General Agent, &c.
"He has changed his name!" said Murray, turning suddenly on Byrne.
"There's nothing to wonder at in that," said Byrne, with a shrug. "In London one comes across queer changes every day."
By the end of the first week in February Sir Thomas Dudgeon and his family were comfortably settled in Harley Street.
Sir Thomas, having no permanent residence in London, had been obliged to take a furnished house for the season. Since the early years of their marriage, the baronet and his wife had never spent more than three weeks, or, at the most, a month, of each season in town; neither had they travelled much abroad. Their adoption of a quiet country life all these years had not been without good and sufficient reasons. The chief reason of all was a laudable desire to economize in money matters. The estate had come to Sir Thomas considerably burdened, and till every penny of mortgage upon it should be cleared off, both Sir Thomas and his wife were determined to cut down every expense as much as possible. The establishment at Stammars was kept up with due regard to comfort, as well as to the family's position in society; but no luxuries were indulged in, and all extravagances were carefully eschewed. A whole season in town, and an autumn on the Continent, however much she might have enjoyed them, would certainly have been set down by Lady Dudgeon as needless extravagances: and she had sufficient heroism in her disposition to give them up without a word of repining. But all this now belonged to the past. Every penny of incumbrance had been cleared off the estate some two years ago, and matters of late had been still further assisted by a handsome legacy from a distant relative. Then, just in the nick of time, had come the opportunity for Sir Thomas to offer himself as member for Pembridge. Lady Dudgeon had been the first to seize the occasion. From the first, she had seen in her mind's eye all the brilliant results that might be made to follow "in sequence due" this one bold step. As in a vision, she had seen the whole glittering pageant. No longer would she be compelled to content herself with a miserable three weeks in London: she would have a whole glorious season to flutter through. She would have a new brougham, and there should be no handsomer horses than hers seen in the Park. As for garden parties and flower shows, as for the opera and the theatre--she would simply do her best to make up for lost time. Poor Sir Thomas, when he allowed himself; very much against his will, to be nominated at the hustings in place of the late lamented Mr. Rackstraw, had not the faintest notion of the splendid conceptions which even then were fermenting in his wife's brain. But he had not been many days in London before he got some glimmering of what was in store for him.
"I feel, dear, as if we had been buried all these years--as if we had never really begun to enjoy life till now," said her ladyship to him one morning at breakfast.
"And yet it seems to me that we have spent many happy days at Stammars," returned Sir Thomas.
"Happy after a fashion, of course; but so different from life here!" continued her ladyship.
"Different indeed!" echoed Sir Thomas, with a sigh.
"To-morrow is my birthday, Thomas; and as you always make me a present on that occasion, I want you, this year, to let me choose for myself what it shall be."
"Certainly, Matilda. I shall be most happy for you to do so."
"That noble heart of yours! What I want is that you shall take me to Long Acre, and buy me a new carriage."
"Good gracious, Matilda!"
"As the wife of the member for Pembridge, I could not think of being seen about London in a hired brougham; neither, I am sure, would you wish me to do anything so paltry."
"But the landau at Stammars--if painted and furbished up----"
"A market-cart, my dear--neither more nor less than a market-cart," cried Lady Dudgeon. "I should be the laughing-stock of the Park. No; if you cannot afford me a new brougham out of your legacy, why, I'll go about in a hansom. I'd far rather do that than be seen in one of those horrid livery-stable abominations, which always put me in mind of fevers and other dreadful things."
When in London, Sir Thomas was always one of the most wretched of men; indeed, a town of any kind was to him a place to be escaped from as quickly as possible. To him it was ever a mystery how people could be found to dwell contentedly for years among acres of brick and mortar, inhaling diluted smoke, and leading lives that were one perpetual round of noise, turmoil, and confusion. He had not been in London more than three days before there came over him a longing, that was almost painful in its intensity, to get clean away out of sight of it--out of hearing of it--if only for a few hours. Taking advantage of a visit of his wife to her milliner, he stole out of the house--and he really felt as if he were doing something that he ought not to do--and a swift hansom soon set him down at "Jack Straw's Castle." A long stretch through the valley on the other side of the Hampstead hills, amid the sights and sounds of country life, sent him back to Harley Street a happier man for the time being.
But the watch which her ladyship kept over him did not allow of a too frequent indulgence in such forbidden luxuries.
"I hope, my dear, that you will not be long before you decide as to the particular question that you intend to make your own this session," she said to her husband one morning, about a fortnight after the opening of Parliament.
"Really, my dear," said Sir Thomas, insinuatingly, "everything is so strange to me just at present--the forms of the House, and all that, you know--that I have hardly had time to give my mind to anything else."
"Just so, my love. Of course, every allowance must be made for that. But still I think you ought to be preparing--working up a subject, mastering the details, and so on. What do you say to the Sugar Duties, now? That is a topic about which the public are likely to be greatly interested before long. Or Indian Finance? That is a fruitful subject."
"But, then, I know absolutely nothing about either of them."
"So much the better. You will bring to the study and discussion of these great questions a mind fresh and unprejudiced--a mind unfettered by the bonds of tradition or the obligations of party."
"But, in addition to not knowing anything about the Sugar Duties or Indian Finance, I don't care about them--no, not a brass farthing."
"All the more will you be able to discuss them with impartiality. Your capacious intellect will enable you to look at a question from several different points of view, and to give to each its proper value."
"But, even supposing I had the inclination--which I certainly have not," persisted poor Sir Thomas, "I have not the remotest idea how to set about working up any such subjects as those mentioned by your ladyship."
"My dear, you surprise me! What is Mr. Pomeroy for? It cannot, of course, be expected that you should waste your time in picking out a lot of dreary statistics, or in wading through a heap of dry, mechanical details. All that forms part of the duties of your secretary. It is his place to bring to a common focus all the various facts and figures that may have any bearing on the subject in hand. Such a summary of facts and figures could be readily mastered by you in the course of a morning's study. You would then have to consider the line of argument which you would adopt in stating your case to the House; and having divided your subject into two or three heads, you would have, finally, to work up the various points in the most effective manner possible, taking care to conclude with one of those glowing perorations--one of those spontaneous bursts of eloquence--for which you are so justly famed."
Sir Thomas sat staring at his wife in speechless dismay. After a little while he got up and walked to the window, and stood there jingling his loose silver.
"What a pity it is, Matilda, that you are not the member for Pembridge instead of me! You would have done far more justice to the position than I can ever hope to do."
"Tut! tut! my dear. You must not talk so foolishly," said her ladyship, complacently. "I know your abilities far better than you do yourself. All that you lack is confidence, and that will come to you in due time."
"I suppose those worthy people down at Pembridge wouldn't feel satisfied unless I made some sort of an attempt at a speech some time before the session's over, eh?"
"Certainly not. So the sooner you take the plunge, the better for everyone. How would you like to meet your constituents in the autumn, if the sound of your voice had never been heard in the House?"
Sir Thomas stood without speaking for a minute or two. At last he said, "I think I'll go and have a little talk with Pomeroy."
"Do so, my dear. I have no doubt that his views will coincide with mine. Mr. Pomeroy is a very clever young man--and so exemplary too! I am highly pleased with him."
Sir Thomas found Jack in the library, where, having nothing to do for his employer, he was trying to hammer out a few verses for one of the magazines; only, as the fair face of Eleanor Lloyd would keep coming between his muse and him, it is to be feared that he was not making very satisfactory progress.
Sir Thomas gave a little sigh, and sat down at the opposite side of the table. "Pomeroy," he began presently, "her ladyship seems to think that it's about time I made a little bit of a splash in the House. Rather out of my line, you know; but I suppose it has to be done, and the sooner it's got over the better. So what I want you to do for me is this: there's to be a big debate on the Sugar Duties in about a month's time, and I want you to work the subject up, and write out a bit of a speech for me that I can get off by heart. I know that's a sort of thing that comes easy enough to a clever young chap like you, but it would be deuced difficult to me; just as difficult, I daresay, as it would be for you to buy half a score bullocks at a fair, and make sure at the same time that you were getting full value for your money."
"I shall be glad to have a little more to do, Sir Thomas. At present I don't feel as if I were earning my salary."
"You mustn't make the speech too long, you know, or else I shall be sure to forget some of it--and you mustn't even hint to her ladyship that it's not my own composition."
"You may rely implicitly upon my discretion, sir."
"And then I want you to write out a second speech, which must be simply an amplification of the first, with a few fine words and big phrases dropped in here and there, like plums in a dumpling. This second speech is for my constituents, and you must arrange with the editor for its appearance in the Pembridge Gazette on the Saturday following my delivery of speech number one in the House."
"I comprehend perfectly, sir," said Jack.
"You are a good fellow, Pomeroy--a very good fellow," added Sir Thomas. "I like you much. Her ladyship likes you much. She quite values you. But not a word to her about our little arrangement--and don't forget the plums in the dumpling."
Sir Thomas had hardly been gone five minutes, when there came a discreet tap at the door, and in walked Olive Deane.
"Good morning, Mr. Pomeroy," she said. "I hear that the box has arrived from Mudie's. Her ladyship gave me the privilege of ordering two or three books on my own account, and I am anxious to see whether they have come."
"Here is the box," said Jack, "unopened as yet; so that you will have the pleasure of being the first to explore its contents."
"You seem to understand our sex--a little," said Olive, as she turned over the books. "It is singular, but true, but I should not derive half so much pleasure from turning over the contents of this box had anyone, especially another woman, done it before me. But we women are full of contrarieties."
"It is precisely those contrarieties which make your sex so charming. You are so full of surprises. No woman, it seems to me, can ever be altogether commonplace."
"Oh, I grant you that we are full of surprises," said Olive. "A man, for instance, has only one or two ways of showing his temper, whereas we have fifty ways, all different from each other: which prevents monotony. If we cannot startle you with a wise or a witty remark, we prefer to try an inane one, rather than not startle you at all. We are melodramatic to the backbone, and are always studying a climax or a surprise, if it be only in the petty details of everyday life."
"I feel that I ought to say something pretty here, in deprecation of the severity of your judgment," said Jack, with a smile, "but nothing worthy of the occasion occurs to me at present. I fear that I am even more stupid than usual this morning."
"Stupidity is certainly the great failing of your sex," said Olive, with candour. "How seldom one meets with a man who has anything to say worth listening to; or if he has, how rarely he knows how to say it. No; in comparison of your sex as against ours, it seems to me that there is only one point wherein we fail--only one grand faculty that men possess and that we have no idea of."
"And that is----?"
"The faculty of silence. The want of that, and of that alone, has lost us the supremacy of the world."
Jack laughed, and Olive went on with her examination of the books.
It had been a debatable point with Lady Dudgeon whether or not she should take her children to London with her; but Sophy's earnest pleading not to be left behind had at last won a half-reluctant consent from her ladyship. But there was another reason, of which Sophy knew nothing, why the young ladies should accompany their mamma. The truth was that her ladyship found Miss Deane's services so useful to her in many ways, that she could by no means make up her mind to let Olive stay behind at Stammars. By so doing she would have to take on herself again a number of duties of which Miss Deane had of late relieved her; and how would it be possible for her to do that, with all the extra demands on her time which a residence in town necessarily implied? If Miss Deane had been useful to her in the country, in London she would be invaluable: so to London Olive and the young ladies were transferred in due course.
Lady Dudgeon was one of those people who delight in keeping an elaborate series of housekeeping books, in which every item of domestic expenditure is carefully tabulated, and against which the tradespeople's accounts can be minutely checked. During the last few months, however, her ladyship's eyesight had begun to fail her, whereupon her medical man had threatened her with spectacles unless she would consent to give her eyes a little more rest. The threat frightened her. She could not afford to give up her diary; she could not find in her heart to curtail her correspondence; she must perforce give up her housekeeping accounts, or delegate the labour connected with them into other hands.
When, some three months later, Olive Deane arrived at Stammars, her ladyship's book-keeping had got terribly into arrear. She was greatly perturbed in her mind thereby, feeling perfectly sure that her tradespeople were all aware that she no longer checked their accounts, and that they were leagued together to overreach her in every possible way. Olive had not been many days at Stammars before she found out what was amiss, whereupon she begged so earnestly that the books and accounts might be put into her hands, that her ladyship, not without a considerable degree of reluctance, agreed at last to entrust them to her. And she had never had cause to regret having done so. Everything was done almost--not quite, but almost--as well as she could have done it herself; and her ladyship was not slow to sing the praises of Olive.
If there was one thing on which Lady Dudgeon prided herself in secret more than another, it was upon her epistolary talents. She was, indeed, a most voluminous and untiring correspondent. However trivial might be the subject about which she was writing, she had a copious stream of words at command--a stream that never ran itself dry. The involution of her sentences was only equalled by the ambiguity of their meaning. Because her correspondents acknowledged that they had to read her letters two or three times over before they could thoroughly comprehend all that was intended to be conveyed by them, she--and in some cases they also--came to look upon it as a sign of profundity, of deep thought, clothed with the fine flowers of rhetoric, that such a difficulty should be so generally admitted to exist. To have written out a plain statement of facts in a few plain words, was a feat of which her ladyship was quite incapable, and one which, to do her justice, she would have despised herself for even attempting. She had been so often complimented on her letter-writing (and knowing for a fact, as she did, that several of her correspondents carefully preserved her epistles) that there had grown up in her mind a sort of vague idea that, after her demise, some one would certainly be found who would look upon it as an act of pious duty to awaken the world to a sense of its loss, to let it see for itself what a genius had dwelt for years in its midst, save by a few choice spirits, unappreciated and unknown. There was only one way by which a heedless world could be thus enlightened, and that was by publishing--posthumously, of course--a selection of her ladyship's correspondence. The fame denied to her during her lifetime would be hers after death. After this fashion it was that Lady Dudgeon fed her imagination: and yet there were not wanting people who denied her the possession of any such commodity, and who mentally catalogued her as one of the most prosaic and commonplace of her sex.
"I hope you have not forgotten our conversation in my cousin's office at Pembridge?" said Olive suddenly to Jack, as she shut down the lid of the box and put her own two particular volumes under her arm, preparatory to leaving the room.
"There are some conversations that I can never forget: that is one of them."
"I have sometimes thought since how very foolish it was of me to talk to you in the way I did on that occasion. But you had only yourself to blame."
"I am not aware that there was any foolishness in the matter: quite the contrary. But tell me in what way I was to blame."
"In causing my aunt to feel such an interest in you. Me, too, you interested. We were both anxious to assist you, if it were possible to do so."
"And you have assisted me, and I thank both you and Mrs. Kelvin very heartily for it."
"Is not Miss Lloyd charming?"
"Thoroughly charming."
"You seem to have succeeded in interesting her, as you interested my aunt and me," said Olive, with one of her wintry smiles.
"Miss Lloyd has seen so little of the world, and is so fresh and untutored, that anyone could interest her whose conversation was not absolutely stupid."
"John Pomeroy, the Hesperian fruit is within your grasp!" said Miss Deane, changing her manner in a moment to one of intense earnestness. "Put forth your hand and seize it. Be not slow to make it your own. If you are, be sure that some one else will quickly claim the golden prize." Her black eyes, fixed steadily on his face, seemed full of some hidden meaning. With a grave inclination of the head, she turned and slowly left the room.
"I will seize the golden fruit, chère demoiselle; I will make it my own!" muttered Pomeroy to himself, as Olive closed the door. "Though why you should feel so strange an interest in my fortunes is more than I can comprehend. A crooked brain and a dark heart are yours, Olive Deane, or else my reading of your character is altogether a wrong one."
The feeling of curiosity which had actuated Miss Deane in her desire to see her rival, as she called Eleanor Lloyd in her thoughts, had been almost as powerful as that which, for the time being, had made John Pomeroy its slave. When Miss Deane did see Eleanor, she could not help acknowledging to herself that Matthew Kelvin's violent passion for that lady was not without some justification. That Miss Lloyd was indeed very lovely, she at once admitted; for Olive was free from that common feminine failing which refuses to acknowledge that another, and more especially a rival, can be the possessor of superior charms, either of person or mind; and she told herself at once that, as far as mere good looks went, she could not hope to stand the slightest chance in a comparison with Miss Lloyd. So long as Miss Lloyd should remain unmarried, Matthew Kelvin would never look with serious eyes elsewhere; and Olive saw with a sort of savage satisfaction how quickly and readily Mr. John Pomeroy had fallen into the same toils in which the lawyer had been enmeshed before him. Her keen eyes saw that which was suspected by no one else--that a few short hours had indeed sufficed to seal Pomeroy's fate. So far everything had gone well with her; everything had answered her highest expectations. But when she looked on the other side of the question; when she came to ask herself, "Does this girl return this man's love?" she could not feel quite so sanguine as to the result. That Eleanor liked the company of John Pomeroy, and that his conversation interested her, Olive could see clearly enough. But liking is not love, though it is often a big stride on the road towards it. All that was left her to do was to hope for the best and to remain as quietly watchful as she had hitherto been.
Of all these plottings and counter-plottings that were going on under her very nose, poor innocent Lady Dudgeon dreamt nothing. She had long ago made up her mind that her ensuing season in town should be fruitful of much pleasure and much enjoyment to her. But chief of all the pleasures that she looked forward to was that of assisting her darling Eleanor to select--or, better still, of selecting for her--a suitable partner for life. She had not been more than a fortnight in Harley Street before she began to cast wary eyes around, and to make cautious inquiries here and there with respect to the pretensions and positions of certain individuals who, even thus early, had evinced a generous alacrity to sell themselves for life for the sake of twenty thousand pounds--the young lady who was tacked to the money being of course thrown in as an unavoidable necessity.
The interest shown by Lady Dudgeon in the fortunes of Miss Lloyd had its origin in a feeling that dated from the time when Eleanor was little more than a mere child. At the risk of his own life, Jacob Lloyd had succeeded in stopping her ladyship's ponies one day when they were running away with her, and making in a straight line for a very deep gravel-pit that may still be seen close by the edge of Dingley Common. Jacob having been considerably bruised and knocked about in his struggle with the ponies, Lady Dudgeon could do no less than call several times at Bridgeley to inquire after his health. There it was that she first saw Eleanor, at that time a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed child of eight, in short frocks and pinafores. She drew the child to her, looked her fixedly in the face for a moment or two, and then stooped and kissed her. Impulsive Nelly at once flung her arms round Lady Dudgeon's neck. "You are pretty, and I do love you!" she cried; and from that moment her ladyship's heart was won. She would insist upon taking Nelly back to Stammars, and that first visit was but the precursor of several others.
Lady Dudgeon was generally looked upon as a cold-mannered, unimpressionable sort of person, and her strange partiality for Mr. Lloyd's daughter was a surprise to all who knew her--to her husband as much as anyone. But Sir Thomas was eminently good-natured, and he yielded to his wife's whim in this respect as in everything else. Before long, indeed, he grew almost as fond of his Bonnybell, as he called her, as Lady Dudgeon herself. Having no children of his own at this time, he liked very well to have Eleanor about him--he liked to have her tugging at his coat-tails, or banging on his arm, or sitting in front of him on his pony as he rode about the fields looking at his crops or watching his labourers at work.
Even as a child there was about Eleanor Lloyd a native distinction of manner that few people failed to observe. Combined with this was a sweet, fearless freedom--like the fearlessness of a fawn--that sprung from a total unconsciousness of self, and that charmed without being aware of its own existence. At ten years of age Eleanor felt as much at home in Lady Dudgeon's drawing-room, among Lady Dudgeon's fine company, as she did when helping Biddy to make a custard in the kitchen.
Lady Dudgeon's liking for Eleanor did not lessen with years. The child was a frequent visitor at Stammars up to the time that she was sent to Germany to finish her education. And when her two years of absence were over, and she was back again at home, the intercourse was at once resumed, although by this time Lady Dudgeon had two young daughters of her own. After the sudden death of Jacob Lloyd, and the announcement that Eleanor had come into a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, there seemed all the more reason why the bond of intimacy should be drawn still closer: and no one was surprised when it was given out that Miss Lloyd had, for the present, accepted Lady Dudgeon's invitation to live with her at Stammars.
A day or two before the departure of the family for Harley Street, Lady Dudgeon called Eleanor into her bedroom. "My dear," she said, "I am going to show you something that you have never seen before--something that no eyes but my own have seen for years. To you they may, perhaps, seem hardly worth keeping, but they are very precious to me."
She opened a drawer as she spoke, the contents of which were covered with several layers of tissue-paper. When the paper had been carefully removed, there were displayed to Eleanor's view several articles that had evidently belonged to a child. There was a little crimson frock and a sash, a pair of tiny shoes, a broken doll, and part of a necklace of coral beads. Eleanor looked up wonderingly. For the first time in her life she saw tears in the eyes of Lady Dudgeon. "They belonged to my little daughter, whom I lost before I ever saw you. She died when she was four years old. She would just have been your age had she lived. Like you, she was fair and had blue eyes. That first day when I saw you at your father's, it almost seemed to me as if my own lost darling had come back again. I could not help loving you then, dear, and I have loved you ever since."
From the first moment that Gerald Warburton set eyes on Eleanor Lloyd, he made up his mind that, if it were in the possibility of things to do so, he would make her his wife, and from that determination he had never wavered. The more he saw of her the more settled became his conviction that he had never really loved till now. Flirtations he had had, and little love-smarts in plenty. Many a pleasant face had haunted his dreams for a night or two, but never for longer. In his writing-desk were two or three crumpled gloves, a ribbon or two, and at least half a dozen cartes-de-visite: tokens all, as he sometimes said to himself, of how hard he had tried to love, of how often he had fancied himself to be in love, and of the very short space of time it had taken him to discover either what an ass he had made of himself, or what an ass some girl had made of him. Such mementoes are not without a certain amount of instructiveness. Gerald looked upon them in the light of warnings. "How terrible and strange it is to think," he said to himself one day, "that each one of these gages d'amour represents a most foolish moment in my life, a moment that might have been the turning-point of my existence: such a moment as has been the turning-point of many a man's existence! How well one knows the history of such relics A pair of bright eyes, a waltz, a glass of champagne, a glove or a ribbon dropped by accident or design; or else a moonlight ramble capped with some poet's soft nonsense, and a little hand nestling timidly under your arm. Then comes a pressure of the tiny hand, an appealing glance into the bright eyes, a whispered word, and unless your enslaver does not really care for you--in which case nothing but your vanity suffers--your fate is sealed, and the chances are that you wake up next morning to find that, for the sake of an hour's foolish romance, you have bound yourself for life to a person for whom in your heart, you don't care the price of a box of cigars."
So moralized Gerald, as he took his relics out of their resting-place for the last time and dropped them quietly, one by one, into the fire. Without a single pang he saw them flare and shrivel into ashes. Let the dead past bury its dead.
No doubt ever clouded his mind as to the strength and reality of that passion which in these latter days had taken possession of his heart. It was no mere will-o'-the-wisp, to be followed with passionate footsteps through brake and morass, but the Planet of Love itself, serene and beautiful: the lodestar of his life and fortune shining down on him at last with a light that nothing but death could ever again eclipse.
Since that first meeting with Eleanor he had made it his business to see as much of her as the exigencies of his position would allow of his doing. Except when they had company, he generally dined with Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon. He had the happy knack of being able to select topics of conversation that had an interest for both of them. He did his best to please them, and he succeeded, simply that he might be able thereby to see more of Miss Lloyd than he could otherwise have hoped to do. The peculiar circumstances under which Eleanor and he had first met had done more to break the ice between them than a month of ordinary intercourse would have done; besides which, it had supplied them with a subject for conversation that Eleanor seemed never to grow tired of, and one in which our artful Gerald feigned a far deeper interest than he really felt.
Days and weeks had come and gone, and he was still as undecided as ever what steps to take in the matter of the sealed packet. Kelvin still maintained his mysterious silence. Gerald had said to himself that, after having been at Stammars for a little while, after having seen and made the acquaintance of Eleanor, should Kelvin not then have spoken, he would write to him in his real name, and demand some explanation of his unaccountable silence. This would at once force matters to a climax, and he, Gerald, would then be able, in the natural course of events, to assume his proper name and position. But day by day was flitting away, and he still neglected to take this very obvious course. As matters had turned out, he shrank from doing so. He loved this girl with all the strength of his ardent temperament. Should he declare himself, such a declaration would take from her all that she had hitherto deemed her own, all that was most dear to her in life: name, wealth, position--everything. Should his be the hand to knowingly strike her such a blow? The more he thought of it, the more hateful such a proceeding seemed to him. He could never hope to see Love's sweet light dawn in those beautiful eyes were he to smite her thus. And then how much more precious to him would it be to win her love for his own sake, to win it as a poor man, to fight for her against the host of other suitors who would surely come when they should discover what a golden prize was there for the winning; to say no word to her of this thing, but to let her rest in blissful ignorance till their wedding day was come. After that, she might, perchance, learn to love him all the more for his long silence. Thus it was that Gerald argued with himself, and thus it was that to the world at large he was still known as John Pomeroy, secretary to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, at an honorarium of one hundred and fifty guineas per annum.
As Gerald was strolling quietly through Kensington Gardens one day between luncheon and dinner, he was met by Eleanor, who was coming from an opposite direction. They shook hands, and Gerald turned and walked back with her.
"What are you meditating this morning?" asked Eleanor. "A sonnet, or another speech on the Sugar Duties?" She had seen and heard enough to know from what fount it was that Sir Thomas derived the stream of his Parliamentary eloquence.
"Neither anything so sentimental on the one hand, nor anything so prosaic on the other," answered Gerald. "I was better employed in listening to the birds, and in marking how the brown buds were here and there beginning to open themselves to the sun."
"You are easily satisfied. I should have thought that the Ride would have had more attractions for you."
"Not at all. In London, humanity is so plentiful that trees and birds seem sometimes the best of company. In the country, where trees and birds are so common, a fresh face is sometimes a godsend."
"But you, who have been so accustomed to change--to seeing fresh faces and visiting strange places--must surely find it both dull and tedious to spend your days among blue-books and parliamentary reports, wading through columns of dreary statistics, and concocting speeches which another than yourself will deliver?"
"I did find it both dull and tedious at first, but I don't find it so now."
"And why do you not find it so now?"
He would have liked to answer: "Because your presence here has made my work glad. Because I could count no work as slavery if through it I were brought into contact with you. Because, since I have learned to love you, life has assumed for me an altogether different complexion from that which it wore before--is imbued with altogether different purposes and ambitions." But the time was not yet ripe for him to say all this, or even part of it. Some more commonplace answer must be found to her question.
"I think," said he, "it must be because human motives and human purposes are so intimately mingled with the dry bones of politics, that politics exercise such a strange fascination over nearly everyone who is brought into close contact with them. Certainly to me, and that no very long time ago, they seemed the dryest and most uninteresting study to which a man could devote his time."
"But you have seen reason to change your opinion since then?" said Eleanor.
"I have," said Gerald, emphatically. "From the moment I leapt into the arena--from the moment that I ceased to be a looker-on and became a gladiator myself--in the very humblest of positions though it was--my blood seemed to warm to the struggle. I buckled my armour round me with gladness at the thought that I was about to contend with shapes of bone and sinew; that my life need no longer have to content itself with pottering about among the petty dilettanteisms of Art, while never quite certain in my own mind whether it was Nature's intention that I should develop into a man of genius or degenerate into a blockhead."
Eleanor laughed. "Then you think you have found your right groove at last," she said.
"As to the right groove, I don't know that this particular one is better for me than any other in which there would be earnest work to do in which I could take a hearty interest. Certainly I have come to find a degree of interest in what I am now doing that could surprise no one more than it does myself."
"You ought to be in Parliament yourself, Mr. Pomeroy, instead of filling the anomalous position you do now."
"One must learn to creep before one can walk," said Gerald, with a shrug.
"But some people never get beyond creeping.----If I were a man, I should certainly strive to get into Parliament," added Eleanor, a minute or two later. "How easy it is for a man to have a noble ambition!"
"Then you like a man to be ambitious?"
"I could certainly never look up to anyone who was not so."
"I am afraid that you aim your arrow too high for these commonplace days. There are many kinds of ambition that a man may occupy himself with, and yet none of them may be really ignoble: Sir Thomas Dudgeon's, for instance. It is his ambition to breed superior sheep and oxen--and it is decidedly for our benefit that he should do so. I have a friend in Paris who has a crippled sister, and the object of his ambition is the invention of an invalid's chair that shall be superior to any other. These are not large ambitions, but they are certainly very laudable ones."
"If you know the object of a man's ambition, cannot you from that gauge, to a certain extent at least, the quality of his mind?"
"Undoubtedly you can, to a certain extent, as you say. But there are many men who keep their ambitious dreams to themselves as closely as they do their bankbook. When such a man dies, the general verdict is that he might have succeeded very much better in life if he had only had a little more ambition, whereas the probability is that he succeeded so ill because he had too much ambition."
"I hardly follow you," said Eleanor.
"Let us say that such a man's ambition was to stand on the topmost pinnacle of the Jungfrau; and because he felt that he had neither the strength nor the skill requisite to carve his way step by step to the summit, rather than content himself with any lesser altitude, he preferred to sit quietly down, dumb and disappointed, among the ignoble crowd at the bottom."
They walked on for a little while in silence. Gerald kept feasting himself with little side glances at Eleanor's face. And it was a face well worth looking at. A delicate, slightly aquiline nose; two eyes of the deepest and tenderest blue, that put you in mind of an April sky when the clouds have divided after a shower; and massive coils of rich flaxen hair that seemed full of stolen sunshine. Her upper lip had a chiselled fineness of curve and outline rarely found among English women, and this feature it was that gave a special distinction to the character of her face. But far before everything else was a prevailing sweetness of expression--a sweetness that was without insipidity, that only served to heighten that delicate verve--the outcome of an ardent and generous nature--which shone through everything she said and did. She had a small basket on her arm this morning, for she had her pensioners already, and was returning from visiting two of them: a poor old orange woman who had broken her arm through slipping on the ice; and a young mother whose husband lay ill of a fever in the hospital. Gerald, glancing now and again into the beautiful face beside him, felt his heart thrill strangely. He would have dearly liked to fling his arms about her and print a thousand kisses on her lips.
"What is the latest news of the little waif?" asked Gerald suddenly, after a pause.
"I have no news other than that which you know already."
"Then she has not been claimed?"
"No. She is still under Mrs. Nixon's care."
"It is not at all likely that anyone will now come forward and claim her."
"I hope with all my heart that they won't. Those to whom she belonged left her to be found by a stranger, or to perish; and after such an act as that they can hardly want to reclaim her."
"I should think that they would hardly dare do so."
"The law would surely punish a deed so detestable. But I have little fear of anyone coming forward. I feel that the child belongs to me, and to me alone."
"Have I, then, no share in her?" asked Gerald, with a smile.
"It was agreed that you should give your share over to me," answered Eleanor.
"I may at least be allowed to feel a little interest in the child's future fortunes?"
"As deep an interest as you like. You are her preserver, and yours shall be the first name that she shall be taught to speak. But for all that, you must let me claim her as altogether my own."
"Oh, with all my heart. I should make a very poor guardian, I am afraid, for such a wee morsel of humanity."
"I have regular accounts from Mrs. Nixon every two or three days, and next week I am going down to Stammars to see her."
"I wish she only thought half as much of me as she does of that young customer down at Stammars!" said Gerald, rather disconsolately, to himself, when he had parted from Eleanor.
"What has come over you, child?" said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor, two or three days afterwards. "This is the third time this morning that I have caught you in a day-dream. Anyone who did not know better, would certainly say that you were in love."
"Then they would certainly say what was not true," said Eleanor, with a blush and a smile.
"I hope so, I am sure," said her ladyship, emphatically. "I don't think your time has come yet, dear."
Eleanor was used to Lady Dudgeon's phraseology, and did not reply.
No; she certainly was not in love, she said to herself. But it was rather strange how often Mr. Pomeroy had been in her thoughts of late. She had caught herself thinking about him several times: daydreaming, Lady Dudgeon called it. And why should she not think about him? she asked herself. He interested her. There was about him something different from anyone she had ever met before. If only she could have assisted him to get into Parliament, how happy that would have made her! Despite his careless, easy way of talking, she felt sure that he was ambitious. But with only a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and no friends to push him forward, a man's ambitious dreams must perforce be buried in his heart. If only she could endow him with some portion of her wealth!---- But here she broke off with a blush, and made up her mind that for the future she would not think quite so much about Mr. Pomeroy. "I must remember that I am not to think quite so much about him," she said to herself. But the very fact of having to remember this had only the effect of bringing his image more frequently to her mind.
From Harley Street, Cavendish Square, to Ormond Square, Bayswater, is but a short distance as the crow flies, but it was enough to transform the John Pomeroy of one place into the Gerald Warburton of the other. And such transformations were very frequent with Gerald just at this time. Now that he had learned to love Ambrose Murray's daughter, Ambrose Murray himself had acquired a fresh interest in his eyes, and he very rarely let more than two days pass over without finding himself in Miss Bellamy's sitting-room. From Miss Bellamy he had but one secret--his love for Eleanor. Everything else he told her: but to Ambrose Murray nothing was told. Murray had not the slightest idea that his daughter was in London; and so incurious was he respecting her, that he never even asked the name of the friends with whom she was living; and yet it was impossible to doubt that in his strangely constituted heart he loved her passionately. He still adhered to his first determination--not to see her, nor even to let her become aware of his existence, till he could stand before her, a man whose innocence the world was now as eager to proclaim as it had been before to swear that he was guilty.
Miss Bellamy felt it as a great deprivation that she could not go to see Eleanor, whom she had known and loved from infancy. But had she done so, Eleanor would have certainly been seen in Ormond Square before many hours were over--and then, what a meeting might there not have been! It was requisite that Eleanor should believe that Miss Bellamy had gone abroad for a short time, and the latter lady went out less frequently than she would otherwise have done, so great was her dread of unexpectedly encountering Miss Lloyd in the street.
"What are we to do now that we have found Jacoby?" said Gerald to Murray the day after their expedition into the City.
"That is just what I want you to tell me," was Murray's complacent rejoinder, as he took one of Gerald's hands between his thin palms and patted it gently. "Your knowledge of the world will enable you to say what the next step ought to be."
"I am afraid that my knowledge of the world, as you call it, is altogether at fault in this instance," said Gerald, with a dubious shake of the head. "To find a man, even in the great wilderness of London, is an altogether different thing from working up a chain of evidence strong enough to convict him of a crime committed twenty years ago.
"But don't you see, Gerald," argued Murray, in his quietly earnest way, "that the very fact of our having found this man constitutes the first link in the chain? All the proofs in the world would have availed us nothing had we not been able to find him. But now that we have got the first link complete, you may depend upon it that the forging of the second will follow in due course."
He spoke with an air of such thorough conviction, that for a moment or two Gerald hardly knew how to answer him.
"I am certainly at a nonplus," he said at last. "I was never more in the dark in my life. Have you any objection to my consulting Byrne?"
"No objection in the world. Consult anybody and everybody, as may seem best to you."
"Should I find it necessary to do so, have I your permission to tell him everything?"
"You have: my full permission."
"Mind you, I don't build any hopes on my interview with Byrne. I don't see how he can possibly help us; but still I will consult him."
"And out of that consultation the forging of the second link will be accomplished," said Murray. Again Gerald shook his head. Slightly exasperating to him was Murray's air of thorough conviction, unbacked as it was by the least fragment of proof, or even the vaguest suggestions as to either how or where such proof might be forthcoming.
Two days later, having an afternoon to spare, Gerald chartered a hansom for Amelia Terrace, Battersea, and picked up Ambrose Murray by the way. He had seen enough of Byrne to make him believe that he was a man who might be thoroughly trusted, and he had made up his mind to lay the case before him in its entirety. He left the cab with his companion in it at the corner of the terrace, and three minutes later he was closeted with Mr. Byrne.
That gentleman was smoking his long-stemmed pipe with the china bowl. He squeezed Gerald's outstretched hand, and greeted him with one of his expansive smiles, which came and went as suddenly as though produced by a clock-work movement inside his head.
"That was a neat stroke of business that we did the other night, sir, though it is I who say it," remarked Mr. Byrne.
"Yes; you managed it very cleverly, and it is on that very subject that I have come to see you again."
"I am yours to command, Mr. Warburton."
"If I recollect rightly, when I saw you before, you gave me to understand that you were in Court on the day that Ambrose Murray took his trial for the murder of Paul Stilling?"
"I was in Court at the time, and I retain a very clear recollection of the different features of the case."
"Can you tell me what impression you formed at the time as to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner?"
"Now you put a very difficult question to me. Anyone who has seen much of criminal trials will tell you what an exceedingly unsafe thing it is to form an opinion from a prisoner's demeanour as to his guilt or otherwise."
"Never mind the prisoner's demeanour in this case. I simply want to know what your own impression was, as a result of what you saw and heard at the trial."
"Well, the weight of evidence, as no doubt you are aware, was dead against the prisoner, and that very fact will, as a rule, go a long way in the formation of a person's opinion. Still, in spite of that, at the time it was my impression that, whoever else it might have been, Murray was not the murderer."
"I am glad to hear you say that," said Gerald, heartily. "Because, after being shut up for twenty years, Murray has escaped from prison."
"Phew! That's good news, Mr. Warburton, very good news! I never could see my way to believe that man guilty."
"That man it was, and no other, who made the third in our little party the other night."
The china pipe had never been so near being broken as it was at that moment. It slipped from Byrne's nerveless fingers, and only the hearthrug saved it. This brought back his presence of mind.
"In telling you this," said Gerald, "you will understand at once the amount of confidence which I am placing in your discretion."
"Not undeservedly, Mr. Warburton--of that you may rest fully assured!" said Byrne, warmly. "I feel honoured by your confidence in this matter, sir: and if I can be of any further assistance either to you or Mr. Murray, my services are entirely at your command."
"That is just the point to which I am coming," said Gerald. "We do want your further assistance. It is for that very purpose I am here to see you to-day: it is for that very purpose Mr. Murray himself has come to see you."
"Mr. Murray here--to see me!"
"He is waiting in a cab at the corner of the street. I will go and fetch him."
Presently Ambrose Murray entered, ushered in by Gerald. Byrne regarded him with mingled feelings of respect, curiosity, and pity. It was characteristic of the man that during the few minutes of Gerald's absence he had found time to put on a better coat, and also, if the whole truth must be confessed, to impart the very slightest extra suspicion of rouge to his cheeks. The pipe was not again visible during the interview.
Gerald introduced Mr. Murray in his real name to Byrne, who had hardly spoken half a dozen words to him at their previous meeting.
"I am proud to see you, sir, under my humble roof," said Byrne, "and I should have been proud to have entertained you during my days of prosperity. But that was not to be," he added, with a melancholy shake of the head.
"And now to business," said Gerald. "Mr. Murray is firmly convinced that Max Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stilling."
"Aye, aye!" interjected Byrne.
"As a matter of course, the great desire of his life is to prove his innocence of the terrible crime of which in the eye of the law he is still adjudged to be guilty. He can only do this by bringing home the guilt to the real murderer. Assuming Mr. Murray's view of the case to be the correct one, the question is, by what means is Jacoby's guilt to be brought home to him?"
"And that is the problem you have come to me to help you to solve?" said Byrne.
Murray answered by a grave inclination of the head.
"I don't know that I ever had such a poser put to me before," said Byrne.
"It is the very difficulty of the problem that has induced me to seek your services," said Gerald.
"I must put on my considering-cap," said Byrne. "I must sand-paper my brains."
He was silent for a little while. Then he said, "I see no light at present--not the faintest gleam. You must let me have time to think about it--to smoke over it. My old pipe has made many a difficulty clear for me; perhaps it may help me in this one."
"Take your own time, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "When the light you seek is ready to come to you, it will come."
"Yes; but I don't know where to look for it," said Byrne.
"It will come of its own accord."
Byrne shook his bead.
"Poor fellow! he's just a bit touched yet," he said to himself.
After a little more conversation, Gerald and Mr. Murray went. It was arranged that Byrne should write and let them know when he was ready to see them again.
It was about a week later when they all met again by appointment.
"Has the light come yet?" was Murray's first question.
"If it has, it is only a tiny ray indeed," said Byrne. "Something like that of a farthing rushlight, liable to be blown out by the first puff of wind."
"In such cases as the one before us," resumed Byrne, when they were all seated, "it often happens that several abortive-attempts have to be made before the proper channel for exploration is discovered. The plan which I am about to propose to you will, in all probability, prove an abortive one, and will result in some other effort in some other direction having ultimately to be made. The plan in question is, however, the only one I can think of at present which seems to possess the least degree of feasibility. Very few words will suffice to lay it before you."
Mr. Byrne here paused to refresh himself from his daughter's smelling-bottle, which stood on the chimney-piece. Then he resumed--
"In the course of my various reconnoitrings about the house of Max Jacoby, or rather Van Duren, as we ought now to call him, I discovered a card in one of the windows, on which were the words, 'Unfurnished Apartments to let.' From what I can make out, Van Duren occupies no more of the house than the basement and ground-floor, the two upper floors being empty and to let, and having a private side-entrance of their own. Now, what I propose is, that I and my daughter shall go and take these empty apartments. Mr. Warburton here shall be my son for the time being. In that capacity he will be able to call upon me as often as he may think well to do so. By these means I shall become an inmate of Van Duren's house--he and I will be under one roof. Should there be anything to discover, I shall thus be more likely to discover it; should any clue develop itself by means of which this man's crime may be traced home to him, I shall be on the spot to follow it up. In any case, to get near the man seems the first thing to do; away from him we can do little or nothing."
"I think your idea a most admirable one," said Murray. "As you say, the first thing to do is to get near the man."
"Will it be essential that you should take your daughter into your confidence?" asked Gerald. "Will it be requisite that you should explain to her your reasons for taking up your residence in Van Duren's house?"
"I have no secrets from Miriam," answered Byrne. "But you need be under no apprehensions on that score. Miriam can keep a secret as well as I can; she is no commonplace, talkative school-girl. Besides which, her presence and co-operation are essential to the scheme I have in view. Without her, it would be impossible for me to carry it out. What this scheme is in all its details, you will excuse me from explaining to you now. I have told you what the first step is to be. With your permission, and if you can place full confidence in me, we will leave the remaining steps to develop themselves in the natural course of events."
"You have our fullest confidence, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "We leave you to conduct the case entirely in the way that may seem best to you."
Gerald, unperceived by Mr. Murray, passed a slip of paper into Byrne's hand, on which was pencilled these words--
"Say nothing to Mr. M. about money matters. I will call to-morrow and arrange with you."
Murray and Gerald walked home together arm-in-arm. The former was in unusually high spirits.
"Did I not tell you, Gerald, that a way would be found out of the difficulty before long?"
"We are not out of the wood yet, sir," said Gerald, drily.
"Certainly not; but we have got a glimpse of daylight. But I cannot hope that you will see with my eyes; I cannot hope that the faith that burns within me will more than faintly warm you."
Gerald walked with Murray as far as the corner of Ormond Square, and then stopped the first empty cab that passed him, and hurried back to Harley Street.
Murray did not go straight home, but wandered back to a favourite second-hand book-stall, where he was well known. His purchases, it is true, were never of a very extensive character, being always confined to the threepenny, or, at the most, to the sixpenny box. But he was a frequent visitor at the stall, and he always made a point of turning over the entire contents of the box before making up his mind which particular treasure he would ultimately choose for his own. On the present occasion, after half an hour's diligent search, he decided on the extravagance of a double purchase. He bought "Althazar," an Arabian romance, for which he paid sixpence; and a "Treatise on Conic Sections," for which he paid threepence. This done, he walked quietly home, hugging his treasures under his arm, and promising himself a good long read that very evening, in either one volume or the other--it did not matter in the least which.
Mr. Murray's small stock of books, all selected from the same receptacle as his present purchases, was indeed a somewhat multifarious one. Nothing modern, nothing frivolous, was to be found there. They were all books that had seen service in their time, and the authors of which were not only dead, but forgotten. "Musings in a Churchyard," and "Travels in Africa in 1755," jostled each other on the same shelf. "A Treatise on the Steam Engine" had heaped a-top of it, as though there were some danger of an explosion, "An Essay on the Measurements and Construction of the Great Pyramid," and a thin volume of elegiac verse "by Mary M.," whoever she may have been.
It was characteristic of Mr. Murray that he seemed to like any one of these books as well as another. From each and all of them he seemed to derive either amusement or information, or perhaps both. And then he was one of those rare readers who will read the same book contentedly five or six times over. If he happened to be wakeful in the night, he would light his candle and pick up the treatise on Steam Engines, if that happened to come first to his hand, and read himself quietly to sleep again over matter that he had probably, perused attentively only some three or four days before.
He had not been at home more than five minutes to-day, when he heard a clatter of little feet on the stairs, and then came a knocking at his door, followed by a request that "Uncle Greaves" would go down into the garden and turn Alice's skipping-rope. So down he went, and turned the skipping-rope dutifully for half an hour. Then came a whisper from Frank, who was on thorns to know how the big kite was getting on, that Uncle Greaves had promised to make for him. It was getting on famously, he was told. "And will it really be as big as me?" asked Frank, eagerly. "Bigger--ever so much bigger," was the blissful answer. Then, with a troubled face, up came little Will. His waggon and horses had somehow come to grief; would Uncle Greaves try to mend them? Uncle Greaves would try to mend them, and would not only do that, but would give Dobbin a new coat of paint, and make an altogether superior animal of him.
When the afternoon grew dusk and chilly, and tea-time was at hand, the children would not let their darling uncle go till they had kissed him all round; and little blue-eyed Kitty, out of sheer love, slipped her old sawdust doll into his tail-pocket, and so made him a present of her dearest worldly possession.