Complete Novels of E Nesbit, page 278
‘I said nothing — he went away, and I came here.’ He spoke in that particularly even and monotonous voice which, with some people, is always the token of suppressed agitation.
‘I mean what had you said to make him say that?’
‘I told him the truth.’
‘But perhaps you said the truth too sharply, and, besides, you ought to make it up with him — especially as you’re the eldest. It’s so terrible for brothers to quarrel.’ She ended with a little didactic air which became her very well.
‘I am afraid this is one of the quarrels that can’t be made up. I can’t alter facts; neither can he, unfortunately.’
‘Is it so very serious?’ she asked. ‘Oh — papa will be so sorry. But you’ll feel differently when you have had time to think it over.’
‘Circumstances don’t change by being thought over.’
‘No, but our view of them does.’
‘Well, I can say this, Miss Stanley; if ever I could change my opinion of my brother’s conduct I should be only too glad, and I should be the first to make advances towards reconciliation.’
‘Why, surely, Mr Roland’s done nothing wrong?’
‘You may be sure he has, in my opinion at least, or I should not have spoken to him as I did; knowing, too, all that it involved,’ he added in a lower voice.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Clare in quite an awestruck tone — all that her father had told her about old Mr Ferrier’s will coming into her mind with a rush. ‘Why, I had forgotten that.’
‘Yes,’ said Richard, looking straight at her for the first time that afternoon,’ I shall lose my living, and more, the hope of my life; but at any rate, thank God, I keep my honour, and he has lost even that.’
Clare returned his gaze steadily.
‘You have no right to say that, unless you are quite, quite, quite sure,’ she said rather haughtily.
She had no motive for that little speech, save a natural love for fair play, but he read in it a desire to champion his brother against his attack, and he was goaded to the point of indiscretion.
‘I am so sure,’ he answered bitterly, ‘that sooner than touch hands in friendship with him again, I am giving up all my chances in life, and with them the hope of winning you. Don’t say anything,’ he went on, seeing that she was about to speak. ‘I had no right to say that. I did not mean to annoy you with any hint of my vain devotion, but I couldn’t help saying it. Consider it unsaid if you like, but don’t be vexed with me. There is one thing I must ask you. I should be untrue to my love for you if I did not ask it. Do not let my brother win what his fault forbids me to try for.’
She rose.
‘I have given you no right to talk in that way, nor to ask me any such promise, and I will promise nothing since I know nothing,’ she said, indignantly.
‘Then at least it shall not be my fault,’ said Richard with equal fire, ‘if you do not know what every woman he comes near ought to know. He is not free to offer love to any woman. He owes all the love he is capable of to a woman he has ruined and deserted.’
Miss Stanley looked at him coldly and contemptuously. He stood silent a moment, and in that moment felt the utter falseness of the step he had taken. She turned slightly away from him, and he knew that there were no more words to be said on either side.
‘Good-bye,’ he said; ‘I shall not be at all likely to trouble you again.’
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, without moving; and he went out. Now, indeed, everything was over.
Clare, left to herself, sank down again in her low chair, and knitted her brows in annoyed meditation. Quarrels, separations, and crushing impertinent people with ‘dynamic glances’ were all very well in novels, but in real life it was much nicer to have things go smoothly. She could not quite foresee all the complications that this quarrel might lead to, but she knew that it would make a great difference at Firth Vale. Aspinshaw would be duller than ever. Would Roland come this evening? Could what Dick had said be true? If it was, she thought, he had no right to say it to her; and it was mean of him to say it to anyone behind his brother’s back. Count Litvinoff would be sure to come, at any rate. ‘Let’s hope he’ll be entertaining,’ she said to herself.
When a woman is bored, or tired, or vexed, or perplexed, or worried, after a quarrel, or before a journey, there is one resource to which she always flies. Miss Stanley rang for tea.
The waiter who announced Mr Ferrier had quite settled in his own mind that in so doing he was ushering in one of the chief characters in a love scene, but when he caught sight of the young man’s face as he came from Miss Stanley’s presence, he decided that the scene in which Mr Ferrier had just played his part, had not had much love-sweetness about it, at any rate. Count Litvinoff, coming up the stairs a moment afterwards, met Dick going down, and thought so too.
‘Ah! Mr Ferrier,’ he said genially; ‘we are to be fellow-guests to-night, I believe.’
‘I think not,’ said Dick, shaking hands; ‘I shall not be able to come.’
Litvinoffs face fell, and he looked quite naturally grieved.
‘How unfortunate,’ he said.
‘I say,’ said Richard, after a minute’s pause, ‘ were you in a place called Spray’s Buildings, a turning out of Porson Street, about an hour ago? You’ll think it strange of me to ask, but I have a particular reason for wanting to know.’
‘Porson Street — Porson Street. I’ve heard the name somewhere, but I certainly haven’t been there this afternoon.’
The Court of St Petersburg had evidently missed a good diplomatist in Count Michael Litvinoff. The lie was admirably told.
‘No,’ said Richard, ‘I didn’t suppose you had, but I thought I’d just set my mind at rest about it.’
‘May I ask,’ said Litvinoff, leaning on the banisters and idly swinging his eyeglass by the guard, ‘why your mind was disturbed concerning my incomings and outgoings?’
‘You are quite right. It is no business of mine; but I asked, in order to verify or disprove a statement of my brother’s.’
‘So your brother, at any rate, honours me with his interest, does he?’
‘You’d better ask him — good afternoon.’
‘A sweet disposition that,’ observed Litvinoff, when, having watched the other out of sight, he turned towards his room. ‘They ought to teach politeness at Cambridge, and put it down among the extras. By the way, there may be something to be got out of our brother. Things are getting too mixed to be pleasant. Wonder whether he’ll turn up to-night?’
He did turn up, in such a state of depression as to promise to be a thorough wet blanket on all the fires of social gaiety. In fact, none of the little party which assembled round Mr Stanley’s dinner-table were in a state of mind to make them what is called good company. Roland was thoroughly unhinged by the events of the afternoon, which to him had been so utterly unexpected, and were so completely unexplained. It needed a determined effort on his part to listen to Mr Stanley’s commonplaces instead of thinking out some means of compassing a reconciliation with his brother. He felt sure that their quarrel hinged on a mistake, but what that mistake was, or what its subject was, he was at a loss to conjecture.
Clare was listless and distraite. She was intensely annoyed by the remembrance of that little episode with Richard, and, though she told herself that she did not believe a word he had said, she found it hard to forget it and to treat Roland as usual. She had not had a chance of telling her father anything about Richard, for Litvinoff had been punctual, and Mr Stanley had come back from the City late, and cross as well as late; and the old gentleman’s continued references to the absentee, and his regrets for the ‘sudden business’ which had prevented him from being present, made matters several degrees more uncomfortable than they would otherwise have been.
Litvinoff had his own reasons for not feeling very joyous on this occasion, but he had not had three years of wandering in exile among all sorts and conditions of men for nothing, and he was able to put his own personal feelings on one side, and to do what was exacted by the proprieties. No one could have told from his manner that he had a care in the world. More than this, he succeeded after a while in inspiring the others with some of his own powers of self-repression; and though they did not perhaps feel more festive, they made a successful effort to seem so, in order to be not out of harmony with what seemed to them to be his gaiety and light-heartedness.
During the earlier part of the evening he devoted himself entirely to Mr Stanley, a real act of self-abnegation in any young man, when Mr Stanley’s daughter was in the room. But Mr Stanley was interested in the financial condition of United States railways, and Count Litvinoff — odd thing in an exile — knew absolutely everything that was to be known about the financial condition of United States railways, and, what was better, he had a friend who knew even more than that, and whose knowledge was quite at Mr Stanley’s service. If during the long conference on these entrancing topics he cast occasional glances across the room to where Clare and young Ferrier sat talking, they were certainly not envious ones, for ‘the gentle Roland’ did not seem to be having a good time of it. Litvinoff took pity on him presently, and came to the rescue.
‘Are we to have no music, Miss Stanley?’ he asked, when the subject of the financial condition of the United States railways was exhausted for the time being, and his host showed decided symptoms of a desire to descant on the beauties of ‘our great Conservative institutions, sir,’ and ‘the glorious Constitution which,’ etc.
Miss Stanley felt that singing to three people would be better than talking to one, and in the intervals between the songs that followed she and Litvinoff seemed to conspire to keep the conversation general.
‘Penny Napoleon,’ so often a refuge of the bored and the uncongenial, helped the long evening to its end, and though the last state of it was better than the first, everyone was glad to say good-night to everyone else.
The two young men, by the way, did not say good-night to each other when they left the Stanleys.
‘Come and have a cigar,’ said Litvinoff, precisely as he had done on the last occasion of their meeting there. And Roland, nothing loth to defer the moment of being alone again with his own perplexities, consented.
But even in the Count’s comfortable little sitting-room his perplexities pursued him, and in more objectionable shape, too. For the first words his companion uttered, after he had supplied his guest with one of his special cigars and a tumbler of something unexceptionable, with lemon, hot, were —
‘Your brother tells me you’re taking an interest in my movements, Mr Ferrier.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I had the felicity to meet him to-day, and he asked me — rather bluntly, perhaps — if I had been this afternoon in some street, the name of which escapes me at the moment — Morford Street, was it? I told him no, and begged to know the reason of his question. He then said he wished to verify (I think those were his exact words) a statement of yours. I asked him, did you take an interest in my movements? He then said, in a manner tant soit peu abrupt, ‘You’d better ask him,’ and vanished into the Ewigkeit. Voilà, I have asked you.’
Roland took two or three puffs at his cigar, and surrounded himself with a little cloud of smoke. Then he rose and stood with his back to the fire, and in that attitude he looked, Litvinoff thought, uncommonly like his brother.
‘Look here,’ he said slowly, ‘according to the laws of etiquette and all that sort of thing, I have known you far too short a time to think of talking to you about my relations with my brother, but I am horribly perplexed about him; and since he has let you know that there is something wrong between us, I may as well tell you all I know about it. I need hardly say that all I say to you is said in strict confidence.’
The Count bowed.
‘For some time we have not been upon the very best of terms; but that’s neither here nor there. There was nothing seriously wrong between us. This morning, without any apparent cause, he made a kind of veiled accusation against me, which I could not understand, and even went so far as to tell me I ought not to go near—’
He hesitated. Litvinoff made an interrogatory movement, which prevented his stopping short, as he seemed inclined to do.
‘Miss Stanley,’ he ended.
‘Ah, so?’ said the other, raising his eyebrows, and looking sympathetically interested.
‘We had a sharp word; but I should not have thought much more of it if it hadn’t been for what came later. This afternoon I was going to see a man you introduced me to the other night, Lenoir, who, I thought, I remembered lived in Porson Street.’
‘Ah, yes, it was Porson Street your brother named,’ interrupted Litvinoff.
‘As I was looking about for him I fancied I caught sight of you, but it was foggy, and when I followed the man into a house, it turned out not to be you. At least, I suppose not.’
‘No, no; it certainly was not I.’
‘Well, as I was looking about, bewildered, on a staircase, I met my brother, who, I suppose, had followed me. He asked me what I wanted there. I told him. He said I was a scoundrel and a liar. Of course, I couldn’t stand that, so I let out at him, and came away — and there the matter stands. What do you make of it?’
‘Excuse me,’ said the other, ‘does your brother drink?’
‘Certainly not; he’s one of the most temperate men I know.’
‘Could he have done it because — But ah, no, that is quite impossible.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Is your brother in love with Miss Stanley?’ said Litvinoff, slowly and directly.
‘I think he is. What made you think so?’
‘It was coming from her presence that I met him.’
‘By God! That may account for her manner to-night,’ said Roland in a low tone, but not so low but that Litvinoff heard him, and read his thought almost before he heard his word.
‘No, no, that is quite impossible; dismiss that from your mind. He would never be so base as to traduce you to her. Besides, where is the motive, unless he fears you? Is there perhaps some other lady in the case?5
‘No.’
‘He told you you were not worthy to go near Miss Stanley,’ said the other, lowering his voice deferentially at her name» ‘That can only mean one thing.’
‘It may mean that he is mad, or — by Jove! — it may mean one other thing. But of that other thing I am as innocent as you are.’
If he was as innocent as Count Litvinoff looked, he was innocent indeed.
‘Perhaps it will arrange itself. Quarrels about ladies often adjust themselves — or rather the lady usually adjusts them.’
‘This,’ said Roland, ‘is more serious than most quarrels for both of us, and more serious than I can tell you; but I think I’ve troubled you enough with our family affairs. I’ll say good-night’
Litvinoff came down to the door with him, and helped him on with his coat. As he did so, he said softly, —
‘If it is any comfort to you, your brother did not seem to have prospered in his suit. He looked distressed, and, I fancied, remorseful. Good-night. Ah, what a lovely night! The fog has quite cleared up. How lucky for you! Au revoir!’
CHAPTER XII. SUCCESSFUL ANGLING.
‘THE only good thing about life is that it’s interesting, but it’s quite possible to have too much interest — at once, and then it begins to be irritating and depressing, and the best sedative is tobacco, and the best stimulant is whisky.’
So said the Count when he returned to his room, and he accordingly acted on his convictions. Rut both whisky and tobacco seemed to fail of the effect expected of them. He sat looking broodingly at the fire for a moment or two: then he got up, paced the length of the room, and, turning sharply stamped his foot on the ground, muttered a curse or two, and flung his hands out with a vigorous gesture of annoyance.
‘So, these sons of the millowner — these playfellows of childhood, these friends of innocence — are men, not ugly, not fools, and not better than their fellows. This Richard is apparently so much interested as to go nearly mad about her disappearance: and as for Roland, there must have been pretty strong grounds before his brother would have started that charming scene on the staircase. I wonder if conscience had as much to do with her conduct as I believed. As a rule, when a woman gives up the substantial goods of this life, it’s as well to look for some more commonplace motive than conscientious scruples. Perhaps it was only a yearning towards the old love. Pardieu, though,’ he added, with something like a laugh; ‘ the old love and conscience together don’t provide very good quarters. It would be too much to believe that that little rustic had actually humbugged me. But it’s not impossible, young man,’ and he glanced mockingly at his reflection over the mantelpiece; ‘and at present I should advise you to go to bed; you’ll need all your senses about you tomorrow. The threads are lying loose round, as the Yankees say, and you must gather them up.’
He finished his glass of grog.
‘I would have given a few hundred francs to have been present in spirit at that interview which depressed la belle Clare and crushed the unhappy Richard. But perhaps a little adroitness to-morrow will fill up the blanks of to-day. And as for the other matter, the future is more to me than the past — to conclude with a fine revolutionary sentiment.’
‘I’m sorry I shall have to be out all the morning again,’ said Mr Stanley next morning at breakfast, as he opened his letters. ‘Would you like to come with me?’
‘No, thanks, papa,’ said Clare. She had been into the City with him before, and had a vivid recollection of draughty passages, steep staircases, and impertinent glances from junior clerks.
‘What will you do with yourself all the time?’ asked her father. ‘ You can’t be always reading.’
‘I’ll run over to the National Gallery, I think, and spend an hour or two there.’
‘Why, you’ve been there once with me.’
‘It’s no good going to a picture gallery once.’
‘I don’t know that it’s any good, my dear, but it’s quite enough for me. However, please yourself — please yourself’
