GRATITUDE.
"There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?" Guy asked
with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse
for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at
Staple Inn, recounting the previous day's adventures.
"Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage
that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment,
which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a
miracle, you may say. But several of the people in the front part
of the train got terribly shaken."
"And you and the other man were shut up in the tunnel there for
fifteen hours at a stretch?" Guy went on reflectively.
"At least fifteen hours," Cyril echoed, without attempting to
correct the slight error of sex, for no man, he thought, is bound
to criminate himself, even in a flirtation. "It was two in the
morning before they dug us quite out. And my companion by that time
was more dead than alive, I can tell you, with watching and terror."
"Was he, poor fellow?" Guy murmured, with a sympathetic face; for
Cyril had always alluded casually to his fellow-traveller in such
general terms that Guy was as yet unaware there was a lady in the
case. "And is he all right again now, do you know? Have you heard
anything more about him?"
But before Cyril could answer there came a knock at the door, and
the next moment Mr. Montague Nevitt, without his violin, entered
the room in some haste, all agog with excitement. His face was eager
and his manner cordial. It was clear he was full of some important
tidings.
"Why, Cyril, my dear fellow," he cried, grasping the painter's hand
with much demonstration of friendly warmth, and wringing it hard
two or three times over, "how delighted I am to see you restored
to us alive and well once more. This is really too happy. What
a marvellous escape! And what a romantic story! All the clubs are
buzzing with it. A charming girl! You'll have to marry her, of
course, that's the necessary climax. You and the young lady are the
staple of news, I see, in very big print, in all the evening papers!"
Guy drew back at the words with a little start of surprise. "Young
lady!" he cried aghast. "A charming girl, Nevitt! Then the person
who was shut up with you for fifteen hours in the tunnel was a
girl, Cyril!"
Cyril's handsome face flushed slightly before his brother's scrutinizing
gaze; but he answered with a certain little ill-concealed embarrassment:
"Oh, I didn't say so, didn't I? Well, she WAS a girl then, of course;
a certain Miss Clifford. She got in at Chetwood. Her people live
somewhere down there near Tilgate. At least, so I gathered from
what she told me."
Nevitt stared hard at the painter's eyes, which tried, without
success, to look unconscious.
"A romance!" he said, slowly, scanning his man with deep interest.
"A romance, I can see. Young, rich, and beautiful. My dear Cyril,
I only wish I'd had half your luck. What a splendid chance, and what
a magnificent introduction! Beauty in distress! A lady in trouble!
You console her alone in a tunnel for fifteen hours by yourself
at a stretch. Heavens, what a tete-a-tete! Did British propriety
ever before allow a man such a glorious opportunity for chivalrous
devotion to a lady of family, face, and fortune?"
"Was she pretty?" Guy asked, coming down at once to a more realistic
platform.
Cyril hesitated a moment. "Well, yes," he answered, somewhat curtly,
after a short pause. "She's distinctly good-looking." And he shut
his mouth sharp. But he had said quite enough.
When a man says that of a girl, and nothing more, in an unconcerned
voice, as if it didn't matter twopence to him, you may be perfectly
sure in your own mind he's very deeply and seriously smitten.
"And young?" Guy continued.
"I should say about twenty."
"And rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice?" Montague Nevitt
put in, with a faintly cynical smile.
"Well, I don't know about that," Cyril answered truthfully. "I
haven't the least idea who she is, even. She and I had other things
to think about, you may be sure, boxed up there so long in that
narrow space, and choking for want of air, than minute investigations
into one another's pedigrees."
"WE'VE got no pedigree," Guy interposed, with a bitter smile. "So
the less she investigates about that the better."
"But SHE has, I expect," Nevitt put in hastily; "and if I were you,
Cyril, I'd hunt her up forthwith, while the iron's hot, and find
out all there is to find out about her. Clifford-Clifford? I wonder
whether by any chance she's one of the Devonshire Cliffords, now?
For if so, she might really be worth a man's serious attention.
They're very good business. They bank at our place; and they're by
no means paupers." For Nevitt was a clerk in the well-known banking
firm of Drummond, Coutts, and Barclay, Limited; and being a man
who didn't mean, as he himself said, "to throw himself away on any
girl for nothing," he kept a sharp look-out on the current account
of every wealthy client with an only daughter.
Ten minutes later, as the talk ran on, some further light was
unexpectedly thrown upon this interesting topic by the entrance
of the porter with a letter for Cyril. The painter tore it open,
and glanced over it, as Nevitt observed, with evident eagerness.
It was short and curt, but in its own way courteous.
"'Mr. Reginald Clifford, C.M.G., desires to thank Mr. Cyril
Waring for his kindness and consideration to Miss Clifford during
her temporary incarceration---'
"Incarceration's good, isn't it? How much does he charge a thousand
for that sort, I wonder?--
"'during her temporary incarceration in the Lavington tunnel
yesterday. Mrs. and Miss Clifford wish also to express at the same
time their deep gratitude to Mr. Waring for his friendly efforts,
and trust he has experienced no further ill effects from the
unfortunate accident to which he was subjected.
"'Craighton, Tilgate, Thursday morning.'"
"She MIGHT have written herself," Cyril murmured half aloud. He was
evidently disappointed at this very short measure of correspondence
on the subject.
But Montague Nevitt took a more cheerful view. "Oh, Reginald
Clifford, of Craighton!" he cried with a smile, his invariable smile.
"I know all about HIM. He's a friend of Colonel Kelmscott's down
at Tilgate Park. C.M.G., indeed! What a ridiculous old peacock.
He was administrator of St. Kitts once upon a time, I believe, or
was it Nevis or Antigua? I don't quite recollect, I'm afraid; but
anyhow, some comical little speck of a sugary, niggery, West Indian
Island; and he was made a Companion of St. Michael and St. George
when his term was up, just to keep him quiet, don't you know, for
he wanted a knighthood, and to shelve him from being appointed to
a first-class post like Barbados or Trinidad. If it's Elma Clifford
you were shut up with in the tunnel, Cyril, you might do worse,
there's no doubt, and you might do better. She's an only daughter,
and there's a little money at the back of the family, I expect;
but I fancy the Companion of the Fighting Saints lives mainly on
his pension, which, of course, is purely personal, and so dies with
him."
Cyril folded up the note without noticing Nevitt's words and put it
in his pocket, somewhat carefully and obtrusively. "Thank you," he
said, in a very quiet tone, "I didn't ask you about Miss Clifford's
fortune. When I want information on that point I'll apply for
it plainly. But meanwhile I don't think any lady's name should be
dragged into conversation and bandied about like that, by an absolute
stranger."
"Oh, now you needn't be huffy," Nevitt answered, with a
still sweeter smile, showing all those pearly teeth of his to the
greatest advantage. "I didn't mean to put your back up, and I'll
tell you what I'll do for you. I'll heap coals of fire on your
head, you ungrateful man. I'll return good for evil. You shall
have an invitation to Mrs. Holker's garden party on Saturday week
at Chetwood Court, and there you'll be almost sure to meet the
beautiful stranger."
But at that very moment, at Craighton, Tilgate, Mr. Reginald
Clifford, C.M.G., a stiff little withered-up official Briton, half
mummified by long exposure to tropical suns, was sitting in his
drawing-room with Mrs. Clifford, his wife, and discussing--what
subject of all others on earth but the personality of Cyril Waring?
"Well, it was an awkward situation for Elma, of course, I admit,"
he was chirping out cheerfully, with his back turned by pure force
of habit to the empty grate, and his hands crossed behind him.
"I don't deny it was an awkward situation. Still, there's no harm
done, I hope and trust. Elma's happily not a fanciful or foolishly
susceptible sort of girl. She sees it's a case for mere ordinary
gratitude. And gratitude, in my opinion, towards a person in his
position, is sufficiently expressed once for all by letter. There's
no reason on earth she should ever again see or hear any more of
him."
"But girls are so romantic," Mrs. Clifford put in doubtfully, with
an anxious air. She herself was by no means romantic to look at,
being, indeed, a person of a certain age, with a plump, matronly
figure, and very staid of countenance; yet there was something in
her eye, for all that, that recalled at times the vivid keenness of
Elma's, and her cheek had once been as delicate and creamy a brown
as her pretty daughter's. "Girls are so romantic," Mrs. Clifford
repeated once more, in a dreamy way, "and she was evidently impressed
by him."
"Well, I'm glad I made inquiries at once about these two young
men, anyhow," the Companion of St. Michael and St. George responded
with fervour, clasping his wizened little hands contentedly over
his narrow waistcoat. "It's a precious odd story, and a doubtful
story, and not at all the sort of story one likes one's girl to be
any way mixed up with. For my part, I shall give them a very wide
berth indeed in future; and there's no reason why Elma should ever
knock up against them."
"Who told you they were nobodies?" Mrs. Clifford inquired, drawing
a wistful sigh.
"Oh, Tom Clark was at school with them," the ex-administrator continued,
with a very cunning air, "and he knows all about them--has heard
the whole circumstances. Very odd, very odd; never met anything
so queer in all my life; most mysterious and uncanny. They never
had a father; they never had a mother; they never had anybody on
earth they could call their own; they dropped from the clouds, as
it were, one rainy day, without a friend in the world, plump down
into the Charterhouse. There they were well supplied with money,
and spent their holidays with a person at Brighton, who wasn't
even supposed to be their lawful guardian. Looks fishy, doesn't
it? Their names are Cyril and Guy Waring--and that's all they know
of themselves. They were educated like gentlemen till they were
twenty-one years old; and then they were turned loose upon the
world, like a pair of young bears, with a couple of hundred pounds
of capital apiece to shift for themselves with. Uncanny, very;
I don't like the look of it. Not at all the sort of people an
impressionable girl like our Elma should ever be allowed to see
too much of."
"I don't think she was very much impressed by him," Mrs. Clifford
said with confidence. "I've watched her to see, and I don't think
she's in love with him. But by to-morrow, Reginald, I shall be
able, I'm sure, to tell you for certain."
The Companion of the Militant Saints glanced rather uneasily across
the hearth-rug at his wife. "It's a marvellous gift, to be sure,
this intuition of yours, Louisa," he said, shaking his head sagely,
and swaying himself gently to and fro on the stone kerb of the
fender. "I frankly confess, my dear, I don't quite understand it.
And Elma's got it too, every bit as bad as you have. Runs in the
family, I suppose--runs somehow in the family. After living with
you now for twenty-two years--yes, twenty-two last April--in every
part of the world and every grade of the service, I'm compelled to
admit that your intuition in these matters is really remarkable--simply
remarkable."
Mrs. Clifford coloured through her olive-brown skin, exactly like
Elma, and rose with a somewhat embarrassed and half-guilty air,
avoiding her husband's eyes as if afraid to meet them.
Elma had gone to bed early, wearied out as she was with her long
agony in the tunnel. Mrs. Clifford crept up to her daughter's room
with a silent tread, like some noiseless Oriental, and, putting her
ear to the keyhole, listened outside the door in profound suspense
for several minutes.
Not a sound from within; not a gentle footfall on the carpeted floor.
For a moment she hesitated; then she turned the handle slowly, and,
peering before her, peeped into the room. Thank Heaven! no snake
signs. Elma lay asleep, with one arm above her head, as peacefully
as a child, after her terrible adventure. Her bosom heaved, but
slowly and regularly. The mother drew a deep breath, and crept down
the stairs with a palpitating heart to the drawing-room again.
"Reginald," she said, with perfect confidence, relapsing once more
at a bound into the ordinary every-day British matron, "there's no
harm done, I'm sure. She doesn't think of this young man at all.
You may dismiss him from your mind at once and for ever. She's
sleeping like a baby."