GENTLE WOOER.
Mr. Montague Nevitt rubbed his hands with delight in the sacred
privacy of his own apartment. Mr. Nevitt, indeed, had laid his
plans deep. He had everybody's secrets all round in his hands, and
he meant to make everybody pay dear in the end for his information.
Mr. Nevitt was free. His holidays were on at Drummond, Coutts and
Barclay's, Limited. He loved the sea, the sun, and the summer. He
was off that day on a projected series of short country runs, in
which it was his intention strictly to combine business and pleasure.
Dartmoor, for example, as everybody knows, is a most delightful and
bracing tourist district; but what more amusing to a man of taste
than to go a round of the Moor with its heather-clad tors, and at
the same time hunt up the parish registers of the neighbourhood
for the purpose of discovering, if possible, the supposed marriage
record of Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate with the Warings' mother?
For that there WAS a marriage Montague Nevitt felt certain in his
own wise mind, and having early arrived at that correct conclusion,
why, he had quietly offered forthwith, in Plymouth papers, a
considerable reward to parish clerks and others who would supply
him with any information as to the births, marriages, or deaths
of any person or persons of the name of Waring for some eighteen
months or so before or after the reputed date when Guy and Cyril
began their earthly pilgrimage.
For deaths, Nevitt said to himself, with a sinister smile, were
every bit as important to him as births or marriages. He knew the
date of Colonel Kelmscott's wedding with Lady Emily Croke, and if
at that date wife number one was not yet dead, when the Colonel
took to himself wife number two, who now did the honours of Tilgate
Park for him, why, there you had as clear and convincing a case of
bigamy as any man could wish to find out against another, and to
utilize some day for his own good purposes.
As he thought these thoughts, Montague Nevitt gave the last delicate
twirl, the final touch of art, to the wire-like ends of his waxed
moustache, in front of his mirror, and, after surveying the result
in the glass with considerable satisfaction, proceeded to set out,
on very good terms with himself, for his summer holiday.
Devonshire, however, wasn't his first destination. Montague Nevitt,
besides being a man of business and a man of taste, was also in due
season a man of feeling. A heart beat beneath that white rosebud
in his left top button-hole. All his thoughts were not thoughts
of greed and of gain. He was bound to Tilgate to-day, and to see
a lady.
It isn't so easy in England to see a lady alone. But fortune
favours the brave. Luck always attended Mr. Montague Nevitt's most
unimportant schemes. Hardly had he got into the field path across
the meadows between Tilgate station and the grounds of Woodlands
than, at the seat by the bend, what should he see but a lady sitting
down in an airy white summer dress, her head leaning on her hand,
most pensive and melancholy. Montague Nevitt's heart gave a sudden
bound. In luck once more. It was Gwendoline Gildersleeve.
"Good morning!" he said briskly, coming up before Gwendoline had
time to perceive him--and fly. "This is really most fortunate. I've
run down from town today on purpose to see you, but hardly hoped
I should have the good fortune to get a tete-a-tete with you--at
least so easily. I'm so glad I'm in time. Now, don't look so cross.
You must at any rate admit, you know, my persistence is flattering."
"I don't feel flattered by it, Mr. Nevitt," Gwendoline answered coldly,
holding out her gloved hand to him with marked disinclination. "I
thought last time I had said good-bye to you for good and for ever."
Nevitt took her hand, and held it in his own a trifle longer than
was strictly necessary. "Now don't talk like that, Gwendoline," he
said coaxingly. "Don't crush me quite flat. Remember at least that
you ONCE were kind to me. It isn't my fault, surely, if _I_ still
recollect it."
Gwendoline withdrew her hand from his with yet more evident coolness.
"Circumstances alter cases," she said severely. "That was before
I really knew you."
"That was before you knew Granville Kelmscott, you mean," Nevitt
responded with an unpleasantly knowing air. "Oh yes, you needn't
wince; I've heard all about that. It's my business to hear and find
out everything. But circumstances alter cases, as you justly say,
Gwendoline. And I've discovered some circumstances about Granville
Kelmscott that may alter the case as regards your opinion of that
rich young man, whose estate weighed down a poor fellow like me in
what you've graciously pleased to call your affections."
Gwendoline rose, and looked down at the man contemptuously. "Mr.
Nevitt," she said, in a chilling voice, "you've no right to call me
Gwendoline any longer now. You've no right to speak to me of Mr.
Granville Kelmscott. I refused your advances, not for any one else's
sake, or any one else's estate, but simply and solely because I
came to know you better than I knew you at first; and the more I
knew of you the less I liked you. I am NOT engaged to Mr. Granville
Kelmscott. I don't mean to see him again. I don't mean to marry
him."
Nevitt took his cue at once, like a clever hand that he was, and
followed it up remorselessly. "Well, I'm glad to hear that anyhow,"
he answered, assuming a careless air of utter unconcern, "for your
sake as well as for his, Miss Gildersleeve; for Granville Kelmscott,
as I happen to know in the course of business, is a ruined man--a
ruined man this moment. He isn't, and never was, the heir of Tilgate.
And I'm sure it was very honourable of him, the minute he found
he was a penniless beggar, to release you from such an unequal
engagement."
He had played his card well. He had delivered his shot neatly.
Gwendoline, though anxious to withdraw from his hateful presence,
couldn't help but stay and learn more about this terrible hint of
his. A light broke in upon her even as the fellow spoke. Was it
this, then, that had made Granville talk so strangely to her that
morning by the dell in the Woodlands? Was it this which, as he
told her, rendered their marriage impossible? Why, if THAT were
all--Gwendoline drew a deep breath and clasped her hands together
in a sudden access of mingled hope and despair. "Oh, what do you
mean, Mr. Nevitt," she cried eagerly. "What can Granville have
done? Don't keep me in suspense! Do tell me what you mean by it."
Montague Nevitt, still seated, looked up at her with a smile of
quiet satisfaction. He played with her for a moment as a cat plays
with a mouse. She was such a beautiful creature, so tall and fair
and graceful, and she was so awfully afraid, and he was so awfully
fond of her, that he loved to torture her thus and hold her dangling
in his power. "No, Gwendoline," he said slowly, drawing his words
out by driblets, so as to prolong her suspense, "I oughtn't to have
mentioned it at all. It's a professional secret. I retract what I
said. Forget that I said it. Excuse me on the ground of my natural
reluctance to see a woman I still love so deeply and so purely--whatever
she may happen to think of ME--throw herself away on a man without
a name or a penny. However, as Kelmscott seems to have done the
honourable thing of his own accord, and given you up the minute he
knew he couldn't keep you in the way you've been accustomed to--why,
there's no need, of course, of any warning from me. I'll say no
more on the subject."
His studied air of mystery piqued and drew on his victim. Gwendoline
knew in her own heart she ought to go at once; her own dignity
demanded it, and she should consult her dignity. But still, she
couldn't help longing to know what Nevitt's half-hints and innuendoes
might mean. After all, she was a woman! "Oh, do tell me," she
cried, clasping her hands in suspense once more; "what have you
heard about Mr. Kelmscott? I'm not engaged to him; I don't want to
know for that, but--" she broke down, blushing crimson, and Montague
Nevitt, gazing fixedly at her delicate peach-like cheek, remarked
to himself how extremely well that blush became her.
"No, but remember," he said in a very grave voice, in his favourite
impersonation of the man of honour, "whatever I tell you--if I give
way at all and tell you anything--you must hear in confidence, and
must repeat to nobody. If you do repeat it, you'll get me into very
serious trouble. And not only so, but as nobody knows it except
myself, you'll as good as proclaim to all the world that you
heard it from ME. If I tell you what I know, will you promise me
this--not to breathe a syllable of what I say to anybody?"
Gwendoline, glancing down, and thoroughly ashamed of herself, yet
answered in a very low and trembling voice, "I'll promise, Mr.
Nevitt."
"Then the facts are these," the man of feeling went on, with an
undercurrent of malicious triumph in his musical voice. "Kelmscott
is NOT his father's eldest son; he's NOT, and never was, the heir
of Tilgate. More than that, nobody knows these facts but myself.
And I know the true heirs, and I can prove their title. Well, now,
Miss Gildersleeve--if it's to be Miss Gildersleeve still--this is
the circumstance that alters the case as regards Granville Kelmscott.
I have it in my hands to ruin Kelmscott. And what I've taken the
trouble to come down and say to you to-day is simply this for your
own advantage; beware, at least, how you throw yourself away upon
a penniless man, with neither name nor fortune! When you've quite
got over that dream, you'll be glad to return to the man you threw
overboard for the rich squire's son. No circumstances have ever
altered him. He loved you from the first, and he will always love
you."
Gwendoline looked him back in the face again, as pale as death.
"Mr. Nevitt," she said scornfully, unmoved by his tale, "I do not
love you, and I will never love you. You have no right to say such
things to me as this. I'm glad you've told me, for I now know what
Mr. Kelmscott meant. And if he was as poor as a church mouse, I'd
marry him to-morrow--I said just now I didn't mean to marry him.
I retract that word. Circumstances alter cases, and what you've
just told me alters this one. I withdraw what I said. I'll marry
Granville Kelmscott to-morrow if he asks me."
She looked down at him so proudly, so defiantly, so haughtily, that
Montague Nevitt, sitting there with his cynical smile on his thin
red lips, flinched and wavered before her. He saw in a moment the
game was up. He had played the wrong card; he had mistaken his
woman and tried false tactics. It was too late now to retreat. An
empty revenge was all that remained to him. "Very well," he said
sullenly, looking her back in the face with a nasty scowl--for
indeed he loved that girl and was loath to lose her--"remember
your promise, and say nothing to anybody. You'll find it best so
for your own reputation in the end. But mark my words; be sure I
won't spare Granville Kelmscott now. I'll play my own game. I'll
ruin him ruthlessly. He's in my power, I tell you, and I'll crush
him under my heel. Well, that's settled at last. I'm off to Devonshire
to-morrow--on the hunt of the records--to the skirts of Dartmoor,
to a place in the wilds by the name of Mambury." He raised his
hat, and, curling his lip maliciously, walked away, without even
so much as shaking hands with her. He knew it was all up. That game
was lost. And, being a man of feeling, he regretted it bitterly.
Gwendoline, for her part, hurried home, all aglow with remorse and
excitement. When she reached the house, she went straight up in
haste to her own bedroom. In spite of her promise, all woman that
she was, she couldn't resist sitting down at once and inditing a
hurried note to Granville Kelmscott.
"Dearest Granville," it said, in a very shaky hand, not unblurred
by tears, "I know all now, and I wonder you thought it could ever
matter. I know you're not the eldest son, and that somebody else
is the heir of Tilgate. And I care for all that a great deal less
than nothing. I love you ten thousand times too dearly to mind one
pin whether you're rich or poor. And, rich or poor, whenever you
like, I'll marry you.
"Yours ever devotedly and unalterably,
"GWENDOLINE."
She sealed it up in haste and ran out with it, all tremors, to the
post by herself. Her hands were hot. She was in a high fever. But
Mr. Montague Nevitt, that man of feeling, thus balked of his game,
walked off his disappointment as well as he could by a long smart
tramp across the springy downs, lunching at a wayside inn on bread
and cheese and beer, and descending as the evening shades drew in
on the Guildford station. Thence he ran up to town by the first
fast train, and sauntered sulkily across Waterloo Bridge to his
rooms on the Embankment. As he went a poster caught his eye on the
bridge. It riveted his attention by one fatal phrase. "Financial
News. Collapse of the Rio Negro Diamond and Sapphire Mines!"
He stared at the placard with a dim sense of disaster. What on
earth could this mean? It fairly took his breath away. The mines
were the best things out this season. He held three hundred shares
on his own account. If this rumour were true, he had let himself
in for a loss of a clear three thousand!
But being a person of restricted sympathies, he didn't reflect till
several minutes had passed that he must at the same time have let
Guy Waring in for three thousand also.