"Call me not fool till Heaven hath sent me fortune."
When Jack Dunquerque communicated to Lawrence Colquhoun the fact of
having made the acquaintance of Miss Fleming, and subsequently that of
Mrs. L'Estrange, Lawrence expressed no surprise and felt no
suspicions. Probably, had he felt any, they would have been at once
set aside, because Colquhoun was not a man given to calculate the
future chances, and to disquiet himself about possible events. Also at
this time he was taking little interest in Phillis. A pretty piquante
girl; he devoted a whole day to her; drove her to Twickenham, and
placed her in perfect safety under the charge of his cousin. What more
was wanted? Agatha wrote to him twice a week or so, and when he had
time he read the letters. They were all about Phillis, and most of
them contained the assurance that he had no entanglements to fear.
"Entanglements!" he murmured impatiently. "As if a man cannot dine
with a girl without falling in love with her. Women are always
thinking that men want to be married."
He was forgetting, after the fashion of men who have gone through the
battle, how hot is the fight for those who are just beginning it. Jack
Dunquerque was four-and-twenty; he was therefore, so to speak, in the
thick of it. Phillis's eyes were like two quivers filled with darts,
and when she turned them innocently upon her friend the enemy, the
darts flew straight at him, and transfixed him as if he were another
Sebastian. Colquhoun's time was past; he was clothed in the armour of
indifference which comes with the years, and he was forgetting the
past.
Still, had he known of the visit to the Tower of London, the rowing on
the river, the luncheons in Carnarvon Square, it is possible that even
he might have seen the propriety of requesting Jack Dunquerque to keep
out of danger for the future.
He had no plans for Phillis, except of the simplest kind. She was to
remain in charge of Agatha for a year, and then she would come out. He
hoped that she would marry well, because her father, had he lived,
would have wished it. And that was all he hoped about her.
He had his private worries at this time--those already
indicated--connected with Victoria Cassilis. The ice once broken, that
lady allowed him no rest. She wrote to him on some pretence nearly
every day; she sent her maid, the unlovely one, with three-cornered
notes all about nothing; she made him meet her in society, she made
him dine with her; it seemed as if she was spreading a sort of net
about him, through the meshes of which he could not escape.
With the knowledge of what had been, it was an unrighteous thing for
Colquhoun to go to the house of Gabriel Cassilis; he ought not to be
there, he felt, it was the one house in all London in which he had no
business. And yet--how to avoid it?
And Gabriel Cassilis seemed to like him; evidently liked to talk to
him; singled him out, this great financier, and talked with him as if
Colquhoun too was interested in stock; called upon him at his
chambers, and told him, in a dry but convincing way, something of his
successes and his projects.
It was after many talks of this kind that Lawrence Colquhoun,
forgetful of the past, and not remembering that of all men in the
world Gabriel Cassilis was the last who should have charge of his
money, put it all in his hands, with power-of-attorney to sell out and
reinvest for him. But that was nothing. Colquhoun was not the man to
trouble about money. He was safe in the hands of this great and
successful capitalist: he gave no thought to any risk; he
congratulated himself on his cleverness in persuading the financier to
take the money for him; and he continued to see Victoria Cassilis
nearly every day.
They quarrelled when they did meet; there was not a conversation
between them in which she did not say something bitter, and he
something savage. And yet he did not have the courage to refuse the
invitations which were almost commands. Nor could she resign the sweet
joys of making him feel her power.
A secret, you see, has a fatal fascination about it. Schoolgirls, I am
told, are given to invent little secrets which mean nothing, and to
whisper them in the ears of their dearest friends to the exclusion of
the rest. The possession of this unknown and invaluable fact brings
them together, whispering and conspiring, at every possible moment.
Freemasons again--how are they kept together; except by the possession
of secrets which are said to have been published over and over again?
And when two people have a secret which means--all that the secret
between Colquhoun and Mrs. Cassilis meant, they can no more help being
drawn together than the waters can cease to find their own level. To
be together, to feel that the only other person in the world who knows
that secret is with you, is a kind of safety. Yet what did it matter
to Colquhoun? Simply nothing. The secret was his as well as hers, but
the reasons for keeping it a secret were not his at all, but hers
entirely.
So Phillis was neglected by her guardian and left to Agatha and Jack
Dunquerque, with such results as we shall see.
So Lawrence Colquhoun fell into the power of this man of stocks, about
the mouth of whose City den the footsteps pointed all one way. He
congratulated himself; he found out Gilead Beck, and they
congratulated each other.
"I don't see," said Colquhoun, who had already enough for four
bachelors, "why one's income should not be doubled."
"With Mr. Cassilis," said Gilead Beck, "you sign cheques, and he gives
you dividends. It's like Ile, because you can go on pumping."
"He understands more than any other living man," said Lawrence.
"He is in the inner track, sir," said Mr. Beck.
"And a man," said Lawrence, "ready to take in his friends with
himself."
"A high-toned and a whole-souled man," said Gilead Beck, with
enthusiasm. "That man, sir, I do believe would take in the hull
world."