Severn went out of his head,--and yet not, perhaps, quite out of his
head. He had not been such a fool, he would have said, as to fall in
love with a girl whom he had only seen once,--a girl belonging to the
objectionable locality in which Laurie had lost himself; yet the little
picture she made as she stood for a moment answering her mother’s call
in the doorway, with the dim curtains falling round her like a frame,
and herself so bright in colouring, so sweet in all her rose-tints,
lasted in his mind as such impressions seldom did. Perhaps it was the
quite unexpected character of the appearance that made him dwell upon
it. In a ball-room, or at a picnic, or, in short, at any party, or in a
country-house where there are a number of people assembled, a man knows
he is likely to meet some pretty girl or other, and is prepared for the
vision; but when you are making a humdrum call, in a house quite out of
the world, on people quite unacquainted with anybody you know,--in
short, very respectable people, but moving in a different sphere,--and
are, all at once, confronted by a creature like a rose, playing
Beethoven in the dark, standing looking at you from the doorway with
dazzling, lovely, half-seeing eyes,--of course you had not been looking
for anything of the kind, and it makes a certain impression on you.
Frank was not in any way addicted to art. He did not understand it much,
nor care for it. Now and then something struck him as being ‘a pretty
picture;’ but it might be one of Laurie’s drawings, or it might be a
Raffael, and the difference was not very evident to the Guardsman.
Perhaps it was the first time that he had of his own accord, or rather
involuntarily, in spite of himself, by impulsion of nature, hung up as
it were a picture of his own making on the walls of his mind. ‘By Jove,
if Laurie were to paint something like that,’ he said to himself,
altogether unaware in his simplicity that neither Laurie nor any of his
fellows could have done justice to the evening darkness, and the soft
lamplight, and the dark, undefined curtains draping themselves about the
bright young face. Frank made it for himself, which was much more
satisfactory, and left it there, hanging in his private closet of
recollections, though, so far as he was aware, he thought but little of
Alice Severn, and was much too sensible a fellow to fall in love at
first sight.
Besides, he was busy, and had no time just then for nonsense of any
kind. It was not quite so easy to manage the exchange he wanted as he
had believed it would be; and Mrs. Renton, though she interfered so
little in her son’s proceedings, did what she could to put a stop to
this movement on his part. ‘I never even hear from Ben,’ she said,
pathetically. ‘I do not know where he has gone or what has become of
him; and Laurie, though he writes punctually, has not been to see me for
ever so long; what shall I do if you go too?’
‘But, mother, I must go,’ Frank would say; ‘I can’t get on where I am
now. No, mamma,--thanks; I ought not to take it. What my father meant
was that we should go and seek our fortune. And beside, if Ben and
Laurie don’t have money from you, I ought not to have it. That is as
clear as daylight.’
‘If Ben and Laurie were here they would have everything I could give
them,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘they ought to know that; but you are the only
one of my boys that stands by me, Frank. Put it in your pocket, dear,
and never mind. Ah! if your poor dear papa could but have seen the harm
it has done!’ and she cried, poor soul, longing for her other children,
though she had not energy enough to seek them out; ‘but we must not
blame your dear papa,’ she added, hastily, drying her eyes.
‘No,’ said Frank. ‘But it has done harm. Laurie was not like himself
last time I saw him. He has got among a queer sort of people,--artists
and that sort of thing. I don’t feel quite easy about him, to tell the
truth.’
‘Among low people, do you mean?’ cried his mother, with the tears ready
to flow from her eyes.
‘N--no; not exactly low people,’ said Frank; and somehow a hot flush of
colour covered his own face. All at once that picture rose up before
him, and Alice out of the doorway looked at him with reproachful eyes.
‘I heard that favourite thing of yours so beautifully played the other
day,’ he added, hastily; and then he hummed a few bars to identify the
melody; ‘charmingly played. I don’t think any one could have done it
better.’
‘Mary plays it very nicely,’ said his mother, who was easily led away
from one subject to another.
‘Oh, Mary!’ said Frank. ‘Yes, she does very well, of course; but this
was almost genius, you know. She played it as if she were making it up
herself. Quite a young girl, fifteen or so,’ Frank went on; ‘and sitting
in a dark room, so she must have played from memory. I wish you could
have heard her.’
‘Was it any one I know?’ said Mrs. Renton.
‘It was somebody Laurie knows,’ said Frank shortly. ‘I suppose he’ll
stick there for ever and ever, and never do anything. I wish he were not
such a lazy beggar. In one way he is the cleverest of us all.’
‘My poor Laurie! so you all say,’ said the mother; ‘but this I
know,--Laurie is never lazy when he can serve other people, Frank; and
he is not so clever as Ben is,’ she added. ‘Your dear papa always said
so. Ben was the clever one, he always said. I would not mind about
cleverness if I but knew where he was and what he was doing. That breaks
my heart.’
‘Oh, he will turn up,’ said Frank, whose heart was not in any danger of
breaking. And he put his mother’s gift in his pocket, though not
without compunction. ‘It seems like stealing a march upon them,’ he said
to himself as he went away. This was just about a month before the time
when Ben suddenly appeared at Renton Manor to bid them all good-bye, and
when Laurie was near the climax of his little drama. Frank, whom no
necessity had urged on, was but beginning to make his arrangements for
setting out in the world, when they voluntarily or involuntarily had
completed theirs, and were about to take their plunge. As he went down
the walk to the river, under the budded trees, his own idea was that he
was the only one of the three who would really go off, as his father
wished, to seek his fortune. Ben had hidden himself somewhere in a fit
of disgust, but would repent and become reasonable, and return to Renton
to manage his mother’s affairs, which needed some one to look after
them. After all, Renton was his mother’s for the time being, and it was
the natural home of her eldest son; and as for Laurie, he would stick
fast where he was, and would not have pluck enough to make any change.
So that it was utterly out of the question that he, Frank, should
relinquish his plans and prospects in order that one of his mother’s
children might be near her. Mrs. Renton, indeed, was not a woman to
exercise such an influence on her sons. They were fond of her; but
either they were not fond enough to make a sacrifice for her, or she
was not the kind of woman to require it. She kept in the background,
wailing softly, but was not energetic enough to demand a response from
any one. Frank marched down to his boat, which lay waiting for him, with
a feeling that if he was not the clever one, he was at least the
energetic one, of the family, and probably would be the only one to make
his fortune. The first step, to be sure, was a little slow and
troublesome, but, once in India, everything became possible. He resolved
within himself that he would scorn delight and live laborious days, as
soon as he had got himself made into a real soldier instead of an
ornamental Guardsman. He would go in for his profession with all his
heart. No doubt it was a resolve which might call for a good deal of
self-denial, but for that young Frank was prepared. Parties, and
pleasure, and music, and even love affairs, were things he meant to be
out of his way. As for falling into a lower sphere contentedly, as
Laurie seemed to have done, Frank hoped that such a descent was
impossible to him. He pulled down the stream to Cookesley, though it was
cold; for the river was at once the best and most expeditious way of
passing between the manor and Royalborough. Frank pulled down the
stream, and felt his heart glow and tingle as he thought of all he was
going to do. He had some ‘pluck’ he admitted to himself, if not so much
cleverness as Laurie or Ben. So it will be seen he had quite forgotten
that momentary peep at Alice Severn, and the equally temporary
impression which her young beauty had made upon his imagination or his
heart.
CHAPTER IX.
NELLY RICH.
It was not very long after this that Frank Renton was accosted by one of
his friends in the regiment with what seemed to him a very odd sort of
request. ‘Look here, Frank,’ said young Edgbaston, who was a son,--it is
unnecessary to add,--of Lord Brummagem, and a very popular, good-natured
young fellow, ‘I’ve promised to produce you at the Riches’, where I am
going to lunch. Don’t struggle, my boy. They are going to have your
brother Laurie, and you must come.’
‘My brother Laurie!’ cried Frank in amazement. ‘And who are the Riches;
and what do they want me for? I never heard of the people that I know
of. I suppose it is one of your jokes?’
‘It’s very witty to be sure,’ said Edgbaston, ‘but it is not one of my
jokes. Papa Rich is something in the City. He was a cheesemonger once
upon a time, I believe; but that’s all left behind long ago. Alf Rich,
of the Buffs, is one of his sons. You know Alf. He gives capital dinners
and eke luncheons. And they’re all intensely jolly, from the pater down
to little Nelly. Come along. I promised to bring you. And you’ll meet
your brother, if that’s any inducement. Old Rich told me he was to be
there.’
‘Laurie to be there! I don’t understand it,’ said Frank.
‘Old Rich buys pictures to no end,’ said Edgbaston; ‘perhaps that’s why
your brother’s going; or perhaps he’s after little Nelly. And not a bad
speculation either, I can tell you. She’s a nice little girl;--and
heaps, cartloads, mountains of tin. If Laurie don’t go in for that style
of thing, I’d recommend it to your own consideration.’
‘If it’s so desirable, why do you let it go among your friends in this
liberal way?’ said Frank. ‘It’s not in Laurie’s line, I fear,’ he added
with a sigh. To tell the truth, the conditions and prospects of his
elder brothers lay much on Frank’s mind. He felt easy about himself; but
he disapproved of the others, especially Laurie, whom everybody had
disapproved of from his cradle,--and felt that he was in a bad way.
‘Then come along, and try your luck, my boy,’ said his friend. And the
consequence was that by noon Frank and half-a-dozen more were flying
over the green, balmy, awakening country on Edgbaston’s drag. They were
all in high spirits, with that delightful sense of fulfilling every duty
that can be looked for from a Guardsman which is the soul of pleasure.
And Frank Renton, puritanical as he had been in respect to his brother
Laurie and Alice Severn, was soon chatting about ‘little Nell,’ whom he
had never seen, as familiarly as any of them. So that it is evident
stern principle alone was not involved in his displeasure with his
brother. The young men were not at all contemptuous of the good things
to be had at Richmont; but the family who were to receive them there did
not count for much. Old Rich spent his money freely to give them
pleasure, and got laughed at for his pains; Mamma Rich, or Rich _mère_,
as they call her, was not much more respectfully treated; and as for
Nelly Rich, her name was bandied about from mouth to mouth with the most
unscrupulous ease. ‘If I were you, So-and-so, I’d certainly go in for
little Nell,’ one and another of those lively youths would say from time
to time. She had ‘heaps of tin’--that was her grand characteristic,--and
was evidently ready to drop into anybody’s arms who should do her the
honour to hold them out to her. But the talk was a matter of course, not
meaning half that it seemed to mean. And half at least of her critics
were dumb before Nelly, and had an unfeigned dread of her keen little
bright eyes and sharp speeches. Richmont itself was a big house in a big
park, conveying to the ordinary spectator no sense of present
incongruity with its past. The old part of the mansion was in the east
wing, and not visible from the front, and all that could be seen by the
party in the drag was the vast white modern façade, very fresh and clean
as yet, with great plate-glass windows, and a wide hospitable door,
opening into a hall with scagliola pillars. At this door old Rich stood,
waving his hand in sign of welcome. The flower-beds on the lawn were
already full of every bright thing which could be had at the season, and
the whole place was alit and alive with wealth, and warmth, and
movement. ‘To think that a fine old place like this should drop into the
greasy hands of an old cheesemonger!’ said one of the men as they drove
through the leafy avenue. But they were all quite willing to be the
cheesemonger’s guests, and to drink his wine, and enjoy the good things
his greasy gold had provided.
‘Glad to see you all,’ shouted Mr. Rich; ‘delighted we’ve got such a
fine day; almost good enough for croquet, it appears to me. Good
morning, my lord. Oh, any friend of yours! Ah-ha, Mr. Frank Renton,’
stretching forth his hand with a cordiality which took Frank by
surprise, ‘now I call this kind. Had everything been as it ought to be,
of course we’d have met before now,--country neighbours, you know. Your
brother has just come by the last train with a friend of his, a
wonderful clever fellow from town. He’s too much of a swell himself ever
to paint much, eh? but he’s hand and glove with all of them. Come along
up-stairs, and I’ll take you to him. Lord Edgbaston, you know your way
to the drawing-room. Mrs. Rich will be delighted to see you; and I trust
to you not to let my Nelly leave the room till I send for her. I mean to
give the child a little surprise,’ added the millionnaire, rubbing his
fat hands. ‘Come along, Mr. Renton.’ Frank followed in a state of
partial stupefaction. What reason there could be for this old fellow’s
cordiality; why he should leave a live lord to find his own way
up-stairs and conduct him, Frank Renton, instead; why Laurie should be
here; what he had to do with the surprise Mr. Rich was going to give his
child;--all these were mysteries to Frank. He seemed to have gone into
an enchanted house. Had Mr. Rich taken him aside and offered him his
daughter’s hand and fortune on the spot, his surprise would scarcely
have been increased. Was this what it meant? Or if it was not this, what
did it mean?
The Rentons and the Beauchamps had been friends in the old days, and
Frank knew the house through which he was being guided almost as well,
perhaps, as the owner of it did, who walked before him, looking not half
so imposing as his own butler. Frank, who had a good deal of prudence
for so young a man, thought it would be better on the whole to say
nothing about this; but when his host preceded him through passage after
passage, and up one short flight of stairs after another, surprise got
the better of him.
‘We must be going to the music-room, I suppose,’ he said; ‘this is the
way;’ for the new master paused uncertain between two turns.
‘That’s about it,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘droll though, to see a stranger know
one’s house better than one does oneself. I suppose you were a deal here
in the time of the old people? Very nice people according to all I hear.
But, you know, I didn’t turn them out. Bought the place at a fair price,
as anybody else might have done. It was their doing, not mine. Ah! it’s
a sad thing to outrun the constable, Mr. Frank. It should be a lesson to
you as a young man.’
‘I am just going off to India,’ said Frank, determined, at least, to let
his new acquaintance know that little was to be made of him in the way
of society, ‘and I shall not have much chance.’
‘To India, eh?’ said Mr. Rich, with an unchanged tone. Clearly after
all, he did not mean to offer the young Guardsman on the spot his
daughter and her fortune. ‘India’s a fine thing at your age. My eldest
boy went off a dozen years ago, when we were not quite so well off as we
are now; and he’s coming home this summer, please God. If you had been
at home we might have had no end of jolly meetings; but your mother goes
out nowhere, I hear.’
‘Not now,’ said Frank; ‘my mother is a great invalid.’ And there was
something in his tone which betrayed a certain offence,--What right had
this man to speak of his mother? And this tone conveyed itself at once
to the other’s lively ear.
‘Ah, well! she has a right to please herself,’ said Mr. Rich. ‘Here we
are at last. Halloo, gentlemen, I hope it fits. I wouldn’t have it too
large or too small for a hundred pounds.’
‘Never fear, it will fit beautifully,--I knew it would,’ cried Laurie’s
voice from behind a great picture, which was being hoisted into its
place. After having been rather splendid and haughty about his mother to
this commonplace individual, who had no right to hope for her
acquaintance, it must be admitted that it gave Frank a pang to find his
brother as busy as a workman, and quite at his ease in his occupation,
putting up Mr. Rich’s pictures. Here was something worse even than
Laurie’s slovenly ways and contented relapse into lower life. When a man
has a brother in the Guards he owes it, if not to himself, at least to
his relations, to remember that he is a gentleman. And to play the fool
in such a house as this was worse than anything, with all those fellows
below to tell each other how sadly Frank Renton’s brother, ‘the artist
fellow,’ had fallen back in the world.
‘I did not know my brother was in the habit of carrying home his work,’
he said, with a certain savage irony. But Laurie did not hear this
speech, and Mr. Rich, who did hear it, took no notice. There was nothing
for it but to stand and stare at the daub as it was raised to its place.
In the middle of the floor, in front of it, stood a bearded stranger,
whom Frank did not know, nor care to know. He was watching the progress
of the picture with anxious interest. Was it Laurie’s picture? Whether
it were or not, Laurie condescending to make a carpenter of himself for
the moment was a sight which shocked his brother much. He strode away to
the end window, and gazed out to show his indifference, with a soft
whistle of impatience, which would have made itself into words anything
but soft had circumstances permitted. But nobody remarked either his
impatience or his anger. The room was long and not very broad, and the
panel in which the picture was being placed was immediately opposite the
gilded pipes of a chamber organ, which was let into the wall. To be
sure, if it had been a picture of chorister boys instead of little
barbarians it would have been more harmonious with the place; but
Suffolk’s Angles shone out of the dark wall like positive sunshine.
There were three broad mullioned windows in one end of the room, and at
the other a great east window full of heraldic designs in painted
glass,--the arms of the Beauchamps and their connexions. Under this
blaze of colour, on either side, the panels were carved, running into
little pinnacles and canopy work of a semi-ecclesiastical kind. It had
been, indeed, a chapel in the early ages, when the Beauchamps were
Catholic. A few high-backed, heavy, oak chairs were all the furniture in
it now, except quite at the west end of the room, near where the
picture was being placed, where a grand piano stood under one window,
and a small easel in the other. This picturesque place, in which priests
in glittering vestments, and knights in steel, and ladies in flowing
robes, would have been the natural actors, was now the music-room in
Richmont, occupied chiefly by the ex-cheesemonger’s daughter,--an
out-of-the-way place in which she could pursue her occupations as she
pleased. Reflections, not exactly to this effect, but of a somewhat
similar meaning, were in Frank’s mind as he turned with disgust from his
unconscious brother. The poor Beauchamps!--who had the best blood in
England in their veins, and were now vegetating at all sorts of wretched
Continental baths and watering-places. To be sure, old Beauchamp was a
blackleg, and his wife no better than she should be,--and the
music-room, when Frank knew it, had been a lumber-room and play-room,
dear to the children, though nobody thought anything about its
picturesqueness. Still, those were the Beauchamps, and these
Riches,--and what a falling off was there! Frank was full of these
thoughts, and in a very discontented mind generally, not condescending
to look at the picture with which all the rest were absorbed, when
Laurie emerged from behind the frame, and, to his amazement, saw that it
was his brother who interrupted the light in the middle window. It was a
kind of bay window, projecting just a little out beyond the line of the
others, and in it there stood a low chair covered with old brocade, and
a small table with a vase of fresh spring flowers. Frank had not noticed
these little accessories, but Laurie, having the eye of an artist, took
them in at a glance. Somehow Frank’s attitude, standing between the low
chair and the little table, suggested ideas to Laurie’s mind of a
different kind from those which moved his brother. This was the
favourite haunt of the millionnaire’s daughter. The chair was hers, and
the flowers, and the book which lay on the ledge of the window; and
Royalborough was close at hand, not too far for a young soldier to ride
over any day. Could Frank be Nelly Rich’s property too?
‘Frank!’ cried Laurie, ‘you here! Who could have dreamt of seeing you?’
‘I have more reason to say so,’ said Frank. ‘We are quartered close by;
but what can you be doing carpentering in a house like this? Perhaps
that’s the branch of art you have taken to at last,’ the Guardsman
continued with a sneer. As for Laurie, he had been good-natured from his
cradle, and laughed at this little ebullition.
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Come and look at the picture. Of course, I know
you don’t know anything about it; but so long as you have eyes you may
look, at least. What games we used to have up here! Is the goddess
worthy of the shrine now?’ he added, glancing up with a little curiosity
into the young soldier’s face.
‘I don’t know what you mean by shrines and goddesses,’ said Frank, still
angry; ‘but I do think, for the sake of your friends, if not for your
own, you ought to mind what you’re about, and not be so very complaisant
in the house of a cad like this.’
‘Hush!’ said Laurie, ‘don’t call names, my big brother. What have I been
doing, I wonder, to come under your great displeasure? Dust on my coat,
is it?’ and Laurie suddenly bethought himself of the cobwebs which he
had hoped the padrona might have brushed off for him; and stopped short,
the foolish fellow, and smiled and sighed.
‘Dust!’ cried Frank, indignantly. ‘I wonder you did not take it off to
do your work the better. It would have been the right thing to do.’
‘And so it would,’ said Laurie; ‘I will recollect another time. But come
along, old fellow, and look at the picture, and don’t make yourself so
disagreeable. Old Rich has sent for his daughter, and we can’t go on
squaring before a lady. Stand here, and look at it well.’
‘Is it yours?’ said the reluctant Frank. And Laurie laughed and shook
his head.
‘He asks if it is mine,’ he said; ‘there’s a Guardsman’s idea of the
possibilities, Suffolk! You might as well have asked if that Madonna was
mine.’
‘Well, and what if I had?’ said Frank, stoutly, in his ignorance--and
went and stared with a determination to see nothing. The three figures
were standing thus grouped,--Frank looking at the picture, and Suffolk,
who had taken no part in the conversation, looking with mild surprise at
the natural curiosity called a Guardsman of which he knew little more
than the other did about the Angles,--when Mr. Rich came back triumphant
with his daughter. They made a curious centre to the room, from which,
by this time, the workmen who had been placing the picture had
disappeared, leaving them alone. Frank, the very impersonation of
scepticism and critical ignorance, stood with his face turned upward to
the Angles, and defiance and disdain in the very attitude of his feet
resentfully planted on the polished oaken floor. Suffolk, turning round
and round in his fingers the rule which one of the workmen had left
behind him, stood half a step behind, looking at Frank, with the
faintest of smiles on his face, and that curious faculty of seeing,
which never deserts a true painter, somehow making itself visible in his
eyes. He was not studying the figure which thus defiantly posed before
him, and yet there was an amusing consciousness of the pose, and of all
expressed by it, in his look. Frank was so unaware of this, and Laurie,
as he recognised it, became so divided between sympathy with his brother
and amusement with his friend, that the three faces made a very curious
group; and so Nelly Rich thought as she came into the room, not knowing
why it was that her father had brought her here. She was followed by
the entire party, Mrs. Rich leading the way, and leaning her substantial
weight on Edgbaston’s arm. She had but a minute to notice the group, but
it made an impression on her; and curiously enough,--or, perhaps not
curiously,--Nelly’s sympathies fixed upon Frank in the moment she had to
identify him. The others were laughing at him, and he was young and
single-handed, and,--so handsome. Nelly Rich piqued herself upon being
intellectual and fond of art; and yet it was neither the painter nor the
amateur that caught her eyes; it was the ignorant, unintellectual,
handsome young Guardsman, which no doubt was quite natural in a way.
She gave a cry of wonder and delight when she saw the picture; but the
kind father, to whom that cry was music, had made a mistake by bringing
the party with him. After the first outburst Nelly retreated and was
silent. She was not the kind of Nelly Rich whom either Frank or Laurie
Renton had expected to see. Anything more unlike the portly, comely
mother who came in after her, sweeping her gorgeous skirts all over the
brown oak floor, could not be conceived. Nelly was very small; she had
the figure and the foot of a fairy; and how her dark, clear, olive
complexion,--her hair so dark as to be almost black,--her brilliant
dark-brown eyes,--could have been derived from the two ruddy, roundabout
people beside her, was a puzzle to everybody. She might have been a
fairy changeling, but that her small figure was perfect in form, and
instinct with life, health, and activity. She was as plainly dressed as
her mother was gorgeous, with a black gown and knots of crimson ribbons,
like a Spaniard, which, indeed, was the most becoming dress she could
have chosen. And she was not a timid maiden generally, taking shelter
from the crowd; but a creature quite able to express herself and defend
herself. Nevertheless she stepped aside as her mother entered on
Edgbaston’s arm, and said not a word more about the picture. The party
invaded the music-room, filling it with noise and movement. The scene
was changed. It was no longer a retired, half-solemn place, full of
associations of the past, and one soft, pleasant suggestion of the
present conveyed by the fresh flowers, the instruments, the little
easel, and the book, which harmonised everything; but a show place, with
vulgar sightseers and a vulgar showman,--vulgar, though the visitors
came of blood to which no objection could be taken. They gazed at the
painted window, and at the carved oak, and at the pictures, alike with
suppressed yawns, and referred stealthily to their watches, wondering
when luncheon would be announced. Suffolk, who was the only stranger
whom no one knew, stood aside, and looked on with a certain indignation.
His picture, newly placed, newly arrived,--a picture which Academicians
had condescended to praise, and the ‘Sword’ had noticed
favourably,--should have been, no one could doubt, the chief thing to be
noticed; but what the newcomers did was to cast a careless glance at it,
and say, ‘Ah! oh! pretty thing, to be sure,’ and turn their backs with
that unspeakable calm of indifference which galls the artist mind beyond
endurance. ‘Like old Woodland’s style, ain’t it?’ said Edgbaston, with
his glass in his eye. If there was one man or painter whom Suffolk
regarded with especial contempt it was old Woodland! The painter turned
to the window stung and smarting all over, and tried to look out; and
then one of the young men found a sketch upon Nelly’s little easel, and
went into ecstasies over it. They all crowded, a mass of tall heads, to
look at it with an interest which no one had dreamt of showing in the
Angles. ‘Parcel of empty-headed coxcombs!’ Suffolk said to himself; and
then certain reflections overtook him as to the kind of people who were
likely to see his work where it was now placed. Was not the Guardsman
the very highest possible class of visitor who could come to Richmont;
and was this all for which he had spent his brains and his strength? He
had turned, and was looking with the most curious wonder and contempt
upon the group round Nelly’s easel. Could he help being contemptuous?
The sketch was an unobtrusive little performance, pretending nothing,
and not meaning much. And it was for such eyes as these that he had
painted his picture! He was thinking so with a certain bitterness, when
Nelly herself, with a little rush, penetrated the group, and, seizing
upon the harmless drawing they were gazing at, thrust it before their
eyes into a portfolio.
‘It is not worth a glance,’ she cried; ‘it’s a bit of waste paper. Oh,
for heaven’s sake, don’t stare, and make me ashamed of myself before Mr.
Suffolk! It was the picture you came to see.’
‘I came because you were coming,’ said one of the young men.
‘Oh, never mind the picture. Come and show us what you have here,’ said
another, laying his hand on the portfolio. This was how they talked,
with Suffolk looking on. As for Nelly, her cheeks grew crimson. She was
not, as we have said, a timid maiden; and she was given to speaking her
mind, as even these gentlemen knew.
‘Yes,’ she said, with her eyes sparkling; ‘to be sure, you know best.
You shall have the portfolio to look at--art brought down to the meanest
capacity. I might have known that would be the most suitable for you;
and, Mr. Suffolk, come and tell me about it,’ she said softly, turning
to the painter. She held out her hand, that he might offer her his arm,
and led him, in spite of himself, opposite to the poor picture which had
been so scorned. ‘I want to clear them all away, those stupid men,’ said
Nelly, confidentially. ‘I hate young men; they are all so idiotic. Mr.
Suffolk, when I look at this I could cry, out of envy and spite. How is
it you can do it?--And I work and work and can’t do anything. I would
give my head if I could paint only that little bit of a tree; and I
suppose you never gave it a thought?’ she said, turning the brilliant
brown eyes upon him. ‘Tell me about it, please; for it will be my chief
friend, and live with me all day long.’
‘What am I to tell you, Miss Rich?’ said the painter, taken by surprise,
and yet standing on his dignity still.
And then Nelly gazed at the Angles for at least a minute in silence,
holding his arm. ‘It does not matter,’ she said, at last, with a
long-drawn breath of satisfaction,--‘I shall learn it all from their
faces. You must know, I live in this room, and they will never ask me
what they are to tell me. I shall find out all their story in little
bits. That one is quite happy to have so much change and variety, and to
feel himself in Rome,--you painted him when you were happy, Mr. Suffolk;
and that one is thinking of home,--something had happened to you then. I
shall find it all out by degrees. Those men don’t find themselves so
happy as they thought they would be over the portfolio,’ she broke off
suddenly, with a little laugh; ‘but please to remember I have got eyes,
and there are other people besides Guardsmen who come here sometimes.
Mamma, I hear the bell for luncheon; please take all those men away.’
‘You must not be shocked with Nelly, Mr. Suffolk,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘I
have told her all about your charming little wife, so she knows she need
not be afraid to speak to you; and that’s her way, making up all that
nonsense about the pictures she likes. I think it looks perfectly
charming, now that it is in its place. Nelly, this is Mr. Renton, whom I
told you of. He is such a friend of Mrs. Severn’s; and this is Mr. Frank
Renton; neighbours of ours, you know, when they are at home, and cousins
to that nice Miss Westbury you made acquaintance with the other
day,--such a nice, lady-like girl. But I hear the bell. I am sure you
must all be quite hungry after your long drive.’
‘Yes, come along,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘come along, and let us have something
to eat. Nothing like art for giving one an appetite. I am as hungry as a
hunter. All with getting up Suffolk’s lovely picture! Gem of my
collection, I call it, though I have half-a-dozen Crowquills
down-stairs, which I’ll show you after lunch. Come along, gentlemen. As
for Nelly, you know, and the painter, they’ll follow. Ladies and men of
genius don’t want to eat like us common mortals. Come along, come
along,’ said the millionnaire, his voice dying off in the passage. The
two Rentons, who had just been presented to Nelly, stood by her, waiting
till she led the way; and Nelly, for her part, had no inclination to
lead the way. She had got rid of ‘those stupid men,’ and she was rather
in the humour for a little talk.
‘Now they’re gone one can breathe,’ she said, with complimentary
confidentialness. ‘We need not go down just yet. Please, Mr. Renton,
tell me about the Severns. You are grand people, and I don’t suppose
Miss Westbury would like it if I quoted her as an acquaintance; but I
may ask about the Severns. Do you know them too?’
‘I have only seen them once,’ said Frank; ‘but I don’t think you do Mary
Westbury justice. I am sure she would be charmed----’
‘Tell me about the Severns, please,’ said Nelly, with a little wave of
her hand.
Then there was a pause, which nobody could have explained. Laurie, it is
true, knew very well why it was that he, excited and confused as he was,
should feel himself unable to speak of the padrona; but why could not
Frank answer so simple a question? In the meanwhile Frank, on his side,
saw suddenly before him, as in a vision, that picture of Alice standing
in the doorway, with all the shadows round her, and felt his lips
sealed, and could not speak.
‘If these gentlemen will not tell me anything,’ said Nelly, ‘Mr.
Suffolk, speak. I’m sure you know them too.’
‘I have only seen them once,’ repeated Frank, hastily. ‘Miss Severn
plays like--St. Cecilia. I have not heard anything like her playing for
a hundred years.’
‘Well,’ said Nelly, shrugging her shoulders, ‘here is one fact elicited
by dint of inquiry. Miss Severn--that is, I suppose, Alice, who was a
little darling when I saw her last--plays. I don’t care so much for
playing as I ought to do. And I wanted to hear of the padrona and all
the little ones. Couldn’t you tell me anything more, Mr. Renton? Yes, I
call her the padrona too. Mr. Severn used to give me a lesson
sometimes--not for money, but for love. It may seem strange to you,’
said Nelly, demurely, ‘but he was fond of me. And I am fond of her, and
all of them. And Alice plays! I suppose that is all one could ever get
out of a man. If any one asks you about me, Mr. Frank Renton, I know
exactly what you will say: “Miss Rich--draws.” It is nice to be so
concise, but oh, tell me about my pretty padrona, please!’ cried Nelly,
clasping her hands together, and turning appealing eyes to Laurie. It
was almost more than Laurie’s composure could bear, for it was just at
the moment after he had made his discovery, and was waiting to know what
was to be done with him; and his heart was, so to speak, in his mouth.
‘She is as pretty as ever,’ said Laurie, in that strange tone of
suppressed emotion which makes itself almost more distinctly apparent
than the plainest confession of feeling; ‘and I don’t think I could tell
you how good she is. Suffolk knows her. We cannot trust ourselves to
speak of the padrona,’ said Laurie, nervously, ‘we people who live
about the Square.’
And then Suffolk said something to the same purport in words, but in so
different a tone as to throw the thrill in Laurie’s voice into fuller
relief. And Nelly looked at him full in the face, not disguising the
little gleams of discernment, half surprise, half mischief, in her eyes.
This was the only sign about her of inferior breeding. She had not
sufficient delicacy to conceal the enlightenment his tone had given her.
She looked at him so that he felt he was discovered, and his face flamed
with the sudden consciousness; and then she turned to Frank, who was the
particular mouse with which at the moment Nelly felt disposed to play.
‘This room must have been made on purpose for Miss Severn, who plays,’
she said. ‘I should think anybody who was musical would be in paradise
here. There is the organ and the piano, and in that closet there are
harps, and sackbuts, and dulcimers, and all kinds of music. I shall ask
Alice Severn to come to see me, and Mr. Frank Renton shall come too, and
hear her--play.’
‘I ask no better,’ said Frank, responding to the challenge as became a
Guardsman. And Nelly took them down-stairs, leaving the two graver,
pre-occupied men to follow, and making Frank her partner by some subtle
sleight of hand. He was very much at home at Richmont before the day was
over. Even Laurie remarked the rising flirtation, and laughed to
himself in the midst of his own excitement at the possibility of his
brother’s fortune coming in so easy a way. And his friends congratulated
him on his success, and pledged him in bumpers when they got home. ‘I
tell you, my boy, she has cartloads of tin,’ said Edgbaston. ‘Better
that than going out to India.’ And as for Frank, he did not deny to
himself that on the whole, notwithstanding Laurie’s undignified aspect,
and Mr. Rich’s soap-boiling, or cheesemongering--which was it?--he had
spent a very pleasant day.
CHAPTER X.
BROTHERLY ADVICE.
Next day, however, Frank Renton was full of many thoughts.
I doubt whether it is in my power to give any clear impression of the
reflections naturally produced in a young man’s mind by the first
suggestion of marrying money. In ordinary cases, marriage is not the
object set before the youth--the purpose contemplated from the beginning
of an acquaintance. He is attracted by some stranger, whose name he
never heard before, perhaps, and of whose existence, previous to the
eventful hour which brought them together, he had no knowledge. Chance
or inclination brings them together. Then the germ warms, quickens,
bursts into flower. Love comes spontaneous, unsought, perhaps almost
unwelcome, and marriage becomes but a necessary accident in its course.
But to approach that idea of marriage in cold blood, and without any
soft compulsion of feeling, is a very different matter. It is a thing
which women are called upon to do every day; but it is not so
inevitable among men. It had been brought before Frank in what seemed a
very distinct way. True, Nelly Rich was a little flirt, almost
confessedly avenging herself on the world for her father’s uncomfortable
position, and the spurns her family endured, by doing as much harm as
she could among the men who ate Mr. Rich’s dinners and laughed at him.
She had no mercy upon them, and more than one, within the knowledge even
of the battalion at Royalborough, who had supposed themselves sure of
Nelly and her fortune, had been ignominiously turned off when the crisis
came. This very fact naturally made Frank think the more of the
impression, which all his comrades informed him he had produced. Fifty
thousand pounds down, and some further share in all probability when the
father and mother died, not to speak of Nelly herself--pretty, and
bright, and amusing, and clever as she was! The idea, as was natural,
awoke many reflections in the young soldier’s mind. I have said that he
had not suffered by his father’s death; but yet had he meant to remain
in his present position at home, no doubt Frank would have shared in the
disadvantages which his brothers had felt so keenly; and to have it in
his power at twenty to secure his own comfort for life without any
particular trouble was a dazzling prospect. It is not to be supposed by
this that Frank had developed at so early an age the mercenary instincts
of a fortune-hunter. On the contrary, the good things which the gods
seemed thus to have placed within his reach, gave him a shock rather
than a thrill of satisfaction. He had no wish to marry,--to plunge into
serious life at his age, and give up the wayward ways of youth. The idea
would never have entered his mind had he been left to himself. But when
a young man sees such a golden apple nodding at him from an accessible
bough, and thinks he has but to put forth his hand and secure to himself
at one stroke all the advantages of wealth, the sensation is a startling
one. He went about thoughtful for two days, turning it over and over in
his mind. It is true he did not think very much about Nelly. She was
very nice, very jolly, and a man need not fear to have a dull companion
for life whom duty called upon to marry Mr. Rich’s daughter; but the
truth was that she did not count for very much in the matter. Frank was
honest with himself, and affected no delusion on that subject; but then
he had heard of people marrying money all his life without any
particular reprobation. Many men had done it, as he knew, who got on
very well with their wives, and made admirable husbands. Indeed, as
Frank reflected to himself, with the mild cynicism which was inseparable
from the kind of education he had gone through, marriage was one of the
things in which there must be many mixed motives. Love, of course, was
all very well to romance about; but love could not be, never was, the
only thing taken into account, except indeed by fools. If it was mere
love you married for, of course you did it in the style of King
Cophetua, and scorned the consequences. But few men went so far as that.
There were questions of income and settlements, and how people were to
live, which came in along with the purest affection, and brought
marriage,--necessarily,--into the same category with all other human
affairs. Edgbaston, for instance, as everybody knew, had been
desperately in love with Fanny Trent, who married old Oatley, the
brewer, after all. Edgbaston himself, in a melting moment, had told the
story to Frank. ‘I’ve got nothing but mortgages to look forward to,’ the
young lord said, ‘and of course I knew that was how it must end. I had
only a shabby old coronet to offer her, and Oatley was a bag of money.
Poor Fanny! I don’t think she liked it any more than I did; but what can
a fellow do when circumstances are dead against him?’ That was how it
happened in ordinary life. Even when a man was as fond of a woman as he
could be, still he must take other matters into account,--how they were
to live, what provision was to be made for the future, and a hundred
other details about connexions and position and the like. Therefore,
whatever your feelings might be, Frank argued with himself, marriage was
always a matter of mixed motives; and to reject a rich alliance which
had nothing particularly disagreeable in it, or indeed to put aside the
thought of it, as if marriage was not one of the things to be calculated
about and carefully considered in all its bearings, was simple folly. He
had never thought so deeply on any subject, his profession and general
circumstances being rather against any very lively exercise of his
mental faculties. This question of Nelly Rich cost him two days’ painful
deliberation. To have her and to suspend his negotiations about India
and the marching regiment, and to strike out a shorter path instead to
wealth, and ease, and comfort--or not to have her! It even interfered
with his sleep, though he was so young and healthy. It was not a matter
on which he could consult any one, and this increased the difficulty
tenfold. Even as to Edgbaston, though he was so good a fellow, Frank had
sufficient delicacy to feel that if he should hereafter marry a woman
about whom he had thus consulted his friend, he could never allow that
friend to enter the house in which his wife should be supreme. If she
ever became his wife it would be indispensable that no living creature
should know how he had once questioned and doubted. Frank might be
susceptible to worldly motives, as most people are; but he was full of
honourable feeling all the same. He might marry money, but no one should
ever be able so much as to hint to the woman who brought it that it was
not her he loved best. He would do all a man could to love her if he did
marry her; and he would breathe his secret to no one. And thus he
turned his difficulty over and over in his mind, and denied himself the
comfort of friendly counsel on the subject, which indeed was as high an
evidence of the young man’s honourable feeling as could well be desired.
But his reasonings with himself were far from being successful. His
arguments, like those of philosophy, were irrefutable, but produced no
conviction. The more clearly he saw that it was expedient for him to
seize so unusual an opportunity, and secure his own prospects for life,
the more unwilling did he feel to take the first necessary steps. India
suddenly acquired an attraction for Frank which it never had before.
Tiger-hunts, warlike expeditions,--all the pomp and circumstance of
Eastern life,--suddenly gleamed up in his imagination as contrasted with
the tame amusements and monotonous life at home. Yes, home had been very
pleasant before any other visions came. Hunting, and fishing, and
boating, and going to balls, are very agreeable modes of filling up a
young man’s time, and leave him little leisure to think what is the good
of it all. But if by any chance that question should penetrate through
the maze of pleasures, it either has to be answered or it leaves an
unpleasant echo among sounds otherwise most agreeable. Frank had made a
virtue of necessity after his father’s death, and had compelled himself
to ask and to find an answer to this demand. After all there was no
good except amusement in it. He was a lovely spectacle,--he was modestly
aware,--on state occasions in his grand uniform; but these occasions
were but few, and there would still be heaps of men left to hunt the
foxes and fish the rivers of England after he was gone. A man who
remained and grew old and yet was never anything more than a beautiful
Guardsman, was not an imposing being. And the money he might marry was
not enough to give him occupation and a solemn status in the country.
Had it been fifty thousand a-year indeed, that would have been as good
as a profession; for of course it would have involved estates to manage,
and a hundred things to do; but fifty thousand down, though it would
make him extremely comfortable, would leave him as ornamental and
useless as ever. And India was all novel, and fresh, and full of
excitement;--troops to lead, mutinies to quell for anything he knew,
principalities to conquer perhaps,--shawls, diamonds, tigers, everything
new. Frank had a hard time of it with all these thoughts. And once or
twice there did actually spring up before him, quite uncalled-for, among
his serious reflections, the shadowy apparition of that doorway with its
curtains, and the young face looking through. That had nothing to do
with it, you may well say,--less than nothing; but yet it had a sort of
confusing effect on the young man’s intellect, and added a perplexity
the more. The way in which he finally extricated himself from the maze,
and saw daylight at last, is one which, I suppose, few people would
divine, and which could have occurred only to a younger brother in
conscious possession of many qualities, both intuitive and the result of
experience, which Providence had denied to the rest of his family. He
wrote a letter to his brother Laurie; and this is what the young
Machiavel said;--
‘MY DEAR LAURIE,--
‘You will be surprised I don’t doubt when you see what I am writing
to you about. Perhaps you will think it is not the part of the
younger to advise the elder; but if we don’t hang together, and do
the best we can for each other, what are we, under our present
circumstances, to do? I am not quite as old as you are, but perhaps
I have been thrown more into the world. You have always taken to
artists, and those kind of people, you know, who are out of the
tide, and have queer notions; beside being,--no offence
intended,--of a diffeent sphere from us. You think, on the other
hand, that we are an empty-headed set, and perhaps you are not far
wrong; but a fellow picks up a great many wrinkles even among men
that are stupid enough to look at,--don’t you see?--when they’ve
got some knowledge of the world.
‘The fact is I am beating about the bush a little, because I don’t
very well know how to begin what I’ve got to say. It is just this.
You must have noticed the other day when you were at Richmont how
favourable everybody was to you and to me. Of course, one does not
care for the opinion of an old beggar like Rich. But his wife isn’t
at all so bad, and the girl, on the whole, is very nice. I assure
you frankly I do think so. She’s a clever little thing, and
decidedly pretty and amusing too, and fond of pictures, and that
sort of thing, so that there would be a sympathy between you. To
say it out plump, my opinion is that she is the very sort of girl
you ought to marry. It is not everybody that would suit you. You
want some one that has money, and yet doesn’t stand upon her money;
and that would not be conventional or stuck-up, but take your
friends along with yourself, and make up her mind to it. Now Nelly
Rich has no right to be stuck-up; and yet she’s nice, and looks
nice, and we Rentons are well enough known to marry anybody we
please. As for the father, I don’t think you need mind about him.
He is very liberal and hospitable, and ready to throw his money
about in buckets-full, and that always tells. People may snigger at
him, but they’ll go to his house all the same. And you may marry a
girl, you know, without marrying her father too. The mother is not
at all so bad. She’s motherly, and that sort of thing. And Nelly
has fifty thousand pounds. I can’t tell you how much I have been
thinking of it since that day. The fellows here have all advised me
to go in for it myself, but I’m rather too young to marry; and
besides I think it would suit you far better than me. I have my
profession, and I can do very well for a few years on my allowance,
especially in India, where there is double pay. But you,--forgive
me, my dear Laurie,--have always been a fellow to talk, you know,
and to do things for other people. I don’t think you’re the man to
make your way in the world, and I can’t help feeling that to have a
nice wife who would take an interest in your pursuits, and a nice
steady income that would keep you out of anxiety, would be the very
thing for you. I have made every inquiry, and as far as I can make
out, Nelly Rich is not what you would call a flirt. She is fond of
a little fun, and I like her for that; and when a man is cheeky,
they say she leads him on till he makes a fool of himself; but no
sensible fellow would object to a girl for having a little spirit.
She is very good-tempered, and no end of fun; and very clever at
drawing, and everything of that kind. She doesn’t go in for music,
but neither do you; and she’s the sort of girl that would travel
with you, and work with you, and make an ass of herself about
pictures, and old churches, and rubbish, just as much as you would.
I think, on my word, Laurie, it’s the very thing for you.
‘Anyhow, old fellow, you won’t take it amiss my having put it into
your head? It would be a most sensible thing to do; and I feel sure
a man might get quite fond of Nelly Rich, were he to try. I suppose
it is because the Manor is so near that they are so friendly to us.
As soon as mamma is well enough I’ll make her call. She’ll do it at
once when she knows what depends on it. And if you play your cards
at all well, you are as sure of success as anything can be. And
then you would not need to give up any of your friends. She was as
pleased with that painter-fellow the other day as if he had been a
prince. And you remember how she talked about the people in Fitzroy
Square. The more I think of it, the more it seems providential for
you. My dear fellow, go in and win. I should have recommended her
to Ben, had Ben been within knowledge. But she will suit you much
better than she would have suited him. And it will be a real
comfort to think that one of us is saved from the wreck, whether
the others sink or swim.
‘Yrs. affec.,
‘F. RENTON.’
This was Frank’s grand device for utilising Nelly’s fortune, and yet
preserving his own freedom. Laurie only received the letter when he was
in the midst of his preparations for going to Italy, and he threw it
aside with a painful smile. But our Guardsman knew nothing about his
brother’s preoccupied mind, and, satisfied that he had done the best
for everybody, laid aside the subject, and went upon his way as usual.
He was rather anxious for Laurie’s answer, it is true; but then there
are often irregularities in family correspondence, and Laurie might
think it best to leave it until they met. As it happened Frank did not
even visit his mother for the next ten days; and Mary Westbury, who was
his home correspondent, was so full of the news of an unexpected visit
from Ben, that she quite omitted to mention Laurie’s intimation, which
came immediately after, of his intended departure. So that Frank had
actually no information about his brother when he went on the following
Saturday to dine at Richmont.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MUSIC-ROOM.
Frank was alone on his second expedition to Richmont, which was a
satisfaction to him. He was full of his scheme, and anxious to see how
the land lay, and what Laurie’s prospects might be should he make up his
mind to ‘go in’ for the fifty thousand pounds. And he was quite willing
to divert himself in the society of his future sister-in-law. The
invitation had a family aspect altogether, he thought; and, instead of
returning to his quarters, he had made his arrangements to go home for
the Sunday, and rouse his mother to such steps as were practicable for
securing Laurie’s advantage. Frank left Royalborough with all the lively
zest of a matchmaker, pleased with himself and his own generosity, and
rather elated on his brother’s account. Fifty thousand pounds!--two
thousand five hundred a-year, and always the prospect of something
coming at the end of the seven years’ probation! For a man who had no
expensive tastes, and whose whole soul was wrapped up in pictures, it
was a fortune! He could dabble in paint as much as he liked, and his
wife could help him; and they could travel about as much as they liked,
and go to all the pretty places that took their fancy. There was no one
to whom he could have said as much in actual words; but the feeling in
his mind was, that if anybody had ever originated a better plan he’d
like to hear of it. Ben had turned up, as Mary Westbury’s letter told
him; and no doubt Ben would make his way in the world. And as for
himself, Frank thought that there was no particular fear; but Laurie was
the feeble one of the family, the one most likely to do little, to spend
his strength for naught, or waste his own life for the advantage of
others. And nothing could be so good for him as to be thus put on a
comfortable shelf out of harm’s way at the very beginning of his career.
He was fond of Laurie, as most people were; and it pleased him as much
in his brotherliness as in his vanity to take Laurie thus in hand and be
the one to provide for him. This time it was to dinner he was going at
Richmont, and he had written to the Manor to beg his mother to send over
the dog-cart for him and his portmanteau. The millionnaire’s house was
beginning to be lit up in all its windows when he drove along the
avenue: the lights in it sparkled like fairy lamps in the blue, spring
twilight; and when he entered the great hall he was informed that nobody
had come down-stairs yet, and that the dinner had been made an hour
later in consequence of some one else who was to arrive by the train.
‘The young ladies is in the music-room, sir,’ the butler said
respectfully, being himself a native of Berks, and feeling that the
advent of a Renton was an honour to the house; ‘and I was to tell you as
tea is served in the drawing-room.’
‘Oh, I’ll join the young ladies,’ said Frank, lightly, thinking of Nelly
only, his sister-in-law that was to be. No doubt some one must be with
her, but that did not matter. Indeed, on the whole, it was so much the
better, for it would not be becoming to flirt, except in the very
mildest way, with a girl who was going to be your brother’s wife. He ran
up-stairs, telling the man he knew the way, and thus making a daring
leap into intimacy such as he would never have dreamed of had he taken
time to think. But his own plan had taken possession of him. Of course
she was going to be his sister-in-law, and it would be absurd to stand
upon ceremony. Thus Frank, being unused to the excitement of so much
thinking, was carried away by it, and took his own imaginations for
granted. As he ran up-stairs, however, his ear was caught by the sound
of the organ, a sound which had not been heard in Beecham so long as he
had known the house, and to which Richmont, according to Nelly’s
description, was as little accustomed. The music seemed to fill the
place, swelling through the stairs and passages, which were full of the
darkness and stillness of the approaching night. Frank stood still to
listen, and then went on with a surprised face, and with a new thrill in
his heart. It was surely the same sonata he had heard softly breathing
out of the dark drawing-room that night he visited Fitzroy Square. Who
could be playing? Could there be two girls in the world who had the same
power, the same feeling for music, the same subtle sentiment, and
expressive strength? But then how did he know at all that it was a girl
who was playing? It might be some old music-master, one of the sort of
people whom Nelly loved. All the same, it had the effect of subduing his
steps, and making his approach much less confident and unembarrassed. He
lingered,--he thought of going back,--he felt himself a coxcomb and
presumptuous animal. And yet he went on, led partly by the force of the
impulse which was still upon him, and partly allured by the dulcet and
harmonious sound to which he was so susceptible. He knocked at the door,
but his summons was unheard in the midst of the music. Then he opened it
softly, and went in. There was no light in the room except the pale
twilight, which marked out every line of the windows, and the glimmering
of the painted glass at the end by which he entered. He seemed to step
out of the real world altogether into an enchanted place when he crossed
that darkling threshold. The gilded organ-pipes caught a certain faint
reflection, and under that dim shimmer sat a shadow, which was playing;
while in the centre window, in the bay, looking out, as it seemed, into
the night, another shadow, light and small as a fairy, stood listening
or musing. The opposite wall of the room, and the picture which was so
bright in the daylight, had retreated altogether into the gloom; and the
painted window hung as if suspended in the air; and all the solid wall
in which it was set, and the dark oak carving under it, had receded into
obscurity. Frank stood with his hand on the door, and held his breath.
He felt at once like a fool and like an intruder, not knowing who they
were whose privacy he was invading, and having no right whatever to be
there even had he been sure it was Nelly who stood in the window. He had
burst into her particular privacy unannounced the second time he had
been in the house! But Frank was bewitched, and stood still, blotting
himself out as small as possible against the door.
But either the door had creaked or her quick ear had caught some sound
of movement, for Nelly Rich turned round suddenly. She was not so
absorbed in the music as the player was, or as Frank would have been had
he been listening in a legitimate and proper way. Her mind was divided
between that and a great many other thoughts, and gave but a partial
attention to the sounds which filled the room. When she saw that another
shadow had intruded into her retirement, Nelly gave a little cry, and
flitted like a ghost towards the door.
‘Who is there?’ she cried with a sharpness which struck in just at a
pianissimo passage, and startled the player as well as the intruder. The
music ceased with a kind of long-drawn wail, and the musician too gave a
little scream. Frank would have been thankful if the old oak floor had
suddenly opened and swallowed him up.
‘A thousand pardons,’ he cried; ‘it is I, Miss Rich; Frank Renton. I
don’t know how to explain my intrusion. Pray forgive me. I was told I
should find you here,--and then the music; I have not a word to say for
myself. Pardon?--that is all.’
‘Was it papa who told you you would find me here?’ said Nelly. ‘It is
just like him. But, Mr. Renton, I am not papa, and I admit nobody but my
friends to this room,--especially in the dark,’ she added, with a quiver
of coming laughter, which reassured Frank. He sank down upon his knee,
as she stood with her arms extended, metaphorically thrusting him away.
‘What can I say for myself?’ said Frank. ‘I am a wretched sinner, not
worthy to be admitted as a friend. Let me come in as a captive, like one
of your Angles; or as a beggar, or---- Don’t be too hard upon me. The
evil is done. The mortal has crossed the threshold of fairyland. Let him
stay.’
‘Alice, advise me,’ cried Nelly, turning to the silent figure at the
piano. ‘Shall we let him stay?’
So it was Alice! Something had told him so the instant he recognised
that sonata. Now he turned his head towards her in the gloom,
breathless, awaiting her answer. Alice, however, made no reply. She only
returned to her organ, and took up her pianissimo passage. I cannot tell
how she intimated her pleasure to the slave on the other side of the
wall who ‘blew;’ but, anyhow, she took it up where she had left off, and
the soft, delicious sounds, the very voice of the darkness and
stillness, whispered over the two darkling, undiscernible figures,--one
standing, one kneeling, in the gloom. A certain soft thrill of
consciousness, half comic, half sentimental, moved Nelly. No doubt it
had been partly in jest that Frank had put himself on his knees; but
might it not be partly in earnest, too? Frank, for his part, had
forgotten Nelly’s very existence. It seemed natural to him to listen
thus to such a strain. He was not intellectual, and could have heard the
finest poetry in the world unmoved. All his pretty sentiments about
fairyland, etcetera, were also the most superficial words; but the music
seized upon, mastered him, put a soul into the young soldier. He turned
half towards the instrument, kneeling, and unconscious that he was
kneeling. To him it was poetry, art, passion, imagination, all in one.
And Alice went on playing softly as in a dream; and the remaining rays
of half light gradually extinguished themselves, till even the two
shadows at the door became scarcely discernible, and the organ-pipes
faded into obscurity. It was a curious situation altogether, but only
Nelly was aware of it. To her the fact was very evident that a handsome
young Guardsman, still kneeling on one knee, as to his sovereign, was
before her; that twilight was settling down into night; that Mr. Frank
Renton was a stranger: and that it was time to dress. Something
prevented her from speaking, and cutting short the music; but her
impatient mind having got over the first charm, began to grow weary, and
long for a change. She could not make out how it was that the musician
went on, unfatigued with all those lingering notes. ‘That’s the same
thing over again,’ Nelly said to herself, not being so fond of music as
she ought to have been, as may easily be perceived. She glided back to
the window, at last; and Frank, roused by her motion, rose from his
reverential attitude. He knew that Alice could not stop till the
movement had come to an end; and was not impatient, but absorbed in the
lovely harmony. But after a while the thought stole into even his mind
that it would be best to get as much into the light as possible, and he
followed Nelly to the window. There was a glimmering of the park visible
outside, and, what was more to the purpose, a great expanse of blue sky
and stars. And in the room there was the painted window, hanging in the
air like a picture worked in jewels, suspended without visible support;
and the music--and the two girls;--even a poet could not have objected
to all the accessories of the scene.
‘Thanks, Alice, it is lovely,’ cried Nelly; ‘but all the same for the
moment, my dear, I am glad it is done; for this is growing very ghostly.
Mr. Renton, I think I can see that you have come in, though you never
got permission. Go before us, please, and let us know if there are
lights in the passages: and if you are good, and do everything you are
told, we will forgive you for coming in. Alice, give me your hand. They
are both intoxicated with the music, these two, cried Nelly, as if to
herself; ‘and I don’t believe they have any eyes to see that window
hanging there all by itself. Come along, you people, who can hear and
can’t see:--let us get into the light.’
‘But I can see, too,’ said Alice, softly, coming to Nelly’s side.
‘Ah, you are a painter’s daughter,’ said Nelly: ‘but you would need to
be a cat to see anything now. Thanks, Mr. Renton. Now wait a moment till
our eyes are used to the light.’
‘Coming down to the common world again,’ said Frank, ‘is hard. No one
can feel it more than I do. Take care of that step,--even painters
themselves cannot always see.’
‘I wish the common world were not down so many stairs,’ said Nelly; and
then they emerged into the light. They were still in their morning
dresses; and Frank’s eyes, once more out of the darkness fell upon the
fresh, girlish face, the mass of shining hair,--all those tints of rose
and lily which belonged to Alice Severn and her sixteen years. There was
a great deal more expression in Nelly’s little brown, sparkling
countenance. She had lived a year or two longer in reality, a hundred
years or so longer in experience. Alice’s face lay like an inland lake
moved from above, from without, by soft, kissing breezes, by beams of
sunshine, but not by any movements from within. There were no volcanoes
underneath, nor quicksands, nor sunken rocks. She was very young, and
ignorant as a child. That want of definite expression which was a
trouble to some of her friends, to Frank was a beauty. She looked like a
saint, or an angel, to his eyes. In his worldly-mindedness and curious
calculations of what he called practical matters, this face disturbed
him, experienced man of the world as he was. What would she think of his
scheme for Laurie? The first effect of her presence had been to drive
Laurie and all his schemes out of his mind. And now the very contrast of
her innocence brought them all back with a rush. It was not this
visionary creature concerning whom the plot was laid;--but Nelly, little
sprite, who stood by her, a being manifestly of this world.
‘I wish Laurie had been here,’ cried Frank, abruptly, remembering his
_rôle_. ‘He is the only one of our family who has an eye. He would have
raved about your window, Miss Rich.’
‘That would have been kind of him,’ said Nelly, with a slight touch of
disdain. ‘It was Mr. Laurence Renton you were speaking of, Alice. Did
you say he had gone away?’
‘Gone away!’ cried Frank, with a start, which endangered his footing on
the stair.
‘To Italy,’ said Alice. ‘We were all so sorry. He went yesterday
morning, and the night before he came to bid mamma good-bye. They say it
was quite suddenly that he had made up his mind.’
‘To Italy!’ repeated Frank, in tones of absolute consternation. He
stopped on the stair as he went down, to apostrophise mentally both
heaven and earth. Gone! notwithstanding all the plans that were making
for him. Frank stopped short, so much affected by the news that he
forgot even the odd appearance that he made, standing on the stair.
‘Then how is it to be done,--and who is to do it?’ was the question that
immediately suggested itself to his mind. Nelly Rich stood and looked up
at him through the rails of the stair with bright eyes, full of
mischief, contemplating his puzzled countenance. Who was to do it? By
this time it seemed a matter of conscience to Frank that some Renton
should appropriate Nelly and her fifty thousand pounds. And Ben was
going to America, and Laurie had disappeared into the South. His face
expressed the liveliest perplexity and self-interrogation. Who was to do
it? Laurie being gone, and Nelly’s fortune still unsecured, was it not
necessary that he himself, casting all weaker ideas aside, should go in
himself for the fifty thousand pounds!
CHAPTER XII.
A PRISONER.
Frank found it very difficult to make out, both at that and a subsequent
period, how it was that no dog-cart came for him from the Manor on that
Saturday night. To be sure, the circumstance was easily enough explained
as a matter of fact, and meant simply this, neither more nor less,--that
his letter, intimating his intention to spend the Sunday with his
mother, and giving instructions when he was to be sent for, reached Mrs.
Renton only on Sunday at noon. But what Providence meant by permitting
such a thing to happen, was of course a totally different matter. The
mistake fitted in wonderfully, as mistakes so often do, with the course
of events. Richmont might not be so refined as the Manor, but it
certainly was, at the present moment, much more amusing. And though of
course Frank, like a good son, had been quite willing to give up the
Sunday to his mother, yet he was aware of the fact beforehand that the
Sunday would be dull. Mrs. Renton had lived a semi-invalid life so long
that it was rather a pleasure to her, now she was alone, to relapse
into full and unmitigated invalidism. She had so many draughts to take,
and precautions to bear in mind, that her whole time was filled up, and
that not so unpleasantly as might have been supposed. She had her
favourite maid, who never permitted her to forget anything; and when
there was no draught to be taken, was always hovering in the background
with cups of tea or arrowroot to sustain her mistress’s strength. Mrs.
Renton was very fond of her boys, but still, her own circumstances being
of such a character, she was not entirely dependent upon them for her
happiness. To be sure, if any one had so much as mentioned happiness to
her, she would have wept, poor soul, and declared positively that no
such thing was possible to her, thus left alone in the vacant house, her
husband dead, and her sons absent. But, nevertheless, the draughts, and
the care, and the tea, and the arrowroot, occupied her time, and gave
that gentle support of routine which is so invaluable to a languid life.
But it may be supposed that her room was not the most lively place in
the world to a young man; and Frank, in the drawing-room at Richmont,
with Mrs. Rich making all sorts of comical speeches, and Nelly quite
disposed to flirt, and Alice ready to play, did not feel any sensation
of despair when he was informed that no dog-cart had come, and that it
was now too late to expect it. ‘All the better luck for us,’ said Mr.
Rich. ‘Nothing for making acquaintance like a Sunday in the country.
There is your room ready, and we’re delighted to have you. By Monday you
will know how you like us, and we shall have found out how much we like
you.’
‘We know that already,’ said Mrs. Rich, who was fond of little inuendos;
‘and I am sure I don’t know how far it is safe to keep a handsome young
Guardsman in the house along with two girls. For my part, I don’t answer
for the consequences. I can’t be sure how I shall stand it myself,’ she
added, with a laugh, which was a little vulgar, no doubt, but mellow,
and not unpleasant to hear. Nelly looked up at her mother as if she
could have pinched her; but as for papa Rich, this kind of humour was in
his way, and he laughed too.
‘I’ll risk it,’ he said, ‘especially as the Guardsman has other fish to
fry, my dear, and isn’t likely to interfere with you. What’s the matter,
little Nell? You need not knit your brows at me. I hope I may express
myself as I like in my own house, and no offence to any one. Mr. Frank,
here, understands what I mean; and I am very glad he is going to stop
with us, whatever you may be, you little flirt. And where has Alice
Severn gone to? I want to speak to her. Don’t you think you could play
us some nice, old-fashioned tunes, my dear? I don’t understand your
grand music. That’s why I like your mamma’s pictures, you know. ’Igh art
goes a step beyond me; but give me a pretty woman and a bunch of nice
children, and I know what that means. And it is just the same in
music;--“Sally in our Alley,” and two or three more,--I like them better
than your sonatas; but I suppose you think me an ignorant old wretch for
that?’
‘No, indeed,’ said Alice; ‘I will play whatever you please.’
‘Then come with me,’ said the patron of art, giving Alice his fat arm.
Alf of the Buffs, who had arrived by the train, and on whose account
dinner had been postponed, was the only other member of the party, and
he had stretched himself at full length on the sofa with all the
appearance of being asleep. The other people had gone away early; and
Frank had Mrs. Rich and Nelly, in the intimacy of the domestic circle,
all to himself. Old Rich took Alice quite to the other end of the great
drawing-room, to the piano, which stood there, and the conversation went
on with a distracting accompaniment of tunes and the clapping of hands,
with which Alice’s audience hailed each air in succession. Frank’s
attention in particular was sadly distracted,--he could neither listen
nor stop listening; and yet the talk had taken a turn which, on the
whole, was rather interesting.
‘How will your mamma bear your going away?’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘Her
youngest;--I can feel for her. My eldest are married, and out in the
world; and I know it’s best for themselves, and I don’t mind. But Alf
and Nelly are my babies, just as you are your mother’s, Mr. Frank. What
should I do, if any one came to carry my little girl off to the end of
the world? And it will be harder still on your poor, dear mamma.’
‘But I can’t help it,’ said Frank. ‘You know,--I suppose everybody
knows,--the peculiarity in our circumstances. I can’t go on as I am
doing. India’s the place when a man has no money. I don’t know what
would become of me if I were to stay at home.’
‘Well,--you might marry an heiress, you know,’ said Mrs. Rich.
‘Mamma,’ said Alf, from the sofa,--not asleep, though he looked like
it,--‘if you have any heiresses in your pocket remember your own flesh
and blood first of all; don’t turn them over to Renton;--he can manage
for himself.’
‘Oh, yes; I don’t doubt he can manage beautifully for himself,’ said
Mrs. Rich, nodding her head; ‘but still he may be the better for a
little advice. An heiress is the very thing for you, Mr, Frank. As for
Alf, of course,--though I say it that shouldn’t,--he’ll be very well
off, and a catch for any one; as you would have been, but for that fancy
of your poor papa’s; Mr. Rich’s opinion has always been that his brain
must have been touched. But that is the thing for you,--as clear as
daylight. Marry a girl with money, and settle down at home; and don’t
go and break your mother’s heart. You take my advice, and tell her it
was I who gave it, and she’ll order her carriage directly, and come over
to Richmont and hug me,--though she would not so much as call, you know,
only for me.’
‘Indeed you do her an injustice,’ said Frank; ‘she is a great
invalid,--she never goes anywhere now.’
‘Then her carriage goes to the Rectory, which is not half a mile off;
but never mind,’ said Mrs. Rich. ‘I am sure I don’t mind. Give us a
little time, and well make our way. Yes; that’s what you’ve got to do.
Marry a girl with money. I’m sure you’d make her a good husband all the
same.’
I hope, if I were a husband at all, I should be a good one,’ said Frank,
laughing; ‘but I don’t think I should like to marry money. A little
could do no harm, of course,--just enough to keep her comfortable, and
as she had been used to be.’ As he said this, Frank, without knowing it,
looked direct at Nelly; and, to his consternation, caught her eye, and
saw her grow suddenly crimson; an example which, man of the world as he
was, he immediately followed. Then, to make things worse, he came to an
alarmed, embarrassed pause. ‘The man who ought to marry money is my
brother Laurie,’ he said hastily, and then stopped. What had he done?
Was it the fifty thousand pounds he was thinking of?--or what was it?
This was only the second time he had been in her company, and yet he
had committed both himself and Nelly,--or, at least, in the
consternation of the moment, so he thought.
‘It must be pleasant for the heiress to be discussed so calmly,’ said
Nelly all at once. ‘Of course, any woman is ready to marry any man who
presents himself. That’s the conclusion, isn’t it? But some girls are of
a different way of thinking. Why should Mr. Laurence Renton marry money,
I should like to know? I think he is very nice,--a great deal nicer
than----most men,’ said Nelly, with emphasis. Her cheek was more
crimson than ever, and the defiance was an exquisite compliment which
went to Frank’s heart. Yes,--it was droll, but it did really seem to him
that if he was disposed he might have that fifty thousand pounds. With
that he could have his horse and a great many luxuries besides; and
Nelly was very pretty, sitting there, opposite to him, with that blush
on her cheek, and soft indignation in her eyes.
‘Laurie is the best fellow that ever lived,’ he cried, recovering
himself with an effort; ‘but he does things for other people with a much
better grace than for himself. He has always been like that. Lazy
Laurence everybody calls him. He will never make his own way. I don’t
know what he has gone to do in Italy. But, all the same, there never was
such a good fellow. He is the kind of fellow,’ said Frank, with a
little effusion, ‘that something out of the way should happen to. He
ought to find a beautiful princess in a wood, and fall in love with her,
and save her from the giant; and then find out after all that she was
the daughter of the king of the gold-mines, and had her pockets full of
diamonds. That is the fate I should like for Laurie. Somehow he seems to
deserve it; and it never would occur to him to plan anything for
himself.’
‘Now I like that,’ cried Mrs. Rich; ‘I like you for being so proud of
your brother. There are heaps of heiresses, you know, in Italy--at least
so one reads in books; ladies travelling alone, that a young man could
make himself very useful to, and then in common gratitude---- Why it is
quite like a fairy tale. And when will your brother go? and what will he
do in Italy? Mr. Rich has promised to take us there next winter. I have
wanted to go all my life, Mr. Frank. It has been my dream. How strange
it would be if we should meet him! But, alas! we have no heiresses,’
said Mrs. Rich, casting a glance at Nelly, who, for her part, gave her
mother a quick, indignant look.
‘We shall go like a caravanserai,’ said Nelly, ‘with servants, and
companions, and all sorts of dead-weights. Papa says he means to take
that Count with him who is sick, and heaps of people. What I should like
to do would be to go all by myself, and live out of the English
quarter, and see all the pictures, and never say a word to anybody.
Fancy going to Rome and somebody saying to you, “ Isn’t it lovely?” as
if it were a scene in a pantomime! I do so hate all that. I hate the
books about parties to the Colosseum and rides in the Campagna. I want
to go to Rome, and live and work. I wish I were your brother. I wish I
could go wherever I pleased, and run about everywhere alone.’
‘I wish you could go with Laurie,’ said Frank, and for the moment it was
said with absolute simplicity, without a thought of his scheme; ‘that is
precisely what he will do; and he knows everything,--where to go, and
what to see.’ Then he caught the odd, inquiring glance Nelly shot at
him, and grew confused, he could scarcely tell why. ‘Of course, that is
nonsense,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘But it must be the pleasantest of all
when two people, just two, can ramble all about the world alone.’
Then there was another pause. What did he mean? He asked himself the
question, and could not answer it. Was it that he himself would like to
be one of the two, with a bright, little, vivacious, enthusiastic
creature by his side to make everything interesting? Or was it Laurie
who should take that place? Frank was so bewildered that he did not
know; and Nelly, sitting opposite to him, was so softened by this
curious talk, and looked so much a sweeter version of herself, as with
her face crimsoned and her eyes lit up, she sent a glance at him now and
then, half stealthy, half candid, that the heart began to beat in the
Guardsman’s bosom. Not that he cared much for Rome, or for rambling
about the world in general. The pictures would bore him. The rides in
the Campagna and the parties to the Colosseum would be best for Frank;
and as for running about among all the old holes and corners as Laurie
did, would not India be a thousand times better, with promotion, and
fighting, and tigers, and general novelty? Clearly Providence had made a
mistake about that dog-cart. It was Laurie who should have been stranded
at Richmont, and left to concert an Italian tour with Nelly Rich. How
perfectly they would have suited each other! But all the time Frank’s
heart felt soft to the bright, sparkling creature, who was actually
waiting, expecting the next words which he should speak.
‘It is very stupid on my part to talk like this,’ he said, with a little
forced laugh. ‘I shall be crossing the Desert most likely when you are
on your way, or creeping about Bombay or Calcutta, or some other
wretched place. But I must tell Laurie to look out for you, Mrs, Rich.
He is sure to be of use,’ he added, hastily. And then Frank’s temples
throbbed and grew crimson, and his heart gave a jump. Was it that Nelly
sighed, and gave her head a little, scarcely perceptible shake, like one
who has relinquished some pleasant thought? It was intensely flattering,
and Frank could not but feel the compliment. What a dear little thing
she was! How warm-hearted and how discriminating in her judgment! Frank
felt disposed to kiss her hand, or even her cheek, out of pure
gratitude. But still he was not disposed to give up India and his own
way, and wander over the world with her, even had she possessed twice
fifty thousand pounds.
And there was still the music going on at the other end of the room, and
Mr. Rich clapping his hands at the conclusion of each melody. It was
very different certainly from the programme up-stairs in the dark in the
music-room; but yet there was a charm in the quaint old airs which Alice
went on playing one after another, over and over again, without a sign
of weariness. A distant, visionary, unconscious creature, still
unawakened to any sense of personal life, rapt in the strains of her own
music--half child, half angel--as calmly indifferent to him and every
man as though they had all been like old Rich! Somehow this was the
image which most captivated the young man’s perverse fancy. He turned
his chair round and listened when the talk had come to this point. And
Nelly did not wonder. It seemed as if all had been said that could be
said thus. And Mrs. Rich began to applaud loudly. And then the Saturday
came to an end. It was only the second time he had been in this house.
That was the extraordinarily ludicrous part of it! In such a house men
grow quickly intimate.
CHAPTER XIII.
SUNDAY.
People are apt to talk of Sunday in the country as a pleasant thing, and
yet there are few things which require a more delicate combination of
circumstances to make it bearable. Far be it from me to say a word
against the English Sunday which is good for man and beast, and only a
little heavy upon the idle portion of the world, who have no particular
occasion for rest. Sunday at home, with one’s own occupations and
pleasures about one, is precisely what one chooses to make it,--an oasis
in the desert, a peaceful break upon the frets of life, or a weariness
and a nuisance, according to the inclinations of the individual. But
your Sunday is taken out of your hands when you visit your friends.
Frank Renton was nothing more than an ordinary young man, neither less
nor more devout than the average; and felt the weekly holiday often
enough lie heavy on his hands. But he, like everybody else, floated upon
the surface of the Sunday at Richmont,--a waif and stray, without any
will of his own, to be made what his entertainers pleased. Sunday
usually comprises morning church, which is one’s duty, and a blessed
relief from one’s friends; and then lunch, which is a happy interlude of
life; and then a dreadful afternoon to be got through somehow; enforced
aimless walks, if it is fine; aimless compulsory talk, in any case; if
it rains, confusion and despair till dinner comes,--a heavenly interval
of occupation! After that, if there is anything at all genial in the
nature of your interlocutors, the evening may be got through, with the
assistance of sacred music; but, oh, the joy, the relief, the
satisfaction, when ten o’clock comes, and one is justified in lighting
one’s candle and going to bed! Two girls in the house to walk with, and
talk to, naturally modified this frightful programme to the young man.
They all walked to church in the morning,--for Mr. Rich was
old-fashioned,--and after luncheon looked at each other to know what was
to be done. There was the flower-garden to visit, and the stables, and
Mr. Rich’s favourite walk round the grounds. Frank, being a stranger,
went through the whole of these varied operations. He visited the
flower-garden with Mrs. Rich, and the stables with Alf, and made the
round of the little park with the father and son together, and had all
the views pointed out to him. ‘But you know all this ground as well as
we do,’ the millionnaire said, though not until after he had cheerfully
pointed out everything that was to be seen, and all the points of
vision. ‘Ten thousand times better,’ Frank groaned to himself; but he
was too civil to speak out. It was a lovely day, in the end of April;
heaps of primroses were clustering in the woods, and the flower-beds
were gay with the first flush of spring; the lilacs and laburnums were
beginning to bloom; the orchards were all white, and the air full of
perfume. On such a day, as Mr. Rich justly said, it was a pleasure
merely to be out-of-doors. But Frank, who had abundant opportunity of
being out-of-doors, was indifferent to the pleasure. He had not anything
particular to say to Alf, and Alf had nothing particular to say to him.
So that Mr. Rich had it all his own way, and did the chief part of the
talking, and enjoyed himself. He went through the walks, a little in
advance of the two young men, with his hands folded under the tails of
his coat. His step was brisk, though theirs was sufficiently languid.
‘This was a sad desert when I came here,’ he would say, turning round,
and bringing them to a stop for a moment, ‘I had cartloads of rubbish
cleared away from this bank,--scrubby bushes, all choked and miserable,
without air to breathe or space to grow in. I had ’em all cleared away,
sir. And over there, there had been a little landslip, as you see, which
I stopped just in time. The whole slope would have fallen with those
pretty birches, but for what we had done. You can see how it’s all bound
and shored up. They told me I never could manage it; that a City man
knew nothing about such things. But just look at it now, and tell me if
anything could be more steady. It would defy an avalanche, that bank
would.’ And Mr. Rich stopped and patted the slope with his fat hands.
‘It seems beautifully done,’ said Frank, and Alf gave a little grunt, as
who should say, The old fellow knows what he is about.
‘I flatter myself you won’t see better work anywhere,’ said the
millionnaire. ‘We City men know a thing or two, Mr. Frank. We may not be
so fine as you soldiers, but we have an eye for practical matters. I was
not much to brag of in the way of prosperity when I first came to this
neighbourhood. We took a little house down here, my wife and I, for
change in the summer; and I set my eye on this place. I said to myself,
‘If I thrive I’ll settle there, if money will buy it.’ And there’s
nothing money will not buy. Here I am, you see, and my children after
me. What would the Beauchamps have thought if they had known that the
very name of their place was to be changed, and it was to be called
after the Riches, people nobody ever heard of? But a great many people
have heard of me now.’
‘Immense numbers, I am sure, sir,’ said Frank, throwing away his cigar.
He had the natural civility of his family, and could not turn an
absolutely deaf ear, sick as he was of the monologue. Even Alf took his
cigar out of his mouth, and looked at it curiously, as if it perhaps
could clear up the situation. ‘All the same; I don’t see that we are
anything remarkable,’ said Alf; which was almost as great a puzzle to
his father as a similar accident was to Balaam.
‘Oh dear, no, not all remarkable,’ said Mr. Rich, after he had stared
wildly at his son; and he gave a glance at Frank, and a little nod, to
signify his appreciation of his boy. ‘I don’t suppose you soldiers have
much need for brains,’ he added, with benevolent jocularity. ‘But to
return to the subject. I don’t know if you have observed how much I have
done to the house, Mr. Frank. That music-room Nelly is so fond of was
the merest wreck and ruin. Lumber in it,--actually lumber!--old pictures
turned against the wall that were not worth sixpence, and trunks full of
old papers, and everything that is most dreary. I had Runnymede, the
architect, down, who knows all about that style of thing. I said, “Name
your own price, and take your time, and come and dine with me whenever
you are in the county.” These were all the conditions I made, and in six
months, sir, I had everything restored; and as pretty a little domestic
chapel,--the best judges tell me,--as exists in England. All money,
sir,--money and a little taste. You may think I have too high an opinion
of what money can do; but I don’t think one can have too high an idea.
It can do anything. It’s the greatest power known. You may have the best
intentions in the world, but you can’t carry them out without money. You
can’t serve your friends without money; for influence means money, you
know, however incorruptible we are now-a-days. When I stand and look
round me, and see all the changes that have been made, I feel that
nothing but money could have done it. We did not have all this by birth,
as the Beauchamps had. You should see my cattle at the farm. The
Beauchamps never could afford to keep up that home-farm. I feel sorry
for them; but it was clearly the best thing they could do to go away.
They were keeping the sunshine off the land, and preventing it from
thriving. You must have money, Mr. Renton, before you can do anything.
It would be a great deal better for you young men if you recognised that
at the first start.’
‘I don’t see what good it would do us,’ said Frank. ‘We can’t invent
money. Of course I know it would be very nice to have it,--but wishing
is not having;’ and with that he turned his eye towards the music-room,
the windows of which were open. He was wishing to be there, there could
be no doubt; but I don’t think there was any calculation in his head, or
at that moment the smallest recollection of the fifty thousand pounds.
‘That is true,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘but when it comes in your way you should
know better than to put it aside, as I have known some foolish young
fellows do. There is your brother, for instance. Knowing who he was, and
being neighbours, and so forth, why I’d have bought anything of his own
as fast as look at it,--anything! As for merit, I should never have
asked if it was good or bad. But, no! Instead of taking me to his own
studio, where he must have had something to show,--must have had, don’t
you see, or what is the good of a studio at all?--he took me to
Suffolk’s and I bought that picture instead. That is what I call running
in the face of Providence. Serve your friends next to yourself, if you
like,--I don’t object to that; but to serve them before yourself is
going counter to every right feeling. Friendship is all very well, but
you can command even friendship if you have money enough. You prefer to
think of disinterestedness and all that sort of thing, you young
fellows; but the only man that can really be disinterested is a rich
man. Therefore be as rich as you can,--that has been my motto all my
life.’
Frank laughed, though he did not much like the lecture. ‘That is all
very well,’ he said; ‘but how are we to grow rich, except on the turf,
or at cards, or something? And you are just as likely, for that matter,
to grow poorer than richer. They are having some music up there,’ he
said, turning decidedly in the direction of the music-room. Mr. Rich
shook his head.
‘You won’t make much by music,’ he said,--‘at least, you amateurs don’t.
If I were Mrs. Severn I’d train that girl for the stage, or something.
Why not? She must work for her living, poor thing! And do you take my
advice, Mr. Frank,--don’t waste your chances, or refuse a good thing
when you may have it. Friends are all very well, but serve yourself
first. You know the proverb,--“He who will not when he may, when he
would he shall have nay.”’
‘If I should ever have any good things in my power I will recollect,’
said Frank, laughing. But he was disturbed by this strange persistency.
They had come at last, he thanked heaven, to the end of the walk; and it
was on Mr. Rich’s lips to propose another round. ‘I think I’ll go
up-stairs and see what the young ladies are doing,’ said Frank, hastily.
Then Alf uttered a haw-haw under his moustache, and his father chorused
loudly,--a liberty which the subject of this mirth somewhat resented.
‘Ay, do,’ said Mr. Rich; ‘more natural than listening to an old fogey
chattering, isn’t it? Go to the young ladies,--I don’t doubt you’ll be
very welcome; but nevertheless, Mr. Frank, don’t forget that I have been
giving you good advice,--and very good advice, too, you’ll find it. Come
along, Alf.’
Frank turned back to the house with a wonderful sense of relief, while
the father and son resumed their walk. What could old Rich mean? What
were the good things that might be coming his way that he was to be
careful not to refuse? The question sent the blood to his face, and a
thrill, for which it was difficult to account, through his whole frame.
Was it Nelly’s fortune that was thus waiting his acceptance? Was it----
He quickened his pace, and felt his temples throb, and something buzz in
his ears. He had put aside the idea. He had resolved in his own mind
that it was Laurie who was to face this question; but Laurie was gone,
and, so far as he could see, everybody was agreed in thrusting it on his
own notice. Was it necessary that he should go over all the arguments
once more? ‘Serve yourself first and then your friends,’ old Rich had
said, as if he had divined the intention of the young soldier to
transfer this possible piece of good fortune to his brother,--as if he
had any right to transfer Nelly Rich to any one! All this time she might
be, and probably was, quite unconscious of the whole business. A girl
might flirt a little with a man without ever thinking of him after. He
was the only fellow at present with whom she could flirt. His face grew
hotter and hotter as he went up-stairs. ‘Don’t waste your chances, or
refuse a good thing when you may have it,’ old Rich had said. After all,
Frank himself was but a younger son. However matters turned out, he
could not come in to a great fortune; and here was competence, comfort,
security, before him. Frank had never been brought up to be anything but
a young man of the world, and he did not know indeed how far it was
right for him to put aside this chance. It was not a temptation he had
to set his face against,--it was a reasonable, sensible prospect which
probably he would be a fool not to seize upon. His freedom, after all,
was but a poor thing to set against all that he would gain by such a
marriage,--freedom for the mess, and the club, and the monotonies of a
young man’s life! For gaiety is as monotonous in its way as dulness; and
Frank was man enough to feel that the kind of existence he was leading
was not so good or so delightful as to be held fast at all costs. He
would not be rendered miserable by being withdrawn from the mess. It
would be no unendurable bondage to have a bright little companion to go
everywhere with him! His mind dwelt for a moment on that thought with a
softening sense of tenderness and gratified vanity. Then he pulled
himself up, as it were, with a start. Was that Nelly, that sudden vision
that had flitted before him? or was it--some one else? Breathless, not
stopping to make any further investigation, he rushed up-stairs.
They were both there as usual;--Nelly in the low chair, with a book in
her hand, talking to Alice, who stood leaning against the window, which
was open. The sounds Frank had heard had been imaginary sounds. ‘Come
and talk,’ Nelly had said, not caring at that moment for music. The soft
air breathing through the window,--the sight of the budding trees and
green of the park,--the sweetness of the flowers, were all music to
Alice. How different it was from Fitzroy Square! The world, with which
the child had as yet made so little acquaintance, breathed melodies to
her from every corner. She was glad to play for anybody who asked her;
but for herself, music was not so much a necessity there as at home. And
she was very content to stand by the open casement with that sweetness
which was sweeter even than the Lieder breathing about her, and the air
rustling softly through her curls. Nelly was asking her all sorts of
questions about home, and about Laurie Renton, who had at that moment an
interest for her. Why had he gone away so suddenly? Had anything
happened? ‘You did not refuse him, did you?’ she had asked, just as
Frank entered the house.
‘I,--refuse him? What do you mean?’ cried Alice, opening her brown eyes.
‘I mean what everybody means,’ cried Nelly. ‘Alice, my dear, you are a
perfect baby. Did you never hear of a girl refusing a man before? Then
you must have been very badly brought up. Perhaps you think we are to
give in to them whenever they ask us; but that would never suit me.’
‘I have not thought anything about it,’ said Alice, with a sudden blush
on her innocent cheeks.
‘And yet you are sixteen,’ said Nelly. ‘I had not only thought about it,
but done it, before I was your age. But then I have money. In this house
we think a great deal of money. It seems quite right and natural to them
all that men should ask me, and pretend to be in love with me, because
papa is rich. Did you hear Frank Renton say last night he would never
marry for that? Young men are all so frightfully prudent now-a-days;
they laugh, and smirk, and say, ‘Oh yes, of course,’ and look at me as
if I was something into the bargain that had to be taken with my
fortune. I wish I had been an artist’s daughter, like you. Then I could
have taken up my father’s profession, and nobody would have thought it
strange. If I married that Laurie Renton now----’ said Nelly, with
meditative calm. Alice’s blush grew deeper and deeper, and she turned
away her face. She was a fanciful child, full of ideas which most people
would think overstrained; and it made her cheeks flame, though she had
nothing to do with it, to hear Nelly’s philosophical peradventures. And
then she remembered how suddenly Mr. Frank Renton had come in upon them
last night. If he should by chance hear anything of a conversation like
this!
‘I don’t know what you mean. I--can’t--understand how you can--speak
so,’ said Alice.
‘That is because you have been kept in the nursery, and never heard
anything,’ said Nelly; ‘and much the best thing too. But it is long
enough since I have been in the nursery, and there are always heaps of
people about the house who do not care a straw for us. Why shouldn’t I
have married Laurie Renton? It would have been a very good thing for
him, and he is living just as I should like to live. Ah! you have heard
a great deal about love, and all that nonsense,’ said Nelly, with a
sigh.
‘I have never heard anything about it. Why should people talk of such
things?’ cried the indignant Alice.
‘Why shouldn’t you talk of anything you think about?’ said her
companion; ‘for of course you have thought about it, and read about it,
and believe in it. But one comes not to believe. I don’t care a straw
for Laurie Renton. I don’t know him. I have seen him once, and most
likely I shall never see him again. But he and I might have made what
you may call a reasonable match. He would have been a great deal the
better of my money; and I should have been much the better of having him
to go about with me, and take care of me, and tell me what to do. It
would have been the very thing for us both.’ And Nelly sighed again,
having thus oddly brought herself just to the same point to which
Frank’s deliberations had brought him. But the sigh was not for Laurie;
indeed, as she admitted, she did not know Laurie. If Frank had been like
his brother, perhaps---- But he was not like his brother, nor was he
like herself. He was Frank, a young Guardsman and butterfly, like the
rest; one of the men who had seized upon her own faulty sketch, and
taken no notice of Suffolk’s beautiful picture; a young fellow,--she
said to herself,--without two ideas in his head; and yet----; ‘I suppose
you don’t know much about his brother?’ she said to Alice, leaning her
arm upon the broad ledge of the window, and her head on that. The two
girls were in this attitude, the one looking up to the other, when Frank
himself arrived at the door.
This time he was very modest and discreet. He knocked, which startled
them much, and then he asked, ‘May I come in?’ and entered softly after
a pause. ‘I was told I might come,’ said Frank, folding his hands. ‘I
hope I have not done anything wrong.’
And Nelly looked up at him with a sudden blush. He was handsome, and
young, and full of that splendid freedom and independence of movement
which girls, being excluded from it, admire so intensely. Why should he
insist on coming, and stand thus suppliant, with his hands folded,
unless---- And last night he had knelt,--he had gone down on his knees
as men are not in the habit of doing out of novels; and he was not like
the other men. He was not exactly like them, at least, as they were like
each other. And---- Nelly extended her hand, which was unnecessary.
‘When a man has made up his mind in this determined way to effect an
entrance, of course he must do it,’ said Nelly. ‘Come in, since you will
come. Come and talk: we were talking of you, and you can give us all
the information we want.’
‘Talking of me?--that is too much happiness,’ said Frank.
‘That is, of your brother, which comes to about the same thing,’ said
Nelly, carelessly. ‘Please give us a full account of all you have ever
done, and your motives for doing it. I am full of curiosity to-day. It
is Sunday, and one has nothing else to do. You had better begin at Eton,
and tell us all about it,’ cried the girl, laying back her head upon her
high-backed chair, and looking full at him, with that calm observation
in her face which is so exasperating to ordinary mortals. Frank was not
exasperated, however, for there was a certain trace of nervousness in
Nelly’s audacity. As for Alice, she was horror-stricken.
‘Oh, Nelly! how can you speak so?’ she cried. To Alice, Frank Renton was
a paladin,--too fine a being to approach with freedom at all, much less
with candid questioning. Tell them everything he ever did! He would be
angry, Alice thought. ‘Oh, Nelly! how dare you?’ she cried. And Frank
was as much touched by the sound of that soft little exclamation as if
her utterances had been those of the highest wisdom.
‘Begin with Eton?’ he said. ‘It is so long ago I forget; and besides, I
have always been so good, and gentle, and well behaved, that there is
nothing to tell about me. I will tell you about Laurie, if you like. He
was always an unlucky fellow,--too late for everything, and never quite
sure whether he was right or wrong;--but the best fellow that ever was
born. You would have liked Laurie if you had known him. And I wanted you
to know him,’ continued Frank. ‘You would have suited each other so
well.’
‘Should we?’ said Nelly, still looking up, and leaning back her head
against the high back of her chair. ‘Alice, please go and play us
something. If you cannot manage the organ, there is the piano. Mr.
Renton, tell me why you wanted me to know your brother, and why you
thought he would have particularly suited me.’ The question brought the
guilty blood to Frank’s face. What a little inquisitor she was! What
strange, outspoken people were the entire family! ‘Why did you think he
would have suited me?--tell me,’ she asked, looking fixedly into his
face.
‘Oh, I only thought,--I don’t know that I had any motive;--I suppose
because you are both fond of pictures, and both.’--here Frank paused to
take breath,--‘both,--why both artists, you know, in a way,’ he said,
with confusion; and during this broken utterance Nelly never once
removed from him her brilliant eyes.
‘I see,’ she said quietly, while Frank looked out at the window, and saw
Mr. Rich and Alf leisurely turning down towards the woods, and wished
he were with them after all. Being advised for his good was bad enough,
but to have his secrets thus demanded of him, and himself looked through
and through, was worse. Confound it! what did she see? that he had been
thinking of handing her over to Laurie? that he had been ready to
traffic with her, presuming on the notice she had taken of him, and
coolly planning to get her money for his brother? Was this what she saw,
the little sorceress? Just then Alice, who had been sent away not to
disturb the investigation, began to strike some plaintive chords on the
piano. Ah, there was a creature who would never gaze at a man with such
disdainful, suspicious scrutiny--a consolatory being, that would sweeten
and smooth life, and make its sorrows bearable, instead of adding
distraction to distraction! Frank felt sure that she had heard what was
passing, and struck in at the most difficult moment to relieve his
embarrassment and tranquillise his mind. Bless her! and of the other he
had said, in his perplexity, Confound her! While he stood silent,
looking out, the music stole about his heart and caressed and soothed
him. He felt as if it had not been the music but the musician who did
so; but of course that was nonsense. It freed him from the necessity of
making Nelly any further answer, or asking what it was she saw, as a man
strong in conscious right might have done. But all Frank’s consciousness
was of wrong.
It was Nelly who was the first to speak. She changed her position
rapidly, and with it her manner and all that was objectionable in her
looks. She leaned forward to him with her arm on the ledge of the
window. ‘I am impertinent,’ she said; ‘yes, I know you think so; but you
must not be angry, Mr. Renton, as Alice says.’
‘Angry!’ cried Frank.
‘Yes, angry; you might be, for I have been very disagreeable. I can’t
help being disagreeable now and then. You are very fond of your brother,
and you wanted me to know him. It was a great compliment; and before you
came I was saying to Alice how I wished I could have gone with him, and
lived just as he did. But I can’t, you know. A girl never can do
anything she wants to do. That is what makes us envy you so, and admire
your independence and your freedom,’ said Nelly, looking up with
different eyes,--with eyes as plaintive and insinuating as the
music,--into Frank’s face.
What could he do? He was mollified in spite of himself. ‘Not so very
independent, after all,’ he said. ‘A subaltern cannot boast of much in
that way. I have to come and go as I am told, and ask leave before I can
get away to see my friends.’
‘And have a hard life altogether,’ said Nelly. ‘That is very sad; but if
I were to ask leave ever so they would not let me go to Rome as your
brother has done. I wish he had been my brother, and then I might have
gone with him; but our poor boys don’t understand that sort of thing.
George knows about the money market and all that. And when Harry comes
home he will probably be able to talk of indigo. Isn’t it indigo? And
Alf,--what should you say Alf knows most about, Mr. Renton?’ said Nelly,
with fun dancing in her eyes.
Poor Alf! Frank could not but laugh, though he was conscious of not
being particularly clever himself. And it was impossible not to look
down upon the sparkling face that gazed up at him. The music plucked at
his heart and called him to attention; but he could not be so rude as to
turn from Nelly. And then something might still be done in Laurie’s
interest. ‘If you go to Italy next winter you will meet my brother,’ he
said; ‘at least I hope so. I should like to be able to tell him to look
out for you, if I knew when you were going;--I am sure he could be of
use.’
‘Next winter!’ said Nelly, ‘that is a long time off yet. No one can tell
what may have happened before next winter. Do you expect to be gone from
here that you speak in that uncertain way about where we are going?’
‘I expect to be in India by that time,’ said Frank.
‘In India? Oh, yes, I remember; so you said,’ said Nelly, and made a
pause; then she asked suddenly, with a hurried glance at him, ‘And you
think there is nothing that could happen that would make you change
your mind?’
‘I don’t know what could happen that would change my mind,’ said Frank.
He faltered as he spoke, knowing that there was one thing,--and that her
very self,--which might alter all his plans; and yet feeling no desire
to have his plans altered; but a more energetic determination, on the
contrary, to carry them out. But what could a girl possibly mean by such
a question? Not that, surely, of all things in the world! The pause that
ensued was full of embarrassment. And the music swept in again suddenly
and filled the whole place, and the rustling, palpitating silence
between them. Nelly spoke no more. She let her head drop upon one hand,
and with the fingers of her other beat time softly on the little table.
The subject of the conversation was nothing to her; that was the
inference in her change of attitude. ‘Listen; how lovely that is!’ were
the first words she spoke; and yet she admitted that she did not care
for music. Frank stood and leaned upon the open casement, with his eyes
vacantly fixed upon the green world without; and though there was still
the vibration in the air caused by the strange, secret, unacknowledged
duel which had been going on between Nelly and himself, the sweet sounds
once more entered into and possessed him. The strain took him upon its
growing current like a toy, and flooded him, as it were, with changed
sensations and a curious quietness. It soothed, and cheered, and stilled
him all in a moment. And strangely enough, though he was a young man who
should have known better, all these results seemed to him to have been
produced not by the music but by the musician. It was to Frank as if
Alice herself had whispered a soft ‘Never mind’ into his ear, and had
charmed him instantly into such dreams as put away from him all
recollection of the former embarrassment. He stood thus till long after
Nelly had ceased to beat with her fingers on the table, and till she had
almost grown tired of wondering at his absorbed countenance. She had
suffered the music to end that particular conversation, feeling that it
could go no further; but she had naturally expected that another
conversation should begin after a proper interval. But such an idea did
not occur to Frank. He was really absorbed in the music,--a thing which
bewildered Nelly. She sat and beat time for five minutes, and then she
stopped and looked at the Guardsman and at Alice with a look of wonder
in her face. But Frank did not even observe her look. When she could no
longer refrain herself, she burst into sudden speech.
‘I do not understand music,’ she said. ‘Do you know what that means, you
two? You are both so absorbed you have lost sight of everything else.
Does it mean anything? Pray tell me what it is?’