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Produced by Michael Hart and Trevor Carlson | |
BEYOND THE CITY | |
By Arthur Conan Doyle | |
CHAPTER I. THE NEW-COMERS. | |
"If you please, mum," said the voice of a domestic from somewhere round | |
the angle of the door, "number three is moving in." | |
Two little old ladies, who were sitting at either side of a table, | |
sprang to their feet with ejaculations of interest, and rushed to the | |
window of the sitting-room. | |
"Take care, Monica dear," said one, shrouding herself in the lace | |
curtain; "don't let them see us. | |
"No, no, Bertha. We must not give them reason to say that their | |
neighbors are inquisitive. But I think that we are safe if we stand like | |
this." | |
The open window looked out upon a sloping lawn, well trimmed and | |
pleasant, with fuzzy rosebushes and a star-shaped bed of sweet-william. | |
It was bounded by a low wooden fence, which screened it off from a | |
broad, modern, new metaled road. At the other side of this road were | |
three large detached deep-bodied villas with peaky eaves and small | |
wooden balconies, each standing in its own little square of grass and | |
of flowers. All three were equally new, but numbers one and two were | |
curtained and sedate, with a human, sociable look to them; while number | |
three, with yawning door and unkempt garden, had apparently only just | |
received its furniture and made itself ready for its occupants. A | |
four-wheeler had driven up to the gate, and it was at this that the old | |
ladies, peeping out bird-like from behind their curtains, directed an | |
eager and questioning gaze. | |
The cabman had descended, and the passengers within were handing out | |
the articles which they desired him to carry up to the house. He stood | |
red-faced and blinking, with his crooked arms outstretched, while a male | |
hand, protruding from the window, kept piling up upon him a series | |
of articles the sight of which filled the curious old ladies with | |
bewilderment. | |
"My goodness me!" cried Monica, the smaller, the drier, and the more | |
wizened of the pair. "What do you call that, Bertha? It looks to me like | |
four batter puddings." | |
"Those are what young men box each other with," said Bertha, with a | |
conscious air of superior worldly knowledge. | |
"And those?" | |
Two great bottle-shaped pieces of yellow shining wood had been heaped | |
upon the cabman. | |
"Oh, I don't know what those are," confessed Bertha. Indian clubs had | |
never before obtruded themselves upon her peaceful and very feminine | |
existence. | |
These mysterious articles were followed, however, by others which were | |
more within their range of comprehension--by a pair of dumb-bells, a | |
purple cricket-bag, a set of golf clubs, and a tennis racket. Finally, | |
when the cabman, all top-heavy and bristling, had staggered off up the | |
garden path, there emerged in a very leisurely way from the cab a big, | |
powerfully built young man, with a bull pup under one arm and a pink | |
sporting paper in his hand. The paper he crammed into the pocket of his | |
light yellow dust-coat, and extended his hand as if to assist some one | |
else from the vehicle. To the surprise of the two old ladies, however, | |
the only thing which his open palm received was a violent slap, and | |
a tall lady bounded unassisted out of the cab. With a regal wave she | |
motioned the young man towards the door, and then with one hand upon her | |
hip she stood in a careless, lounging attitude by the gate, kicking her | |
toe against the wall and listlessly awaiting the return of the driver. | |
As she turned slowly round, and the sunshine struck upon her face, the | |
two watchers were amazed to see that this very active and energetic lady | |
was far from being in her first youth, so far that she had certainly | |
come of age again since she first passed that landmark in life's | |
journey. Her finely chiseled, clean-cut face, with something red Indian | |
about the firm mouth and strongly marked cheek bones, showed even at | |
that distance traces of the friction of the passing years. And yet she | |
was very handsome. Her features were as firm in repose as those of a | |
Greek bust, and her great dark eyes were arched over by two brows so | |
black, so thick, and so delicately curved, that the eye turned away from | |
the harsher details of the face to marvel at their grace and strength. | |
Her figure, too, was straight as a dart, a little portly, perhaps, but | |
curving into magnificent outlines, which were half accentuated by the | |
strange costume which she wore. Her hair, black but plentifully shot | |
with grey, was brushed plainly back from her high forehead, and was | |
gathered under a small round felt hat, like that of a man, with | |
one sprig of feather in the band as a concession to her sex. A | |
double-breasted jacket of some dark frieze-like material fitted closely | |
to her figure, while her straight blue skirt, untrimmed and ungathered, | |
was cut so short that the lower curve of her finely-turned legs was | |
plainly visible beneath it, terminating in a pair of broad, flat, | |
low-heeled and square-toed shoes. Such was the lady who lounged at | |
the gate of number three, under the curious eyes of her two opposite | |
neighbors. | |
But if her conduct and appearance had already somewhat jarred upon their | |
limited and precise sense of the fitness of things, what were they to | |
think of the next little act in this tableau vivant? The cabman, red and | |
heavy-jowled, had come back from his labors, and held out his hand for | |
his fare. The lady passed him a coin, there was a moment of mumbling | |
and gesticulating, and suddenly she had him with both hands by the red | |
cravat which girt his neck, and was shaking him as a terrier would | |
a rat. Right across the pavement she thrust him, and, pushing him up | |
against the wheel, she banged his head three several times against the | |
side of his own vehicle. | |
"Can I be of any use to you, aunt?" asked the large youth, framing | |
himself in the open doorway. | |
"Not the slightest," panted the enraged lady. "There, you low | |
blackguard, that will teach you to be impertinent to a lady." | |
The cabman looked helplessly about him with a bewildered, questioning | |
gaze, as one to whom alone of all men this unheard-of and extraordinary | |
thing had happened. Then, rubbing his head, he mounted slowly on to the | |
box and drove away with an uptossed hand appealing to the universe. The | |
lady smoothed down her dress, pushed back her hair under her little felt | |
hat, and strode in through the hall-door, which was closed behind her. | |
As with a whisk her short skirts vanished into the darkness, the two | |
spectators--Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams--sat looking at each | |
other in speechless amazement. For fifty years they had peeped through | |
that little window and across that trim garden, but never yet had such a | |
sight as this come to confound them. | |
"I wish," said Monica at last, "that we had kept the field." | |
"I am sure I wish we had," answered her sister. | |
CHAPTER II. BREAKING THE ICE. | |
The cottage from the window of which the Misses Williams had looked | |
out stands, and has stood for many a year, in that pleasant suburban | |
district which lies between Norwood, Anerley, and Forest Hill. Long | |
before there had been a thought of a township there, when the Metropolis | |
was still quite a distant thing, old Mr. Williams had inhabited "The | |
Brambles," as the little house was called, and had owned all the | |
fields about it. Six or eight such cottages scattered over a rolling | |
country-side were all the houses to be found there in the days when the | |
century was young. From afar, when the breeze came from the north, the | |
dull, low roar of the great city might be heard, like the breaking of | |
the tide of life, while along the horizon might be seen the dim curtain | |
of smoke, the grim spray which that tide threw up. Gradually, however, | |
as the years passed, the City had thrown out a long brick-feeler here | |
and there, curving, extending, and coalescing, until at last the little | |
cottages had been gripped round by these red tentacles, and had been | |
absorbed to make room for the modern villa. Field by field the estate of | |
old Mr. Williams had been sold to the speculative builder, and had borne | |
rich crops of snug suburban dwellings, arranged in curving crescents and | |
tree-lined avenues. The father had passed away before his cottage was | |
entirely bricked round, but his two daughters, to whom the property had | |
descended, lived to see the last vestige of country taken from them. For | |
years they had clung to the one field which faced their windows, and it | |
was only after much argument and many heartburnings, that they had at | |
last consented that it should share the fate of the others. A broad road | |
was driven through their quiet domain, the quarter was re-named "The | |
Wilderness," and three square, staring, uncompromising villas began to | |
sprout up on the other side. With sore hearts, the two shy little old | |
maids watched their steady progress, and speculated as to what fashion | |
of neighbors chance would bring into the little nook which had always | |
been their own. | |
And at last they were all three finished. Wooden balconies and | |
overhanging eaves had been added to them, so that, in the language of | |
the advertisement, there were vacant three eligible Swiss-built villas, | |
with sixteen rooms, no basement, electric bells, hot and cold water, and | |
every modern convenience, including a common tennis lawn, to be let | |
at L100 a year, or L1,500 purchase. So tempting an offer did not long | |
remain open. Within a few weeks the card had vanished from number one, | |
and it was known that Admiral Hay Denver, V. C., C. B., with Mrs. Hay | |
Denver and their only son, were about to move into it. The news brought | |
peace to the hearts of the Williams sisters. They had lived with a | |
settled conviction that some wild impossible colony, some shouting, | |
singing family of madcaps, would break in upon their peace. This | |
establishment at least was irreproachable. A reference to "Men of the | |
Time" showed them that Admiral Hay Denver was a most distinguished | |
officer, who had begun his active career at Bomarsund, and had ended it | |
at Alexandria, having managed between these two episodes to see as much | |
service as any man of his years. From the Taku Forts and the _Shannon_ | |
brigade, to dhow-harrying off Zanzibar, there was no variety of naval | |
work which did not appear in his record; while the Victoria Cross, and | |
the Albert Medal for saving life, vouched for it that in peace as in war | |
his courage was still of the same true temper. Clearly a very eligible | |
neighbor this, the more so as they had been confidentially assured by | |
the estate agent that Mr. Harold Denver, the son, was a most quiet | |
young gentleman, and that he was busy from morning to night on the Stock | |
Exchange. | |
The Hay Denvers had hardly moved in before number two also struck | |
its placard, and again the ladies found that they had no reason to be | |
discontented with their neighbors. Doctor Balthazar Walker was a very | |
well-known name in the medical world. Did not his qualifications, his | |
membership, and the record of his writings fill a long half-column | |
in the "Medical Directory," from his first little paper on the "Gouty | |
Diathesis" in 1859 to his exhaustive treatise upon "Affections of the | |
Vaso-Motor System" in 1884? A successful medical career which promised | |
to end in a presidentship of a college and a baronetcy, had been cut | |
short by his sudden inheritance of a considerable sum from a grateful | |
patient, which had rendered him independent for life, and had enabled | |
him to turn his attention to the more scientific part of his profession, | |
which had always had a greater charm for him than its more practical | |
and commercial aspect. To this end he had given up his house in Weymouth | |
Street, and had taken this opportunity of moving himself, his scientific | |
instruments, and his two charming daughters (he had been a widower for | |
some years) into the more peaceful atmosphere of Norwood. | |
There was thus but one villa unoccupied, and it was no wonder that the | |
two maiden ladies watched with a keen interest, which deepened into a | |
dire apprehension, the curious incidents which heralded the coming of | |
the new tenants. They had already learned from the agent that the family | |
consisted of two only, Mrs. Westmacott, a widow, and her nephew, Charles | |
Westmacott. How simple and how select it had sounded! Who could have | |
foreseen from it these fearful portents which seemed to threaten | |
violence and discord among the dwellers in The Wilderness? Again the two | |
old maids cried in heartfelt chorus that they wished they had not sold | |
their field. | |
"Well, at least, Monica," remarked Bertha, as they sat over their | |
teacups that afternoon, "however strange these people may be, it is our | |
duty to be as polite to them as to the others." | |
"Most certainly," acquiesced her sister. | |
"Since we have called upon Mrs. Hay Denver and upon the Misses Walker, | |
we must call upon this Mrs. Westmacott also." | |
"Certainly, dear. As long as they are living upon our land I feel as | |
if they were in a sense our guests, and that it is our duty to welcome | |
them." | |
"Then we shall call to-morrow," said Bertha, with decision. | |
"Yes, dear, we shall. But, oh, I wish it was over!" | |
At four o'clock on the next day, the two maiden ladies set off upon | |
their hospitable errand. In their stiff, crackling dresses of black | |
silk, with jet-bespangled jackets, and little rows of cylindrical grey | |
curls drooping down on either side of their black bonnets, they looked | |
like two old fashion plates which had wandered off into the wrong | |
decade. Half curious and half fearful, they knocked at the door of | |
number three, which was instantly opened by a red-headed page-boy. | |
Yes, Mrs. Westmacott was at home. He ushered them into the front room, | |
furnished as a drawing-room, where in spite of the fine spring weather a | |
large fire was burning in the grate. The boy took their cards, and then, | |
as they sat down together upon a settee, he set their nerves in a thrill | |
by darting behind a curtain with a shrill cry, and prodding at something | |
with his foot. The bull pup which they had seen upon the day before | |
bolted from its hiding-place, and scuttled snarling from the room. | |
"It wants to get at Eliza," said the youth, in a confidential whisper. | |
"Master says she would give him more'n he brought." He smiled affably | |
at the two little stiff black figures, and departed in search of his | |
mistress. | |
"What--what did he say?" gasped Bertha. | |
"Something about a---- Oh, goodness gracious! Oh, help, help, help, | |
help, help!" The two sisters had bounded on to the settee, and stood | |
there with staring eyes and skirts gathered in, while they filled the | |
whole house with their yells. Out of a high wicker-work basket which | |
stood by the fire there had risen a flat diamond-shaped head with wicked | |
green eyes which came flickering upwards, waving gently from side to | |
side, until a foot or more of glossy scaly neck was visible. Slowly the | |
vicious head came floating up, while at every oscillation a fresh burst | |
of shrieks came from the settee. | |
"What in the name of mischief!" cried a voice, and there was the | |
mistress of the house standing in the doorway. Her gaze at first had | |
merely taken in the fact that two strangers were standing screaming upon | |
her red plush sofa. A glance at the fireplace, however, showed her the | |
cause of the terror, and she burst into a hearty fit of laughter. | |
"Charley," she shouted, "here's Eliza misbehaving again." | |
"I'll settle her," answered a masculine voice, and the young man dashed | |
into the room. He had a brown horse-cloth in his hand, which he | |
threw over the basket, making it fast with a piece of twine so as to | |
effectually imprison its inmate, while his aunt ran across to reassure | |
her visitors. | |
"It is only a rock snake," she explained. | |
"Oh, Bertha!" "Oh, Monica!" gasped the poor exhausted gentlewomen. | |
"She's hatching out some eggs. That is why we have the fire. Eliza | |
always does better when she is warm. She is a sweet, gentle creature, | |
but no doubt she thought that you had designs upon her eggs. I suppose | |
that you did not touch any of them?" | |
"Oh, let us get away, Bertha!" cried Monica, with her thin, black-gloved | |
hands thrown forwards in abhorrence. | |
"Not away, but into the next room," said Mrs. Westmacott, with the air | |
of one whose word was law. "This way, if you please! It is less warm | |
here." She led the way into a very handsomely appointed library, with | |
three great cases of books, and upon the fourth side a long yellow table | |
littered over with papers and scientific instruments. "Sit here, and | |
you, there," she continued. "That is right. Now let me see, which of you | |
is Miss Williams, and which Miss Bertha Williams?" | |
"I am Miss Williams," said Monica, still palpitating, and glancing | |
furtively about in dread of some new horror. | |
"And you live, as I understand, over at the pretty little cottage. It is | |
very nice of you to call so early. I don't suppose that we shall get | |
on, but still the intention is equally good." She crossed her legs and | |
leaned her back against the marble mantelpiece. | |
"We thought that perhaps we might be of some assistance," said Bertha, | |
timidly. "If there is anything which we could do to make you feel more | |
at home----" | |
"Oh, thank you, I am too old a traveler to feel anything but at home | |
wherever I go. I've just come back from a few months in the Marquesas | |
Islands, where I had a very pleasant visit. That was where I got Eliza. | |
In many respects the Marquesas Islands now lead the world." | |
"Dear me!" ejaculated Miss Williams. "In what respect?" | |
"In the relation of the sexes. They have worked out the great problem | |
upon their own lines, and their isolated geographical position has | |
helped them to come to a conclusion of their own. The woman there is, | |
as she should be, in every way the absolute equal of the male. Come in, | |
Charles, and sit down. Is Eliza all right?" | |
"All right, aunt." | |
"These are our neighbors, the Misses Williams. Perhaps they will have | |
some stout. You might bring in a couple of bottles, Charles." | |
"No, no, thank you! None for us!" cried her two visitors, earnestly. | |
"No? I am sorry that I have no tea to offer you. I look upon the | |
subserviency of woman as largely due to her abandoning nutritious drinks | |
and invigorating exercises to the male. I do neither." She picked up | |
a pair of fifteen-pound dumb-bells from beside the fireplace and swung | |
them lightly about her head. "You see what may be done on stout," said | |
she. | |
"But don't you think," the elder Miss Williams suggested timidly, "don't | |
you think, Mrs. Westmascott, that woman has a mission of her own?" | |
The lady of the house dropped her dumb-bells with a crash upon the | |
floor. | |
"The old cant!" she cried. "The old shibboleth! What is this mission | |
which is reserved for woman? All that is humble, that is mean, that is | |
soul-killing, that is so contemptible and so ill-paid that none other | |
will touch it. All that is woman's mission. And who imposed these | |
limitations upon her? Who cooped her up within this narrow sphere? Was | |
it Providence? Was it nature? No, it was the arch enemy. It was man." | |
"Oh, I say, auntie!" drawled her nephew. | |
"It was man, Charles. It was you and your fellows. I say that woman is | |
a colossal monument to the selfishness of man. What is all this boasted | |
chivalry--these fine words and vague phrases? Where is it when we wish | |
to put it to the test? Man in the abstract will do anything to help a | |
woman. Of course. How does it work when his pocket is touched? Where | |
is his chivalry then? Will the doctors help her to qualify? will the | |
lawyers help her to be called to the bar? will the clergy tolerate her | |
in the Church? Oh, it is close your ranks then and refer poor woman | |
to her mission! Her mission! To be thankful for coppers and not to | |
interfere with the men while they grabble for gold, like swine round a | |
trough, that is man's reading of the mission of women. You may sit there | |
and sneer, Charles, while you look upon your victim, but you know that | |
it is truth, every word of it." | |
Terrified as they were by this sudden torrent of words, the two | |
gentlewomen could not but smile at the sight of the fiery, domineering | |
victim and the big apologetic representative of mankind who sat meekly | |
bearing all the sins of his sex. The lady struck a match, whipped a | |
cigarette from a case upon the mantelpiece, and began to draw the smoke | |
into her lungs. | |
"I find it very soothing when my nerves are at all ruffled," she | |
explained. "You don't smoke? Ah, you miss one of the purest of | |
pleasures--one of the few pleasures which are without a reaction." | |
Miss Williams smoothed out her silken lap. | |
"It is a pleasure," she said, with some approach to self-assertion, | |
"which Bertha and I are rather too old-fashioned to enjoy." | |
"No doubt. It would probably make you very ill if you attempted it. | |
By the way, I hope that you will come to some of our Guild meetings. I | |
shall see that tickets are sent you." | |
"Your Guild?" | |
"It is not yet formed, but I shall lose no time in forming a committee. | |
It is my habit to establish a branch of the Emancipation Guild wherever | |
I go. There is a Mrs. Sanderson in Anerley who is already one of | |
the emancipated, so that I have a nucleus. It is only by organized | |
resistance, Miss Williams, that we can hope to hold our own against the | |
selfish sex. Must you go, then?" | |
"Yes, we have one or two other visits to pay," said the elder sister. | |
"You will, I am sure, excuse us. I hope that you will find Norwood a | |
pleasant residence." | |
"All places are to me simply a battle-field," she answered, gripping | |
first one and then the other with a grip which crumpled up their little | |
thin fingers. "The days for work and healthful exercise, the evenings | |
to Browning and high discourse, eh, Charles? Good-bye!" She came to the | |
door with them, and as they glanced back they saw her still standing | |
there with the yellow bull pup cuddled up under one forearm, and the | |
thin blue reek of her cigarette ascending from her lips. | |
"Oh, what a dreadful, dreadful woman!" whispered sister Bertha, as they | |
hurried down the street. "Thank goodness that it is over." | |
"But she'll return the visit," answered the other. "I think that we had | |
better tell Mary that we are not at home." | |
CHAPTER III. DWELLERS IN THE WILDERNESS. | |
How deeply are our destinies influenced by the most trifling causes! | |
Had the unknown builder who erected and owned these new villas contented | |
himself by simply building each within its own grounds, it is probable | |
that these three small groups of people would have remained hardly | |
conscious of each other's existence, and that there would have been no | |
opportunity for that action and reaction which is here set forth. But | |
there was a common link to bind them together. To single himself out | |
from all other Norwood builders the landlord had devised and laid out | |
a common lawn tennis ground, which stretched behind the houses | |
with taut-stretched net, green close-cropped sward, and widespread | |
whitewashed lines. Hither in search of that hard exercise which is as | |
necessary as air or food to the English temperament, came young Hay | |
Denver when released from the toil of the City; hither, too, came Dr. | |
Walker and his two fair daughters, Clara and Ida, and hither also, | |
champions of the lawn, came the short-skirted, muscular widow and her | |
athletic nephew. Ere the summer was gone they knew each other in this | |
quiet nook as they might not have done after years of a stiffer and more | |
formal acquaintance. | |
And especially to the Admiral and the Doctor were this closer intimacy | |
and companionship of value. Each had a void in his life, as every man | |
must have who with unexhausted strength steps out of the great race, but | |
each by his society might help to fill up that of his neighbor. It is | |
true that they had not much in common, but that is sometimes an aid | |
rather than a bar to friendship. Each had been an enthusiast in his | |
profession, and had retained all his interest in it. The Doctor still | |
read from cover to cover his Lancet and his Medical Journal, attended | |
all professional gatherings, worked himself into an alternate state of | |
exaltation and depression over the results of the election of officers, | |
and reserved for himself a den of his own, in which before rows of | |
little round bottles full of glycerine, Canadian balsam, and staining | |
agents, he still cut sections with a microtome, and peeped through his | |
long, brass, old-fashioned microscope at the arcana of nature. With his | |
typical face, clean shaven on lip and chin, with a firm mouth, a strong | |
jaw, a steady eye, and two little white fluffs of whiskers, he could | |
never be taken for anything but what he was, a high-class British | |
medical consultant of the age of fifty, or perhaps just a year or two | |
older. | |
The Doctor, in his hey-day, had been cool over great things, but now, | |
in his retirement, he was fussy over trifles. The man who had operated | |
without the quiver of a finger, when not only his patient's life but his | |
own reputation and future were at stake, was now shaken to the soul by | |
a mislaid book or a careless maid. He remarked it himself, and knew the | |
reason. "When Mary was alive," he would say, "she stood between me and | |
the little troubles. I could brace myself for the big ones. My girls are | |
as good as girls can be, but who can know a man as his wife knows him?" | |
Then his memory would conjure up a tuft of brown hair and a single | |
white, thin hand over a coverlet, and he would feel, as we have all | |
felt, that if we do not live and know each other after death, then | |
indeed we are tricked and betrayed by all the highest hopes and subtlest | |
intuitions of our nature. | |
The Doctor had his compensations to make up for his loss. The great | |
scales of Fate had been held on a level for him; for where in all great | |
London could one find two sweeter girls, more loving, more intelligent, | |
and more sympathetic than Clara and Ida Walker? So bright were they, | |
so quick, so interested in all which interested him, that if it were | |
possible for a man to be compensated for the loss of a good wife then | |
Balthazar Walker might claim to be so. | |
Clara was tall and thin and supple, with a graceful, womanly figure. | |
There was something stately and distinguished in her carriage, "queenly" | |
her friends called her, while her critics described her as reserved and | |
distant. | |
Such as it was, however, it was part and parcel of herself, for she was, | |
and had always from her childhood been, different from any one around | |
her. There was nothing gregarious in her nature. She thought with her | |
own mind, saw with her own eyes, acted from her own impulse. Her face | |
was pale, striking rather than pretty, but with two great dark eyes, so | |
earnestly questioning, so quick in their transitions from joy to pathos, | |
so swift in their comment upon every word and deed around her, that | |
those eyes alone were to many more attractive than all the beauty of her | |
younger sister. Hers was a strong, quiet soul, and it was her firm hand | |
which had taken over the duties of her mother, had ordered the house, | |
restrained the servants, comforted her father, and upheld her weaker | |
sister, from the day of that great misfortune. | |
Ida Walker was a hand's breadth smaller than Clara, but was a little | |
fuller in the face and plumper in the figure. She had light yellow hair, | |
mischievous blue eyes with the light of humor ever twinkling in their | |
depths, and a large, perfectly formed mouth, with that slight upward | |
curve of the corners which goes with a keen appreciation of fun, | |
suggesting even in repose that a latent smile is ever lurking at the | |
edges of the lips. She was modern to the soles of her dainty little | |
high-heeled shoes, frankly fond of dress and of pleasure, devoted to | |
tennis and to comic opera, delighted with a dance, which came her way | |
only too seldom, longing ever for some new excitement, and yet behind | |
all this lighter side of her character a thoroughly good, healthy-minded | |
English girl, the life and soul of the house, and the idol of her sister | |
and her father. Such was the family at number two. A peep into the | |
remaining villa and our introductions are complete. | |
Admiral Hay Denver did not belong to the florid, white-haired, hearty | |
school of sea-dogs which is more common in works of fiction than in the | |
Navy List. On the contrary, he was the representative of a much more | |
common type which is the antithesis of the conventional sailor. He was | |
a thin, hard-featured man, with an ascetic, aquiline cast of face, | |
grizzled and hollow-cheeked, clean-shaven with the exception of | |
the tiniest curved promontory of ash-colored whisker. An observer, | |
accustomed to classify men, might have put him down as a canon of the | |
church with a taste for lay costume and a country life, or as the master | |
of a large public school, who joined his scholars in their outdoor | |
sports. His lips were firm, his chin prominent, he had a hard, dry eye, | |
and his manner was precise and formal. Forty years of stern discipline | |
had made him reserved and silent. Yet, when at his ease with an equal, | |
he could readily assume a less quarter-deck style, and he had a fund | |
of little, dry stories of the world and its ways which were of interest | |
from one who had seen so many phases of life. Dry and spare, as lean as | |
a jockey and as tough as whipcord, he might be seen any day swinging his | |
silver-headed Malacca cane, and pacing along the suburban roads with the | |
same measured gait with which he had been wont to tread the poop of his | |
flagship. He wore a good service stripe upon his cheek, for on one | |
side it was pitted and scarred where a spurt of gravel knocked up by | |
a round-shot had struck him thirty years before, when he served in the | |
Lancaster gun-battery. Yet he was hale and sound, and though he was | |
fifteen years senior to his friend the Doctor, he might have passed as | |
the younger man. | |
Mrs. Hay Denver's life had been a very broken one, and her record upon | |
land represented a greater amount of endurance and self-sacrifice than | |
his upon the sea. They had been together for four months after their | |
marriage, and then had come a hiatus of four years, during which he was | |
flitting about between St. Helena and the Oil Rivers in a gunboat. Then | |
came a blessed year of peace and domesticity, to be followed by nine | |
years, with only a three months' break, five upon the Pacific station, | |
and four on the East Indian. After that was a respite in the shape of | |
five years in the Channel squadron, with periodical runs home, and then | |
again he was off to the Mediterranean for three years and to Halifax | |
for four. Now, at last, however, this old married couple, who were still | |
almost strangers to one another, had come together in Norwood, where, | |
if their short day had been chequered and broken, the evening at least | |
promised to be sweet and mellow. In person Mrs. Hay Denver was tall and | |
stout, with a bright, round, ruddy-cheeked face still pretty, with a | |
gracious, matronly comeliness. Her whole life was a round of devotion | |
and of love, which was divided between her husband and her only son, | |
Harold. | |
This son it was who kept them in the neighborhood of London, for the | |
Admiral was as fond of ships and of salt water as ever, and was as happy | |
in the sheets of a two-ton yacht as on the bridge of his sixteen-knot | |
monitor. Had he been untied, the Devonshire or Hampshire coast would | |
certainly have been his choice. There was Harold, however, and Harold's | |
interests were their chief care. Harold was four-and-twenty now. | |
Three years before he had been taken in hand by an acquaintance of his | |
father's, the head of a considerable firm of stock-brokers, and fairly | |
launched upon 'Change. His three hundred guinea entrance fee paid, his | |
three sureties of five hundred pounds each found, his name approved by | |
the Committee, and all other formalities complied with, he found himself | |
whirling round, an insignificant unit, in the vortex of the money market | |
of the world. There, under the guidance of his father's friend, he was | |
instructed in the mysteries of bulling and of bearing, in the | |
strange usages of 'Change in the intricacies of carrying over and of | |
transferring. He learned to know where to place his clients' money, | |
which of the jobbers would make a price in New Zealands, and which | |
would touch nothing but American rails, which might be trusted and which | |
shunned. All this, and much more, he mastered, and to such purpose that | |
he soon began to prosper, to retain the clients who had been recommended | |
to him, and to attract fresh ones. But the work was never congenial. | |
He had inherited from his father his love of the air of heaven, his | |
affection for a manly and natural existence. To act as middleman between | |
the pursuer of wealth, and the wealth which he pursued, or to stand as | |
a human barometer, registering the rise and fall of the great mammon | |
pressure in the markets, was not the work for which Providence had | |
placed those broad shoulders and strong limbs upon his well knit frame. | |
His dark open face, too, with his straight Grecian nose, well opened | |
brown eyes, and round black-curled head, were all those of a man who was | |
fashioned for active physical work. Meanwhile he was popular with his | |
fellow brokers, respected by his clients, and beloved at home, but his | |
spirit was restless within him and his mind chafed unceasingly against | |
his surroundings. | |
"Do you know, Willy," said Mrs. Hay Denver one evening as she stood | |
behind her husband's chair, with her hand upon his shoulder, "I think | |
sometimes that Harold is not quite happy." | |
"He looks happy, the young rascal," answered the Admiral, pointing with | |
his cigar. It was after dinner, and through the open French window of | |
the dining-room a clear view was to be had of the tennis court and the | |
players. A set had just been finished, and young Charles Westmacott was | |
hitting up the balls as high as he could send them in the middle of the | |
ground. Doctor Walker and Mrs. Westmacott were pacing up and down the | |
lawn, the lady waving her racket as she emphasized her remarks, and | |
the Doctor listening with slanting head and little nods of agreement. | |
Against the rails at the near end Harold was leaning in his flannels | |
talking to the two sisters, who stood listening to him with their long | |
dark shadows streaming down the lawn behind them. The girls were dressed | |
alike in dark skirts, with light pink tennis blouses and pink bands on | |
their straw hats, so that as they stood with the soft red of the setting | |
sun tinging their faces, Clara, demure and quiet, Ida, mischievous | |
and daring, it was a group which might have pleased the eye of a more | |
exacting critic than the old sailor. | |
"Yes, he looks happy, mother," he repeated, with a chuckle. "It is not | |
so long ago since it was you and I who were standing like that, and I | |
don't remember that we were very unhappy either. It was croquet in our | |
time, and the ladies had not reefed in their skirts quite so taut. What | |
year would it be? Just before the commission of the Penelope." | |
Mrs. Hay Denver ran her fingers through his grizzled hair. "It was when | |
you came back in the Antelope, just before you got your step." | |
"Ah, the old Antelope! What a clipper she was! She could sail two | |
points nearer the wind than anything of her tonnage in the service. You | |
remember her, mother. You saw her come into Plymouth Bay. Wasn't she a | |
beauty?" | |
"She was indeed, dear. But when I say that I think that Harold is not | |
happy I mean in his daily life. Has it never struck you how thoughtful | |
he is at times, and how absent-minded?" | |
"In love perhaps, the young dog. He seems to have found snug moorings | |
now at any rate." | |
"I think that it is very likely that you are right, Willy," answered the | |
mother seriously. "But with which of them?" | |
"I cannot tell." | |
"Well, they are very charming girls, both of them. But as long as he | |
hangs in the wind between the two it cannot be serious. After all, the | |
boy is four-and-twenty, and he made five hundred pounds last year. He is | |
better able to marry than I was when I was lieutenant." | |
"I think that we can see which it is now," remarked the observant | |
mother. Charles Westmacott had ceased to knock the tennis balls about, | |
and was chatting with Clara Walker, while Ida and Harold Denver | |
were still talking by the railing with little outbursts of laughter. | |
Presently a fresh set was formed, and Doctor Walker, the odd man out, | |
came through the wicket gate and strolled up the garden walk. | |
"Good evening, Mrs. Hay Denver," said he, raising his broad straw hat. | |
"May I come in?" | |
"Good evening, Doctor! Pray do!" | |
"Try one of these," said the Admiral, holding out his cigar-case. | |
"They are not bad. I got them on the Mosquito Coast. I was thinking of | |
signaling to you, but you seemed so very happy out there." | |
"Mrs. Westmacott is a very clever woman," said the Doctor, lighting the | |
cigar. "By the way, you spoke about the Mosquito Coast just now. Did you | |
see much of the Hyla when you were out there?" | |
"No such name on the list," answered the seaman, with decision. "There's | |
the Hydra, a harbor defense turret-ship, but she never leaves the home | |
waters." | |
The Doctor laughed. "We live in two separate worlds," said he. "The Hyla | |
is the little green tree frog, and Beale has founded some of his views | |
on protoplasm upon the appearances of its nerve cells. It is a subject | |
in which I take an interest." | |
"There were vermin of all sorts in the woods. When I have been on river | |
service I have heard it at night like the engine-room when you are on | |
the measured mile. You can't sleep for the piping, and croaking, and | |
chirping. Great Scott! what a woman that is! She was across the lawn | |
in three jumps. She would have made a captain of the foretop in the old | |
days." | |
"She is a very remarkable woman." | |
"A very cranky one." | |
"A very sensible one in some things," remarked Mrs. Hay Denver. | |
"Look at that now!" cried the Admiral, with a lunge of his forefinger at | |
the Doctor. "You mark my words, Walker, if we don't look out that woman | |
will raise a mutiny with her preaching. Here's my wife disaffected | |
already, and your girls will be no better. We must combine, man, or | |
there's an end of all discipline." | |
"No doubt she is a little excessive in her views," said the Doctor, "but | |
in the main I think as she does." | |
"Bravo, Doctor!" cried the lady. | |
"What, turned traitor to your sex! We'll court-martial you as a | |
deserter." | |
"She is quite right. The professions are not sufficiently open to women. | |
They are still far too much circumscribed in their employments. They | |
are a feeble folk, the women who have to work for their bread--poor, | |
unorganized, timid, taking as a favor what they might demand as a right. | |
That is why their case is not more constantly before the public, for if | |
their cry for redress was as great as their grievance it would fill the | |
world to the exclusion of all others. It is all very well for us to be | |
courteous to the rich, the refined, those to whom life is already made | |
easy. It is a mere form, a trick of manner. If we are truly courteous, | |
we shall stoop to lift up struggling womanhood when she really needs our | |
help--when it is life and death to her whether she has it or not. And | |
then to cant about it being unwomanly to work in the higher professions. | |
It is womanly enough to starve, but unwomanly to use the brains which | |
God has given them. Is it not a monstrous contention?" | |
The Admiral chuckled. "You are like one of these phonographs, Walker," | |
said he; "you have had all this talked into you, and now you are reeling | |
it off again. It's rank mutiny, every word of it, for man has his duties | |
and woman has hers, but they are as separate as their natures are. I | |
suppose that we shall have a woman hoisting her pennant on the flagship | |
presently, and taking command of the Channel Squadron." | |
"Well, you have a woman on the throne taking command of the whole | |
nation," remarked his wife; "and everybody is agreed that she does it | |
better than any of the men." | |
The Admiral was somewhat staggered by this home-thrust. "That's quite | |
another thing," said he. | |
"You should come to their next meeting. I am to take the chair. I have | |
just promised Mrs. Westmacott that I will do so. But it has turned | |
chilly, and it is time that the girls were indoors. Good night! I shall | |
look out for you after breakfast for our constitutional, Admiral." | |
The old sailor looked after his friend with a twinkle in his eyes. | |
"How old is he, mother?" | |
"About fifty, I think." | |
"And Mrs. Westmacott?" | |
"I heard that she was forty-three." | |
The Admiral rubbed his hands, and shook with amusement. "We'll find one | |
of these days that three and two make one," said he. "I'll bet you a new | |
bonnet on it, mother." | |
CHAPTER IV. A SISTER'S SECRET. | |
"Tell me, Miss Walker! You know how things should be. What would you | |
say was a good profession for a young man of twenty-six who has had no | |
education worth speaking about, and who is not very quick by nature?" | |
The speaker was Charles Westmacott, and the time this same summer | |
evening in the tennis ground, though the shadows had fallen now and the | |
game been abandoned. | |
The girl glanced up at him, amused and surprised. | |
"Do you mean yourself?" | |
"Precisely." | |
"But how could I tell?" | |
"I have no one to advise me. I believe that you could do it better than | |
any one. I feel confidence in your opinion." | |
"It is very flattering." She glanced up again at his earnest, | |
questioning face, with its Saxon eyes and drooping flaxen mustache, in | |
some doubt as to whether he might be joking. On the contrary, all his | |
attention seemed to be concentrated upon her answer. | |
"It depends so much upon what you can do, you know. I do not know you | |
sufficiently to be able to say what natural gifts you have." They were | |
walking slowly across the lawn in the direction of the house. | |
"I have none. That is to say none worth mentioning. I have no memory and | |
I am very slow." | |
"But you are very strong." | |
"Oh, if that goes for anything. I can put up a hundred-pound bar till | |
further orders; but what sort of a calling is that?" | |
Some little joke about being called to the bar flickered up in Miss | |
Walker's mind, but her companion was in such obvious earnest that she | |
stifled down her inclination to laugh. | |
"I can do a mile on the cinder-track in 4:50 and across-country in 5:20, | |
but how is that to help me? I might be a cricket professional, but it | |
is not a very dignified position. Not that I care a straw about dignity, | |
you know, but I should not like to hurt the old lady's feelings." | |
"Your aunt's?" | |
"Yes, my aunt's. My parents were killed in the Mutiny, you know, when | |
I was a baby, and she has looked after me ever since. She has been very | |
good to me. I'm sorry to leave her." | |
"But why should you leave her?" They had reached the garden gate, and | |
the girl leaned her racket upon the top of it, looking up with grave | |
interest at her big white-flanneled companion. | |
"It's Browning," said he. | |
"What!" | |
"Don't tell my aunt that I said it"--he sank his voice to a whisper--"I | |
hate Browning." | |
Clara Walker rippled off into such a merry peal of laughter that he | |
forgot the evil things which he had suffered from the poet, and burst | |
out laughing too. | |
"I can't make him out," said he. "I try, but he is one too many. No | |
doubt it is very stupid of me; I don't deny it. But as long as I cannot | |
there is no use pretending that I can. And then of course she feels | |
hurt, for she is very fond of him, and likes to read him aloud in the | |
evenings. She is reading a piece now, 'Pippa Passes,' and I assure you, | |
Miss Walker, that I don't even know what the title means. You must think | |
me a dreadful fool." | |
"But surely he is not so incomprehensible as all that?" she said, as an | |
attempt at encouragement. | |
"He is very bad. There are some things, you know, which are fine. That | |
ride of the three Dutchmen, and Herve Riel and others, they are all | |
right. But there was a piece we read last week. The first line stumped | |
my aunt, and it takes a good deal to do that, for she rides very | |
straight. 'Setebos and Setebos and Setebos.' That was the line." | |
"It sounds like a charm." | |
"No, it is a gentleman's name. Three gentlemen, I thought, at first, but | |
my aunt says one. Then he goes on, 'Thinketh he dwelleth in the light of | |
the moon.' It was a very trying piece." | |
Clara Walker laughed again. | |
"You must not think of leaving your aunt," she said. "Think how lonely | |
she would be without you." | |
"Well, yes, I have thought of that. But you must remember that my aunt | |
is to all intents hardly middle-aged, and a very eligible person. I | |
don't think that her dislike to mankind extends to individuals. She | |
might form new ties, and then I should be a third wheel in the coach. | |
It was all very well as long as I was only a boy, when her first husband | |
was alive." | |
"But, good gracious, you don't mean that Mrs. Westmacott is going to | |
marry again?" gasped Clara. | |
The young man glanced down at her with a question in his eyes. "Oh, it | |
is only a remote possibility, you know," said he. "Still, of course, | |
it might happen, and I should like to know what I ought to turn my hand | |
to." | |
"I wish I could help you," said Clara. "But I really know very little | |
about such things. However, I could talk to my father, who knows a very | |
great deal of the world." | |
"I wish you would. I should be so glad if you would." | |
"Then I certainly will. And now I must say good-night, Mr. Westmacott, | |
for papa will be wondering where I am." | |
"Good night, Miss Walker." He pulled off his flannel cap, and stalked | |
away through the gathering darkness. | |
Clara had imagined that they had been the last on the lawn, but, looking | |
back from the steps which led up to the French windows, she saw two dark | |
figures moving across towards the house. As they came nearer she could | |
distinguish that they were Harold Denver and her sister Ida. The | |
murmur of their voices rose up to her ears, and then the musical little | |
child-like laugh which she knew so well. "I am so delighted," she heard | |
her sister say. "So pleased and proud. I had no idea of it. Your words | |
were such a surprise and a joy to me. Oh, I am so glad." | |
"Is that you, Ida?" | |
"Oh, there is Clara. I must go in, Mr. Denver. Good-night!" | |
There were a few whispered words, a laugh from Ida, and a "Good-night, | |
Miss Walker," out of the darkness. Clara took her sister's hand, and | |
they passed together through the long folding window. The Doctor had | |
gone into his study, and the dining-room was empty. A single small red | |
lamp upon the sideboard was reflected tenfold by the plate about it and | |
the mahogany beneath it, though its single wick cast but a feeble light | |
into the large, dimly shadowed room. Ida danced off to the big central | |
lamp, but Clara put her hand upon her arm. "I rather like this quiet | |
light," said she. "Why should we not have a chat?" She sat in the | |
Doctor's large red plush chair, and her sister cuddled down upon the | |
footstool at her feet, glancing up at her elder with a smile upon her | |
lips and a mischievous gleam in her eyes. There was a shade of anxiety | |
in Clara's face, which cleared away as she gazed into her sister's frank | |
blue eyes. | |
"Have you anything to tell me, dear?" she asked. | |
Ida gave a little pout and shrug to her shoulder. "The Solicitor-General | |
then opened the case for the prosecution," said she. "You are going to | |
cross-examine me, Clara, so don't deny it. I do wish you would have that | |
grey satin foulard of yours done up. With a little trimming and a new | |
white vest it would look as good as new, and it is really very dowdy." | |
"You were quite late upon the lawn," said the inexorable Clara. | |
"Yes, I was rather. So were you. Have you anything to tell me?" She | |
broke away into her merry musical laugh. | |
"I was chatting with Mr. Westmacott." | |
"And I was chatting with Mr. Denver. By the way, Clara, now tell me | |
truly, what do you think of Mr. Denver? Do you like him? Honestly now!" | |
"I like him very much indeed. I think that he is one of the most | |
gentlemanly, modest, manly young men that I have ever known. So now, | |
dear, have you nothing to tell me?" Clara smoothed down her sister's | |
golden hair with a motherly gesture, and stooped her face to catch the | |
expected confidence. She could wish nothing better than that Ida should | |
be the wife of Harold Denver, and from the words which she had overheard | |
as they left the lawn that evening, she could not doubt that there was | |
some understanding between them. | |
But there came no confession from Ida. Only the same mischievous smile | |
and amused gleam in her deep blue eyes. | |
"That grey foulard dress----" she began. | |
"Oh, you little tease! Come now, I will ask you what you have just asked | |
me. Do you like Harold Denver?" | |
"Oh, he's a darling!" | |
"Ida!" | |
"Well, you asked me. That's what I think of him. And now, you dear old | |
inquisitive, you will get nothing more out of me; so you must wait and | |
not be too curious. I'm going off to see what papa is doing." She sprang | |
to her feet, threw her arms round her sister's neck, gave her a final | |
squeeze, and was gone. A chorus from Olivette, sung in her clear | |
contralto, grew fainter and fainter until it ended in the slam of a | |
distant door. | |
But Clara Walker still sat in the dim-lit room with her chin upon her | |
hands, and her dreamy eyes looking out into the gathering gloom. It | |
was the duty of her, a maiden, to play the part of a mother--to guide | |
another in paths which her own steps had not yet trodden. Since her | |
mother died not a thought had been given to herself, all was for her | |
father and her sister. In her own eyes she was herself very plain, and | |
she knew that her manner was often ungracious when she would most wish | |
to be gracious. She saw her face as the glass reflected it, but she did | |
not see the changing play of expression which gave it its charm--the | |
infinite pity, the sympathy, the sweet womanliness which drew towards | |
her all who were in doubt and in trouble, even as poor slow-moving | |
Charles Westmacott had been drawn to her that night. She was herself, | |
she thought, outside the pale of love. But it was very different with | |
Ida, merry, little, quick-witted, bright-faced Ida. She was born for | |
love. It was her inheritance. But she was young and innocent. She | |
must not be allowed to venture too far without help in those dangerous | |
waters. Some understanding there was between her and Harold Denver. In | |
her heart of hearts Clara, like every good woman, was a match-maker, and | |
already she had chosen Denver of all men as the one to whom she could | |
most safely confide Ida. He had talked to her more than once on the | |
serious topics of life, on his aspirations, on what a man could do to | |
leave the world better for his presence. She knew that he was a man of | |
a noble nature, high-minded and earnest. And yet she did not like this | |
secrecy, this disinclination upon the part of one so frank and honest | |
as Ida to tell her what was passing. She would wait, and if she got the | |
opportunity next day she would lead Harold Denver himself on to this | |
topic. It was possible that she might learn from him what her sister had | |
refused to tell her. | |
CHAPTER V. A NAVAL CONQUEST. | |
It was the habit of the Doctor and the Admiral to accompany each other | |
upon a morning ramble between breakfast and lunch. The dwellers in those | |
quiet tree-lined roads were accustomed to see the two figures, the long, | |
thin, austere seaman, and the short, bustling, tweed-clad physician, | |
pass and repass with such regularity that a stopped clock has been reset | |
by them. The Admiral took two steps to his companion's three, but the | |
younger man was the quicker, and both were equal to a good four and a | |
half miles an hour. | |
It was a lovely summer day which followed the events which have been | |
described. The sky was of the deepest blue, with a few white, fleecy | |
clouds drifting lazily across it, and the air was filled with the low | |
drone of insects or with a sudden sharper note as bee or bluefly shot | |
past with its quivering, long-drawn hum, like an insect tuning-fork. As | |
the friends topped each rise which leads up to the Crystal Palace, | |
they could see the dun clouds of London stretching along the northern | |
skyline, with spire or dome breaking through the low-lying haze. The | |
Admiral was in high spirits, for the morning post had brought good news | |
to his son. | |
"It is wonderful, Walker," he was saying, "positively wonderful, the way | |
that boy of mine has gone ahead during the last three years. We heard | |
from Pearson to-day. Pearson is the senior partner, you know, and my boy | |
the junior--Pearson and Denver the firm. Cunning old dog is Pearson, | |
as cute and as greedy as a Rio shark. Yet he goes off for a fortnight's | |
leave, and puts my boy in full charge, with all that immense business | |
in his hands, and a freehand to do what he likes with it. How's that for | |
confidence, and he only three years upon 'Change?" | |
"Any one would confide in him. His face is a surety," said the Doctor. | |
"Go on, Walker!" The Admiral dug his elbow at him. "You know my weak | |
side. Still it's truth all the same. I've been blessed with a good wife | |
and a good son, and maybe I relish them the more for having been cut off | |
from them so long. I have much to be thankful for!" | |
"And so have I. The best two girls that ever stepped. There's Clara, who | |
has learned up as much medicine as would give her the L.S.A., simply | |
in order that she may sympathize with me in my work. But hullo, what is | |
this coming along?" | |
"All drawing and the wind astern!" cried the Admiral. "Fourteen knots if | |
it's one. Why, by George, it is that woman!" | |
A rolling cloud of yellow dust had streamed round the curve of the road, | |
and from the heart of it had emerged a high tandem tricycle flying along | |
at a breakneck pace. In front sat Mrs. Westmacott clad in a heather | |
tweed pea-jacket, a skirt which just{?} passed her knees and a pair of | |
thick gaiters of the same material. She had a great bundle of red papers | |
under her arm, while Charles, who sat behind her clad in Norfolk jacket | |
and knickerbockers, bore a similar roll protruding from either pocket. | |
Even as they watched, the pair eased up, the lady sprang off, impaled | |
one of her bills upon the garden railing of an empty house, and then | |
jumping on to her seat again was about to hurry onwards when her nephew | |
drew her attention to the two gentlemen upon the footpath. | |
"Oh, now, really I didn't notice you," said she, taking a few turns | |
of the treadle and steering the machine across to them. "Is it not a | |
beautiful morning?" | |
"Lovely," answered the Doctor. "You seem to be very busy." | |
"I am very busy." She pointed to the colored paper which still fluttered | |
from the railing. "We have been pushing our propaganda, you see. Charles | |
and I have been at it since seven o'clock. It is about our meeting. I | |
wish it to be a great success. See!" She smoothed out one of the bills, | |
and the Doctor read his own name in great black letters across the | |
bottom. | |
"We don't forget our chairman, you see. Everybody is coming. Those two | |
dear little old maids opposite, the Williamses, held out for some time; | |
but I have their promise now. Admiral, I am sure that you wish us well." | |
"Hum! I wish you no harm, ma'am." | |
"You will come on the platform?" | |
"I'll be---- No, I don't think I can do that." | |
"To our meeting, then?" | |
"No, ma'am; I don't go out after dinner." | |
"Oh yes, you will come. I will call in if I may, and chat it over with | |
you when you come home. We have not breakfasted yet. Goodbye!" There was | |
a whir of wheels, and the yellow cloud rolled away down the road again. | |
By some legerdemain the Admiral found that he was clutching in his right | |
hand one of the obnoxious bills. He crumpled it up, and threw it into | |
the roadway. | |
"I'll be hanged if I go, Walker," said he, as he resumed his walk. "I've | |
never been hustled into doing a thing yet, whether by woman or man." | |
"I am not a betting man," answered the Doctor, "but I rather think that | |
the odds are in favor of your going." | |
The Admiral had hardly got home, and had just seated himself in his | |
dining-room, when the attack upon him was renewed. He was slowly and | |
lovingly unfolding the Times preparatory to the long read which led up | |
to luncheon, and had even got so far as to fasten his golden pince-nez | |
on to his thin, high-bridged nose, when he heard a crunching of gravel, | |
and, looking over the top of his paper, saw Mrs. Westmacott coming up | |
the garden walk. She was still dressed in the singular costume which | |
offended the sailor's old-fashioned notions of propriety, but he could | |
not deny, as he looked at her, that she was a very fine woman. In many | |
climes he had looked upon women of all shades and ages, but never upon | |
a more clearcut, handsome face, nor a more erect, supple, and womanly | |
figure. He ceased to glower as he gazed upon her, and the frown smoothed | |
away from his rugged brow. | |
"May I come in?" said she, framing herself in the open window, with a | |
background of green sward and blue sky. "I feel like an invader deep in | |
an enemy's country." | |
"It is a very welcome invasion, ma'am," said he, clearing his throat and | |
pulling at his high collar. "Try this garden chair. What is there that | |
I can do for you? Shall I ring and let Mrs. Denver know that you are | |
here?" | |
"Pray do not trouble, Admiral. I only looked in with reference to our | |
little chat this morning. I wish that you would give us your powerful | |
support at our coming meeting for the improvement of the condition of | |
woman." | |
"No, ma'am, I can't do that." He pursed up his lips and shook his | |
grizzled head. | |
"And why not?" | |
"Against my principles, ma'am." | |
"But why?" | |
"Because woman has her duties and man has his. I may be old-fashioned, | |
but that is my view. Why, what is the world coming to? I was saying to | |
Dr. Walker only last night that we shall have a woman wanting to command | |
the Channel Fleet next." | |
"That is one of the few professions which cannot be improved," said Mrs. | |
Westmacott, with her sweetest smile. "Poor woman must still look to man | |
for protection." | |
"I don't like these new-fangled ideas, ma'am. I tell you honestly that | |
I don't. I like discipline, and I think every one is the better for | |
it. Women have got a great deal which they had not in the days of our | |
fathers. They have universities all for themselves, I am told, and there | |
are women doctors, I hear. Surely they should rest contented. What more | |
can they want?" | |
"You are a sailor, and sailors are always chivalrous. If you could see | |
how things really are, you would change your opinion. What are the poor | |
things to do? There are so many of them and so few things to which they | |
can turn their hands. Governesses? But there are hardly any situations. | |
Music and drawing? There is not one in fifty who has any special talent | |
in that direction. Medicine? It is still surrounded with difficulties | |
for women, and it takes many years and a small fortune to qualify. | |
Nursing? It is hard work ill paid, and none but the strongest can stand | |
it. What would you have them do then, Admiral? Sit down and starve?" | |
"Tut, tut! It is not so bad as that." | |
"The pressure is terrible. Advertise for a lady companion at ten | |
shillings a week, which is less than a cook's wage, and see how many | |
answers you get. There is no hope, no outlook, for these struggling | |
thousands. Life is a dull, sordid struggle, leading down to a cheerless | |
old age. Yet when we try to bring some little ray of hope, some | |
chance, however distant, of something better, we are told by chivalrous | |
gentlemen that it is against their principles to help." | |
The Admiral winced, but shook his head in dissent. | |
"There is banking, the law, veterinary surgery, government offices, the | |
civil service, all these at least should be thrown freely open to women, | |
if they have brains enough to compete successfully for them. Then if | |
woman were unsuccessful it would be her own fault, and the majority of | |
the population of this country could no longer complain that they live | |
under a different law to the minority, and that they are held down in | |
poverty and serfdom, with every road to independence sealed to them." | |
"What would you propose to do, ma'am?" | |
"To set the more obvious injustices right, and so to pave the way for | |
a reform. Now look at that man digging in the field. I know him. He | |
can neither read nor write, he is steeped in whisky, and he has as much | |
intelligence as the potatoes that he is digging. Yet the man has a vote, | |
can possibly turn the scale of an election, and may help to decide the | |
policy of this empire. Now, to take the nearest example, here am I, a | |
woman who have had some education, who have traveled, and who have seen | |
and studied the institutions of many countries. I hold considerable | |
property, and I pay more in imperial taxes than that man spends in | |
whisky, which is saying a great deal, and yet I have no more direct | |
influence upon the disposal of the money which I pay than that fly which | |
creeps along the wall. Is that right? Is it fair?" | |
The Admiral moved uneasily in his chair. "Yours is an exceptional case," | |
said he. | |
"But no woman has a voice. Consider that the women are a majority in the | |
nation. Yet if there was a question of legislation upon which all women | |
were agreed upon one side and all the men upon the other, it would | |
appear that the matter was settled unanimously when more than half the | |
population were opposed to it. Is that right?" | |
Again the Admiral wriggled. It was very awkward for the gallant seaman | |
to have a handsome woman opposite to him, bombarding him with questions | |
to none of which he could find an answer. "Couldn't even get the | |
tompions out of his guns," as he explained the matter to the Doctor that | |
evening. | |
"Now those are really the points that we shall lay stress upon at the | |
meeting. The free and complete opening of the professions, the final | |
abolition of the zenana I call it, and the franchise to all women | |
who pay Queen's taxes above a certain sum. Surely there is nothing | |
unreasonable in that. Nothing which could offend your principles. We | |
shall have medicine, law, and the church all rallying that night for the | |
protection of woman. Is the navy to be the one profession absent?" | |
The Admiral jumped out of his chair with an evil word in his throat. | |
"There, there, ma'am," he cried. "Drop it for a time. I have heard | |
enough. You've turned me a point or two. I won't deny it. But let it | |
stand at that. I will think it over." | |
"Certainly, Admiral. We would not hurry you in your decision. But we | |
still hope to see you on our platform." She rose and moved about in her | |
lounging masculine fashion from one picture to another, for the walls | |
were thickly covered with reminiscences of the Admiral's voyages. | |
"Hullo!" said she. "Surely this ship would have furled all her lower | |
canvas and reefed her topsails if she found herself on a lee shore with | |
the wind on her quarter." | |
"Of course she would. The artist was never past Gravesend, I swear. It's | |
the Penelope as she was on the 14th of June, 1857, in the throat of the | |
Straits of Banca, with the Island of Banca on the starboard bow, and | |
Sumatra on the port. He painted it from description, but of course, as | |
you very sensibly say, all was snug below and she carried storm sails | |
and double-reefed topsails, for it was blowing a cyclone from the | |
sou'east. I compliment you, ma'am, I do indeed!" | |
"Oh, I have done a little sailoring myself--as much as a woman can | |
aspire to, you know. This is the Bay of Funchal. What a lovely frigate!" | |
"Lovely, you say! Ah, she was lovely! That is the Andromeda. I was a | |
mate aboard of her--sub-lieutenant they call it now, though I like the | |
old name best." | |
"What a lovely rake her masts have, and what a curve to her bows! She | |
must have been a clipper." | |
The old sailor rubbed his hands and his eyes glistened. His old ships | |
bordered close upon his wife and his son in his affections. | |
"I know Funchal," said the lady carelessly. "A couple of years ago I had | |
a seven-ton cutter-rigged yacht, the Banshee, and we ran over to Madeira | |
from Falmouth." | |
"You ma'am, in a seven-tonner?" | |
"With a couple of Cornish lads for a crew. Oh, it was glorious! A | |
fortnight right out in the open, with no worries, no letters, no | |
callers, no petty thoughts, nothing but the grand works of God, the | |
tossing sea and the great silent sky. They talk of riding, indeed, I am | |
fond of horses, too, but what is there to compare with the swoop of a | |
little craft as she pitches down the long steep side of a wave, and then | |
the quiver and spring as she is tossed upwards again? Oh, if our souls | |
could transmigrate I'd be a seamew above all birds that fly! But I keep | |
you, Admiral. Adieu!" | |
The old sailor was too transported with sympathy to say a word. He could | |
only shake her broad muscular hand. She was half-way down the garden | |
path before she heard him calling her, and saw his grizzled head and | |
weather-stained face looking out from behind the curtains. | |
"You may put me down for the platform," he cried, and vanished abashed | |
behind the curtain of his Times, where his wife found him at lunch time. | |
"I hear that you have had quite a long chat with Mrs. Westmacott," said | |
she. | |
"Yes, and I think that she is one of the most sensible women that I ever | |
knew." | |
"Except on the woman's rights question, of course." | |
"Oh, I don't know. She had a good deal to say for herself on that also. | |
In fact, mother, I have taken a platform ticket for her meeting." | |
CHAPTER VI. AN OLD STORY. | |
But this was not to be the only eventful conversation which Mrs. | |
Westmacott held that day, nor was the Admiral the only person in the | |
Wilderness who was destined to find his opinions considerably | |
changed. Two neighboring families, the Winslows from Anerley, and | |
the Cumberbatches from Gipsy Hill, had been invited to tennis by Mrs. | |
Westmacott, and the lawn was gay in the evening with the blazers of | |
the young men and the bright dresses of the girls. To the older people, | |
sitting round in their wicker-work garden chairs, the darting, stooping, | |
springing white figures, the sweep of skirts, and twinkle of canvas | |
shoes, the click of the rackets and sharp whiz of the balls, with the | |
continual "fifteen love--fifteen all!" of the marker, made up a merry | |
and exhilarating scene. To see their sons and daughters so flushed and | |
healthy and happy, gave them also a reflected glow, and it was hard to | |
say who had most pleasure from the game, those who played or those who | |
watched. | |
Mrs. Westmacott had just finished a set when she caught a glimpse of | |
Clara Walker sitting alone at the farther end of the ground. She ran | |
down the court, cleared the net to the amazement of the visitors, and | |
seated herself beside her. Clara's reserved and refined nature shrank | |
somewhat from the boisterous frankness and strange manners of the | |
widow, and yet her feminine instinct told her that beneath all her | |
peculiarities there lay much that was good and noble. She smiled up at | |
her, therefore, and nodded a greeting. | |
"Why aren't you playing, then? Don't, for goodness' sake, begin to be | |
languid and young ladyish! When you give up active sports you give up | |
youth." | |
"I have played a set, Mrs. Westmacott." | |
"That's right, my dear." She sat down beside her, and tapped her upon | |
the arm with her tennis racket. "I like you, my dear, and I am going to | |
call you Clara. You are not as aggressive as I should wish, Clara, but | |
still I like you very much. Self-sacrifice is all very well, you know, | |
but we have had rather too much of it on our side, and should like to | |
see a little on the other. What do you think of my nephew Charles?" | |
The question was so sudden and unexpected that Clara gave quite a jump | |
in her chair. "I--I--I hardly ever have thought of your nephew Charles." | |
"No? Oh, you must think him well over, for I want to speak to you about | |
him." | |
"To me? But why?" | |
"It seemed to me most delicate. You see, Clara, the matter stands | |
in this way. It is quite possible that I may soon find myself in a | |
completely new sphere of life, which will involve fresh duties and make | |
it impossible for me to keep up a household which Charles can share." | |
Clara stared. Did this mean that she was about to marry again? What else | |
could it point to? | |
"Therefore Charles must have a household of his own. That is obvious. | |
Now, I don't approve of bachelor establishments. Do you?" | |
"Really, Mrs. Westmacott, I have never thought of the matter." | |
"Oh, you little sly puss! Was there ever a girl who never thought of the | |
matter? I think that a young man of six-and-twenty ought to be married." | |
Clara felt very uncomfortable. The awful thought had come upon her | |
that this ambassadress had come to her as a proxy with a proposal of | |
marriage. But how could that be? She had not spoken more than three or | |
four times with her nephew, and knew nothing more of him than he had | |
told her on the evening before. It was impossible, then. And yet what | |
could his aunt mean by this discussion of his private affairs? | |
"Do you not think yourself," she persisted, "that a young man of | |
six-and-twenty is better married?" | |
"I should think that he is old enough to decide for himself." | |
"Yes, yes. He has done so. But Charles is just a little shy, just a | |
little slow in expressing himself. I thought that I would pave the | |
way for him. Two women can arrange these things so much better. Men | |
sometimes have a difficulty in making themselves clear." | |
"I really hardly follow you, Mrs. Westmacott," cried Clara in despair. | |
"He has no profession. But he has nice tastes. He reads Browning every | |
night. And he is most amazingly strong. When he was younger we used to | |
put on the gloves together, but I cannot persuade him to now, for he | |
says he cannot play light enough. I should allow him five hundred, which | |
should be enough at first." | |
"My dear Mrs. Westmacott," cried Clara, "I assure you that I have not | |
the least idea what it is that you are talking of." | |
"Do you think your sister Ida would have my nephew Charles?" | |
Her sister Ida? Quite a little thrill of relief and of pleasure ran | |
through her at the thought. Ida and Charles Westmacott. She had never | |
thought of it. And yet they had been a good deal together. They had | |
played tennis. They had shared the tandem tricycle. Again came | |
the thrill of joy, and close at its heels the cold questionings of | |
conscience. Why this joy? What was the real source of it? Was it that | |
deep down, somewhere pushed back in the black recesses of the soul, | |
there was the thought lurking that if Charles prospered in his wooing | |
then Harold Denver would still be free? How mean, how unmaidenly, how | |
unsisterly the thought! She crushed it down and thrust it aside, but | |
still it would push up its wicked little head. She crimsoned with shame | |
at her own baseness, as she turned once more to her companion. | |
"I really do not know," she said. | |
"She is not engaged?" | |
"Not that I know of." | |
"You speak hesitatingly." | |
"Because I am not sure. But he may ask. She cannot but be flattered." | |
"Quite so. I tell him that it is the most practical compliment which a | |
man can pay to a woman. He is a little shy, but when he sets himself | |
to do it he will do it. He is very much in love with her, I assure you. | |
These little lively people always do attract the slow and heavy ones, | |
which is nature's device for the neutralizing of bores. But they are | |
all going in. I think if you will allow me that I will just take the | |
opportunity to tell him that, as far as you know, there is no positive | |
obstacle in the way." | |
"As far as I know," Clara repeated, as the widow moved away to where | |
the players were grouped round the net, or sauntering slowly towards | |
the house. She rose to follow her, but her head was in a whirl with new | |
thoughts, and she sat down again. Which would be best for Ida, Harold | |
or Charles? She thought it over with as much solicitude as a mother who | |
plans for her only child. Harold had seemed to her to be in many ways | |
the noblest and the best young man whom she had known. If ever she was | |
to love a man it would be such a man as that. But she must not think of | |
herself. She had reason to believe that both these men loved her sister. | |
Which would be the best for her? But perhaps the matter was already | |
decided. She could not forget the scrap of conversation which she had | |
heard the night before, nor the secret which her sister had refused to | |
confide to her. If Ida would not tell her, there was but one person who | |
could. She raised her eyes and there was Harold Denver standing before | |
her. | |
"You were lost in your thoughts," said he, smiling. "I hope that they | |
were pleasant ones." | |
"Oh, I was planning," said she, rising. "It seems rather a waste of time | |
as a rule, for things have a way of working themselves out just as you | |
least expect." | |
"What were you planning, then?" | |
"The future." | |
"Whose?" | |
"Oh, my own and Ida's." | |
"And was I included in your joint futures?" | |
"I hope all our friends were included." | |
"Don't go in," said he, as she began to move slowly towards the house. | |
"I wanted to have a word. Let us stroll up and down the lawn. Perhaps | |
you are cold. If you are, I could bring you out a shawl." | |
"Oh, no, I am not cold." | |
"I was speaking to your sister Ida last night." She noticed that there | |
was a slight quiver in his voice, and, glancing up at his dark, clearcut | |
face, she saw that he was very grave. She felt that it was settled, that | |
he had come to ask her for her sister's hand. | |
"She is a charming girl," said he, after a pause. | |
"Indeed she is," cried Clara warmly. "And no one who has not lived with | |
her and known her intimately can tell how charming and good she is. She | |
is like a sunbeam in the house." | |
"No one who was not good could be so absolutely happy as she seems to | |
be. Heaven's last gift, I think, is a mind so pure and a spirit so | |
high that it is unable even to see what is impure and evil in the world | |
around us. For as long as we can see it, how can we be truly happy?" | |
"She has a deeper side also. She does not turn it to the world, and it | |
is not natural that she should, for she is very young. But she thinks, | |
and has aspirations of her own." | |
"You cannot admire her more than I do. Indeed, Miss Walker, I only ask | |
to be brought into nearer relationship with her, and to feel that there | |
is a permanent bond between us." | |
It had come at last. For a moment her heart was numbed within her, and | |
then a flood of sisterly love carried all before it. Down with that dark | |
thought which would still try to raise its unhallowed head! She turned | |
to Harold with sparkling eyes and words of pleasure upon her lips. | |
"I should wish to be near and dear to both of you," said he, as he took | |
her hand. "I should wish Ida to be my sister, and you my wife." | |
She said nothing. She only stood looking at him with parted lips and | |
great, dark, questioning eyes. The lawn had vanished away, the sloping | |
gardens, the brick villas, the darkening sky with half a pale moon | |
beginning to show over the chimney-tops. All was gone, and she was only | |
conscious of a dark, earnest, pleading face, and of a voice, far away, | |
disconnected from herself, the voice of a man telling a woman how he | |
loved her. He was unhappy, said the voice, his life was a void; there | |
was but one thing that could save him; he had come to the parting of | |
the ways, here lay happiness and honor, and all that was high and noble; | |
there lay the soul-killing round, the lonely life, the base pursuit of | |
money, the sordid, selfish aims. He needed but the hand of the woman | |
that he loved to lead him into the better path. And how he loved her his | |
life would show. He loved her for her sweetness, for her womanliness, | |
for her strength. He had need of her. Would she not come to him? And | |
then of a sudden as she listened it came home to her that the man was | |
Harold Denver, and that she was the woman, and that all God's work was | |
very beautiful--the green sward beneath her feet, the rustling leaves, | |
the long orange slashes in the western sky. She spoke; she scarce knew | |
what the broken words were, but she saw the light of joy shine out | |
on his face, and her hand was still in his as they wandered amid the | |
twilight. They said no more now, but only wandered and felt each other's | |
presence. All was fresh around them, familiar and yet new, tinged with | |
the beauty of their new-found happiness. | |
"Did you not know it before?" he asked. | |
"I did not dare to think it." | |
"What a mask of ice I must wear! How could a man feel as I have done | |
without showing it? Your sister at least knew." | |
"Ida!" | |
"It was last night. She began to praise you, I said what I felt, and | |
then in an instant it was all out." | |
"But what could you--what could you see in me? Oh, I do pray that you | |
may not repent it!" The gentle heart was ruffled amid its joy by the | |
thought of its own unworthiness. | |
"Repent it! I feel that I am a saved man. You do not know how degrading | |
this city life is, how debasing, and yet how absorbing. Money for ever | |
clinks in your ear. You can think of nothing else. From the bottom of my | |
heart I hate it, and yet how can I draw back without bringing grief | |
to my dear old father? There was but one way in which I could defy the | |
taint, and that was by having a home influence so pure and so high that | |
it may brace me up against all that draws me down. I have felt that | |
influence already. I know that when I am talking to you I am a better | |
man. It is you who must go with me through life, or I must walk for | |
ever alone." | |
"Oh, Harold, I am so happy!" Still they wandered amid the darkening | |
shadows, while one by one the stars peeped out in the blue black sky | |
above them. At last a chill night wind blew up from the east, and | |
brought them back to the realities of life. | |
"You must go in. You will be cold." | |
"My father will wonder where I am. Shall I say anything to him?" | |
"If you like, my darling. Or I will in the morning. I must tell my | |
mother to-night. I know how delighted she will be." | |
"I do hope so." | |
"Let me take you up the garden path. It is so dark. Your lamp is not lit | |
yet. There is the window. Till to-morrow, then, dearest." | |
"Till to-morrow, Harold." | |
"My own darling!" He stooped, and their lips met for the first time. | |
Then, as she pushed open the folding windows she heard his quick, firm | |
step as it passed down the graveled path. A lamp was lit as she entered | |
the room, and there was Ida, dancing about like a mischievous little | |
fairy in front of her. | |
"And have you anything to tell me?" she asked, with a solemn face. Then, | |
suddenly throwing her arms round her sister's neck, "Oh, you dear, dear | |
old Clara! I am so pleased. I am so pleased." | |
CHAPTER VII. VENIT TANDEM FELICITAS. | |
It was just three days after the Doctor and the Admiral had | |
congratulated each other upon the closer tie which was to unite their | |
two families, and to turn their friendship into something even dearer | |
and more intimate, that Miss Ida Walker received a letter which caused | |
her some surprise and considerable amusement. It was dated from next | |
door, and was handed in by the red-headed page after breakfast. | |
"Dear Miss Ida," began this curious document, and then relapsed suddenly | |
into the third person. "Mr. Charles Westmacott hopes that he may have | |
the extreme pleasure of a ride with Miss Ida Walker upon his tandem | |
tricycle. Mr. Charles Westmacott will bring it round in half an hour. | |
You in front. Yours very truly, Charles Westmacott." The whole was | |
written in a large, loose-jointed, and school-boyish hand, very thin on | |
the up strokes and thick on the down, as though care and pains had gone | |
to the fashioning of it. | |
Strange as was the form, the meaning was clear enough; so Ida hastened | |
to her room, and had hardly slipped on her light grey cycling dress when | |
she saw the tandem with its large occupant at the door. He handed her up | |
to her saddle with a more solemn and thoughtful face than was usual | |
with him, and a few moments later they were flying along the beautiful, | |
smooth suburban roads in the direction of Forest Hill. The great limbs | |
of the athlete made the heavy machine spring and quiver with every | |
stroke; while the mignon grey figure with the laughing face, and the | |
golden curls blowing from under the little pink-banded straw hat, simply | |
held firmly to her perch, and let the treadles whirl round beneath her | |
feet. Mile after mile they flew, the wind beating in her face, the trees | |
dancing past in two long ranks on either side, until they had passed | |
round Croydon and were approaching Norwood once more from the further | |
side. | |
"Aren't you tired?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder and turning | |
towards him a little pink ear, a fluffy golden curl, and one blue eye | |
twinkling from the very corner of its lid. | |
"Not a bit. I am just getting my swing." | |
"Isn't it wonderful to be strong? You always remind me of a | |
steamengine." | |
"Why a steamengine?" | |
"Well, because it is so powerful, and reliable, and unreasoning. Well, I | |
didn't mean that last, you know, but--but--you know what I mean. What is | |
the matter with you?" | |
"Why?" | |
"Because you have something on your mind. You have not laughed once." | |
He broke into a gruesome laugh. "I am quite jolly," said he. | |
"Oh, no, you are not. And why did you write me such a dreadfully stiff | |
letter?" | |
"There now," he cried, "I was sure it was stiff. I said it was absurdly | |
stiff." | |
"Then why write it?" | |
"It wasn't my own composition." | |
"Whose then? Your aunt's?" | |
"Oh, no. It was a person of the name of Slattery." | |
"Goodness! Who is he?" | |
"I knew it would come out, I felt that it would. You've heard of | |
Slattery the author?" | |
"Never." | |
"He is wonderful at expressing himself. He wrote a book called 'The | |
Secret Solved; or, Letter-writing Made Easy.' It gives you models of all | |
sorts of letters." | |
Ida burst out laughing. "So you actually copied one." | |
"It was to invite a young lady to a picnic, but I set to work and soon | |
got it changed so that it would do very well. Slattery seems never | |
to have asked any one to ride a tandem. But when I had written it, it | |
seemed so dreadfully stiff that I had to put a little beginning and end | |
of my own, which seemed to brighten it up a good deal." | |
"I thought there was something funny about the beginning and end." | |
"Did you? Fancy your noticing the difference in style. How quick you | |
are! I am very slow at things like that. I ought to have been a woodman, | |
or game-keeper, or something. I was made on those lines. But I have | |
found something now." | |
"What is that, then?" | |
"Ranching. I have a chum in Texas, and he says it is a rare life. I am | |
to buy a share in his business. It is all in the open air--shooting, and | |
riding, and sport. Would it--would it inconvenience you much, Ida, to | |
come out there with me?" | |
Ida nearly fell off her perch in her amazement. The only words of which | |
she could think were "My goodness me!" so she said them. | |
"If it would not upset your plans, or change your arrangements in any | |
way." He had slowed down and let go of the steering handle, so that the | |
great machine crawled aimlessly about from one side of the road to the | |
other. "I know very well that I am not clever or anything of that sort, | |
but still I would do all I can to make you very happy. Don't you think | |
that in time you might come to like me a little bit?" | |
Ida gave a cry of fright. "I won't like you if you run me against a | |
brick wall," she said, as the machine rasped up against the curb, "Do | |
attend to the steering." | |
"Yes, I will. But tell me, Ida, whether you will come with me." | |
"Oh, I don't know. It's too absurd! How can we talk about such things | |
when I cannot see you? You speak to the nape of my neck, and then I have | |
to twist my head round to answer." | |
"I know. That was why I put 'You in front' upon my letter. I thought | |
that it would make it easier. But if you would prefer it I will stop the | |
machine, and then you can sit round and talk about it." | |
"Good gracious!" cried Ida. "Fancy our sitting face to face on a | |
motionless tricycle in the middle of the road, and all the people | |
looking out of their windows at us!" | |
"It would look rather funny, wouldn't it? Well, then, suppose that we | |
both get off and push the tandem along in front of us?" | |
"Oh, no, this is better than that." | |
"Or I could carry the thing." | |
Ida burst out laughing. "That would be more absurd still." | |
"Then we will go quietly, and I will look out for the steering. I won't | |
talk about it at all if you would rather not. But I really do love you | |
very much, and you would make me happy if you came to Texas with me, and | |
I think that perhaps after a time I could make you happy too." | |
"But your aunt?" | |
"Oh, she would like it very much. I can understand that your father | |
might not like to lose you. I'm sure I wouldn't either, if I were he. | |
But after all, America is not very far off nowadays, and is not so very | |
wild. We would take a grand piano, and--and--a copy of Browning. And | |
Denver and his wife would come over to see us. We should be quite a | |
family party. It would be jolly." | |
Ida sat listening to the stumbling words and awkward phrases which | |
were whispered from the back of her, but there was something in Charles | |
Westmacott's clumsiness of speech which was more moving than the words | |
of the most eloquent of pleaders. He paused, he stammered, he caught his | |
breath between the words, and he blurted out in little blunt phrases all | |
the hopes of his heart. If love had not come to her yet, there was at | |
least pity and sympathy, which are nearly akin to it. Wonder there was | |
also that one so weak and frail as she should shake this strong man so, | |
should have the whole course of his life waiting for her decision. Her | |
left hand was on the cushion at her side. He leaned forward and took it | |
gently in his own. She did not try to draw it back from him. | |
"May I have it," said he, "for life?" | |
"Oh, do attend to your steering," said she, smiling round at him; "and | |
don't say any more about this to-day. Please don't!" | |
"When shall I know, then?" | |
"Oh, to-night, to-morrow, I don't know. I must ask Clara. Talk about | |
something else." | |
And they did talk about something else; but her left hand was still | |
enclosed in his, and he knew, without asking again, that all was well. | |
CHAPTER VIII. SHADOWS BEFORE. | |
Mrs. Westmacott's great meeting for the enfranchisement of woman had | |
passed over, and it had been a triumphant success. All the maids and | |
matrons of the southern suburbs had rallied at her summons, there was an | |
influential platform with Dr. Balthazar Walker in the chair, and Admiral | |
Hay Denver among his more prominent supporters. One benighted male had | |
come in from the outside darkness and had jeered from the further end | |
of the hall, but he had been called to order by the chair, petrified | |
by indignant glances from the unenfranchised around him, and finally | |
escorted to the door by Charles Westmacott. Fiery resolutions were | |
passed, to be forwarded to a large number of leading statesmen, and the | |
meeting broke up with the conviction that a shrewd blow had been struck | |
for the cause of woman. | |
But there was one woman at least to whom the meeting and all that | |
was connected with it had brought anything but pleasure. Clara Walker | |
watched with a heavy heart the friendship and close intimacy which had | |
sprung up between her father and the widow. From week to week it had | |
increased until no day ever passed without their being together. The | |
coming meeting had been the excuse for these continual interviews, but | |
now the meeting was over, and still the Doctor would refer every point | |
which rose to the judgment of his neighbor. He would talk, too, to his | |
two daughters of her strength of character, her decisive mind, and of | |
the necessity of their cultivating her acquaintance and following | |
her example, until at last it had become his most common topic of | |
conversation. | |
All this might have passed as merely the natural pleasure which an | |
elderly man might take in the society of an intelligent and handsome | |
woman, but there were other points which seemed to Clara to give it a | |
deeper meaning. She could not forget that when Charles Westmacott had | |
spoken to her one night he had alluded to the possibility of his aunt | |
marrying again. He must have known or noticed something before he would | |
speak upon such a subject. And then again Mrs. Westmacott had herself | |
said that she hoped to change her style of living shortly and take over | |
completely new duties. What could that mean except that she expected to | |
marry? And whom? She seemed to see few friends outside their own little | |
circle. She must have alluded to her father. It was a hateful thought, | |
and yet it must be faced. | |
One evening the Doctor had been rather late at his neighbor's. He used | |
to go into the Admiral's after dinner, but now he turned more frequently | |
in the other direction. When he returned Clara was sitting alone in the | |
drawing-room reading a magazine. She sprang up as he entered, pushed | |
forward his chair, and ran to fetch his slippers. | |
"You are looking a little pale, dear," he remarked. | |
"Oh, no, papa, I am very well." | |
"All well with Harold?" | |
"Yes. His partner, Mr. Pearson, is still away, and he is doing all the | |
work." | |
"Well done. He is sure to succeed. Where is Ida?" | |
"In her room, I think." | |
"She was with Charles Westmacott on the lawn not very long ago. He seems | |
very fond of her. He is not very bright, but I think he will make her a | |
good husband." | |
"I am sure of it, papa. He is very manly and reliable." | |
"Yes, I should think that he is not the sort of man who goes wrong. | |
There is nothing hidden about him. As to his brightness, it really does | |
not matter, for his aunt, Mrs. Westmacott, is very rich, much richer | |
than you would think from her style of living, and she has made him a | |
handsome provision." | |
"I am glad of that." | |
"It is between ourselves. I am her trustee, and so I know something of | |
her arrangements. And when are you going to marry, Clara?" | |
"Oh, papa, not for some time yet. We have not thought of a date." | |
"Well, really, I don't know that there is any reason for delay. He has | |
a competence and it increases yearly. As long as you are quite certain | |
that your mind is made up----" | |
"Oh, papa!" | |
"Well, then, I really do not know why there should be any delay. And | |
Ida, too, must be married within the next few months. Now, what I want | |
to know is what I am to do when my two little companions run away | |
from me." He spoke lightly, but his eyes were grave as he looked | |
questioningly at his daughter. | |
"Dear papa, you shall not be alone. It will be years before Harold and I | |
think of marrying, and when we do you must come and live with us." | |
"No, no, dear. I know that you mean what you say, but I have seen | |
something of the world, and I know that such arrangements never answer. | |
There cannot be two masters in a house, and yet at my age my freedom is | |
very necessary to me." | |
"But you would be completely free." | |
"No, dear, you cannot be that if you are a guest in another man's house. | |
Can you suggest no other alternative?" | |
"That we remain with you." | |
"No, no. That is out of the question. Mrs. Westmacott herself says that | |
a woman's first duty is to marry. Marriage, however, should be an equal | |
partnership, as she points out. I should wish you both to marry, but | |
still I should like a suggestion from you, Clara, as to what I should | |
do." | |
"But there is no hurry, papa. Let us wait. I do not intend to marry | |
yet." | |
Doctor Walker looked disappointed. "Well, Clara, if you can suggest | |
nothing, I suppose that I must take the initiative myself," said he. | |
"Then what do you propose, papa?" She braced herself as one who sees the | |
blow which is about to fall. | |
He looked at her and hesitated. "How like your poor dear mother you are, | |
Clara!" he cried. "As I looked at you then it was as if she had come | |
back from the grave." He stooped towards her and kissed her. "There, | |
run away to your sister, my dear, and do not trouble yourself about me. | |
Nothing is settled yet, but you will find that all will come right." | |
Clara went upstairs sad at heart, for she was sure now that what she had | |
feared was indeed about to come to pass, and that her father was going | |
to take Mrs. Westmacott to be his wife. In her pure and earnest mind her | |
mother's memory was enshrined as that of a saint, and the thought that | |
any one should take her place seemed a terrible desecration. Even worse, | |
however, did this marriage appear when looked at from the point of view | |
of her father's future. The widow might fascinate him by her knowledge | |
of the world, her dash, her strength, her unconventionality--all these | |
qualities Clara was willing to allow her--but she was convinced that she | |
would be unendurable as a life companion. She had come to an age when | |
habits are not lightly to be changed, nor was she a woman who was at | |
all likely to attempt to change them. How would a sensitive man like | |
her father stand the constant strain of such a wife, a woman who was | |
all decision, with no softness, and nothing soothing in her nature? It | |
passed as a mere eccentricity when they heard of her stout drinking, | |
her cigarette smoking, her occasional whiffs at a long clay pipe, her | |
horsewhipping of a drunken servant, and her companionship with the snake | |
Eliza, whom she was in the habit of bearing about in her pocket. All | |
this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation | |
was past. For his own sake, then, as well as for her mother's memory, | |
this match must be prevented. And yet how powerless she was to prevent | |
it! What could she do? Could Harold aid her? Perhaps. Or Ida? At least | |
she would tell her sister and see what she could suggest. | |
Ida was in her boudoir, a tiny little tapestried room, as neat and | |
dainty as herself, with low walls hung with Imari plaques and with | |
pretty little Swiss brackets bearing blue Kaga ware, or the pure white | |
Coalport china. In a low chair beneath a red shaded standing lamp sat | |
Ida, in a diaphanous evening dress of mousseline de soie, the ruddy | |
light tinging her sweet childlike face, and glowing on her golden curls. | |
She sprang up as her sister entered, and threw her arms around her. | |
"Dear old Clara! Come and sit down here beside me. I have not had a chat | |
for days. But, oh, what a troubled face! What is it then?" She put up | |
her forefinger and smoothed her sister's brow with it. | |
Clara pulled up a stool, and sitting down beside her sister, passed her | |
arm round her waist. "I am so sorry to trouble you, dear Ida," she said. | |
"But I do not know what to do. | |
"There's nothing the matter with Harold?" | |
"Oh, no, Ida." | |
"Nor with my Charles?" | |
"No, no." | |
Ida gave a sigh of relief. "You quite frightened me, dear," said she. | |
"You can't think how solemn you look. What is it, then?" | |
"I believe that papa intends to ask Mrs. Westmacott to marry him." | |
Ida burst out laughing. "What can have put such a notion into your head, | |
Clara?" | |
"It is only too true, Ida. I suspected it before, and he himself almost | |
told me as much with his own lips to-night. I don't think that it is a | |
laughing matter." | |
"Really, I could not help it. If you had told me that those two dear old | |
ladies opposite, the Misses Williams, were both engaged, you would not | |
have surprised me more. It is really too funny." | |
"Funny, Ida! Think of any one taking the place of dear mother." | |
But her sister was of a more practical and less sentimental nature. "I | |
am sure," said she, "that dear mother would like papa to do whatever | |
would make him most happy. We shall both be away, and why should papa | |
not please himself?" | |
"But think how unhappy he will be. You know how quiet he is in his ways, | |
and how even a little thing will upset him. How could he live with a | |
wife who would make his whole life a series of surprises? Fancy what | |
a whirlwind she must be in a house. A man at his age cannot change his | |
ways. I am sure he would be miserable." | |
Ida's face grew graver, and she pondered over the matter for a few | |
minutes. "I really think that you are right as usual," said she at last. | |
"I admire Charlie's aunt very much, you know, and I think that she is | |
a very useful and good person, but I don't think she would do as a wife | |
for poor quiet papa." | |
"But he will certainly ask her, and I really think that she intends to | |
accept him. Then it would be too late to interfere. We have only a few | |
days at the most. And what can we do? How can we hope to make him change | |
his mind?" | |
Again Ida pondered. "He has never tried what it is to live with a | |
strong-minded woman," said she. "If we could only get him to realize | |
it in time. Oh, Clara, I have it; I have it! Such a lovely plan!" She | |
leaned back in her chair and burst into a fit of laughter so natural and | |
so hearty that Clara had to forget her troubles and to join in it. | |
"Oh, it is beautiful!" she gasped at last. "Poor papa! What a time he | |
will have! But it's all for his own good, as he used to say when we | |
had to be punished when we were little. Oh, Clara, I do hope your heart | |
won't fail you." | |
"I would do anything to save him, dear." | |
"That's it. You must steel yourself by that thought." | |
"But what is your plan?" | |
"Oh, I am so proud of it. We will tire him for ever of the widow, and | |
of all emancipated women. Let me see, what are Mrs. Westmacott's main | |
ideas? You have listened to her more than I. Women should attend less to | |
household duties. That is one, is it not?" | |
"Yes, if they feel they have capabilities for higher things. Then she | |
thinks that every woman who has leisure should take up the study of | |
some branch of science, and that, as far as possible, every woman should | |
qualify herself for some trade or profession, choosing for preference | |
those which have been hitherto monopolized by men. To enter the others | |
would only be to intensify the present competition." | |
"Quite so. That is glorious!" Her blue eyes were dancing with mischief, | |
and she clapped her hands in her delight. "What else? She thinks that | |
whatever a man can do a woman should be allowed to do also--does she | |
not?" | |
"She says so." | |
"And about dress? The short skirt, and the divided skirt are what she | |
believes in?" | |
"Yes." | |
"We must get in some cloth." | |
"Why?" | |
"We must make ourselves a dress each. A brand-new, enfranchised, | |
emancipated dress, dear. Don't you see my plan? We shall act up to all | |
Mrs. Westmacott's views in every respect, and improve them when we can. | |
Then papa will know what it is to live with a woman who claims all her | |
rights. Oh, Clara, it will be splendid." | |
Her milder sister sat speechless before so daring a scheme. "But it | |
would be wrong, Ida!" she cried at last. | |
"Not a bit. It is to save him." | |
"I should not dare." | |
"Oh, yes, you would. Harold will help. Besides, what other plan have | |
you?" | |
"I have none." | |
"Then you must take mine." | |
"Yes. Perhaps you are right. Well, we do it for a good motive." | |
"You will do it?" | |
"I do not see any other way." | |
"You dear good Clara! Now I will show you what you are to do. We must | |
not begin too suddenly. It might excite suspicion." | |
"What would you do, then?" | |
"To-morrow we must go to Mrs. Westmacott, and sit at her feet and learn | |
all her views." | |
"What hypocrites we shall feel!" | |
"We shall be her newest and most enthusiastic converts. Oh, it will be | |
such fun, Clara! Then we shall make our plans and send for what we want, | |
and begin our new life." | |
"I do hope that we shall not have to keep it up long. It seems so cruel | |
to dear papa." | |
"Cruel! To save him!" | |
"I wish I was sure that we were doing right. And yet what else can | |
we do? Well, then, Ida, the die is cast, and we will call upon Mrs. | |
Westmacott tomorrow." | |
CHAPTER IX. A FAMILY PLOT. | |
Little did poor Doctor Walker imagine as he sat at his breakfast-table | |
next morning that the two sweet girls who sat on either side of him were | |
deep in a conspiracy, and that he, munching innocently at his muffins, | |
was the victim against whom their wiles were planned. Patiently they | |
waited until at last their opening came. | |
"It is a beautiful day," he remarked. "It will do for Mrs. Westmacott. | |
She was thinking of having a spin upon the tricycle." | |
"Then we must call early. We both intended to see her after breakfast." | |
"Oh, indeed!" The Doctor looked pleased. | |
"You know, pa," said Ida, "it seems to us that we really have a very | |
great advantage in having Mrs. Westmacott living so near." | |
"Why so, dear?" | |
"Well, because she is so advanced, you know. If we only study her ways | |
we may advance ourselves also." | |
"I think I have heard you say, papa," Clara remarked, "that she is the | |
type of the woman of the future." | |
"I am very pleased to hear you speak so sensibly, my dears. I certainly | |
think that she is a woman whom you may very well take as your model. The | |
more intimate you are with her the better pleased I shall be." | |
"Then that is settled," said Clara demurely, and the talk drifted to | |
other matters. | |
All the morning the two girls sat extracting from Mrs. Westmacott her | |
most extreme view as to the duty of the one sex and the tyranny of the | |
other. Absolute equality, even in details, was her ideal. Enough of the | |
parrot cry of unwomanly and unmaidenly. It had been invented by man | |
to scare woman away when she poached too nearly upon his precious | |
preserves. Every woman should be independent. Every woman should learn a | |
trade. It was their duty to push in where they were least welcome. Then | |
they were martyrs to the cause, and pioneers to their weaker sisters. | |
Why should the wash-tub, the needle, and the housekeeper's book be | |
eternally theirs? Might they not reach higher, to the consulting-room, | |
to the bench, and even to the pulpit? Mrs. Westmacott sacrificed her | |
tricycle ride in her eagerness over her pet subject, and her two fair | |
disciples drank in every word, and noted every suggestion for future | |
use. That afternoon they went shopping in London, and before evening | |
strange packages began to be handed in at the Doctor's door. The plot | |
was ripe for execution, and one of the conspirators was merry and | |
jubilant, while the other was very nervous and troubled. | |
When the Doctor came down to the dining-room next morning, he was | |
surprised to find that his daughters had already been up some time. Ida | |
was installed at one end of the table with a spirit-lamp, a curved glass | |
flask, and several bottles in front of her. The contents of the flask | |
were boiling furiously, while a villainous smell filled the room. Clara | |
lounged in an arm-chair with her feet upon a second one, a blue-covered | |
book in her hand, and a huge map of the British Islands spread across | |
her lap. "Hullo!" cried the Doctor, blinking and sniffing, "where's the | |
breakfast?" | |
"Oh, didn't you order it?" asked Ida. | |
"I! No; why should I?" He rang the bell. "Why have you not laid the | |
breakfast, Jane?" | |
"If you please, sir, Miss Ida was a workin' at the table." | |
"Oh, of course, Jane," said the young lady calmly. "I am so sorry. I | |
shall be ready to move in a few minutes." | |
"But what on earth are you doing, Ida?" asked the Doctor. "The smell is | |
most offensive. And, good gracious, look at the mess which you have made | |
upon the cloth! Why, you have burned a hole right through." | |
"Oh, that is the acid," Ida answered contentedly. "Mrs. Westmacott said | |
that it would burn holes." | |
"You might have taken her word for it without trying," said her father | |
dryly. | |
"But look here, pa! See what the book says: 'The scientific mind takes | |
nothing upon trust. Prove all things!' I have proved that." | |
"You certainly have. Well, until breakfast is ready I'll glance over the | |
Times. Have you seen it?" | |
"The Times? Oh, dear me, this is it which I have under my spirit-lamp. | |
I am afraid there is some acid upon that too, and it is rather damp and | |
torn. Here it is." | |
The Doctor took the bedraggled paper with a rueful face. "Everything | |
seems to be wrong to-day," he remarked. "What is this sudden enthusiasm | |
about chemistry, Ida?" | |
"Oh, I am trying to live up to Mrs. Westmacott's teaching." | |
"Quite right! quite right!" said he, though perhaps with less heartiness | |
than he had shown the day before. "Ah, here is breakfast at last!" | |
But nothing was comfortable that morning. There were eggs without | |
egg-spoons, toast which was leathery from being kept, dried-up rashers, | |
and grounds in the coffee. Above all, there was that dreadful smell | |
which pervaded everything and gave a horrible twang to every mouthful. | |
"I don't wish to put a damper upon your studies, Ida," said the Doctor, | |
as he pushed back his chair. "But I do think it would be better if you | |
did your chemical experiments a little later in the day." | |
"But Mrs. Westmacott says that women should rise early, and do their | |
work before breakfast." | |
"Then they should choose some other room besides the breakfast-room." | |
The Doctor was becoming just a little ruffled. A turn in the open air | |
would soothe him, he thought. "Where are my boots?" he asked. | |
But they were not in their accustomed corner by his chair. Up and down | |
he searched, while the three servants took up the quest, stooping and | |
peeping under book-cases and drawers. Ida had returned to her studies, | |
and Clara to her blue-covered volume, sitting absorbed and disinterested | |
amid the bustle and the racket. At last a general buzz of congratulation | |
announced that the cook had discovered the boots hung up among the | |
hats in the hall. The Doctor, very red and flustered, drew them on, and | |
stamped off to join the Admiral in his morning walk. | |
As the door slammed Ida burst into a shout of laughter. "You see, | |
Clara," she cried, "the charm works already. He has gone to number one | |
instead of to number three. Oh, we shall win a great victory. You've | |
been very good, dear; I could see that you were on thorns to help him | |
when he was looking for his boots." | |
"Poor papa! It is so cruel. And yet what are we to do?" | |
"Oh, he will enjoy being comfortable all the more if we give him a | |
little discomfort now. What horrible work this chemistry is! Look at | |
my frock! It is ruined. And this dreadful smell!" She threw open the | |
window, and thrust her little golden-curled head out of it. Charles | |
Westmacott was hoeing at the other side of the garden fence. | |
"Good morning, sir," said Ida. | |
"Good morning!" The big man leaned upon his hoe and looked up at her. | |
"Have you any cigarettes, Charles?" | |
"Yes, certainly." | |
"Throw me up two." | |
"Here is my case. Can you catch!" | |
A seal-skin case came with a soft thud on to the floor. Ida opened it. | |
It was full. | |
"What are these?" she asked. | |
"Egyptians." | |
"What are some other brands?" | |
"Oh, Richmond Gems, and Turkish, and Cambridge. But why?" | |
"Never mind!" She nodded to him and closed the window. "We must remember | |
all those, Clara," said she. "We must learn to talk about such things. | |
Mrs. Westmacott knows all about the brands of cigarettes. Has your rum | |
come?" | |
"Yes, dear. It is here." | |
"And I have my stout. Come along up to my room now. This smell is too | |
abominable. But we must be ready for him when he comes back. If we sit | |
at the window we shall see him coming down the road." | |
The fresh morning air, and the genial company of the Admiral had caused | |
the Doctor to forget his troubles, and he came back about midday in an | |
excellent humor. As he opened the hall door the vile smell of chemicals | |
which had spoilt his breakfast met him with a redoubled virulence. He | |
threw open the hall window, entered the dining-room, and stood aghast at | |
the sight which met his eyes. | |
Ida was still sitting among her bottles, with a lit cigarette in her | |
left hand and a glass of stout on the table beside her. Clara, with | |
another cigarette, was lounging in the easy chair with several maps | |
spread out upon the floor around. Her feet were stuck up on the coal | |
scuttle, and she had a tumblerful of some reddish-brown composition on | |
the smoking table close at her elbow. The Doctor gazed from one to the | |
other of them through the thin grey haze of smoke, but his eyes rested | |
finally in a settled stare of astonishment upon his elder and more | |
serious daughter. | |
"Clara!" he gasped, "I could not have believed it!" | |
"What is it, papa?" | |
"You are smoking!" | |
"Trying to, papa. I find it a little difficult, for I have not been used | |
to it." | |
"But why, in the name of goodness--" | |
"Mrs. Westmacott recommends it." | |
"Oh, a lady of mature years may do many things which a young girl must | |
avoid." | |
"Oh, no," cried Ida, "Mrs. Westmacott says that there should be one law | |
for all. Have a cigarette, pa?" | |
"No, thank you. I never smoke in the morning." | |
"No? Perhaps you don't care for the brand. What are these, Clara?" | |
"Egyptians." | |
"Ah, we must have some Richmond Gems or Turkish. I wish, pa, when you go | |
into town, you would get me some Turkish." | |
"I will do nothing of the kind. I do not at all think that it is a | |
fitting habit for young ladies. I do not agree with Mrs. Westmacott upon | |
the point." | |
"Really, pa! It was you who advised us to imitate her." | |
"But with discrimination. What is it that you are drinking, Clara?" | |
"Rum, papa." | |
"Rum? In the morning?" He sat down and rubbed his eyes as one who tries | |
to shake off some evil dream. "Did you say rum?" | |
"Yes, pa. They all drink it in the profession which I am going to take | |
up." | |
"Profession, Clara?" | |
"Mrs. Westmacott says that every woman should follow a calling, and that | |
we ought to choose those which women have always avoided." | |
"Quite so." | |
"Well, I am going to act upon her advice. I am going to be a pilot." | |
"My dear Clara! A pilot! This is too much." | |
"This is a beautiful book, papa. 'The Lights, Beacons, Buoys, Channels, | |
and Landmarks of Great Britain.' Here is another, 'The Master Mariner's | |
Handbook.' You can't imagine how interesting it is." | |
"You are joking, Clara. You must be joking!" | |
"Not at all, pa. You can't think what a lot I have learned already. | |
I'm to carry a green light to starboard and a red to port, with a white | |
light at the mast-head, and a flare-up every fifteen minutes." | |
"Oh, won't it look pretty at night!" cried her sister. | |
"And I know the fog-signals. One blast means that a ship steers to | |
starboard, two to port, three astern, four that it is unmanageable. But | |
this man asks such dreadful questions at the end of each chapter. Listen | |
to this: 'You see a red light. The ship is on the port tack and the wind | |
at north; what course is that ship steering to a point?'" | |
The Doctor rose with a gesture of despair. "I can't imagine what has | |
come over you both," said he. | |
"My dear papa, we are trying hard to live up to Mrs. Westmacott's | |
standard." | |
"Well, I must say that I do not admire the result. Your chemistry, Ida, | |
may perhaps do no harm; but your scheme, Clara, is out of the question. | |
How a girl of your sense could ever entertain such a notion is more than | |
I can imagine. But I must absolutely forbid you to go further with it." | |
"But, pa," asked Ida, with an air of innocent inquiry in her big blue | |
eyes, "what are we to do when your commands and Mrs. Westmacott's advice | |
are opposed? You told us to obey her. She says that when women try to | |
throw off their shackles, their fathers, brothers and husbands are the | |
very first to try to rivet them on again, and that in such a matter no | |
man has any authority." | |
"Does Mrs. Westmacott teach you that I am not the head of my own house?" | |
The Doctor flushed, and his grizzled hair bristled in his anger. | |
"Certainly. She says that all heads of houses are relics of the dark | |
ages." | |
The Doctor muttered something and stamped his foot upon the carpet. Then | |
without a word he passed out into the garden and his daughters could see | |
him striding furiously up and down, cutting off the heads of the flowers | |
with a switch. | |
"Oh, you darling! You played your part so splendidly!" cried Ida. | |
"But how cruel it is! When I saw the sorrow and surprise in his eyes I | |
very nearly put my arms about him and told him all. Don't you think we | |
have done enough?" | |
"No, no, no. Not nearly enough. You must not turn weak now, Clara. It is | |
so funny that I should be leading you. It is quite a new experience. But | |
I know I am right. If we go on as we are doing, we shall be able to say | |
all our lives that we have saved him. And if we don't, oh, Clara, we | |
should never forgive ourselves." | |
CHAPTER X. WOMEN OF THE FUTURE. | |
From that day the Doctor's peace was gone. Never was a quiet and orderly | |
household transformed so suddenly into a bear garden, or a happy man | |
turned into such a completely miserable one. He had never realized | |
before how entirely his daughters had shielded him from all the friction | |
of life. Now that they had not only ceased to protect him, but had | |
themselves become a source of trouble to him, he began to understand how | |
great the blessing was which he had enjoyed, and to sigh for the happy | |
days before his girls had come under the influence of his neighbor. | |
"You don't look happy," Mrs. Westmacott had remarked to him one morning. | |
"You are pale and a little off color. You should come with me for a ten | |
mile spin upon the tandem." | |
"I am troubled about my girls." They were walking up and down in the | |
garden. From time to time there sounded from the house behind them the | |
long, sad wail of a French horn. | |
"That is Ida," said he. "She has taken to practicing on that dreadful | |
instrument in the intervals of her chemistry. And Clara is quite as bad. | |
I declare it is getting quite unendurable." | |
"Ah, Doctor, Doctor!" she cried, shaking her forefinger, with a gleam | |
of her white teeth. "You must live up to your principles--you must give | |
your daughters the same liberty as you advocate for other women." | |
"Liberty, madam, certainly! But this approaches to license." | |
"The same law for all, my friend." She tapped him reprovingly on the arm | |
with her sunshade. "When you were twenty your father did not, I presume, | |
object to your learning chemistry or playing a musical instrument. You | |
would have thought it tyranny if he had." | |
"But there is such a sudden change in them both." | |
"Yes, I have noticed that they have been very enthusiastic lately in the | |
cause of liberty. Of all my disciples I think that they promise to be | |
the most devoted and consistent, which is the more natural since their | |
father is one of our most trusted champions." | |
The Doctor gave a twitch of impatience. "I seem to have lost all | |
authority," he cried. | |
"No, no, my dear friend. They are a little exuberant at having broken | |
the trammels of custom. That is all." | |
"You cannot think what I have had to put up with, madam. It has been a | |
dreadful experience. Last night, after I had extinguished the candle | |
in my bedroom, I placed my foot upon something smooth and hard, which | |
scuttled from under me. Imagine my horror! I lit the gas, and came upon | |
a well-grown tortoise which Clara has thought fit to introduce into the | |
house. I call it a filthy custom to have such pets." | |
Mrs. Westmacott dropped him a little courtesy. "Thank you, sir," said | |
she. "That is a nice little side hit at my poor Eliza." | |
"I give you my word that I had forgotten about her," cried the Doctor, | |
flushing. "One such pet may no doubt be endured, but two are more than I | |
can bear. Ida has a monkey which lives on the curtain rod. It is a most | |
dreadful creature. It will remain absolutely motionless until it sees | |
that you have forgotten its presence, and then it will suddenly bound | |
from picture to picture all round the walls, and end by swinging down | |
on the bell-rope and jumping on to the top of your head. At breakfast | |
it stole a poached egg and daubed it all over the door handle. Ida calls | |
these outrages amusing tricks." | |
"Oh, all will come right," said the widow reassuringly. | |
"And Clara is as bad, Clara who used to be so good and sweet, the very | |
image of her poor mother. She insists upon this preposterous scheme of | |
being a pilot, and will talk of nothing but revolving lights and hidden | |
rocks, and codes of signals, and nonsense of the kind." | |
"But why preposterous?" asked his companion. "What nobler occupation can | |
there be than that of stimulating commerce, and aiding the mariner to | |
steer safely into port? I should think your daughter admirably adapted | |
for such duties." | |
"Then I must beg to differ from you, madam." | |
"Still, you are inconsistent." | |
"Excuse me, madam, I do not see the matter in the same light. And | |
I should be obliged to you if you would use your influence with my | |
daughter to dissuade her." | |
"You wish to make me inconsistent too." | |
"Then you refuse?" | |
"I am afraid that I cannot interfere." | |
The Doctor was very angry. "Very well, madam," said he. "In that case I | |
can only say that I have the honor to wish you a very good morning." He | |
raised his broad straw hat and strode away up the gravel path, while the | |
widow looked after him with twinkling eyes. She was surprised herself to | |
find that she liked the Doctor better the more masculine and aggressive | |
he became. It was unreasonable and against all principle, and yet so it | |
was and no argument could mend the matter. | |
Very hot and angry, the Doctor retired into his room and sat down to | |
read his paper. Ida had retired, and the distant wails of the bugle | |
showed that she was upstairs in her boudoir. Clara sat opposite to him | |
with her exasperating charts and her blue book. The Doctor glanced at | |
her and his eyes remained fixed in astonishment upon the front of her | |
skirt. | |
"My dear Clara," he cried, "you have torn your skirt!" | |
His daughter laughed and smoothed out her frock. To his horror he saw | |
the red plush of the chair where the dress ought to have been. "It is | |
all torn!" he cried. "What have you done?" | |
"My dear papa!" said she, "what do you know about the mysteries of | |
ladies' dress? This is a divided skirt." | |
Then he saw that it was indeed so arranged, and that his daughter was | |
clad in a sort of loose, extremely long knickerbockers. | |
"It will be so convenient for my sea-boots," she explained. | |
Her father shook his head sadly. "Your dear mother would not have liked | |
it, Clara," said he. | |
For a moment the conspiracy was upon the point of collapsing. There | |
was something in the gentleness of his rebuke, and in his appeal to her | |
mother, which brought the tears to her eyes, and in another instant she | |
would have been kneeling beside him with everything confessed, when the | |
door flew open and her sister Ida came bounding into the room. She wore | |
a short grey skirt, like that of Mrs. Westmacott, and she held it up in | |
each hand and danced about among the furniture. | |
"I feel quite the Gaiety girl!" she cried. "How delicious it must be | |
to be upon the stage! You can't think how nice this dress is, papa. One | |
feels so free in it. And isn't Clara charming?" | |
"Go to your room this instant and take it off!" thundered the Doctor. "I | |
call it highly improper, and no daughter of mine shall wear it." | |
"Papa! Improper! Why, it is the exact model of Mrs. Westmacott's." | |
"I say it is improper. And yours also, Clara! Your conduct is really | |
outrageous. You drive me out of the house. I am going to my club in | |
town. I have no comfort or peace of mind in my own house. I will stand | |
it no longer. I may be late to-night--I shall go to the British | |
Medical meeting. But when I return I shall hope to find that you have | |
reconsidered your conduct, and that you have shaken yourself clear of | |
the pernicious influences which have recently made such an alteration | |
in your conduct." He seized his hat, slammed the dining-room door, and a | |
few minutes later they heard the crash of the big front gate. | |
"Victory, Clara, victory!" cried Ida, still pirouetting around the | |
furniture. "Did you hear what he said? Pernicious influences! Don't you | |
understand, Clara? Why do you sit there so pale and glum? Why don't you | |
get up and dance?" | |
"Oh, I shall be so glad when it is over, Ida. I do hate to give him | |
pain. Surely he has learned now that it is very unpleasant to spend | |
one's life with reformers." | |
"He has almost learned it, Clara. Just one more little lesson. We must | |
not risk all at this last moment." | |
"What would you do, Ida? Oh, don't do anything too dreadful. I feel that | |
we have gone too far already." | |
"Oh, we can do it very nicely. You see we are both engaged and that | |
makes it very easy. Harold will do what you ask him, especially as you | |
have told him the reason why, and my Charles will do it without even | |
wanting to know the reason. Now you know what Mrs. Westmacott thinks | |
about the reserve of young ladies. Mere prudery, affectation, and a | |
relic of the dark ages of the Zenana. Those were her words, were they | |
not?" | |
"What then?" | |
"Well, now we must put it in practice. We are reducing all her other | |
views to practice, and we must not shirk this one. | |
"But what would you do? Oh, don't look so wicked, Ida! You look like | |
some evil little fairy, with your golden hair and dancing, mischievous | |
eyes. I know that you are going to propose something dreadful!" | |
"We must give a little supper to-night." | |
"We? A supper!" | |
"Why not? Young gentlemen give suppers. Why not young ladies?" | |
"But whom shall we invite?" | |
"Why, Harold and Charles of course." | |
"And the Admiral and Mrs. Hay Denver?" | |
"Oh, no. That would be very old-fashioned. We must keep up with the | |
times, Clara." | |
"But what can we give them for supper?" | |
"Oh, something with a nice, fast, rollicking, late-at-night-kind of | |
flavor to it. Let me see! Champagne, of course--and oysters. Oysters | |
will do. In the novels, all the naughty people take champagne and | |
oysters. Besides, they won't need any cooking. How is your pocket-money, | |
Clara?" | |
"I have three pounds." | |
"And I have one. Four pounds. I have no idea how much champagne costs. | |
Have you?" | |
"Not the slightest." | |
"How many oysters does a man eat?" | |
"I can't imagine." | |
"I'll write and ask Charles. No, I won't. I'll ask Jane. Ring for her, | |
Clara. She has been a cook, and is sure to know." | |
Jane, on being cross-questioned, refused to commit herself beyond | |
the statement that it depended upon the gentleman, and also upon the | |
oysters. The united experience of the kitchen, however, testified that | |
three dozen was a fair provision. | |
"Then we shall have eight dozen altogether," said Ida, jotting down all | |
her requirements upon a sheet of paper. "And two pints of champagne. And | |
some brown bread, and vinegar, and pepper. That's all, I think. It is | |
not so very difficult to give a supper after all, is it, Clara?" | |
"I don't like it, Ida. It seems to me to be so very indelicate." | |
"But it is needed to clinch the matter. No, no, there is no drawing back | |
now, Clara, or we shall ruin everything. Papa is sure to come back by | |
the 9:45. He will reach the door at 10. We must have everything ready | |
for him. Now, just sit down at once, and ask Harold to come at nine | |
o'clock, and I shall do the same to Charles." | |
The two invitations were dispatched, received and accepted. Harold | |
was already a confidant, and he understood that this was some further | |
development of the plot. As to Charles, he was so accustomed to feminine | |
eccentricity, in the person of his aunt, that the only thing which could | |
surprise him would be a rigid observance of etiquette. At nine o'clock | |
they entered the dining-room of Number 2, to find the master of the | |
house absent, a red-shaded lamp, a snowy cloth, a pleasant little feast, | |
and the two whom they would have chosen, as their companions. A merrier | |
party never met, and the house rang with their laughter and their | |
chatter. | |
"It is three minutes to ten," cried Clara, suddenly, glancing at the | |
clock. | |
"Good gracious! So it is! Now for our little tableau!" Ida pushed the | |
champagne bottles obtrusively forward, in the direction of the door, and | |
scattered oyster shells over the cloth. | |
"Have you your pipe, Charles?" | |
"My pipe! Yes." | |
"Then please smoke it. Now don't argue about it, but do it, for you will | |
ruin the effect otherwise." | |
The large man drew out a red case, and extracted a great yellow | |
meerschaum, out of which, a moment later, he was puffing thick wreaths | |
of smoke. Harold had lit a cigar, and both the girls had cigarettes. | |
"That looks very nice and emancipated," said Ida, glancing round. "Now I | |
shall lie on this sofa. So! Now, Charles, just sit here, and throw your | |
arm carelessly over the back of the sofa. No, don't stop smoking. I like | |
it. Clara, dear, put your feet upon the coal-scuttle, and do try to look | |
a little dissipated. I wish we could crown ourselves with flowers. There | |
are some lettuces on the sideboard. Oh dear, here he is! I hear his | |
key." She began to sing in her high, fresh voice a little snatch from a | |
French song, with a swinging tra la-la chorus. | |
The Doctor had walked home from the station in a peaceable and relenting | |
frame of mind, feeling that, perhaps, he had said too much in the | |
morning, that his daughters had for years been models in every way, | |
and that, if there had been any change of late, it was, as they said | |
themselves, on account of their anxiety to follow his advice and to | |
imitate Mrs. Westmacott. He could see clearly enough now that that | |
advice was unwise, and that a world peopled with Mrs. Westmacotts would | |
not be a happy or a soothing one. It was he who was, himself, to | |
blame, and he was grieved by the thought that perhaps his hot words had | |
troubled and saddened his two girls. | |
This fear, however, was soon dissipated. As he entered his hall he heard | |
the voice of Ida uplifted in a rollicking ditty, and a very strong smell | |
of tobacco was borne to his nostrils. He threw open the dining-room | |
door, and stood aghast at the scene which met his eyes. | |
The room was full of the blue wreaths of smoke, and the lamp-light shone | |
through the thin haze upon gold-topped bottles, plates, napkins, and a | |
litter of oyster shells and cigarettes. Ida, flushed and excited, was | |
reclining upon the settee, a wine-glass at her elbow, and a cigarette | |
between her fingers, while Charles Westmacott sat beside her, with his | |
arm thrown over the head of the sofa, with the suggestion of a caress. | |
On the other side of the room, Clara was lounging in an arm-chair, with | |
Harold beside her, both smoking, and both with wine-glasses beside them. | |
The Doctor stood speechless in the doorway, staring at the Bacchanalian | |
scene. | |
"Come in, papa! Do!" cried Ida. "Won't you have a glass of champagne?" | |
"Pray excuse me," said her father, coldly, "I feel that I am intruding. | |
I did not know that you were entertaining. Perhaps you will kindly | |
let me know when you have finished. You will find me in my study." He | |
ignored the two young men completely, and, closing the door, retired, | |
deeply hurt and mortified, to his room. A quarter of an hour afterwards | |
he heard the door slam, and his two daughters came to announce that the | |
guests were gone. | |
"Guests! Whose guests?" he cried angrily. "What is the meaning of this | |
exhibition?" | |
"We have been giving a little supper, papa. They were our guests." | |
"Oh, indeed!" The Doctor laughed sarcastically. "You think it right, | |
then, to entertain young bachelors late at night, to smoke and drink | |
with them, to---- Oh, that I should ever have lived to blush for my own | |
daughters! I thank God that your dear mother never saw the day." | |
"Dearest papa," cried Clara, throwing her arms about him. "Do not be | |
angry with us. If you understood all, you would see that there is no | |
harm in it." | |
"No harm, miss! Who is the best judge of that?" | |
"Mrs. Westmacott," suggested Ida, slyly. | |
The Doctor sprang from his chair. "Confound Mrs. Westmacott!" he cried, | |
striking frenziedly into the air with his hands. "Am I to hear of | |
nothing but this woman? Is she to confront me at every turn? I will | |
endure it no longer." | |
"But it was your wish, papa." | |
"Then I will tell you now what my second and wiser wish is, and we shall | |
see if you will obey it as you have the first." | |
"Of course we will, papa." | |
"Then my wish is, that you should forget these odious notions which you | |
have imbibed, that you should dress and act as you used to do, | |
before ever you saw this woman, and that, in future, you confine | |
your intercourse with her to such civilities as are necessary between | |
neighbors." | |
"We are to give up Mrs. Westmacott?" | |
"Or give up me." | |
"Oh, dear dad, how can you say anything so cruel?" cried Ida, burrowing | |
her towsy golden hair into her father's shirt front, while Clara pressed | |
her cheek against his whisker. "Of course we shall give her up, if you | |
prefer it." | |
"Of course we shall, papa." | |
The Doctor patted the two caressing heads. "These are my own two girls | |
again," he cried. "It has been my fault as much as yours. I have been | |
astray, and you have followed me in my error. It was only by seeing your | |
mistake that I have become conscious of my own. Let us set it aside, and | |
neither say nor think anything more about it." | |
CHAPTER XI. A BLOT FROM THE BLUE. | |
So by the cleverness of two girls a dark cloud was thinned away | |
and turned into sunshine. Over one of them, alas, another cloud was | |
gathering, which could not be so easily dispersed. Of these three | |
households which fate had thrown together, two had already been united | |
by ties of love. It was destined, however, that a bond of another sort | |
should connect the Westmacotts with the Hay Denvers. | |
Between the Admiral and the widow a very cordial feeling had existed | |
since the day when the old seaman had hauled down his flag and changed | |
his opinions; granting to the yachts-woman all that he had refused to | |
the reformer. His own frank and downright nature respected the same | |
qualities in his neighbor, and a friendship sprang up between them which | |
was more like that which exists between two men, founded upon esteem and | |
a community of tastes. | |
"By the way, Admiral," said Mrs. Westmacott one morning, as they walked | |
together down to the station, "I understand that this boy of yours in | |
the intervals of paying his devotions to Miss Walker is doing something | |
upon 'Change." | |
"Yes, ma'am, and there is no man of his age who is doing so well. He's | |
drawing ahead, I can tell you, ma'am. Some of those that started with | |
him are hull down astarn now. He touched his five hundred last year, and | |
before he's thirty he'll be making the four figures." | |
"The reason I asked is that I have small investments to make myself from | |
time to time, and my present broker is a rascal. I should be very glad | |
to do it through your son." | |
"It is very kind of you, ma'am. His partner is away on a holiday, and | |
Harold would like to push on a bit and show what he can do. You know | |
the poop isn't big enough to hold the lieutenant when the skipper's on | |
shore." | |
"I suppose he charges the usual half per cent?" | |
"Don't know, I'm sure, ma'am. I'll swear that he does what is right and | |
proper." | |
"That is what I usually pay--ten shillings in the hundred pounds. If | |
you see him before I do just ask him to get me five thousand in New | |
Zealands. It is at four just now, and I fancy it may rise." | |
"Five thousand!" exclaimed the Admiral, reckoning it in his own mind. | |
"Lemme see! That's twenty-five pounds commission. A nice day's work, | |
upon my word. It is a very handsome order, ma'am." | |
"Well, I must pay some one, and why not him?" | |
"I'll tell him, and I'm sure he'll lose no time." | |
"Oh, there is no great hurry. By the way, I understand from what you | |
said just now that he has a partner." | |
"Yes, my boy is the junior partner. Pearson is the senior. I was | |
introduced to him years ago, and he offered Harold the opening. Of | |
course we had a pretty stiff premium to pay." | |
Mrs. Westmacott had stopped, and was standing very stiffly with her Red | |
Indian face even grimmer than usual. | |
"Pearson?" said she. "Jeremiah Pearson?" | |
"The same." | |
"Then it's all off," she cried. "You need not carry out that | |
investment." | |
"Very well, ma'am." | |
They walked on together side by side, she brooding over some thought of | |
her own, and he a little crossed and disappointed at her caprice and the | |
lost commission for Harold. | |
"I tell you what, Admiral," she exclaimed suddenly, "if I were you I | |
should get your boy out of this partnership." | |
"But why, madam?" | |
"Because he is tied to one of the deepest, slyest foxes in the whole | |
city of London." | |
"Jeremiah Pearson, ma'am? What can you know of him? He bears a good | |
name." | |
"No one in this world knows Jeremiah Pearson as I know him, Admiral. | |
I warn you because I have a friendly feeling both for you and for your | |
son. The man is a rogue and you had best avoid him." | |
"But these are only words, ma'am. Do you tell me that you know him | |
better than the brokers and jobbers in the City?" | |
"Man," cried Mrs. Westmacott, "will you allow that I know him when I | |
tell you that my maiden name was Ada Pearson, and that Jeremiah is my | |
only brother?" | |
The Admiral whistled. "Whew!" cried he. "Now that I think of it, there | |
is a likeness." | |
"He is a man of iron, Admiral--a man without a heart. I should shock you | |
if I were to tell you what I have endured from my brother. My father's | |
wealth was divided equally between us. His own share he ran through in | |
five years, and he has tried since then by every trick of a cunning, | |
low-minded man, by base cajolery, by legal quibbles, by brutal | |
intimidation, to juggle me out of my share as well. There is no villainy | |
of which the man is not capable. Oh, I know my brother Jeremiah. I know | |
him and I am prepared for him." | |
"This is all new to me, ma'am. 'Pon my word, I hardly know what to say | |
to it. I thank you for having spoken so plainly. From what you say, this | |
is a poor sort of consort for a man to sail with. Perhaps Harold would | |
do well to cut himself adrift." | |
"Without losing a day." | |
"Well, we shall talk it over. You may be sure of that. But here we are | |
at the station, so I will just see you into your carriage and then home | |
to see what my wife says to the matter." | |
As he trudged homewards, thoughtful and perplexed, he was surprised to | |
hear a shout behind him, and to see Harold running down the road after | |
him. | |
"Why, dad," he cried, "I have just come from town, and the first thing | |
I saw was your back as you marched away. But you are such a quick walker | |
that I had to run to catch you." | |
The Admiral's smile of pleasure had broken his stern face into a | |
thousand wrinkles. "You are early to-day," said he. | |
"Yes, I wanted to consult you." | |
"Nothing wrong?" | |
"Oh no, only an inconvenience." | |
"What is it, then?" | |
"How much have we in our private account?" | |
"Pretty fair. Some eight hundred, I think." | |
"Oh, half that will be ample. It was rather thoughtless of Pearson." | |
"What then?" | |
"Well, you see, dad, when he went away upon this little holiday to Havre | |
he left me to pay accounts and so on. He told me that there was enough | |
at the bank for all claims. I had occasion on Tuesday to pay away two | |
cheques, one for L80, and the other for L120, and here they are returned | |
with a bank notice that we have already overdrawn to the extent of some | |
hundreds." | |
The Admiral looked very grave. "What's the meaning of that, then?" he | |
asked. | |
"Oh, it can easily be set right. You see Pearson invests all the spare | |
capital and keeps as small a margin as possible at the bank. Still it | |
was too bad for him to allow me even to run a risk of having a cheque | |
returned. I have written to him and demanded his authority to sell out | |
some stock, and I have written an explanation to these people. In the | |
meantime, however, I have had to issue several cheques; so I had better | |
transfer part of our private account to meet them." | |
"Quite so, my boy. All that's mine is yours. But who do you think this | |
Pearson is? He is Mrs. Westmacott's brother." | |
"Really. What a singular thing! Well, I can see a likeness now that you | |
mention it. They have both the same hard type of face." | |
"She has been warning me against him--says he is the rankest pirate | |
in London. I hope that it is all right, boy, and that we may not find | |
ourselves in broken water." | |
Harold had turned a little pale as he heard Mrs. Westmacott's opinion of | |
his senior partner. It gave shape and substance to certain vague fears | |
and suspicions of his own which had been pushed back as often as they | |
obtruded themselves as being too monstrous and fantastic for belief. | |
"He is a well-known man in the City, dad," said he. | |
"Of course he is--of course he is. That is what I told her. They would | |
have found him out there if anything had been amiss with him. Bless you, | |
there's nothing so bitter as a family quarrel. Still it is just as well | |
that you have written about this affair, for we may as well have all | |
fair and aboveboard." | |
But Harold's letter to his partner was crossed by a letter from his | |
partner to Harold. It lay awaiting him upon the breakfast table next | |
morning, and it sent the heart into his mouth as he read it, and caused | |
him to spring up from his chair with a white face and staring eyes. | |
"My boy! My boy!" | |
"I am ruined, mother--ruined!" He stood gazing wildly in front of him, | |
while the sheet of paper fluttered down on the carpet. Then he dropped | |
back into the chair, and sank his face into his hands. His mother | |
had her arms round him in an instant, while the Admiral, with shaking | |
fingers, picked up the letter from the floor and adjusted his glasses to | |
read it. | |
"My DEAR DENVER," it ran. "By the time that this reaches you I shall | |
be out of the reach of yourself or of any one else who may desire an | |
interview. You need not search for me, for I assure you that this letter | |
is posted by a friend, and that you will have your trouble in vain if | |
you try to find me. I am sorry to leave you in such a tight place, but | |
one or other of us must be squeezed, and on the whole I prefer that | |
it should be you. You'll find nothing in the bank, and about L13,000 | |
unaccounted for. I'm not sure that the best thing you can do is not to | |
realize what you can, and imitate your senior's example. If you act at | |
once you may get clean away. If not, it's not only that you must put up | |
your shutters, but I am afraid that this missing money could hardly be | |
included as an ordinary debt, and of course you are legally responsible | |
for it just as much as I am. Take a friend's advice and get to America. | |
A young man with brains can always do something out there, and you can | |
live down this little mischance. It will be a cheap lesson if it teaches | |
you to take nothing upon trust in business, and to insist upon knowing | |
exactly what your partner is doing, however senior he may be to you. | |
"Yours faithfully, | |
"JEREMIAH PEARSON." | |
"Great Heavens!" groaned the Admiral, "he has absconded." | |
"And left me both a bankrupt and a thief." | |
"No, no, Harold," sobbed his mother. "All will be right. What matter | |
about money!" | |
"Money, mother! It is my honor." | |
"The boy is right. It is his honor, and my honor, for his is mine. This | |
is a sore trouble, mother, when we thought our life's troubles were all | |
behind us, but we will bear it as we have borne others." He held out | |
his stringy hand, and the two old folk sat with bowed grey heads, their | |
fingers intertwined, strong in each other's love and sympathy. | |
"We were too happy," she sighed. | |
"But it is God's will, mother." | |
"Yes, John, it is God's will." | |
"And yet it is bitter to bear. I could have lost all, the house, money, | |
rank--I could have borne it. But at my age--my honor--the honor of an | |
admiral of the fleet." | |
"No honor can be lost, John, where no dishonor has been done. What have | |
you done? What has Harold done? There is no question of honor." | |
The old man shook his head, but Harold had already called together his | |
clear practical sense, which for an instant in the presence of this | |
frightful blow had deserted him. | |
"The mater is right, dad," said he. "It is bad enough, Heaven knows, but | |
we must not take too dark a view of it. After all, this insolent letter | |
is in itself evidence that I had nothing to do with the schemes of the | |
base villain who wrote it." | |
"They may think it prearranged." | |
"They could not. My whole life cries out against the thought. They could | |
not look me in the face and entertain it." | |
"No, boy, not if they have eyes in their heads," cried the Admiral, | |
plucking up courage at the sight of the flashing eyes and brave, defiant | |
face. "We have the letter, and we have your character. We'll weather it | |
yet between them. It's my fault from the beginning for choosing such a | |
land-shark for your consort. God help me, I thought I was finding such | |
an opening for you." | |
"Dear dad! How could you possibly know? As he says in his letter, it | |
has given me a lesson. But he was so much older and so much more | |
experienced, that it was hard for me to ask to examine his books. But we | |
must waste no time. I must go to the City." | |
"What will you do?" | |
"What an honest man should do. I will write to all our clients and | |
creditors, assemble them, lay the whole matter before them, read them | |
the letter and put myself absolutely in their hands." | |
"That's it, boy--yard-arm to yard-arm, and have it over." | |
"I must go at once." He put on his top-coat and his hat. "But I have ten | |
minutes yet before I can catch a train. There is one little thing which | |
I must do before I start." | |
He had caught sight through the long glass folding door of the gleam of | |
a white blouse and a straw hat in the tennis ground. Clara used often | |
to meet him there of a morning to say a few words before he hurried away | |
into the City. He walked out now with the quick, firm step of a man who | |
has taken a momentous resolution, but his face was haggard and his lips | |
pale. | |
"Clara," said he, as she came towards him with words of greeting, "I am | |
sorry to bring ill news to you, but things have gone wrong in the City, | |
and--and I think that I ought to release you from your engagement." | |
Clara stared at him with her great questioning dark eyes, and her face | |
became as pale as his. | |
"How can the City affect you and me, Harold?" | |
"It is dishonor. I cannot ask you to share it." | |
"Dishonor! The loss of some miserable gold and silver coins!" | |
"Oh, Clara, if it were only that! We could be far happier together in | |
a little cottage in the country than with all the riches of the City. | |
Poverty could not cut me to the heart, as I have been cut this morning. | |
Why, it is but twenty minutes since I had the letter, Clara, and it | |
seems to me to be some old, old thing which happened far away in my past | |
life, some horrid black cloud which shut out all the freshness and the | |
peace from it." | |
"But what is it, then? What do you fear worse than poverty?" | |
"To have debts that I cannot meet. To be hammered upon 'Change and | |
declared a bankrupt. To know that others have a just claim upon me | |
and to feel that I dare not meet their eyes. Is not that worse than | |
poverty?" | |
"Yes, Harold, a thousand fold worse! But all this may be got over. Is | |
there nothing more?" | |
"My partner has fled and left me responsible for heavy debts, and in | |
such a position that I may be required by the law to produce some at | |
least of this missing money. It has been confided to him to invest, and | |
he has embezzled it. I, as his partner, am liable for it. I have brought | |
misery on all whom I love--my father, my mother. But you at least shall | |
not be under the shadow. You are free, Clara. There is no tie between | |
us." | |
"It takes two to make such a tie, Harold," said she, smiling and putting | |
her hand inside his arm. "It takes two to make it, dear, and also two to | |
break it. Is that the way they do business in the City, sir, that a man | |
can always at his own sweet will tear up his engagement?" | |
"You hold me to it, Clara?" | |
"No creditor so remorseless as I, Harold. Never, never shall you get | |
from that bond." | |
"But I am ruined. My whole life is blasted." | |
"And so you wish to ruin me, and blast my life also. No indeed, sir, you | |
shall not get away so lightly. But seriously now, Harold, you would hurt | |
me if it were not so absurd. Do you think that a woman's love is like | |
this sunshade which I carry in my hand, a thing only fitted for the | |
sunshine, and of no use when the winds blow and the clouds gather?" | |
"I would not drag you down, Clara." | |
"Should I not be dragged down indeed if I left your side at such a time? | |
It is only now that I can be of use to you, help you, sustain you. You | |
have always been so strong, so above me. You are strong still, but then | |
two will be stronger. Besides, sir, you have no idea what a woman of | |
business I am. Papa says so, and he knows." | |
Harold tried to speak, but his heart was too full. He could only press | |
the white hand which curled round his sleeve. She walked up and down | |
by his side, prattling merrily, and sending little gleams of cheeriness | |
through the gloom which girt him in. To listen to her he might have | |
thought that it was Ida, and not her staid and demure sister, who was | |
chatting to him. | |
"It will soon be cleared up," she said, "and then we shall feel quite | |
dull. Of course all business men have these little ups and downs. Why, | |
I suppose of all the men you meet upon 'Change, there is not one who has | |
not some such story to tell. If everything was always smooth, you know, | |
then of course every one would turn stockbroker, and you would have to | |
hold your meetings in Hyde Park. How much is it that you need?" | |
"More than I can ever get. Not less than thirteen thousand pounds." | |
Clara's face fell as she heard the amount. "What do you purpose doing?" | |
"I shall go to the City now, and I shall ask all our creditors to meet | |
me to-morrow. I shall read them Pearson's letter, and put myself into | |
their hands." | |
"And they, what will they do?" | |
"What can they do? They will serve writs for their money, and the firm | |
will be declared bankrupt." | |
"And the meeting will be to-morrow, you say. Will you take my advice?" | |
"What is it, Clara?" | |
"To ask them for a few days of delay. Who knows what new turn matters | |
may take?" | |
"What turn can they take? I have no means of raising the money." | |
"Let us have a few days." | |
"Oh, we should have that in the ordinary course of business. The legal | |
formalities would take them some little time. But I must go, Clara, I | |
must not seem to shirk. My place now must be at my offices." | |
"Yes, dear, you are right. God bless you and guard you! I shall be | |
here in The Wilderness, but all day I shall be by your office table at | |
Throgmorton Street in spirit, and if ever you should be sad you will | |
hear my little whisper in your ear, and know that there is one client | |
whom you will never be able to get rid of--never as long as we both | |
live, dear." | |
CHAPTER XII. FRIENDS IN NEED. | |
"Now, papa," said Clara that morning, wrinkling her brows and putting | |
her finger-tips together with the air of an experienced person of | |
business, "I want to have a talk to you about money matters." | |
"Yes, my dear." He laid down his paper, and looked a question. | |
"Kindly tell me again, papa, how much money I have in my very own right. | |
You have often told me before, but I always forget figures." | |
"You have two hundred and fifty pounds a year of your own, under your | |
aunt's will. | |
"And Ida?" | |
"Ida has one hundred and fifty." | |
"Now, I think I can live very well on fifty pounds a year, papa. I | |
am not very extravagant, and I could make my own dresses if I had a | |
sewing-machine." | |
"Very likely, dear." | |
"In that case I have two hundred a year which I could do without." | |
"If it were necessary." | |
"But it is necessary. Oh, do help me, like a good, dear, kind papa, in | |
this matter, for my whole heart is set upon it. Harold is in sore need | |
of money, and through no fault of his own." With a woman's tact and | |
eloquence, she told the whole story. "Put yourself in my place, papa. | |
What is the money to me? I never think of it from year's end to year's | |
end. But now I know how precious it is. I could not have thought that | |
money could be so valuable. See what I can do with it. It may help to | |
save him. I must have it by to-morrow. Oh, do, do advise me as to what I | |
should do, and how I should get the money." | |
The Doctor smiled at her eagerness. "You are as anxious to get rid of | |
money as others are to gain it," said he. "In another case I might think | |
it rash, but I believe in your Harold, and I can see that he has had | |
villainous treatment. You will let me deal with the matter." | |
"You, papa?" | |
"It can be done best between men. Your capital, Clara, is some five | |
thousand pounds, but it is out on a mortgage, and you could not call it | |
in." | |
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" | |
"But we can still manage. I have as much at my bank. I will advance it | |
to the Denvers as coming from you, and you can repay it to me, or the | |
interest of it, when your money becomes due." | |
"Oh, that is beautiful! How sweet and kind of you!" | |
"But there is one obstacle: I do not think that you would ever induce | |
Harold to take this money." | |
Clara's face fell. "Don't you think so, really?" | |
"I am sure that he would not." | |
"Then what are you to do? What horrid things money matters are to | |
arrange!" | |
"I shall see his father. We can manage it all between us." | |
"Oh, do, do, papa! And you will do it soon?" | |
"There is no time like the present. I will go in at once." He scribbled | |
a cheque, put it in an envelope, put on his broad straw hat, and | |
strolled in through the garden to pay his morning call. | |
It was a singular sight which met his eyes as he entered the | |
sitting-room of the Admiral. A great sea chest stood open in the center, | |
and all round upon the carpet were little piles of jerseys, oil-skins, | |
books, sextant boxes, instruments, and sea-boots. The old seaman sat | |
gravely amidst this lumber, turning it over, and examining it intently; | |
while his wife, with the tears running silently down her ruddy cheeks, | |
sat upon the sofa, her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her | |
hands, rocking herself slowly backwards and forwards. | |
"Hullo, Doctor," said the Admiral, holding out his hand, "there's foul | |
weather set in upon us, as you may have heard, but I have ridden out | |
many a worse squall, and, please God, we shall all three of us weather | |
this one also, though two of us are a little more cranky than we were." | |
"My dear friends, I came in to tell you how deeply we sympathize with | |
you all. My girl has only just told me about it." | |
"It has come so suddenly upon us, Doctor," sobbed Mrs. Hay Denver. "I | |
thought that I had John to myself for the rest of our lives--Heaven | |
knows that we have not seen very much of each other--but now he talks of | |
going to sea again. | |
"Aye, aye, Walker, that's the only way out of it. When I first heard of | |
it I was thrown up in the wind with all aback. I give you my word that | |
I lost my bearings more completely than ever since I strapped a middy's | |
dirk to my belt. You see, friend, I know something of shipwreck or | |
battle or whatever may come upon the waters, but the shoals in the City | |
of London on which my poor boy has struck are clean beyond me. Pearson | |
had been my pilot there, and now I know him to be a rogue. But I've | |
taken my bearings now, and I see my course right before me." | |
"What then, Admiral?" | |
"Oh, I have one or two little plans. I'll have some news for the boy. | |
Why, hang it, Walker man, I may be a bit stiff in the joints, but you'll | |
be my witness that I can do my twelve miles under the three hours. What | |
then? My eyes are as good as ever except just for the newspaper. My head | |
is clear. I'm three-and-sixty, but I'm as good a man as ever I was--too | |
good a man to lie up for another ten years. I'd be the better for a | |
smack of the salt water again, and a whiff of the breeze. Tut, mother, | |
it's not a four years' cruise this time. I'll be back every month or | |
two. It's no more than if I went for a visit in the country." He was | |
talking boisterously, and heaping his sea-boots and sextants back into | |
his chest. | |
"And you really think, my dear friend, of hoisting your pennant again?" | |
"My pennant, Walker? No, no. Her Majesty, God bless her, has too many | |
young men to need an old hulk like me. I should be plain Mr. Hay Denver, | |
of the merchant service. I daresay that I might find some owner who | |
would give me a chance as second or third officer. It will be strange to | |
me to feel the rails of the bridge under my fingers once more." | |
"Tut! tut! this will never do, this will never do, Admiral!" The Doctor | |
sat down by Mrs. Hay Denver and patted her hand in token of friendly | |
sympathy. "We must wait until your son has had it out with all these | |
people, and then we shall know what damage is done, and how best to set | |
it right. It will be time enough then to begin to muster our resources | |
to meet it." | |
"Our resources!" The Admiral laughed. "There's the pension. I'm afraid, | |
Walker, that our resources won't need much mustering." | |
"Oh, come, there are some which you may not have thought of. For | |
example, Admiral, I had always intended that my girl should have five | |
thousand from me when she married. Of course your boy's trouble is her | |
trouble, and the money cannot be spent better than in helping to set it | |
right. She has a little of her own which she wished to contribute, but | |
I thought it best to work it this way. Will you take the cheque, Mrs. | |
Denver, and I think it would be best if you said nothing to Harold about | |
it, and just used it as the occasion served?" | |
"God bless you, Walker, you are a true friend. I won't forget this, | |
Walker." The Admiral sat down on his sea chest and mopped his brow with | |
his red handkerchief. | |
"What is it to me whether you have it now or then? It may be more useful | |
now. There's only one stipulation. If things should come to the worst, | |
and if the business should prove so bad that nothing can set it right, | |
then hold back this cheque, for there is no use in pouring water into a | |
broken basin, and if the lad should fall, he will want something to pick | |
himself up again with." | |
"He shall not fall, Walker, and you shall not have occasion to be | |
ashamed of the family into which your daughter is about to marry. I | |
have my own plan. But we shall hold your money, my friend, and it will | |
strengthen us to feel that it is there." | |
"Well, that is all right," said Doctor Walker, rising. "And if a little | |
more should be needed, we must not let him go wrong for the want of a | |
thousand or two. And now, Admiral, I'm off for my morning walk. Won't | |
you come too?" | |
"No, I am going into town." | |
"Well, good-bye. I hope to have better news, and that all will come | |
right. Good-bye, Mrs. Denver. I feel as if the boy were my own, and I | |
shall not be easy until all is right with him." | |
CHAPTER XIII. IN STRANGE WATERS. | |
When Doctor Walker had departed, the Admiral packed all his possessions | |
back into his sea chest with the exception of one little brass-bound | |
desk. This he unlocked, and took from it a dozen or so blue sheets of | |
paper all mottled over with stamps and seals, with very large V. R.'s | |
printed upon the heads of them. He tied these carefully into a small | |
bundle, and placing them in the inner pocket of his coat, he seized his | |
stick and hat. | |
"Oh, John, don't do this rash thing," cried Mrs. Denver, laying her | |
hands upon his sleeve. "I have seen so little of you, John. Only three | |
years since you left the service. Don't leave me again. I know it is | |
weak of me, but I cannot bear it." | |
"There's my own brave lass," said he, smoothing down the grey-shot hair. | |
"We've lived in honor together, mother, and please God in honor we'll | |
die. No matter how debts are made, they have got to be met, and what | |
the boy owes we owe. He has not the money, and how is he to find it? He | |
can't find it. What then? It becomes my business, and there's only one | |
way for it." | |
"But it may not be so very bad, John. Had we not best wait until after | |
he sees these people to-morrow?" | |
"They may give him little time, lass. But I'll have a care that I don't | |
go so far that I can't put back again. Now, mother, there's no use | |
holding me. It's got to be done, and there's no sense in shirking it." | |
He detached her fingers from his sleeve, pushed her gently back into an | |
arm-chair, and hurried from the house. | |
In less than half an hour the Admiral was whirled into Victoria Station | |
and found himself amid a dense bustling throng, who jostled and pushed | |
in the crowded terminus. His errand, which had seemed feasible enough in | |
his own room, began now to present difficulties in the carrying out, and | |
he puzzled over how he should take the first steps. Amid the stream of | |
business men, each hurrying on his definite way, the old seaman in his | |
grey tweed suit and black soft hat strode slowly along, his head sunk | |
and his brow wrinkled in perplexity. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. | |
He walked back to the railway stall and bought a daily paper. This he | |
turned and turned until a certain column met his eye, when he smoothed | |
it out, and carrying it over to a seat, proceeded to read it at his | |
leisure. | |
And, indeed, as a man read that column, it seemed strange to him that | |
there should still remain any one in this world of ours who should be in | |
straits for want of money. Here were whole lines of gentlemen who were | |
burdened with a surplus in their incomes, and who were loudly calling | |
to the poor and needy to come and take it off their hands. Here was the | |
guileless person who was not a professional moneylender, but who would | |
be glad to correspond, etc. Here too was the accommodating individual | |
who advanced sums from ten to ten thousand pounds without expense, | |
security, or delay. "The money actually paid over within a few hours," | |
ran this fascinating advertisement, conjuring up a vision of swift | |
messengers rushing with bags of gold to the aid of the poor struggler. A | |
third gentleman did all business by personal application, advanced money | |
on anything or nothing; the lightest and airiest promise was enough to | |
content him according to his circular, and finally he never asked | |
for more than five per cent. This struck the Admiral as far the most | |
promising, and his wrinkles relaxed, and his frown softened away as | |
he gazed at it. He folded up the paper rose from the seat, and found | |
himself face to face with Charles Westmacott. | |
"Hullo, Admiral!" | |
"Hullo, Westmacott!" Charles had always been a favorite of the seaman's. | |
"What are you doing here?" | |
"Oh, I have been doing a little business for my aunt. But I have never | |
seen you in London before." | |
"I hate the place. It smothers me. There's not a breath of clean air on | |
this side of Greenwich. But maybe you know your way about pretty well in | |
the City?" | |
"Well, I know something about it. You see I've never lived very far from | |
it, and I do a good deal of my aunt's business." | |
"Maybe you know Bread Street?" | |
"It is out of Cheapside." | |
"Well then, how do you steer for it from here? You make me out a course | |
and I'll keep to it." | |
"Why, Admiral, I have nothing to do. I'll take you there with pleasure." | |
"Will you, though? Well, I'd take it very kindly if you would. I have | |
business there. Smith and Hanbury, financial agents, Bread Street." | |
The pair made their way to the river-side, and so down the Thames to St. | |
Paul's landing--a mode of travel which was much more to the Admiral's | |
taste than 'bus or cab. On the way, he told his companion his mission | |
and the causes which had led to it. Charles Westmacott knew little | |
enough of City life and the ways of business, but at least he had more | |
experience in both than the Admiral, and he made up his mind not to | |
leave him until the matter was settled. | |
"These are the people," said the Admiral, twisting round his paper, | |
and pointing to the advertisement which had seemed to him the most | |
promising. "It sounds honest and above-board, does it not? The personal | |
interview looks as if there were no trickery, and then no one could | |
object to five per cent." | |
"No, it seems fair enough." | |
"It is not pleasant to have to go hat in hand borrowing money, but there | |
are times, as you may find before you are my age, Westmacott, when a man | |
must stow away his pride. But here's their number, and their plate is on | |
the corner of the door." | |
A narrow entrance was flanked on either side by a row of brasses, | |
ranging upwards from the shipbrokers and the solicitors who occupied | |
the ground floors, through a long succession of West Indian agents, | |
architects, surveyors, and brokers, to the firm of which they were in | |
quest. A winding stone stair, well carpeted and railed at first but | |
growing shabbier with every landing, brought them past innumerable doors | |
until, at last, just under the ground-glass roofing, the names of Smith | |
and Hanbury were to be seen painted in large white letters across a | |
panel, with a laconic invitation to push beneath it. Following out the | |
suggestion, the Admiral and his companion found themselves in a dingy | |
apartment, ill lit from a couple of glazed windows. An ink-stained | |
table, littered with pens, papers, and almanacs, an American cloth sofa, | |
three chairs of varying patterns, and a much-worn carpet, constituted | |
all the furniture, save only a very large and obtrusive porcelain | |
spittoon, and a gaudily framed and very somber picture which hung above | |
the fireplace. Sitting in front of this picture, and staring gloomily | |
at it, as being the only thing which he could stare at, was a small | |
sallow-faced boy with a large head, who in the intervals of his art | |
studies munched sedately at an apple. | |
"Is Mr. Smith or Mr. Hanbury in?" asked the Admiral. | |
"There ain't no such people," said the small boy. | |
"But you have the names on the door." | |
"Ah, that is the name of the firm, you see. It's only a name. It's Mr. | |
Reuben Metaxa that you wants." | |
"Well then, is he in?" | |
"No, he's not." | |
"When will he be back?" | |
"Can't tell, I'm sure. He's gone to lunch. Sometimes he takes one hour, | |
and sometimes two. It'll be two to-day, I 'spect, for he said he was | |
hungry afore he went." | |
"Then I suppose that we had better call again," said the Admiral. | |
"Not a bit," cried Charles. "I know how to manage these little imps. See | |
here, you young varmint, here's a shilling for you. Run off and fetch | |
your master. If you don't bring him here in five minutes I'll clump you | |
on the side of the head when you get back. Shoo! Scat!" He charged at | |
the youth, who bolted from the room and clattered madly down-stairs. | |
"He'll fetch him," said Charles. "Let us make ourselves at home. | |
This sofa does not feel over and above safe. It was not meant for | |
fifteen-stone men. But this doesn't look quite the sort of place where | |
one would expect to pick up money." | |
"Just what I was thinking," said the Admiral, looking ruefully about | |
him. | |
"Ah, well! I have heard that the best furnished offices generally belong | |
to the poorest firms. Let us hope it's the opposite here. They can't | |
spend much on the management anyhow. That pumpkin-headed boy was the | |
staff, I suppose. Ha, by Jove, that's his voice, and he's got our man, I | |
think!" | |
As he spoke the youth appeared in the doorway with a small, brown, | |
dried-up little chip of a man at his heels. He was clean-shaven and | |
blue-chinned, with bristling black hair, and keen brown eyes which shone | |
out very brightly from between pouched under-lids and drooping upper | |
ones. He advanced, glancing keenly from one to the other of his | |
visitors, and slowly rubbing together his thin, blue-veined hands. The | |
small boy closed the door behind him, and discreetly vanished. | |
"I am Mr. Reuben Metaxa," said the moneylender. "Was it about an advance | |
you wished to see me?" | |
"Yes." | |
"For you, I presume?" turning to Charles Westmacott. | |
"No, for this gentleman." | |
The moneylender looked surprised. "How much did you desire?" | |
"I thought of five thousand pounds," said the Admiral. | |
"And on what security?" | |
"I am a retired admiral of the British navy. You will find my name in | |
the Navy List. There is my card. I have here my pension papers. I get | |
L850 a year. I thought that perhaps if you were to hold these papers | |
it would be security enough that I should pay you. You could draw my | |
pension, and repay yourselves at the rate, say, of L500 a year, taking | |
your five per cent interest as well." | |
"What interest?" | |
"Five per cent per annum." | |
Mr. Metaxa laughed. "Per annum!" he said. "Five per cent a month." | |
"A month! That would be sixty per cent a year." | |
"Precisely." | |
"But that is monstrous." | |
"I don't ask gentlemen to come to me. They come of their own free will. | |
Those are my terms, and they can take it or leave it." | |
"Then I shall leave it." The Admiral rose angrily from his chair. | |
"But one moment, sir. Just sit down and we shall chat the matter over. | |
Yours is a rather unusual case and we may find some other way of doing | |
what you wish. Of course the security which you offer is no security at | |
all, and no sane man would advance five thousand pennies on it." | |
"No security? Why not, sir?" | |
"You might die to-morrow. You are not a young man. What age are you?" | |
"Sixty-three." | |
Mr. Metaxa turned over a long column of figures. "Here is an actuary's | |
table," said he. "At your time of life the average expectancy of life is | |
only a few years even in a well-preserved man." | |
"Do you mean to insinuate that I am not a well-preserved man?" | |
"Well, Admiral, it is a trying life at sea. Sailors in their younger | |
days are gay dogs, and take it out of themselves. Then when they grow | |
older they are still hard at it, and have no chance of rest or peace. I | |
do not think a sailor's life a good one." | |
"I'll tell you what, sir," said the Admiral hotly. "If you have two | |
pairs of gloves I'll undertake to knock you out under three rounds. Or | |
I'll race you from here to St. Paul's, and my friend here will see fair. | |
I'll let you see whether I am an old man or not." | |
"This is beside the question," said the moneylender with a deprecatory | |
shrug. "The point is that if you died to-morrow where would be the | |
security then?" | |
"I could insure my life, and make the policy over to you." | |
"Your premiums for such a sum, if any office would have you, which I | |
very much doubt, would come to close on five hundred a year. That would | |
hardly suit your book." | |
"Well, sir, what do you intend to propose?" asked the Admiral. | |
"I might, to accommodate you, work it in another way. I should send for | |
a medical man, and have an opinion upon your life. Then I might see what | |
could be done." | |
"That is quite fair. I have no objection to that." | |
"There is a very clever doctor in the street here. Proudie is his name. | |
John, go and fetch Doctor Proudie." The youth was dispatched upon | |
his errand, while Mr. Metaxa sat at his desk, trimming his nails, and | |
shooting out little comments upon the weather. Presently feet were | |
heard upon the stairs, the moneylender hurried out, there was a sound of | |
whispering, and he returned with a large, fat, greasy-looking man, clad | |
in a much worn frock-coat, and a very dilapidated top hat. | |
"Doctor Proudie, gentlemen," said Mr. Metaxa. | |
The doctor bowed, smiled, whipped off his hat, and produced his | |
stethoscope from its interior with the air of a conjurer upon the stage. | |
"Which of these gentlemen am I to examine?" he asked, blinking from one | |
to the other of them. "Ah, it is you! Only your waistcoat! You need | |
not undo your collar. Thank you! A full breath! Thank you! Ninety-nine! | |
Thank you! Now hold your breath for a moment. Oh, dear, dear, what is | |
this I hear?" | |
"What is it then?" asked the Admiral coolly. | |
"Tut! tut! This is a great pity. Have you had rheumatic fever?" | |
"Never." | |
"You have had some serious illness?" | |
"Never." | |
"Ah, you are an admiral. You have been abroad, tropics, malaria, ague--I | |
know." | |
"I have never had a day's illness." | |
"Not to your knowledge; but you have inhaled unhealthy air, and it has | |
left its effect. You have an organic murmur--slight but distinct." | |
"Is it dangerous?" | |
"It might at anytime become so. You should not take violent exercise." | |
"Oh, indeed. It would hurt me to run a half mile?" | |
"It would be very dangerous." | |
"And a mile?" | |
"Would be almost certainly fatal." | |
"Then there is nothing else the matter?" | |
"No. But if the heart is weak, then everything is weak, and the life is | |
not a sound one." | |
"You see, Admiral," remarked Mr. Metaxa, as the doctor secreted his | |
stethoscope once more in his hat, "my remarks were not entirely uncalled | |
for. I am sorry that the doctor's opinion is not more favorable, but | |
this is a matter of business, and certain obvious precautions must be | |
taken." | |
"Of course. Then the matter is at an end." | |
"Well, we might even now do business. I am most anxious to be of use | |
to you. How long do you think, doctor, that this gentleman will in all | |
probability live?" | |
"Well, well, it's rather a delicate question to answer," said Dr. | |
Proudie, with a show of embarrassment. | |
"Not a bit, sir. Out with it! I have faced death too often to flinch | |
from it now, though I saw it as near me as you are." | |
"Well, well, we must go by averages of course. Shall we say two years? I | |
should think that you have a full two years before you." | |
"In two years your pension would bring you in L1,600. Now I will do my | |
very best for you, Admiral! I will advance you L2,000, and you can make | |
over to me your pension for your life. It is pure speculation on my | |
part. If you die to-morrow I lose my money. If the doctor's prophecy | |
is correct I shall still be out of pocket. If you live a little longer, | |
then I may see my money again. It is the very best I can do for you." | |
"Then you wish to buy my pension?" | |
"Yes, for two thousand down." | |
"And if I live for twenty years?" | |
"Oh, in that case of course my speculation would be more successful. But | |
you have heard the doctor's opinion." | |
"Would you advance the money instantly?" | |
"You should have a thousand at once. The other thousand I should expect | |
you to take in furniture." | |
"In furniture?" | |
"Yes, Admiral. We shall do you a beautiful houseful at that sum. It is | |
the custom of my clients to take half in furniture." | |
The Admiral sat in dire perplexity. He had come out to get money, and to | |
go back without any, to be powerless to help when his boy needed every | |
shilling to save him from disaster, that would be very bitter to him. On | |
the other hand, it was so much that he surrendered, and so little that | |
he received. Little, and yet something. Would it not be better than | |
going back empty-handed? He saw the yellow backed chequebook upon the | |
table. The moneylender opened it and dipped his pen into the ink. | |
"Shall I fill it up?" said he. | |
"I think, Admiral," remarked Westmacott, "that we had better have a | |
little walk and some luncheon before we settle this matter." | |
"Oh, we may as well do it at once. It would be absurd to postpone it | |
now," Metaxa spoke with some heat, and his eyes glinted angrily from | |
between his narrow lids at the imperturbable Charles. The Admiral was | |
simple in money matters, but he had seen much of men and had learned | |
to read them. He saw that venomous glance, and saw too that intense | |
eagerness was peeping out from beneath the careless air which the agent | |
had assumed. | |
"You're quite right, Westmacott," said he. "We'll have a little walk | |
before we settle it." | |
"But I may not be here this afternoon." | |
"Then we must choose another day." | |
"But why not settle it now?" | |
"Because I prefer not," said the Admiral shortly. | |
"Very well. But remember that my offer is only for to-day. It is off | |
unless you take it at once." | |
"Let it be off, then." | |
"There's my fee," cried the doctor. | |
"How much?" | |
"A guinea." | |
The Admiral threw a pound and a shilling upon the table. "Come, | |
Westmacott," said he, and they walked together from the room. | |
"I don't like it," said Charles, when they found themselves in the | |
street once more; "I don't profess to be a very sharp chap, but this is | |
a trifle too thin. What did he want to go out and speak to the doctor | |
for? And how very convenient this tale of a weak heart was! I believe | |
they are a couple of rogues, and in league with each other." | |
"A shark and a pilot fish," said the Admiral. | |
"I'll tell you what I propose, sir. There's a lawyer named McAdam who | |
does my aunt's business. He is a very honest fellow, and lives at | |
the other side of Poultry. We'll go over to him together and have his | |
opinion about the whole matter." | |
"How far is it to his place?" | |
"Oh, a mile at least. We can have a cab." | |
"A mile? Then we shall see if there is any truth in what that swab of | |
a doctor said. Come, my boy, and clap on all sail, and see who can stay | |
the longest." | |
Then the sober denizens of the heart of business London saw a singular | |
sight as they returned from their luncheons. Down the roadway, dodging | |
among cabs and carts, ran a weather-stained elderly man, with wide | |
flapping black hat, and homely suit of tweeds. With elbows braced back, | |
hands clenched near his armpits, and chest protruded, he scudded | |
along, while close at his heels lumbered a large-limbed, heavy, yellow | |
mustached young man, who seemed to feel the exercise a good deal more | |
than his senior. On they dashed, helter-skelter, until they pulled up | |
panting at the office where the lawyer of the Westmacotts was to be | |
found. | |
"There now!" cried the Admiral in triumph. "What d'ye think of that? | |
Nothing wrong in the engine-room, eh?" | |
"You seem fit enough, sir." | |
"Blessed if I believe the swab was a certificated doctor at all. He was | |
flying false colors, or I am mistaken." | |
"They keep the directories and registers in this eating-house," said | |
Westmacott. "We'll go and look him out." | |
They did so, but the medical rolls contained no such name as that of Dr. | |
Proudie, of Bread Street. | |
"Pretty villainy this!" cried the Admiral, thumping his chest. "A | |
dummy doctor and a vamped up disease. Well, we've tried the rogues, | |
Westmacott! Let us see what we can do with your honest man." | |
CHAPTER XIV. EASTWARD HO! | |
Mr. McAdam, of the firm of McAdam and Squire, was a highly polished man | |
who dwelt behind a highly polished table in the neatest and snuggest | |
of offices. He was white-haired and amiable, with a deep-lined aquiline | |
face, was addicted to low bows, and indeed, always seemed to carry | |
himself at half-cock, as though just descending into one, or just | |
recovering himself. He wore a high-buckled stock, took snuff, and | |
adorned his conversation with little scraps from the classics. | |
"My dear Sir," said he, when he had listened to their story, "any friend | |
of Mrs. Westmacott's is a friend of mine. Try a pinch. I wonder that | |
you should have gone to this man Metaxa. His advertisement is enough to | |
condemn him. Habet foenum in cornu. They are all rogues." | |
"The doctor was a rogue too. I didn't like the look of him at the time." | |
"Arcades ambo. But now we must see what we can do for you. Of course | |
what Metaxa said was perfectly right. The pension is in itself no | |
security at all, unless it were accompanied by a life assurance which | |
would be an income in itself. It is no good whatever." | |
His clients' faces fell. | |
"But there is the second alternative. You might sell the pension right | |
out. Speculative investors occasionally deal in such things. I have one | |
client, a sporting man, who would be very likely to take it up if we | |
could agree upon terms. Of course, I must follow Metaxa's example by | |
sending for a doctor." | |
For the second time was the Admiral punched and tapped and listened to. | |
This time, however, there could be no question of the qualifications | |
of the doctor, a well-known Fellow of the College of Surgeons, and his | |
report was as favorable as the other's had been adverse. | |
"He has the heart and chest of a man of forty," said he. "I can | |
recommend his life as one of the best of his age that I have ever | |
examined." | |
"That's well," said Mr. McAdam, making a note of the doctor's remarks, | |
while the Admiral disbursed a second guinea. "Your price, I understand, | |
is five thousand pounds. I can communicate with Mr. Elberry, my client, | |
and let you know whether he cares to touch the matter. Meanwhile you can | |
leave your pension papers here, and I will give you a receipt for them." | |
"Very well. I should like the money soon." | |
"That is why I am retaining the papers. If I can see Mr. Elberry to-day | |
we may let you have a cheque to-morrow. Try another pinch. No? Well, | |
good-bye. I am very happy to have been of service." Mr. McAdam bowed | |
them out, for he was a very busy man, and they found themselves in the | |
street once more with lighter hearts than when they had left it. | |
"Well, Westmacott, I am sure I am very much obliged to you," said the | |
Admiral. "You have stood by me when I was the better for a little help, | |
for I'm clean out of my soundings among these city sharks. But I've | |
something to do now which is more in my own line, and I need not trouble | |
you any more." | |
"Oh, it is no trouble. I have nothing to do. I never have anything to | |
do. I don't suppose I could do it if I had. I should be delighted to | |
come with you, sir, if I can be of any use." | |
"No, no, my lad. You go home again. It would be kind of you, though, if | |
you would look in at number one when you get back and tell my wife that | |
all's well with me, and that I'll be back in an hour or so." | |
"All right, sir. I'll tell her." Westmacott raised his hat and strode | |
away to the westward, while the Admiral, after a hurried lunch, bent his | |
steps towards the east. | |
It was a long walk, but the old seaman swung along at a rousing pace, | |
leaving street after street behind him. The great business places | |
dwindled down into commonplace shops and dwellings, which decreased and | |
became more stunted, even as the folk who filled them did, until he was | |
deep in the evil places of the eastern end. It was a land of huge, | |
dark houses and of garish gin-shops, a land, too, where life moves | |
irregularly and where adventures are to be gained--as the Admiral was to | |
learn to his cost. | |
He was hurrying down one of the long, narrow, stone-flagged lanes | |
between the double lines of crouching, disheveled women and of dirty | |
children who sat on the hollowed steps of the houses, and basked in | |
the autumn sun. At one side was a barrowman with a load of walnuts, and | |
beside the barrow a bedraggled woman with a black fringe and a chequered | |
shawl thrown over her head. She was cracking walnuts and picking them | |
out of the shells, throwing out a remark occasionally to a rough man in | |
a rabbit-skin cap, with straps under the knees of his corduroy trousers, | |
who stood puffing a black clay pipe with his back against the wall. What | |
the cause of the quarrel was, or what sharp sarcasm from the woman's | |
lips pricked suddenly through that thick skin may never be known, but | |
suddenly the man took his pipe in his left hand, leaned forward, and | |
deliberately struck her across the face with his right. It was a slap | |
rather than a blow, but the woman gave a sharp cry and cowered up | |
against the barrow with her hand to her cheek. | |
"You infernal villain!" cried the Admiral, raising his stick. "You brute | |
and blackguard!" | |
"Garn!" growled the rough, with the deep rasping intonation of a savage. | |
"Garn out o' this or I'll----" He took a step forward with uplifted | |
hand, but in an instant down came cut number three upon his wrist, and | |
cut number five across his thigh, and cut number one full in the center | |
of his rabbit-skin cap. It was not a heavy stick, but it was strong | |
enough to leave a good red weal wherever it fell. The rough yelled | |
with pain, and rushed in, hitting with both hands, and kicking with his | |
ironshod boots, but the Admiral had still a quick foot and a true eye, | |
so that he bounded backwards and sideways, still raining a shower of | |
blows upon his savage antagonist. Suddenly, however, a pair of arms | |
closed round his neck, and glancing backwards he caught a glimpse of the | |
black coarse fringe of the woman whom he had befriended. "I've got him!" | |
she shrieked. "I'll 'old 'im. Now, Bill, knock the tripe out of him!" | |
Her grip was as strong as a man's, and her wrist pressed like an iron | |
bar upon the Admiral's throat. He made a desperate effort to disengage | |
himself, but the most that he could do was to swing her round, so as to | |
place her between his adversary and himself. As it proved, it was the | |
very best thing that he could have done. The rough, half-blinded and | |
maddened by the blows which he had received, struck out with all his | |
ungainly strength, just as his partner's head swung round in front | |
of him. There was a noise like that of a stone hitting a wall, a | |
deep groan, her grasp relaxed, and she dropped a dead weight upon the | |
pavement, while the Admiral sprang back and raised his stick once more, | |
ready either for attack or defense. Neither were needed, however, for | |
at that moment there was a scattering of the crowd, and two police | |
constables, burly and helmeted, pushed their way through the rabble. | |
At the sight of them the rough took to his heels, and was instantly | |
screened from view by a veil of his friends and neighbors. | |
"I have been assaulted," panted the Admiral. "This woman was attacked | |
and I had to defend her." | |
"This is Bermondsey Sal," said one police officer, bending over the | |
bedraggled heap of tattered shawl and dirty skirt. "She's got it hot | |
this time." | |
"He was a shortish man, thick, with a beard." | |
"Ah, that's Black Davie. He's been up four times for beating her. He's | |
about done the job now. If I were you I would let that sort settle their | |
own little affairs, sir." | |
"Do you think that a man who holds the Queen's commission will stand by | |
and see a woman struck?" cried the Admiral indignantly. | |
"Well, just as you like, sir. But you've lost your watch, I see." | |
"My watch!" He clapped his hand to his waistcoat. The chain was hanging | |
down in front, and the watch gone. | |
He passed his hand over his forehead. "I would not have lost that watch | |
for anything," said he. "No money could replace it. It was given me by | |
the ship's company after our African cruise. It has an inscription." | |
The policeman shrugged his shoulders. "It comes from meddling," said he. | |
"What'll you give me if I tell yer where it is?" said a sharp-faced boy | |
among the crowd. "Will you gimme a quid?" | |
"Certainly." | |
"Well, where's the quid?" | |
The Admiral took a sovereign from his pocket. "Here it is." | |
"Then 'ere's the ticker!" The boy pointed to the clenched hand of the | |
senseless woman. A glimmer of gold shone out from between the fingers, | |
and on opening them up, there was the Admiral's chronometer. This | |
interesting victim had throttled her protector with one hand, while she | |
had robbed him with the other. | |
The Admiral left his address with the policeman, satisfied that the | |
woman was only stunned, not dead, and then set off upon his way once | |
more, the poorer perhaps in his faith in human nature, but in very good | |
spirits none the less. He walked with dilated nostrils and clenched | |
hands, all glowing and tingling with the excitement of the combat, and | |
warmed with the thought that he could still, when there was need, take | |
his own part in a street brawl in spite of his three-score and odd | |
years. | |
His way now led towards the river-side regions, and a cleansing whiff | |
of tar was to be detected in the stagnant autumn air. Men with the blue | |
jersey and peaked cap of the boatman, or the white ducks of the dockers, | |
began to replace the corduroys and fustian of the laborers. Shops with | |
nautical instruments in the windows, rope and paint sellers, and slop | |
shops with long rows of oilskins dangling from hooks, all proclaimed | |
the neighborhood of the docks. The Admiral quickened his pace and | |
straightened his figure as his surroundings became more nautical, until | |
at last, peeping between two high, dingy wharfs, he caught a glimpse of | |
the mud-colored waters of the Thames, and of the bristle of masts | |
and funnels which rose from its broad bosom. To the right lay a quiet | |
street, with many brass plates upon either side, and wire blinds in | |
all of the windows. The Admiral walked slowly down it until "The Saint | |
Lawrence Shipping Company" caught his eye. He crossed the road, pushed | |
open the door, and found himself in a low-ceilinged office, with a long | |
counter at one end and a great number of wooden sections of ships stuck | |
upon boards and plastered all over the walls. | |
"Is Mr. Henry in?" asked the Admiral. | |
"No, sir," answered an elderly man from a high seat in the corner. "He | |
has not come into town to-day. I can manage any business you may wish | |
seen to." | |
"You don't happen to have a first or second officer's place vacant, do | |
you?" | |
The manager looked with a dubious eye at his singular applicant. | |
"Do you hold certificates?" he asked. | |
"I hold every nautical certificate there is." | |
"Then you won't do for us." | |
"Why not?" | |
"Your age, sir." | |
"I give you my word that I can see as well as ever, and am as good a man | |
in every way." | |
"I don't doubt it." | |
"Why should my age be a bar, then?" | |
"Well, I must put it plainly. If a man of your age, holding | |
certificates, has not got past a second officer's berth, there must be | |
a black mark against him somewhere. I don't know what it is, drink or | |
temper, or want of judgment, but something there must be." | |
"I assure you there is nothing, but I find myself stranded, and so have | |
to turn to the old business again." | |
"Oh, that's it," said the manager, with suspicion in his eye. "How long | |
were you in your last billet?" | |
"Fifty-one years." | |
"What!" | |
"Yes, sir, one-and-fifty years." | |
"In the same employ?" | |
"Yes." | |
"Why, you must have begun as a child." | |
"I was twelve when I joined." | |
"It must be a strangely managed business," said the manager, "which | |
allows men to leave it who have served for fifty years, and who are | |
still as good as ever. Who did you serve?" | |
"The Queen. Heaven bless her!" | |
"Oh, you were in the Royal Navy. What rating did you hold?" | |
"I am Admiral of the Fleet." | |
The manager started, and sprang down from his high stool. | |
"My name is Admiral Hay Denver. There is my card. And here are the | |
records of my service. I don't, you understand, want to push another man | |
from his billet; but if you should chance to have a berth open, I should | |
be very glad of it. I know the navigation from the Cod Banks right up to | |
Montreal a great deal better than I know the streets of London." | |
The astonished manager glanced over the blue papers which his visitor | |
had handed him. "Won't you take a chair, Admiral?" said he. | |
"Thank you! But I should be obliged if you would drop my title now. I | |
told you because you asked me, but I've left the quarter-deck, and I am | |
plain Mr. Hay Denver now." | |
"May I ask," said the manager, "are you the same Denver who commanded at | |
one time on the North American station?" | |
"I did." | |
"Then it was you who got one of our boats, the Comus, off the rocks | |
in the Bay of Fundy? The directors voted you three hundred guineas as | |
salvage, and you refused them." | |
"It was an offer which should not have been made," said the Admiral | |
sternly. | |
"Well, it reflects credit upon you that you should think so. If Mr. | |
Henry were here I am sure that he would arrange this matter for you at | |
once. As it is, I shall lay it before the directors to-day, and I am | |
sure that they will be proud to have you in our employment, and, I hope, | |
in some more suitable position than that which you suggest." | |
"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the Admiral, and started off | |
again, well pleased, upon his homeward journey. | |
CHAPTER XV. STILL AMONG SHOALS. | |
Next day brought the Admiral a cheque for L5,000 from Mr. McAdam, and | |
a stamped agreement by which he made over his pension papers to the | |
speculative investor. It was not until he had signed and sent it off | |
that the full significance of all that he had done broke upon him. He | |
had sacrificed everything. His pension was gone. He had nothing save | |
only what he could earn. But the stout old heart never quailed. He | |
waited eagerly for a letter from the Saint Lawrence Shipping Company, | |
and in the meanwhile he gave his landlord a quarter's notice. Hundred | |
pound a year houses would in future be a luxury which he could not | |
aspire to. A small lodging in some inexpensive part of London must be | |
the substitute for his breezy Norwood villa. So be it, then! Better that | |
a thousand fold than that his name should be associated with failure and | |
disgrace. | |
On that morning Harold Denver was to meet the creditors of the firm, | |
and to explain the situation to them. It was a hateful task, a degrading | |
task, but he set himself to do it with quiet resolution. At home they | |
waited in intense anxiety to learn the result of the meeting. It was | |
late before he returned, haggard and pale, like a man who has done and | |
suffered much. | |
"What's this board in front of the house?" he asked. | |
"We are going to try a little change of scene," said the Admiral. "This | |
place is neither town nor country. But never mind that, boy. Tell us | |
what happened in the City." | |
"God help me! My wretched business driving you out of house and home!" | |
cried Harold, broken down by this fresh evidence of the effects of his | |
misfortunes. "It is easier for me to meet my creditors than to see you | |
two suffering so patiently for my sake." | |
"Tut, tut!" cried the Admiral. "There's no suffering in the matter. | |
Mother would rather be near the theaters. That's at the bottom of it, | |
isn't it, mother? You come and sit down here between us and tell us all | |
about it." | |
Harold sat down with a loving hand in each of his. | |
"It's not so bad as we thought," said he, "and yet it is bad enough. | |
I have about ten days to find the money, but I don't know which way to | |
turn for it. Pearson, however, lied, as usual, when he spoke of L13,000. | |
The amount is not quite L7,000." | |
The Admiral claped his hands. "I knew we should weather it after all! | |
Hurrah my boy! Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!" | |
Harold gazed at him in surprise, while the old seaman waved his arm | |
above his head and bellowed out three stentorian cheers. "Where am I to | |
get seven thousand pounds from, dad?" he asked. | |
"Never mind. You spin your yarn." | |
"Well, they were very good and very kind, but of course they must | |
have either their money or their money's worth. They passed a vote | |
of sympathy with me, and agreed to wait ten days before they took any | |
proceedings. Three of them, whose claim came to L3,500, told me that if | |
I would give them my personal I.O.U., and pay interest at the rate of | |
five per cent, their amounts might stand over as long as I wished. That | |
would be a charge of L175 upon my income, but with economy I could meet | |
it, and it diminishes the debt by one-half." | |
Again the Admiral burst out cheering. | |
"There remains, therefore, about L3,200 which has to be found within ten | |
days. No man shall lose by me. I gave them my word in the room that if I | |
worked my soul out of my body every one of them should be paid. I shall | |
not spend a penny upon myself until it is done. But some of them can't | |
wait. They are poor men themselves, and must have their money. They have | |
issued a warrant for Pearson's arrest. But they think that he has got | |
away to the States." | |
"These men shall have their money," said the Admiral. | |
"Dad!" | |
"Yes, my boy, you don't know the resources of the family. One never does | |
know until one tries. What have you yourself now?" | |
"I have about a thousand pounds invested." | |
"All right. And I have about as much more. There's a good start. Now, | |
mother, it is your turn. What is that little bit of paper of yours?" | |
Mrs. Denver unfolded it, and placed it upon Harold's knee. | |
"Five thousand pounds!" he gasped. | |
"Ah, but mother is not the only rich one. Look at this!" And the Admiral | |
unfolded his cheque, and placed it upon the other knee. | |
Harold gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. "Ten thousand | |
pounds!" he cried. "Good heavens! where did these come from?" | |
"You will not worry any longer, dear," murmured his mother, slipping her | |
arm round him. | |
But his quick eye had caught the signature upon one of the cheques. | |
"Doctor Walker!" he cried, flushing. "This is Clara's doing. Oh, dad, we | |
cannot take this money. It would not be right nor honorable." | |
"No, boy, I am glad you think so. It is something, however, to have | |
proved one's friend, for a real good friend he is. It was he who brought | |
it in, though Clara sent him. But this other money will be enough to | |
cover everything, and it is all my own." | |
"Your own? Where did you get it, dad?" | |
"Tut, tut! See what it is to have a City man to deal with. It is my own, | |
and fairly earned, and that is enough." | |
"Dear old dad!" Harold squeezed his gnarled hand. "And you, mother! | |
You have lifted the trouble from my heart. I feel another man. You have | |
saved my honor, my good name, everything. I cannot owe you more, for I | |
owe you everything already." | |
So while the autumn sunset shone ruddily through the broad window these | |
three sat together hand in hand, with hearts which were too full to | |
speak. Suddenly the soft thudding of tennis balls was heard, and Mrs. | |
Westmacott bounded into view upon the lawn with brandished racket and | |
short skirts fluttering in the breeze. The sight came as a relief to | |
their strained nerves, and they burst all three into a hearty fit of | |
laughter. | |
"She is playing with her nephew," said Harold at last. "The Walkers have | |
not come out yet. I think that it would be well if you were to give me | |
that cheque, mother, and I were to return it in person." | |
"Certainly, Harold. I think it would be very nice." | |
He went in through the garden. Clara and the Doctor were sitting | |
together in the dining-room. She sprang to her feet at the sight of him. | |
"Oh, Harold, I have been waiting for you so impatiently," she cried; "I | |
saw you pass the front windows half an hour ago. I would have come in if | |
I dared. Do tell us what has happened." | |
"I have come in to thank you both. How can I repay you for your | |
kindness? Here is your cheque, Doctor. I have not needed it. I find that | |
I can lay my hands on enough to pay my creditors." | |
"Thank God!" said Clara fervently. | |
"The sum is less than I thought, and our resources considerably more. We | |
have been able to do it with ease." | |
"With ease!" The Doctor's brow clouded and his manner grew cold. "I | |
think, Harold, that you would do better to take this money of mine, than | |
to use that which seems to you to be gained with ease." | |
"Thank you, sir. If I borrowed from any one it would be from you. But | |
my father has this very sum, five thousand pounds, and, as I tell him, I | |
owe him so much that I have no compunction about owing him more." | |
"No compunction! Surely there are some sacrifices which a son should not | |
allow his parents to make." | |
"Sacrifices! What do you mean?" | |
"Is it possible that you do not know how this money has been obtained?" | |
"I give you my word, Doctor Walker, that I have no idea. I asked my | |
father, but he refused to tell me." | |
"I thought not," said the Doctor, the gloom clearing from his brow. "I | |
was sure that you were not a man who, to clear yourself from a little | |
money difficulty, would sacrifice the happiness of your mother and the | |
health of your father." | |
"Good gracious! what do you mean?" | |
"It is only right that you should know. That money represents the | |
commutation of your father's pension. He has reduced himself to poverty, | |
and intends to go to sea again to earn a living." | |
"To sea again! Impossible!" | |
"It is the truth. Charles Westmacott has told Ida. He was with him | |
in the City when he took his poor pension about from dealer to dealer | |
trying to sell it. He succeeded at last, and hence the money." | |
"He has sold his pension!" cried Harold, with his hands to his face. "My | |
dear old dad has sold his pension!" He rushed from the room, and burst | |
wildly into the presence of his parents once more. "I cannot take it, | |
father," he cried. "Better bankruptcy than that. Oh, if I had only known | |
your plan! We must have back the pension. Oh, mother, mother, how could | |
you think me capable of such selfishness? Give me the cheque, dad, and | |
I will see this man to-night, for I would sooner die like a dog in the | |
ditch than touch a penny of this money." | |
CHAPTER XVI. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR. | |
Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was being played in | |
these three suburban villas, while on a commonplace stage love and humor | |
and fears and lights and shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other, | |
and while these three families, drifted together by fate, were shaping | |
each other's destinies and working out in their own fashion the strange, | |
intricate ends of human life, there were human eyes which watched over | |
every stage of the performance, and which were keenly critical of | |
every actor on it. Across the road beyond the green palings and the | |
close-cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their creeper-framed windows, | |
sat the two old ladies, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking | |
out as from a private box at all that was being enacted before them. | |
The growing friendship of the three families, the engagement of Harold | |
Denver with Clara Walker, the engagement of Charles Westmacott with her | |
sister, the dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over | |
the Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and the | |
unhappiness which they had caused their father, not one of these | |
incidents escaped the notice of the two maiden ladies. Bertha the | |
younger had a smile or a sigh for the lovers, Monica the elder a frown | |
or a shrug for the elders. Every night they talked over what they had | |
seen, and their own dull, uneventful life took a warmth and a coloring | |
from their neighbors as a blank wall reflects a beacon fire. | |
And now it was destined that they should experience the one keen | |
sensation of their later years, the one memorable incident from which | |
all future incidents should be dated. | |
It was on the very night which succeeded the events which have just been | |
narrated, when suddenly into Monica William's head, as she tossed upon | |
her sleepless bed, there shot a thought which made her sit up with a | |
thrill and a gasp. | |
"Bertha," said she, plucking at the shoulder of her sister, "I have left | |
the front window open." | |
"No, Monica, surely not." Bertha sat up also, and thrilled in sympathy. | |
"I am sure of it. You remember I had forgotten to water the pots, and | |
then I opened the window, and Jane called me about the jam, and I have | |
never been in the room since." | |
"Good gracious, Monica, it is a mercy that we have not been murdered in | |
our beds. There was a house broken into at Forest Hill last week. Shall | |
we go down and shut it?" | |
"I dare not go down alone, dear, but if you will come with me. Put on | |
your slippers and dressing-gown. We do not need a candle. Now, Bertha, | |
we will go down together." | |
Two little white patches moved vaguely through the darkness, the stairs | |
creaked, the door whined, and they were at the front room window. Monica | |
closed it gently down, and fastened the snib. | |
"What a beautiful moon!" said she, looking out. "We can see as clearly | |
as if it were day. How peaceful and quiet the three houses are over | |
yonder! It seems quite sad to see that 'To Let' card upon number one. I | |
wonder how number two will like their going. For my part I could better | |
spare that dreadful woman at number three with her short skirts and | |
her snake. But, oh, Bertha, look! look!! look!!!" Her voice had fallen | |
suddenly to a quivering whisper and she was pointing to the Westmacotts' | |
house. Her sister gave a gasp of horror, and stood with a clutch at | |
Monica's arm, staring in the same direction. | |
There was a light in the front room, a slight, wavering light such as | |
would be given by a small candle or taper. The blind was down, but | |
the light shone dimly through. Outside in the garden, with his figure | |
outlined against the luminous square, there stood a man, his back to the | |
road, his two hands upon the window ledge, and his body rather bent as | |
though he were trying to peep in past the blind. So absolutely still | |
and motionless was he that in spite of the moon they might well have | |
overlooked him were it not for that tell-tale light behind. | |
"Good heaven!" gasped Bertha, "it is a burglar." | |
But her sister set her mouth grimly and shook her head. "We shall see," | |
she whispered. "It may be something worse." | |
Swiftly and furtively the man stood suddenly erect, and began to push | |
the window slowly up. Then he put one knee upon the sash, glanced round | |
to see that all was safe, and climbed over into the room. As he did so | |
he had to push the blind aside. Then the two spectators saw where the | |
light came from. Mrs. Westmacott was standing, as rigid as a statue, in | |
the center of the room, with a lighted taper in her right hand. For an | |
instant they caught a glimpse of her stern face and her white collar. | |
Then the blind fell back into position, and the two figures disappeared | |
from their view. | |
"Oh, that dreadful woman!" cried Monica. "That dreadful, dreadful woman! | |
She was waiting for him. You saw it with your own eyes, sister Bertha!" | |
"Hush, dear, hush and listen!" said her more charitable companion. | |
They pushed their own window up once more, and watched from behind the | |
curtains. | |
For a long time all was silent within the house. The light still | |
stood motionless as though Mrs. Westmacott remained rigidly in the one | |
position, while from time to time a shadow passed in front of it to show | |
that her midnight visitor was pacing up and down in front of her. Once | |
they saw his outline clearly, with his hands outstretched as if in | |
appeal or entreaty. Then suddenly there was a dull sound, a cry, the | |
noise of a fall, the taper was extinguished, and a dark figure fled in | |
the moonlight, rushed across the garden, and vanished amid the shrubs at | |
the farther side. | |
Then only did the two old ladies understand that they had looked on | |
whilst a tragedy had been enacted. "Help!" they cried, and "Help!" in | |
their high, thin voices, timidly at first, but gathering volume as they | |
went on, until the Wilderness rang with their shrieks. Lights shone | |
in all the windows opposite, chains rattled, bars were unshot, doors | |
opened, and out rushed friends to the rescue. Harold, with a stick; the | |
Admiral, with his sword, his grey head and bare feet protruding from | |
either end of a long brown ulster; finally, Doctor Walker, with a poker, | |
all ran to the help of the Westmacotts. Their door had been already | |
opened, and they crowded tumultuously into the front room. | |
Charles Westmacott, white to his lips, was kneeling an the floor, | |
supporting his aunt's head upon his knee. She lay outstretched, dressed | |
in her ordinary clothes, the extinguished taper still grasped in her | |
hand, no mark or wound upon her--pale, placid, and senseless. | |
"Thank God you are come, Doctor," said Charles, looking up. "Do tell me | |
how she is, and what I should do." | |
Doctor Walker kneeled beside her, and passed his left hand over her | |
head, while he grasped her pulse with the right. | |
"She has had a terrible blow," said he. "It must have been with some | |
blunt weapon. Here is the place behind the ear. But she is a woman of | |
extraordinary physical powers. Her pulse is full and slow. There is no | |
stertor. It is my belief that she is merely stunned, and that she is in | |
no danger at all." | |
"Thank God for that!" | |
"We must get her to bed. We shall carry her upstairs, and then I shall | |
send my girls in to her. But who has done this?" | |
"Some robber," said Charles. "You see that the window is open. She must | |
have heard him and come down, for she was always perfectly fearless. I | |
wish to goodness she had called me." | |
"But she was dressed." | |
"Sometimes she sits up very late." | |
"I did sit up very late," said a voice. She had opened her eyes, and was | |
blinking at them in the lamplight. "A villain came in through the window | |
and struck me with a life-preserver. You can tell the police so when | |
they come. Also that it was a little fat man. Now, Charles, give me your | |
arm and I shall go upstairs." | |
But her spirit was greater than her strength, for, as she staggered to | |
her feet, her head swam round, and she would have fallen again had her | |
nephew not thrown his arms round her. They carried her upstairs among | |
them and laid her upon the bed, where the Doctor watched beside her, | |
while Charles went off to the police-station, and the Denvers mounted | |
guard over the frightened maids. | |
CHAPTER XVII. IN PORT AT LAST. | |
Day had broken before the several denizens of the Wilderness had all | |
returned to their homes, the police finished their inquiries, and all | |
come back to its normal quiet. Mrs. Westmacott had been left sleeping | |
peacefully with a small chloral draught to steady her nerves and a | |
handkerchief soaked in arnica bound round her head. It was with some | |
surprise, therefore, that the Admiral received a note from her about ten | |
o'clock, asking him to be good enough to step in to her. He hurried in, | |
fearing that she might have taken some turn for the worse, but he was | |
reassured to find her sitting up in her bed, with Clara and Ida Walker | |
in attendance upon her. She had removed the handkerchief, and had put on | |
a little cap with pink ribbons, and a maroon dressing-jacket, daintily | |
fulled at the neck and sleeves. | |
"My dear friend," said she as he entered, "I wish to make a last few | |
remarks to you. No, no," she continued, laughing, as she saw a look of | |
dismay upon his face. "I shall not dream of dying for at least another | |
thirty years. A woman should be ashamed to die before she is seventy. | |
I wish, Clara, that you would ask your father to step up. And you, Ida, | |
just pass me my cigarettes, and open me a bottle of stout." | |
"Now then," she continued, as the doctor joined their party. "I don't | |
quite know what I ought to say to you, Admiral. You want some very plain | |
speaking to." | |
"'Pon my word, ma'am, I don't know what you are talking about." | |
"The idea of you at your age talking of going to sea, and leaving that | |
dear, patient little wife of yours at home, who has seen nothing of you | |
all her life! It's all very well for you. You have the life, and the | |
change, and the excitement, but you don't think of her eating her heart | |
out in a dreary London lodging. You men are all the same." | |
"Well, ma'am, since you know so much, you probably know also that I have | |
sold my pension. How am I to live if I do not turn my hand to work?" | |
Mrs. Westmacott produced a large registered envelope from beneath the | |
sheets and tossed it over to the old seaman. | |
"That excuse won't do. There are your pension papers. Just see if they | |
are right." | |
He broke the seal, and out tumbled the very papers which he had made | |
over to McAdam two days before. | |
"But what am I to do with these now?" he cried in bewilderment. | |
"You will put them in a safe place, or get a friend to do so, and, if | |
you do your duty, you will go to your wife and beg her pardon for having | |
even for an instant thought of leaving her." | |
The Admiral passed his hand over his rugged forehead. "This is very good | |
of you, ma'am," said he, "very good and kind, and I know that you are a | |
staunch friend, but for all that these papers mean money, and though we | |
may have been in broken water lately, we are not quite in such straits | |
as to have to signal to our friends. When we do, ma'am, there's no one | |
we would look to sooner than to you." | |
"Don't be ridiculous!" said the widow. "You know nothing whatever about | |
it, and yet you stand there laying down the law. I'll have my way in | |
the matter, and you shall take the papers, for it is no favor that I am | |
doing you, but simply a restoration of stolen property." | |
"How's that, ma'am?" | |
"I am just going to explain, though you might take a lady's word for | |
it without asking any questions. Now, what I am going to say is just | |
between you four, and must go no farther. I have my own reasons for | |
wishing to keep it from the police. Who do you think it was who struck | |
me last night, Admiral?" | |
"Some villain, ma'am. I don't know his name." | |
"But I do. It was the same man who ruined or tried to ruin your son. It | |
was my only brother, Jeremiah." | |
"Ah!" | |
"I will tell you about him--or a little about him, for he has done much | |
which I would not care to talk of, nor you to listen to. He was always | |
a villain, smooth-spoken and plausible, but a dangerous, subtle villain | |
all the same. If I have some hard thoughts about mankind I can trace | |
them back to the childhood which I spent with my brother. He is my only | |
living relative, for my other brother, Charles's father, was killed in | |
the Indian mutiny. | |
"Our father was rich, and when he died he made a good provision both for | |
Jeremiah and for me. He knew Jeremiah and he mistrusted him, however; so | |
instead of giving him all that he meant him to have he handed me over a | |
part of it, telling me, with what was almost his dying breath, to hold | |
it in trust for my brother, and to use it in his behalf when he should | |
have squandered or lost all that he had. This arrangement was meant to | |
be a secret between my father and myself, but unfortunately his words | |
were overheard by the nurse, and she repeated them afterwards to my | |
brother, so that he came to know that I held some money in trust for | |
him. I suppose tobacco will not harm my head, Doctor? Thank you, then I | |
shall trouble you for the matches, Ida." She lit a cigarette, and leaned | |
back upon the pillow, with the blue wreaths curling from her lips. | |
"I cannot tell you how often he has attempted to get that money from me. | |
He has bullied, cajoled, threatened, coaxed, done all that a man could | |
do. I still held it with the presentiment that a need for it would come. | |
When I heard of this villainous business, his flight, and his leaving | |
his partner to face the storm, above all that my old friend had been | |
driven to surrender his income in order to make up for my brother's | |
defalcations, I felt that now indeed I had a need for it. I sent in | |
Charles yesterday to Mr. McAdam, and his client, upon hearing the facts | |
of the case, very graciously consented to give back the papers, and | |
to take the money which he had advanced. Not a word of thanks to me, | |
Admiral. I tell you that it was very cheap benevolence, for it was all | |
done with his own money, and how could I use it better? | |
"I thought that I should probably hear from him soon, and I did. Last | |
evening there was handed in a note of the usual whining, cringing tone. | |
He had come back from abroad at the risk of his life and liberty, just | |
in order that he might say good-bye to the only sister he ever had, and | |
to entreat my forgiveness for any pain which he had caused me. He would | |
never trouble me again, and he begged only that I would hand over to him | |
the sum which I held in trust for him. That, with what he had already, | |
would be enough to start him as an honest man in the new world, when | |
he would ever remember and pray for the dear sister who had been his | |
savior. That was the style of the letter, and it ended by imploring me | |
to leave the window-latch open, and to be in the front room at three in | |
the morning, when he would come to receive my last kiss and to bid me | |
farewell. | |
"Bad as he was, I could not, when he trusted me, betray him. I said | |
nothing, but I was there at the hour. He entered through the window, | |
and implored me to give him the money. He was terribly changed; gaunt, | |
wolfish, and spoke like a madman. I told him that I had spent the money. | |
He gnashed his teeth at me, and swore it was his money. I told him that | |
I had spent it on him. He asked me how. I said in trying to make him an | |
honest man, and in repairing the results of his villainy. He shrieked | |
out a curse, and pulling something out of the breast of his coat--a | |
loaded stick, I think--he struck me with it, and I remembered nothing | |
more." | |
"The blackguard!" cried the Doctor, "but the police must be hot upon his | |
track." | |
"I fancy not," Mrs. Westmacott answered calmly. "As my brother is a | |
particularly tall, thin man, and as the police are looking for a short, | |
fat one, I do not think that it is very probable that they will catch | |
him. It is best, I think, that these little family matters should be | |
adjusted in private." | |
"My dear ma'am," said the Admiral, "if it is indeed this man's money | |
that has bought back my pension, then I can have no scruples about | |
taking it. You have brought sunshine upon us, ma'am, when the clouds | |
were at their darkest, for here is my boy who insists upon returning | |
the money which I got. He can keep it now to pay his debts. For what you | |
have done I can only ask God to bless you, ma'am, and as to thanking you | |
I can't even----" | |
"Then pray don't try," said the widow. "Now run away, Admiral, and make | |
your peace with Mrs. Denver. I am sure if I were she it would be a long | |
time before I should forgive you. As for me, I am going to America when | |
Charles goes. You'll take me so far, won't you, Ida? There is a college | |
being built in Denver which is to equip the woman of the future for the | |
struggle of life, and especially for her battle against man. Some months | |
ago the committee offered me a responsible situation upon the staff, and | |
I have decided now to accept it, for Charles's marriage removes the | |
last tie which binds me to England. You will write to me sometimes, | |
my friends, and you will address your letters to Professor Westmacott, | |
Emancipation College, Denver. From there I shall watch how the glorious | |
struggle goes in conservative old England, and if I am needed you will | |
find me here again fighting in the forefront of the fray. Good-bye--but | |
not you, girls; I have still a word I wish to say to you. | |
"Give me your hand, Ida, and yours, Clara," said she when they were | |
alone. "Oh, you naughty little pusses, aren't you ashamed to look me in | |
the face? Did you think--did you really think that I was so very blind, | |
and could not see your little plot? You did it very well, I must say | |
that, and really I think that I like you better as you are. But you had | |
all your pains for nothing, you little conspirators, for I give you my | |
word that I had quite made up my mind not to have him." | |
And so within a few weeks our little ladies from their observatory saw | |
a mighty bustle in the Wilderness, when two-horse carriages came, and | |
coachmen with favors, to bear away the twos who were destined to come | |
back one. And they themselves in their crackling silk dresses went | |
across, as invited, to the big double wedding breakfast which was held | |
in the house of Doctor Walker. Then there was health-drinking, and | |
laughter, and changing of dresses, and rice-throwing when the carriages | |
drove up again, and two more couples started on that journey which ends | |
only with life itself. | |
Charles Westmacott is now a flourishing ranchman in the western part | |
of Texas, where he and his sweet little wife are the two most popular | |
persons in all that county. Of their aunt they see little, but from time | |
to time they see notices in the papers that there is a focus of light | |
in Denver, where mighty thunderbolts are being forged which will one day | |
bring the dominant sex upon their knees. The Admiral and his wife still | |
live at number one, while Harold and Clara have taken number two, where | |
Doctor Walker continues to reside. As to the business, it had been | |
reconstructed, and the energy and ability of the junior partner had soon | |
made up for all the ill that had been done by his senior. Yet with his | |
sweet and refined home atmosphere he is able to realize his wish, and | |
to keep himself free from the sordid aims and base ambitions which drag | |
down the man whose business lies too exclusively in the money market | |
of the vast Babylon. As he goes back every evening from the crowds of | |
Throgmorton Street to the tree-lined peaceful avenues of Norwood, so he | |
has found it possible in spirit also to do one's duties amidst the babel | |
of the City, and yet to live beyond it. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Beyond the City, by Arthur Conan Doyle | |
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