ordinary tones, ‘we shall have not a single relative left, that is anything to us.’
Her brother kept silence.
‘Has Mrs. Damerel,’ she continued, ‘ever said anything to you about mother’s family?’
After hesitation, Horace answered, ‘Yes,’ and his countenance showed that the affirmative had special meaning. Nancy waited with an inquiring look.
‘I haven’t told you,’ he added, ‘because—we have had other things to think about. But Mrs. Damerel is mother’s sister, our aunt.’
‘How long have you known that?’
‘She told me at Scarborough.’
‘But why didn’t she tell you so at first?’
‘That’s what I can’t understand. She says she was afraid I might mention it; but I don’t believe that’s the real reason.’
Nancy’s questioning elicited all that was to be learnt from her brother, little more than she had heard already; the same story of a disagreement between Mrs. Damerel and their father, of long absences from England, and a revival of interest in her relatives, following upon Mrs. Damerel’s widowhood.
‘She would be glad to see you, if you liked. But I doubt whether you would get on very well.’
‘Why?’
‘She doesn’t care about the same things that you do. She’s a woman of society, you know.’
‘But if she’s mother’s sister. Yes, I should like to know her.’ Nancy spoke with increasing earnestness. ‘It makes everything quite different. I must see her.’
‘Well, as I said, she’s quite willing. But you remember that I’m supposed not to have spoken about her at all. I should have to get her to send you a message, or something of that kind. Of course, we have often talked about you.’
‘I can’t form an idea of her,’ said Nancy impatiently. ‘Is she good? Is she really kind? Couldn’t you get her portrait to show me?’
‘I should be afraid to ask, unless she had given me leave to speak to you.’
‘She really lives in good society?’
‘Haven’t I told you the sort of people she knows? She must be very well off; there can’t be a doubt of it.’
I don’t care so much about that,’ said Nancy in a brooding voice. ‘It’s herself,—whether she’s kind and good and wishes well to us.
The next day there was no change in Mr. Lord’s condition; a deep silence possessed the house. In the afternoon Nancy went to pass an hour with Jessica Morgan; on her return she met Samuel Barmby, who was just leaving after a visit to the sick man. Samuel bore himself with portentous gravity, but spoke only a few commonplaces, affecting hope; he bestowed upon Nancy’s hand a fervent pressure, and strode away with the air of an undertaker who had called on business.
Two more days of deepening gloom, then a night through which Nancy sat with Mary Woodruff by her father’s bed. Mr. Lord was unconscious, but from time to time a syllable or a phrase fell from his lips, meaningless to the watchers. At dawn, Nancy went to her chamber, pallid, exhausted. Mary, whose strength seemed proof against fatigue, moved about the room, preparing for a new day; every few minutes she stood with eyes fixed on the dying face, and the tears she had restrained in Nancy’s presence flowed silently.
When the sun made a golden glimmer upon the wall, Mary withdrew, and was absent for a quarter of an hour. On returning, she bent at once over the bed; her eyes were met by a grave, wondering look.
‘Do you know me?’ she whispered.
The lips moved; she bent lower, but could distinguish no word. He was speaking; the murmur continued; but she gathered no sense.
‘You can trust me, I will do all I can.’
He seemed to understand her, and smiled. As the smile faded away, passing into an austere calm, Mary pressed her lips upon his forehead.
CHAPTER 5
After breakfast, and before Arthur Peachey’s departure for business, there had been a scene of violent quarrel between him and his wife. It took place in the bed-room, where, as usual save on Sunday morning, Ada consumed her strong tea and heavily buttered toast; the state of her health—she had frequent ailments, more or less genuine, such as afflict the indolent and brainless type of woman—made it necessary for her to repose till a late hour. Peachey did not often lose self-control, though sorely tried; the one occasion that unchained his wrath was when Ada’s heedlessness or ill-temper affected the well-being of his child. This morning it had been announced to him that the nurse-girl, Emma, could no longer be tolerated; she was making herself offensive to her mistress, had spoken insolently, disobeyed orders, and worst of all, defended herself by alleging orders from Mr. Peachey. Hence the outbreak of strife, signalled by furious shrill voices, audible to Beatrice and Fanny as they sat in the room beneath.
Ada came down at half-past ten, and found Beatrice writing letters. She announced what any who did not know her would have taken for a final resolve.
‘I’m going—I won’t put up with that beast any longer. I shall go and live at Brighton.’
Her sister paid not the slightest heed; she was intent upon a business letter of much moment.
‘Do you hear what I say? I’m going by the first train this afternoon.’
‘All right,’ remarked Beatrice placidly. ‘Don’t interrupt me just now.
The result of this was fury directed against Beatrice, who found herself accused of every domestic vice compatible with her position. She was a sordid creature, living at other people’s expense,—a selfish, scheming, envious wretch—
‘If I were your husband,’ remarked the other without looking up, ‘I should long since have turned you into the street—if I hadn’t broken your neck first.’
Exercise in quarrel only made Ada’s voice the clearer and more shrill. It rose now to the highest points of a not inconsiderable compass. But Beatrice continued to write, and by resolute silence put a limit to her sister’s railing. A pause had just come about, when the door was thrown open, and in rushed Fanny, hatted and gloved from a walk.
‘He’s dead!’ she said excitedly. ‘He’s dead!’
Beatrice turned with a look of interest. ‘Who? Mr. Lord?’
‘Yes. The blinds are all down. He must have died in the night.’
Her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled, as though she had brought the most exhilarating news.
‘What do I care?’ said Mrs. Peachey, to whom her sister had addressed the last remark.
‘Just as much as I care about your affairs, no doubt,’ returned Fanny, with genial frankness.
‘Don’t be in too great a hurry,’ remarked Beatrice, who showed the calculating wrinkle at the corner of her eye. ‘Because he’s dead, that doesn’t say that your masher comes in for money.’
‘Who’ll get it, then?’
‘There may be nothing worth speaking of to get, for all we know.’
Beatrice had not as yet gained Fanny’s co-operation in the commercial scheme now being elaborated; though of far more amiable nature than Mrs. Peachey, she heartily hoped that the girl might be disappointed in her expectations from Mr. Lord’s will. An hour later, she walked along Grove Lane, and saw for herself that Fanny’s announcement was accurate; the close-drawn blinds could mean but one thing.
To-day there was little likelihood of learning particulars, but on the morrow Fanny might perchance hear something from Horace Lord. However, the evening brought a note, hand-delivered by some stranger. Horace wrote only a line or two, informing Fanny that his father had died about eight o’clock that morning, and adding: ‘Please be at home to-morrow at twelve.’
At twelve next day Fanny received her lover alone in the drawing-room. He entered with the exaggerated solemnity of a very young man who knows for the first time a grave bereavement, and feels the momentary importance it confers upon him. Fanny, trying to regard him without a smile, grimaced; decorous behaviour was at all times impossible to her, for she neither understood its nature nor felt its obligation. In a few minutes she smiled unrestrainedly, and spoke the things that rose to her lips.
‘I’ve been keeping a secret from you,’ said Horace, in the low voice which had to express his sorrow,—for he could not preserve a gloomy countenance with Fanny before him. ‘But I can tell you now.’
‘A secret? And what business had you to keep secrets from me?’
‘It’s about Mrs. Damerel. When I was at the seaside she told me who she really is. She’s my aunt—my mother’s sister. Queer, isn’t it? Of course that makes everything different. And she’s going to ask you to come and see her. It’ll have to be put off a little—now; but not very long, I dare say, as she’s a relative. You’ll have to do your best to please her.’
‘I’m sure I shan’t put myself out of the way. People must take me as they find me.’
‘Now don’t talk like that, Fanny. It isn’t very kind—just now. I thought you’d be different to-day.’
‘All right.—Have you anything else to tell me?’
Horace understood her significant glance, and shook his head.
‘I’ll let you know everything as soon as I know myself.’
Having learnt the day and hour of Mr. Lord’s funeral, Ada and Fanny made a point of walking out to get a glimpse of it. The procession of vehicles in Grove Lane excited their contempt, so far was it from the splendour they had anticipated.
‘There you are!’ said Ada; ‘I shouldn’t wonder if it’s going to be a jolly good take in for you, after all. If he’d died worth much, they wouldn’t have buried him like that.’
Fanny’s heart sank. She could conceive no other explanation of a simple burial save lack of means, or resentment in the survivors at the disposition made of his property by the deceased. When, on the morrow, Horace told her that his father had strictly charged Mr Barmby to have him buried in the simplest mode compatible with decency, she put it down to the old man’s excessive meanness.
On this occasion she learnt the contents of Mr. Lord’s will, and having learnt them, got rid of Horace as soon as possible that she might astonish her sisters with the report.
In the afternoon of that day, Beatrice had an appointment with Luckworth Crewe. She was to meet him at the office he had just taken in Farringdon Street, whence they would repair to a solicitor’s in the same neighbourhood, for the discussion of legal business connected with Miss. French’s enterprise. She climbed the staircase of a big building, and was directed to the right door by the sound of Crewe’s voice, loudly and jocularly discoursing. He stood with two men in the open doorway, and at the sight of Beatrice waved a hand to her.
‘Take your hook, you fellows; I have an engagement.’ The men, glancing at Miss. French facetiously, went their way. ‘How do, old chum? It’s all in a mess yet; hold your skirts together. Come along this way.’
Through glue-pots and shavings and an overpowering smell of paint, Beatrice followed to inspect the premises, which consisted of three rooms; one, very much the smallest, about ten feet square. Three workmen were busy, and one, fitting up shelves, whistled a melody with ear-piercing shrillness.
‘Stop that damned noise!’ shouted Crewe. ‘I’ve told you once already. Try it on again, my lad, and I’ll drop you down the well of the staircase—you’ve too much breath, you have.’
The other workmen laughed. It was evident that Crewe had made friends with them all.
‘Won’t be bad, when we get the decks cleared,’ he remarked to Beatrice. ‘Plenty of room to make twenty thousand a year or so.’
He checked himself, and asked in a subdued voice, ‘Seen anything of the Lords?’
Beatrice nodded with a smile. ‘And heard about the will. Have you?’
‘No, I haven’t. Come into this little room.’
He closed the door behind them, and looked at his companion with curiosity, but without show of eagerness.
‘Well, it’s a joke,’ said Miss. French.
‘Is it? How?’
‘Fanny’s that mad about it! She’d got it into her silly noddle that Horace Lord would drop in for a fortune at once. As it is, he gets nothing at all for two years, except what the Barmbys choose to give him. And if he marries before he’s four-and-twenty, he loses everything—every cent!’
Crewe whistled a bar of a street-melody, then burst into laughter.
‘That’s how the old joker has done them, is it? Quite right too. The lad doesn’t know his own mind yet. Let Fanny wait if she really wants him—and if she can keep hold of him. But what are the figures?’
‘Nothing startling. Of course I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but Horace Lord will get seven thousand pounds, and a sixth share in the piano business. Old Barmby and his son are trustees. They may let Horace have just what they think fit during the next two years. If he wants money to go into business with, they may advance what they like. But for two years he’s simply in their hands, to be looked after. And if he marries—pop goes the weasel!’
‘And Miss. Lord?’ asked Crewe carelessly.
Beatrice pointed a finger at him.
‘You want to know badly, don’t you? Well, it’s pretty much the same as the other. To begin with, if she marries before the age of six-and-twenty, she gets nothing whatever. If she doesn’t marry, there’s two hundred a year to live on and to keep up the house.—Oh, I was forgetting; she must not only keep single to twenty-six, but continue to live where she does now, with that old servant of theirs for companion. At six-and-twenty she takes the same as her brother, about seven thousand, and a sixth share in Lord and Barmby.’
Again Crewe whistled.
‘That’s about three years still to live in Grove Lane,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Well, the old joker has pinned them, and no mistake. I thought he had more to leave.’
‘Of course you did,’ remarked Beatrice significantly.
‘Look here, old fellow, don’t talk to me like that,’ he replied good-humouredly, but with a reproof not to be mistaken. ‘I thought nothing about it in the way that you mean. But it isn’t much, after living as he has done. I suppose you don’t know how the money lies?’
‘I have it all from Fanny, and it’s a wonder she remembered as much as she did.’
‘Oh, Fanny’s pretty smart in L. s. d. But did she say what becomes of the money if either of them break the terms?’
‘Goes to a girl’s orphanage, somewhere in the old man’s country. But there’s more than I’ve accounted for yet. Young Barmby’s sisters get legacies—a hundred and fifty apiece. And, last of all, the old servant has an annuity of two hundred. He made her a sort of housekeeper not long ago, H. L. says; thought no end of her.’
‘Don’t know anything about her,’ said Crewe absently. ‘I should like to know the business details. What arrangement was made, I wonder, when he took Barmby into partnership?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised if he simply gave him a share. Old Barmby and Lord were great chums. Then, you see, Samuel Barmby has a third of his profits to pay over, eventually.’
Beatrice went on to speak of the mysterious Mrs. Damerel, concerning whom she had heard from Fanny. The man of business gave particular ear to this story, and asked many questions. Of a sudden, as if dismissing matters which hardly concerned him, he said mirthfully:
‘You’ve heard about the row at Lillie Bridge yesterday?’
‘I saw something about it in the paper.’
‘Well, I was there. Pure chance; haven’t been at that kind of place for a year and more. It was a match for the Sprint Championship and a hundred pounds. Timed for six o’clock, but at a quarter past the chaps hadn’t come forward. I heard men talking, and guessed there was something wrong; they thought it a put-up job. When it got round that there’d be no race, the excitement broke out, and then—I’d have given something for you to see it! First of all there was a rush for the gate-money; a shilling a piece, you know, we’d all paid. There were a whole lot of North-of-England chaps, fellow countrymen of mine, and I heard some of them begin to send up a roar that sounded dangerous. I was tumbling along with the crowd, quite ready for a scrimmage—I rather enjoy a fight now and then,—and all at once some chap sang out just in front, ‘Let’s burst up the blooming show!’—only he used a stronger word. And a lot of us yelled hooray, and to it we went. I don’t mean I had a hand in the pillaging and smashing,—it wouldn’t have done for a man just starting in business to be up at the police-court,—but I looked on and laughed—laughed till I could hardly stand! They set to work on the refreshment place. It was a scene if you like! Fellows knocking off the heads of bottles, and drinking all they could, then pouring the rest on the ground. Glasses and decanters flying right and left,—sandwiches and buns, and I don’t know what, pelting about. They splintered all the small wood they could lay their hands on, and set fire to it, and before you could say Jack Robinson the whole place was blazing. The bobbies got it pretty warm—bottles and stones and logs of wood; I saw one poor chap with the side of his face cut clean open. It does one good, a real stirring-up like that; I feel better to-day than for the last month. And the swearing that went on! It’s a long time since I heard such downright, hearty, solid swearing. There was one chap I kept near, and he swore for a full hour without stopping, except when he had a bottle at his mouth; he only stopped when he was speechless with liquor.’
‘I wish I’d been there,’ said Miss. French gaily. ‘It must have been no end of fun.’
‘A right down good spree. And it wasn’t over till about eight o’clock. I stayed till the police had cleared the grounds, and then came home, laughing all the way. It did me good, I tell you!’
‘Well, shall we go and see the lawyer?’ suggested Beatrice.
‘Right you are.—Have a drink first? Nice quiet place round in Fleet Street—glass of wine. No? As you please, old chum.—Think this shop ‘ll do, don’t you? You must come round when it’s finished. But I daresay you’ll be here many a time—on biz.’
‘Oh, I daresay.’
And as they went down the stairs, Crewe laughed again at his recollections of yesterday’s sport.