SUBURBAN
“Le bonheur c'est être né joyeux.”
There are in the suburbs of London certain strata of men which lie in
circles of diminishing density around the great city, like _debris_
around a volcano. London indeed erupts every evening between the hours
of five and six, and throws out showers of tired men, who lie where
they fall--or rather where their season ticket drops them--until
morning, when they arise and crowd back again to the seething crater.
The deposits of small clerks and tradespeople fall near at hand in a
dense shower, bounded on the north by Finchley, on the south by
Streatham. An outer circle of head clerks, Government servants, junior
partners, covers the land in a stratum reaching as far south as
Surbiton, as far north as the Alexandra Palace. And beyond these limits
are cast the brighter lights of commerce, law, and finance, who fall, a
thin golden shower, in the favoured neighbourhoods of the far suburbs,
where, from eventide till morning, they play at being country
gentlemen, talking stock and stable, with minds attuned to share and
produce.
Mr. Joseph Wade, banker, was one of those who are thrown far afield by
the facilities of a fine suburban train service. He wore a frock-coat,
a very shiny hat, and he read the _Times_ in the train. He lived in a
staring red house, solid brick without and solid comfort within, in the
favoured pine country of Weybridge. He was one of those pillars of the
British Constitution who are laughed at behind their backs and
eminently respected to their faces. His gardeners trembled before him,
his coachman, as stout and respectable as himself, knew him to be a
just and a good master, who grudged no man his perquisites, and behaved
with a fine gentlemanly tact at those trying moments when the departing
visitor is desirous of tipping and the coachman knows that it is
blessed to receive.
Mr. Wade rather scorned the amateur country-gentleman hobby which so
many of his travelling companions affected. It led them to don rough
tweed suits on Sunday, and walk about their paddocks and gardens as if
these formed a great estate.
“I am a banker,” he said, with that sound common sense which led him to
avoid those cheap affectations of superiority that belong to the outer
strata of the daily volcanic deposit--“I am a banker, and I am content
to be a banker in the evening and on Sundays, as well as during
bank-hours. What should I know about horses or Alderneys or Dorking
fowls? None of 'em yield a dividend.”
Mr. Wade, in fact, looked upon “The Brambles” as a place of rest,
arriving there at half-past six, in time to dress for a very good
dinner. After dinner he read in a small way by no means to be despised.
He had a taste for biography, and cherished in his stout heart a fine
old respect for Thackeray and Dickens and Walter Scott. Of the modern
fictionists he knew nothing.
“Seems to me they are splitting straws, my dear,” he once said to an
earnest young person who thought that literature meant contemporary
fiction, whereas we all know that the two are in no way connected.
Joseph Wade was a widower, having some years before buried a wife as
stout and sensible as himself. He never spoke of her except to his
daughter Marguerite, now leaving school, and usually confined his
remarks to a consideration of what Marguerite's mother would have liked
in the circumstances under discussion at the moment.
Marguerite had been educated at Cheltenham, and “finished” at Dresden,
without any limit as to extras. She had come home from Dresden a few
months before the Malgamite scheme was set on foot, to find herself
regarded by her father in the light of a rather delicate financial
crisis. The affection which had always existed between father and
daughter soon developed into something stronger--something volatile and
half mocking on her part, indulgent and half mystified on his.
“She is rather a handful,” wrote Mr. Wade to Tony Cornish, “and too
inconsequent to let my mind be easy about her future. I wish you would
run down and dine and sleep at 'The Brambles' some evening soon. Monday
is Marguerite's eighteenth birthday. Will you come on that evening?”
“He is not thirty-three yet,” reflected Mr. Wade, as he folded the
letter and slipped it into an envelope, “and she is the sort of girl
who must be able to give a man her full respect before she can give
him--er--anything else.”
From which it may be perceived that the astute banker was preparing to
face the delicate financial crisis.
Cornish received the invitation the day after returning from Holland.
Mr. Wade had been his father's friend and trustee, and was, he
understood, distantly related to the mother whom Tony had never known.
Such invitations were not infrequent, and it was the recipient's custom
to set aside others in order to reply with an acceptance. A friendship
had sprung up between two men who were not only divided by a gulf of
years, but had hardly a thought in common.
On arriving at Weybridge station, Cornish found Marguerite awaiting his
arrival in a very high dog-cart drawn by an exceedingly shiny cob,
which animal she proceeded to handle with vast spirit and a blithe
ignorance. She looked trim and fresh, with bright brown hair under a
smart sailor hat, and a complexion almost dazzling in its youthfulness
and brilliancy. She nodded gaily at Cornish.
“Hop up,” she said encouragingly, “and then hang on like grim death.
There are going to be--whoa, my pet!--er--ructions. All right, William.
Let go.”
William let go, and made a dash at the rear step. The shiny cob
squeaked, stood thoughtfully on his hind legs for a moment, and then
dashed across the bridge, shaving a cab rather closely, and failing to
observe a bank of stones at one side of the road.
“Do you mind this sort of thing?” inquired Marguerite, as they bumped
heavily over the obstruction.
“Not in the least. Most invigorating, I consider it.” Marguerite
arranged the reins carefully, and inclined the whip at a suitable angle
across her companion's vision.
“I'm learning to drive, you know,” she said, leaning confidently down
from her high seat. “And papa thinks that because this young gentleman
is rather stout he is quiet, which is quite a mistake. Whoa! Steady!
Keep off the grass! Visitors are requested to keep to--Well, I'm”--she
hauled the pony off the common, whither he had betaken himself, on to
the road again--“blowed,” she added, religiously completing her
unfinished sentence.
They were now between high fences, and compelled to progress more
steadily.
“I am very glad you have come, you know,” Marguerite took the
opportunity of assuring the visitor. “It is jolly slow, I can tell you,
at times; and then you will do papa good. He is very difficult to
manage. It took me a week to get this pony out of him. His great idea
is for somebody to marry me. He looks upon me as a sort of fund that
has to be placed or sunk or something, somewhere. There was a young
Scotchman here the week before last. I have forgotten his name already.
John--something--Fairly. Yes, that is it--John Fairly, of
Auchen-something. It is better to be John Fairly, of Auchen-something,
than a belted earl, it appears.”
“Did John tell you so himself?” inquired Tony.
“Yes; and he ought to know, oughtn't he? But that was what put me on
my guard. When a Scotchman begins to tell you who he is, take my advice
and sheer off.”
“I will,” said Tony.
“And when a Scotchman begins to tell you what he has, you may be sure
that he wants something more. I smelt a rat at once. And I would not
speak to him for the rest of the evening, or if I did, I spoke with a
Scotch accent--just a suspeecion of an accent, you know--nothing to get
hold of, but just enough to let him know that his Auchen-something
would not go down with me.”
She spoke with a sort of inconsequent earnestness, a relic of the
school-days she had so lately left behind. She did not seem to have had
time to decide yet whether life was a rattling farce or a matter of
deadly earnest. And who shall blame her, remembering that older heads
than hers are no clearer on that point?
On approaching the red villa by its short entrance drive of yellow
gravel, they perceived Mr. Wade slowly walking in his garden. The
garden of “The Brambles” was exactly the sort of garden one would
expect to find attached to a house of that name. It was chiefly
conspicuous for its lack of brambles, or indeed of any vegetable of
such disorderly habit. Yellow gravel walks intersected smooth lawns.
April having drawn almost to its close, there were thin red lines of
tulips standing at attention all along the flowery borders. Not a stalk
was out of place. One suspected that the flowers had been drilled by a
martinet of a gardener. The sight of an honest weed would have been a
relief to the eye. The curse of too much gardener and too little nature
lay over the land.
“Ah!” said Mr. Wade, holding out a large white hand. “You perceive me
inspecting the garden, and if you glance in the direction of
McPherson's cottage you will perceive McPherson watching me. I pay him
a hundred and twenty and he knows that it is too much.”
“By the way, papa,” put in Marguerite, gravely, “will you tell
McPherson that he will receive a month's notice if he counts the
peaches this summer, as he did last year?”
Mr. Wade laughed, and promised her a freer hand in this matter. They
walked in the trim garden until it was time to dress for dinner, and
Cornish saw enough to convince him that Mr. Wade was fully occupied
between banking hours in his capacity as Marguerite's father.
That young lady came down as the bell rang, in a white dress as fresh
and girlish as herself, and during the meal, which was long and
somewhat solemn, entertained the guest with considerable liveliness. It
was only after she had left them to their wine, over which the banker
loved to linger in the old-fashioned way that Mr. Wade put on his grave
financial air. He fingered his glass thoughtfully, as if choosing, not
a subject of conversation, but a suitable way of approaching a
premeditated question.
“You do not recollect your mother?” he said suddenly.
“No; she died when I was two years old.”
Mr. Wade nodded, and slowly sipped his port. “Queer thing is,” he said,
after a pause and looking towards the door, “that that child is
startlingly like what your mother used to be at the age of eighteen,
when I first knew her. Perhaps it is only my imagination--not that I
have much of that. Perhaps all girls are alike at that age--a sort of
freshness and an optimism that positively take one's breath away. At
any rate, she reminds me of your mother.” He broke off, and looked at
Cornish with his slow and rather ponderous smile. His attitude towards
the world was indeed one of conscious ponderosity. He did not attempt
to understand the lighter side of life, but took it seriously as a
work-a-day matter. “I was once in love with your mother,” he stated
squarely. “But circumstances were against us. You see, your father was
a lord's younger brother, and that made a great difference in Clapham
in those days. I felt it a good deal at the time, but I of course got
over it years and years ago. No sentiment about me, Tony. Sentiment and
seventeen stone won't balance, you know.” The great man slowly drew the
decanter towards him. “She got a better husband in your father--a
clever, bright chap--and I was best man, I recollect. It was about that
time--about your age I was--that I took seriously to my work. Before, I
had been a little wild. And that interest has lasted me right up to the
present time. Take my word for it, Tony, the greatest interest in life
would be money-making--if one only knew what to do with the money
afterwards.” The banker had been eating a biscuit, and he now swept the
crumbs together with his little finger from all sides in a lessening
circle until they formed a heap upon the white tablecloth. “It
accumulates,” he said slowly, “accumulates, accumulates. And, after
all, one can only eat and drink the best that are to be obtained, and
the best costs so little--a mere drop in the ocean.” He handed Tony
the decanter as he spoke. “Then I married Marguerite's mother, some
years afterwards, when I was a middle-aged man. She was the only
daughter of--the bank, you know.”
And that seemed to be all that there was to be said about Marguerite's
mother.
Tony Cornish nodded in his quick, sympathetic way. Mr. Wade had told
him none of this before, but it was to be presumed that he had heard at
least part of it from other sources. His manner now indicated that he
was interested, but he did not ask his companion to say one word more
than he felt disposed to utter. It is probable that he knew these to be
no idle after-dinner words, spoken without premeditation, out of a full
heart; for Mr. Wade was not, as he had boasted, a person of sentiment,
but a plain, straightforward business man, who, if he had no meaning to
convey, said nothing. And in this respect it is a pity that more are
not like him.
“We have always been pretty good friends, you and I,” continued the
banker, “though I know I am not exactly your sort. I am distinctly
City; you are as distinctly West End. But during your minority, and
when we settled up accounts on your coming of age, and since then, we
have always hit it off pretty well.”
“Yes,” said Cornish, moving his feet impatiently under the table.
There was no mistaking the aim of all this, and Mr. Wade was too
British in his habits to beat about the bush much longer.
“I do not mind telling you that I have got you down in my will,” said
the banker.
Cornish bit his lip and frowned at his wine-glass. And it is possible
that the man of no sentiment understood his silence.
“I have frequently disbelieved what I have heard of you,” went on the
elder man. “You have, doubtless, enemies--as all men have--and you have
been a trifle reckless, perhaps, of what the world might say. If you
will allow me to say so, I think none the worse of you for that.”
Mr. Wade pushed the decanter across the table, and when Cornish had
filled his glass, drew it back towards himself. It is wonderful what
resource there is in half a glass of wine, if merely to examine it when
it is hard to look elsewhere.
“You remember, six months ago, I spoke to you of a personal matter,”
said the banker. “I asked you if you had thoughts of marrying, and
suggested something in the nature of a partnership if that would
facilitate your plans in any way.”
“That is not the sort of offer one is likely to forget,” answered
Cornish.
“I asked you if--well, if it was Joan Ferriby.”
“Yes. And I answered that it was not Joan Ferriby. That was mere
gossip, of which we are both aware, and for which neither of us cares
a pin.”
“Then it comes to this,” said Mr. Wade, drawing lines on the tablecloth
with his dessert knife as if it were a balance-sheet, and he was
casting the final totals there. “You are a man of the world; you are
clever; you are like your father before you, in that you have something
that women care about. Heaven only knows what it is, for I don't!” He
paused, and looked at his companion as if seeking that intangible
something. Then he jerked his head towards the drawing-room, where
Marguerite could be dimly heard playing an air from the latest comic
opera with a fine contempt for accidentals. “That child,” he said,
“knows no more about life than a sparrow. A man like myself--seventeen
stone--may have to balance his books at any moment. You have a clear
field; for you may take my word for it that you will be the first in
it. My own experience of life has been mostly financial, but I am
pretty certain that the first man a woman cares for is the man she
cares for all along, though she may never see him again. I don't hold
it out as an inducement, but there is no reason why you should not know
that she will have a hundred and fifty thousand pounds--not when I am
dead, but on the day she marries.” Mr. Wade paused, and took a sip of
his most excellent port. “Do not hurry,” he said. “Take your time.
Think about it carefully--unless you have already thought about it, and
can say yes or no now.”
“I can do that.”
Mr. Wade bent forward heavily, with one arm on the table.
“Ah!” he said. “Which is it?”
“It is no,” answered Cornish, simply. The banker passed his
table-napkin across his lips, paused for a moment, and then rose with,
as was his hospitable custom, his hand upon the sherry decanter. “Then
let us go into the drawing-room,” he said.