"I trust to your honor, sir, to keep the explanation secret." I bowed,
and he resumed. "My elder brother and I are in business together.
Lately we have had losses which have crippled us so severely that we
decided to disclose them to Sir Charles and ask his help. George did
so yesterday by letter, giving certain notes of our liabilities. You
ask why he did not make such a statement by word of mouth? Because he
had to go to Liverpool at a moment's notice to make a last effort to
arrange the matter. And as for me," with a curious grimace, "my father
would as soon discuss business with his dog! Sooner!"
"Well?" I said. He had paused, and was absently flicking the blossoms
off the geraniums in the fireplace with his pocket-handkerchief,
looking moodily at his work the while. I cannot remember noticing the
handkerchief, yet I seem to be able to see it now. It had a red
border, and was heavily scented with white rose. "Well?"
"Well," he continued, with a visible effort, "my father has been
ailing lately, and this morning his usual doctor made him see
Bristowe. He is an authority on heart-disease, as you doubtless know;
and his opinion is," he added in a lower voice and with some emotion,
"that even a slight shock may prove fatal."
I began to feel hot and uncomfortable. What was I to think? The packet
was becoming as lead in my pocket.
"Of course," he resumed more briskly, "that threw our difficulties
into the shade at once; and my first impulse was to get these papers
from him. Don't you see that? All day I have been trying in vain to
effect it. I took Barnes, who is an old servant, partially into my
confidence, but we could think of no plan. My father, like many people
who have lost their sight, is jealous, and I was at my wits' end, when
Barnes brought you up. Your likeness," he added in a parenthesis,
looking at me reflectively, "to George put the idea into his head, I
fancy? Yes, it must have been so. When I heard you announced, for a
moment I thought you were George."
"And you called up a look of the warmest welcome," I put in dryly.
He colored, but answered almost immediately, "I was afraid that he
would assume that the governor had read his letter, and blurt out
something about it. Good Lord! if you knew the funk in which I have
been all the evening lest my father should ask either of us to read
the letter!" and he gathered up his handkerchief with a sigh of
relief, and wiped his forehead.
"I could see it very plainly," I answered, going slowly in my mind
over what he had told me. If the truth must be confessed, I was in no
slight quandary what I should do, or what I should believe. Was this
really the key to it all? Dared I doubt it, or that that which I had
constructed was a mare's nest,--the mere framework of a mare's nest.
For the life of me I could not tell!
"Well?" he said presently, looking up with an offended air. "Is there
anything else I can explain? or will you have the kindness to return
my property to me now?"
"There is one thing about which I should like to ask a question," I
said.
"Ask on," he replied; and I wondered whether there was not a little
too much of bravado in the tone of sufferance he assumed.
"Why do you carry--" I went on, raising my eyes to his, and pausing on
the word an instant--"that little medicament--you know what I mean--in
your waistcoat pocket, my friend?"
He perceptibly flinched. "I don't quite--quite understand," he began
to stammer. Then he changed his tone and went on rapidly, "No! I will
be frank with you, Mr.-- Mr.--"
"George," I said, calmly.
"Ah, indeed?" a trifle surprised, "Mr. George! Well, it is something
Bristowe gave me this morning to be administered to my father--without
his knowledge, if possible--whenever he grows excited. I did not think
that you had seen it."
Nor had I. I had only inferred its presence. But having inferred
rightly once, I was inclined to trust my inference farther. Moreover
while he gave this explanation, his breath came and went so quickly
that my former suspicions returned. I was ready for him when he said,
"Now I will trouble you, if you please, for those papers!" and held
out his hand.
"I cannot give them to you," I replied, point blank.
"You cannot give them to me now?" he repeated.
"No. Moreover the packet is sealed. I do not see, on second thoughts,
what harm I can do you--now that it is out of your father's hands--by
keeping it until to-morrow, when I will return it to your brother,
from whom it came."
"He will not be in London," he answered doggedly. He stepped between
me and the door with looks which I did not like. At the same time I
felt that some allowance must be made for a man treated in this way.
"I am sorry," I said, "but I cannot do what you ask. I will do this,
however. If you think the delay of importance, and will give me your
brother's address in Liverpool, I will undertake to post the letters
to him at once."
He considered the offer, eyeing me the while with the same disfavor
which he had exhibited in the drawing-room. At last he said slowly,
"If you will do that?"
"I will," I repeated. "I will do it immediately."
He gave me the direction--"George Ritherdon, at the London and
North-Western Hotel, Liverpool," and in return I gave him my own name
and address. Then I parted from him, with a civil good-night on either
side--and little liking I fancy--the clocks striking midnight, and the
servants coming in as I passed out into the cool darkness of the
square.
Late as it was, I went straight to my club, determined that as I had
assumed the responsibility there should be no laches on my part. There
I placed the packet, together with a short note explaining how it came
into my possession, in an outer envelope, and dropped the whole duly
directed and stamped into the nearest pillar box. I could not register
it at that hour, and rather than wait until next morning, I omitted
the precaution, merely requesting Mr. Ritherdon to acknowledge its
receipt.
Well, some days passed during which it may be imagined that I thought
no little about my odd experience. It was the story of the Lady and
the Tiger over again. I had the choice of two alternatives at least. I
might either believe the young fellow's story, which certainly had the
merit of explaining in a fairly probable manner an occurrence of so
odd a character as not to lend itself freely to explanation. Or I
might disbelieve his story, plausible in its very strangeness as it
was, in favor of my own vague suspicions. Which was I to do?
Well, I set out by preferring the former alternative. This
notwithstanding that I had to some extent committed myself against it
by withholding the papers. But with each day that passed without
bringing me an answer from Liverpool, I leaned more and more to the
other side. I began to pin my faith to the tiger, adding each morning
a point to the odds in the animal's favor. So it went on until ten
days had passed.
Then a little out of curiosity, but more, I gravely declare, because I
thought it the right thing to do, I resolved to seek out George
Ritherdon. I had no difficulty in learning where he might be found. I
turned up the firm of Ritherdon Brothers (George and Gerald),
cotton-spinners and India merchants, in the first directory I
consulted. And about noon the next day I called at their place of
business, and sent in my card to the senior partner. I waited five
minutes--curiously scanned by the porter, who no doubt saw a likeness
between me and his employer--and then I was admitted to the latter's
room.
He was a tall man with a fair beard, not one whit like Gerald, and yet
tolerably good-looking; if I say more I shall seem to be describing
myself. I fancied him to be balder about the temples, however, and
grayer and more careworn than the man I am in the habit of seeing in
my shaving-glass. His eyes, too, had a hard look, and he seemed in
ill-health. All these things I took in later. At the time I only
noticed his clothes. "So the old gentleman is dead," I thought, "and
the young one's tale is true after all!" George Ritherdon was in deep
mourning.
"I wrote to you," I began, taking the seat to which he pointed, "about
a fortnight ago."
He looked at my card, which he held in his hand. "I think not," he
said slowly.
"Yes," I repeated. "You were then at the London and North-Western
Hotel, at Liverpool."
He was stepping to his writing-table, but he stopped abruptly. "I was
in Liverpool," he answered in a different tone, "but I was not at
that hotel. You are thinking of my brother, are you not?"
"No," I said, "it was your brother who told me you were there."
"Perhaps you had better explain what was the subject of your letter,"
he suggested, speaking in the weary tone of one returning to a painful
matter. "I have been through a great trouble lately, and this may well
have been overlooked."
I said I would, and as briefly as possible I told the main facts of my
strange visit in Fitzhardinge Square. He was much moved, walking up
and down the room as he listened, and giving vent to exclamations from
time to time, until I came to the arrangement I had finally made with
his brother. Then he raised his hand as one might do in pain.
"Enough!" he said abruptly. "Barnes told me a rambling tale of some
stranger. I understand it all now."
"So do I, I think!" I replied dryly. "Your brother went to Liverpool,
and received the papers in your name?"
He murmured what I took for "Yes." But he did not utter a single word
of acknowledgement to me, or of reprobation of his brother's deceit. I
thought some such word should have been spoken; and I let my feelings
carry me away. "Let me tell you," I said warmly, "that your brother is
a--"
"Hush!" he said, holding up his hand again. "He is dead."
"Dead!" I repeated, shocked and amazed.
"Have you not read of it in the papers? It is in all the papers," he
said wearily. "He committed suicide--God forgive me for it!--at
Liverpool, at the hotel you have mentioned, and the day after you saw
him."
And so it was. He had committed some serious forgery--he had always
been wild, though his father, slow to see it, had only lately closed
his purse to him--and the forged signatures had come into his
brother's power. He had cheated his brother before. There had long
been bad blood between them, the one being as cold, business-like, and
masterful as the other was idle and jealous.
"I told him," the elder said to me, shading his eyes with his hand,
"that I should let him be prosecuted--that I would not protect or
shelter him. The threat nearly drove him mad; and while it was hanging
over him, I wrote to disclose the matter to Sir Charles. Gerald
thought his last chance lay in recovering this letter unread. The
proofs against him destroyed, he might laugh at me. His first attempts
failed; and then he planned with Barnes's cognizance to get possession
of the packet by drugging my father's whiskey. Barnes's courage
deserted him; he called you in, and--and you know the rest."
"But," I said softly, "your brother did get the letter--at Liverpool."
George Ritherdon groaned. "Yes," he said, "he did. But the proofs were
not enclosed. After writing the outside letter I changed my mind, and
withheld them, explaining my reasons within. He found his plot laid in
vain; and it was under the shock of this disappointment--the packet
lay before him re-sealed and directed to me--that he--that he did it.
Poor Gerald!"
"Poor Gerald!" I said. What else remained to be said?
It may be a survival of superstition, yet when I dine in Baker Street
now, I take some care to go home by any other route than that through
Fitzhardinge Square.
The Invisible Portraits.
On a certain morning in last June I was stooping to fasten a
shoe-lace, having taken advantage for the purpose of the step of a
corner house in St. James's Square, when a man passing behind me
stopped.
"Well!" said he, aloud, after a short pause during which I wondered--I
could not see him--what he was doing, "the meanness of these rich folk
is disgusting! Not a coat of paint for a twelvemonth! I should be
ashamed to own a house and leave it like that!"
The man was a stranger to me, and his words seemed as uncalled for as
they were ill-natured. But being thus challenged I looked at the
house. It was a great stone mansion with a balustrade atop, with many
windows and a long stretch of area railings. And certainly it was
shabby. I turned from it to the critic. He was shabby too--a little
red-nosed man wearing a bad hat. "It is just possible," I suggested,
"that the owner may be a poor man and unable to keep it in order."
"Ugh! What has that to do with it?" my new friend answered
contemptuously. "He ought to think of the public."
"And your hat?" I asked with winning politeness. "It strikes me, an
unprejudiced observer, as a bad hat. Why do you not get a new one?"
"Cannot afford it!" he snapped out, his dull eyes sparkling with rage.
"Cannot afford it? But, my good man, you ought to think of the
public."
"You tom-cat! What have you to do with my hat? Smother you!" was his
kindly answer; and he went on his way muttering things uncomplimentary.
I was about to go mine, and was first falling back to gain a better
view of the house in question, when a chuckle close to me betrayed the
presence of a listener, a thin, gray-haired man, who, hidden by a
pillar of the porch, must have heard our discussion. His hands were
engaged with a white tablecloth, from which he had been shaking the
crumbs. He had the air of an upper servant of the best class. As our
eyes met he spoke.
"Neatly put, sir, if I may take the liberty of saying so," he observed
with a quiet dignity it was a pleasure to witness, "and we are very
much obliged to you. The man was a snob, sir."
"I am afraid he was," I answered; "and a fool too."
"And a fool, sir. Answer a fool after his folly. You did that, and he
was nowhere; nowhere at all, except in the swearing line. Now might I
ask," he continued, "if you are an American, sir?"
"No, I am not," I answered; "but I have spent some time in the
States."
I could have fancied that he sighed.
"I thought--but never mind, sir," he began. "I was wrong. It is
curious how very much alike gentlemen, that are real gentlemen, speak.
Now, I dare swear, sir, that you have a taste for pictures."
I was inclined to humor the old fellow's mood.
"I like a good picture, I admit," I said.
"Then perhaps you would not be offended if I asked you to step inside
and look at one or two," he suggested timidly. "I would not take a
liberty, sir, but there are some Van Dycks and a Rubens in the
dining-room that cost a mint of money in their day, I have heard; and
there is no one else in the house but my wife and myself."
It was a strange invitation, strangely brought about. But I saw no
reason for myself why I should not accept it, and I followed him into
the hall. It was spacious, but sparely furnished. The matted floor had
a cold look, and so had the gaunt stand which seemed to be a fixture,
and boasted but one umbrella, one sunshade, and one dog-whip. As I
passed a half-open door I caught a glimpse of a small room prettily
furnished, with dainty prints and water-colors on the walls. But these
were of a common order. A dozen replicas of each and all might be seen
in a walk through Bond Street. Even this oasis of taste and comfort
told the same story as had the bare hall and dreary exterior, and laid
as it were a finger on one's heart. I trod softly as I followed my
guide along the strip of matting towards the rear of the house.
He opened a door at the inner end of the hall, and led me into a large
and lofty room, built out from the back, as a state dining-room or
ball-room. At present it rather resembled the latter, for it was
without furniture. "Now," said the old man, turning and respectfully
touching my sleeve to gain my attention, "now you will not consider
your labor lost in coming to see that, sir. It is a portrait of the
second Lord Wetherby by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, and is judged to be one
of the finest specimens of his style in existence."
I was lost in astonishment; amazed, almost appalled. My companion
stood by my side, his face wearing a placid smile of satisfaction, his
hand pointing slightly upwards to the blank wall before us. The blank
wall! Of any picture, there or elsewhere in the room, there was no
sign. I turned to him and then from him, and I felt very sick at
heart. The poor old fellow was--must be--mad. I gazed blankly at the
blank wall. "By Van Dyck?" I repeated mechanically.
"Yes, sir, by Van Dyck?" he replied, in the most matter-of-fact
tone imaginable. "So, too, is this one;" he moved as he spoke a few
feet to his left. "The second peer's first wife in the costume of a
lady-in-waiting. This portrait and the last are in as good a state of
preservation as on the day they were painted."
Oh, certainly mad! And yet so graphic was his manner, so crisp and
realistic were his words, that I rubbed my eyes; and looked and looked
again, and almost fancied that Lord Walter and Anne, his wife, grew
into shape before me on the wall. Almost, but not quite; and it was
with a heart full of wondering pity that I accompanied the old man, in
whose manner there was no trace of wildness or excitement, round the
walls; visiting in turn the Cuyp which my lord bought in Holland, the
Rubens, the four Lawrences, and the Philips--a very Barmecide feast of
art. I could not doubt that the old man saw the pictures. But I saw
only bare walls.
"Now I think you have seen them, family portraits and all," he
concluded, as we came to the doorway again; stating the fact, which
was no fact, with complacent pride. "They are fine pictures, sir.
They, at least, are left, although the house is not what it was."
"Very fine pictures," I remarked. I was minded to learn if he were
sane on other points. "Lord Wetherby," I said, "I should suppose that
he is not in London?"
"I do not know sir, one way or the other," the servant answered with a
new air of reserve. "This is not his lordship's house. Mrs. Wigram, my
late lord's daughter-in-law, lives here."
"But this is the Wetherbys' town house," I persisted. I knew so much.
"It was my late lord's house. At his son's marriage it was settled
upon Mrs. Wigram, and little enough besides, God knows!" he exclaimed
querulously. "It was Mr. Alfred's wish that some land should be
settled upon his wife, but there was none out of the entail, and my
lord, who did not like the match, though he lived to be fond enough of
the mistress afterwards, said, 'Settle the house in town!' in a bitter
kind of joke like. So the house was settled, and five hundred pounds a
year. Mr. Alfred died abroad, as you may know, sir, and my lord was
not long in following him."
He was closing the shutters of one window after another as he spoke.
The room had sunk into deep gloom. I could imagine now that the
pictures were really where he fancied them. "And Lord Wetherby, the
late peer," I asked, after a pause, "did he leave his daughter-in-law
nothing?"
"My lord died suddenly, leaving no will," he replied sadly. "That
is how it all is. And the present peer, who was only a second
cousin--well, I say nothing about him." A reticence which was well
calculated to consign his lordship to the lowest deep.
"He did not help?" I asked.
"Devil a bit, begging your pardon, sir. But there! it is not my place
to talk of these things. I doubt I have wearied you with talk about
the family. It is not my way," he added, as if wondering at himself,
"only something in what you said seemed to touch a chord like."
By this time we were outside the room, standing at the inner end of
the hall, while he fumbled with the lock of the door. Short passages
ending in swing doors ran out right and left from this point, and
through one of these a tidy, middle-aged woman wearing an apron
suddenly emerged. At sight of me she looked greatly astonished. "I
have been showing the gentleman the pictures," said my guide, who was
still occupied with the door.
A quick flash of pain altered and hardened the woman's face. "I have
been very much interested, madam," I said softly.
Her gaze left me to dwell upon the old man with infinite affection.
"John had no right to bring you in, sir," she said primly. "I have
never known him do such a thing before, and--Lord a mercy! there is
the mistress's knock. Go, John, and let her in; and this gentleman,"
with an inquisitive look at me, "will not mind stepping a bit aside,
while her ladyship goes upstairs."
"Certainly not," I answered. I hastened to draw back into one of the
side passages, into the darkest corner of it, and there stood leaning
against the cool panels, my hat in my hand.
In the short pause which ensued before John opened the door she
whispered to me, "You have not told him, sir?"
"About the pictures?"
"Yes, sir. He is blind, you see."
"Blind?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir, this year and more; and when the pictures were taken
away--by the present earl--that he had known all his life, and been so
proud to show to people just the same as if they had been his own,
why, it seemed a shame to tell him. I have never had the heart to do
it, and he thinks they are there to this day."
Blind! I had never thought of that; and while I was grasping the idea
now, and fitting it to the facts, a light footstep sounded in the
hall, and a woman's voice on the stairs; such a voice and such a
footstep that, as it seemed to me, a man, if nothing else were left to
him, might find home in them alone. "Your mistress," I said presently,
when the sounds had died away upon the floor above, "has a sweet
voice; but has not something annoyed her?
"Well, I never should have thought that you would have noticed that!"
exclaimed the housekeeper, who was, I dare say, many other things
besides housekeeper. "You have a sharp ear, sir; that I will say. Yes,
there is a something has gone wrong; but to think that an American
gentleman should have noticed it!"
"I am not an American," I said, perhaps testily.
"Oh, indeed, sir! I beg your pardon, I am sure. It was just your way
of speaking made me think it," she replied; and then there came a
second louder rap at the door as John, who had gone upstairs with his
mistress, came down in a leisurely fashion.
"That is Lord Wetherby, drat him!" he said, on his wife calling to him
in a low voice. He was ignorant, I think, of my presence. "He is to be
shown into the library, and the mistress will see him there in five
minutes; and you are to go to her room. Oh, rap away!" he added,
turning towards the door, and shaking his fist at it. "There is many a
better man than you has waited longer at that door."
"Hush, John. Do you not see the gentleman?" interposed his wife, with
the simplicity of habit. "He will show you out," she added rapidly to
me, "as soon as his lordship has gone in, if you do not mind waiting
another minute."
"Not at all," I said, drawing back into the corner as they went on
their errands; but though I said, "Not at all," mine was an odd
position. The way in which I had come into the house, and my present
situation in a kind of hiding, would have made most men only anxious
to extricate themselves. But I, while listening to John parleying with
some one at the door, conceived a strange desire, or a desire which
would have been strange in any other man, to see this thing to the
end--conceived it and acted upon it.
The library? That was the room on the right of the hall, opposite to
Mrs. Wigram's sitting-room. Probably, nay I was certain, it had
another door opening on the passage in which I stood. It would cost me
but a step or two to confirm my opinion. When John ushered in the
visitor by one door I had already, by way of the other, ensconced
myself behind a screen, that I seemed to know would face it. I was
going to listen. Perhaps I had my reasons. Perhaps--but there, what
matter? I, as a fact, listened.
The room was spacious, but sombre, wainscoted and vaulted with oak.
Its only visible occupant was a thin, dark man of middle size, with a
narrow face, and a stubborn feather of black hair rising above his
forehead; a man of Welsh type. He was standing with his back to the
light, a roll of papers in one hand. The fingers of the other,
drumming upon the table, betrayed that he was both out of temper and
ill at ease. While I was still scanning him stealthily--I had never
seen him before--the door was opened, and Mrs. Wigram came in. I sank
back behind the screen. I think some words passed, some greeting of
the most formal, but though the room was still, I failed to hear it,
and when I recovered myself he was speaking.
"I am here at your wish, Mrs. Wigram, and your service, too," he was
saying, with an effort at gallantry which sat very ill upon him,
"although I think it would have been better if we had left the matter
to our solicitors."
"Indeed."
"Yes. I fancied you were aware of my opinion."
"I was; and I perfectly understand, Lord Wetherby, your preference for
that course," she replied, with sarcastic coldness, which did not hide
her dislike for him. "You naturally shrink from telling me your terms
face to face."