Sherrington Trimm arrived on the following afternoon, rosier and fresher
than ever, and considerably reduced in weight. After the first general
and affectionate greeting he proceeded to interview each member of the
family in private, as though he were getting up evidence for a case. It
was characteristic of him that he spoke to Mamie first. The most
important point in his estimation was to ascertain whether the girl were
really in love, or whether she had only contracted a passing attachment
for George Wood. Knowing all that he did, and all that he supposed was
unknown to his wife, he could not but regard the match with complacency,
so far as worldly advantages were concerned. But if he had been once
assured that his daughter’s happiness was really at stake, he would have
given her as readily to George, the comparatively impecunious author, as
to Mr. Winton Wood, the future millionaire.
“Now, Mamie,” he said, linking his arm in hers and leading her into the
garden, “now, Mamie, tell us all about it.”
Mamie blushed faintly and gave her father a shy glance, and then looked
down.
“There is not much to tell,” she answered. “I love him, and I am very
happy. Is not that enough?”
“You are quite sure of yourself, eh?” Mr. Trimm looked sharply at her
face. “And how long has this been going on?”
“All my life—though—well, how can I explain, papa? You ought to
understand. One finds out such things all at once, and then one knows
that they have always been there.”
“I suppose so,” said Sherry. “You did not know that ‘it,’ as you call
it, was there when I went away.”
“Oh yes, I did.”
“Well, did you know it a year ago?”
“No, perhaps not. Oh, papa, this is like twenty questions.” Mamie
laughed happily.
“Is it? Never played the game—cannot say. And you have no doubts about
him, have you?”
“How can anybody doubt him!” Mamie exclaimed indignantly.
“It is my business to doubt,” said Sherry Trimm with a twinkle in his
eye. “’I am the doubter and the doubt’—never knew what it meant till
to-day.”
“Then go away, papa!” laughed the young girl.
“And let George have a chance. I suppose that is what you mean. On the
whole, perhaps I could do nothing better. But I will just see whether he
has any doubts, and finish my cigar with him.”
Thereupon Sherrington Trimm turned sharply on his heel and went in
search of George. He found him standing on the verandah pensively
examining a trail of ants that were busily establishing communication
between the garden walk and a tiny fragment of sponge cake which had
fallen upon the step during afternoon tea.
“George,” said Sherry in business-like tones, through which, however,
the man’s kindly good nature was clearly appreciable, “do you mind
telling me in a few words why you want to marry my daughter?”
George turned his head, and there was a pleasant smile upon his face.
Then he pointed to the trail of ants.
“Mr. Sherrington Trimm,” he said, “do you mind explaining to me very
briefly why those ants are so particularly anxious to get at that piece
of cake?”
“Like it, I suppose,” Sherry answered laconically.
“That is exactly my case. I have gone to the length of falling very much
in love with Mamie, and I wish to marry her. I understand that her views
coincide with mine and that you make no objections. I think that the
explanation is complete.”
“Very well stated. Now, look here. The only thing I care for on earth is
that child’s happiness. She is not like all girls. You may have found
that out, by this time. If you behave yourself as I think you will, she
will be the best wife to you that man ever had. If you do not—well,
there is no knowing what she will do, but whatever it is, it will
surprise you. I do not know whether hearts break nowadays as easily as
they used to, and I am not prepared to state positively that Mamie’s
heart would break under the circumstances. But if you do not treat her
properly, she will make it pretty deuced hot for you, and by the
Eternal, so will I, my boy. I like to put the thing in its proper
light.”
“You do,” laughed George, “with uncommon clearness. I am prepared to run
all risks of that sort.”
“Hope so,” returned Sherry Trimm, smoking thoughtfully. “Now then,
George,” he resumed in a more confidential tone, after a short pause,
“there is a little matter of business between you and me. We are old
friends, and I might be your father in point of age, and now about to
become your father-in-law in point of fact. How about the bread and
butter? I have no intention of giving Mamie a fortune. No, no, I know
you are aware of that, but there are material considerations, you know.
Now, just give me an idea of how you propose to live.”
“If I do not lose my health, we can live very comfortably,” George
answered. “I think I can undertake to say that we should need no help.
It would not be like this—like your way of living, of course. But we can
have all we need and a certain amount of small luxury.”
“Hum!” ejaculated Sherry Trimm in a doubting tone. “Not much luxury, I
am afraid.”
“A certain amount,” George answered quietly. “I have earned over ten
thousand dollars during the last year and I have kept most of it.”
“Really!” exclaimed the other. “I did not know that literature was such
a good thing. But you may not always earn as much, next year, or the
year after.”
“That is unlikely, unless I break down. I do not know why that should
happen to me.”
“You do not look like it,” said Sherry, eyeing George’s spare and
vigorous frame, and his clear, brown skin.
“I do not feel like it,” said George.
“Well, look here. I will tell you what I will do. I have my own reasons
for not giving you a house just now. But I will give Mamie just half as
much as you make, right along. I suppose that is fair. I need not tell
you that she will have everything some day.”
“You may give Mamie anything you like,” George answered indifferently.
“I shall never ask questions. If I fall ill and cannot work for a long
time together, you will have to support her, and my father will support
me.”
“I daresay we could spare you a crust, my boy,” said Sherrington Trimm,
laying his small hand upon George’s broad, bony shoulder and pushing him
along. “I do not want to keep you any longer, if you have anything to
do.”
George sauntered away in the direction of the garden, and Sherry Trimm
went indoors to find his wife. Totty met him in the drawing-room, having
just returned from a secret interview with her cook, in the interests of
Sherry’s first dinner at home.
“Totty, look here,” he said, selecting a comfortable chair and sitting
down. He leaned back, crossed his legs, raised his hands and set them
together, thumb to thumb and finger to finger, but said nothing more.
“I am looking,” said Totty with a sweet smile. She seated herself beside
him. “I have already looked. You are wonderfully better—I am so glad.”
“Yes. Those waters have screwed me up a peg. But that is not what I
mean. When I say, look here, I mean to suggest that you should
concentrate your gigantic intellect upon the consideration of the matter
in hand. You have made this match, and you are responsible for it. Will
you tell me why you have made it?”
“How do you mean that I have made it?” asked Totty evasively.
“Innocence, thy name is Charlotte!” exclaimed Sherry, looking at the
ceiling. “You brought George here, you knew that Mamie liked him and
that he would like her, not on the first day, nor on the second, but
inevitably on the third or fourth. You knew that on the fifth day they
would love each other, that they would tell each other so on the sixth,
and that the seventh day, being one of rest, would be devoted to
obtaining our consent. You knew also that George was, and is, a
penniless author—I admit that he earns a good deal—and yet you have done
all in your power to make Mamie marry him. The fact that I like him has
nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing to do with it! Oh, Sherry, how can you say such things!”
“Nothing whatever. I would have liked lots of other young fellows just
as well. What especial reason had you for selecting this particular
young fellow? That is what I want to get at.”
“Oh, is that all? Mamie loved him, my dear. I knew it long ago, and as I
knew that you would not disapprove, I brought him here. It is not a
question of money. We have more than we can ever need. It is not as if
we had two or three sons to start in the world, Sherry.”
She lent an intonation of sadness to the last words, which, as she was
aware, always produced the same effect upon her husband. He had bitterly
regretted having no son to bear his honourable name.
“That is just it,” he answered sadly. “Mamie is everything, and
everything is for her. That is the reason why we should be careful. She
is not like a great many girls. She has a heart and she will break it,
if she is not happy.”
“That is the very reason. You do not seem to realise that she is madly
in love.”
“No doubt, but was she madly in love, as you call it, when you brought
them here?”
“Long before that——”
“Then why did you never tell me—we might have had him to the house all
the time——”
“Because I supposed, as every one else did, that he meant to marry
Constance Fearing. I did not want to spoil his life, and I thought that
Mamie would get over it. But the thing came to nothing. In fact, I begin
to believe that there never was anything in it, and that the story was
all idle gossip from beginning to end. He is on as good terms as ever
with her and goes over there from time to time to console poor Grace.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Sherry in a thoughtful tone.
“You need not say ‘oh,’ like that. There is nothing to be afraid of. It
is perfectly natural that the poor woman should like to see him, when he
nearly died in trying to save her husband. They say she is in a dreadful
state, half mad, and ill, and so changed!”
“Poor John!” exclaimed Sherry sadly. “I shall never see his like again.”
He sighed, for he had been very fond of the man, besides looking upon
him as a most promising partner in his law business.
“It was dreadful!” Mrs. Trimm shuddered as she thought of the accident.
“I cannot bear to talk about it,” she added.
A short pause followed, during which Totty wore a very sad expression,
and Sherry examined attentively a ring he wore upon his finger, in which
a dark sapphire was set between two very white diamonds.
“There is one thing,” he said suddenly. “The sooner we pull up stakes
the better. I do not propose to spend the best part of my life in the
cars. The weather is cool and we will go back to town. So pack up your
traps, Totty, and let us be off. Have you written to Tom?”
“No,” said Totty. “I would not announce the engagement till we were
settled in town.”
Sherrington Trimm departed on the following morning, alleging with truth
that the business could not be allowed to go to pieces. Totty and the
two young people were to return two or three days later, and active
preparations were at once made for moving. Totty, indeed, could not bear
the idea of allowing her husband to remain alone in New York. It was
possible that at any moment he might discover that the will was missing
from her brother’s box. She might indeed have been spared much anxiety
in this matter had she known that although Sherry had sealed and marked
the document himself, it was not he who had placed it in the receptacle
where it had been found by his wife. Sherry had handed it across the
table to John Bond, telling him to put it in Craik’s deed-box, and had
seen John leave the room with it, but had never seen it since. It was
not, indeed, until much later that he had communicated to his partner
the contents of the paper. If it could not now be found, Sherry would
suppose that John had accidentally put it into the wrong box and a
general search would be made. Then it would be thought that John had
mislaid it. In any case poor John was dead and could not defend himself.
Sherry would go directly to Tom Craik and get him to sign a duplicate,
but he would never, under any conceivable combination of circumstances,
connect his wife with the disappearance of the will, nor mention the
fact in her presence. Totty, however, was ignorant of these facts, and
lived in the constant fear of being obliged to explain matters to her
husband. Though she had thought much of the matter she had not hit upon
any expedient for restoring the document to its place. She kept it in a
small Indian cabinet which her brother had once given her, in which
there was a hidden drawer of which no one knew the secret but herself.
This cabinet she had brought with her and had kept all through the
summer in a prominent place in the drawing-room, justly deeming that
things are generally most safely hidden when placed in the most exposed
position, where no one would ever think of looking for them. On
returning to New York the cabinet was again packed in one of Totty’s own
boxes, but the will was temporarily concealed about her person, to be
restored to its hiding-place as soon as she reached the town house.
Before leaving the neighbourhood George felt that it was his duty to
apprise Constance and her sister of his departure, but he avoided the
necessity of making a visit by writing a letter to Grace. It seemed to
him more fitting that he should address his note to her rather than to
her sister, considering all that had happened. He urged that both should
return to New York before the winter began, and he inserted a civil
message for Constance before he concluded.
Mamie took an affectionate leave of the place in which she had been so
happy. During the last hours of the day preceding their return to town,
George never left her side, while she wandered through the walks of the
garden and beneath the beautiful trees, back to the house, in and out of
the rooms, then lingered again upon the verandah and gazed at the
distant river. He watched the movements of her faultless figure as she
sat down for the last time in the places where they had so often sat
together, then rose quickly, and, linking her arm in his, led him away
to some other well-remembered spot.
“I have been so happy here!” she said for the hundredth time.
“You shall be as happy in other places, if I can make you so,” George
answered.
“Shall we? Shall I?” she asked, looking up into his face. “Who can tell!
One is never so sure of the future as one is of the past—and the
present. Shall we take it all with us to our little house in New York?
How funny it will seem to be living all alone with you in a little
house! I shall not give you champagne every day, George. You need not
expect it! It will be a very little house, and I shall do all the work.”
“If you will allow me to black the boots, I shall be most happy,” said
George. “I know how.”
“Imagine! You, blacking boots!” exclaimed Mamie indignantly.
“Why not? But seriously, we can do a great deal more than you
fancy—provided, as you say, that we do not go in for champagne every
day, and keep horses and all that.”
“I think we shall have more champagne and horses than other things,”
Mamie answered with a laugh. “Mamma is going to keep a carriage for me,
as well as my dear old riding horse, and papa told me not to let you buy
any wine, because there was some of that particular kind you like on the
way out. Between you and me, I do not think they really expect us to be
in the least economical, though mamma is always talking about it.”
She was very happy and it was impossible for her to cloud the future by
the idea of being deprived of any of the luxury to which she had always
been accustomed. She knew in her heart that she was both willing and
able to undergo any privation for George’s sake, but it would have been
unlike her to talk of what she would or could do when there was no
immediate prospect of doing it. Her chief thought was to make her
husband’s house comfortable, and if she knew something of the art from
having watched her mother, she knew also that comfort, as she understood
it, required a very free use of money. George knew it, too, since he had
been brought up in luxury and had been deprived of it at the age when
such things are most keenly felt. The terrible, noiseless, hourly
expenditure that he had seen in Totty’s house made the exiguity of his
own resources particularly apparent to his judgment.
“Good-bye, dear old place!” cried the young girl, as they stood on the
verandah at dusk, before going in to dress for dinner. She threw kisses
with her fingers at the garden and at the trees.
George stood by her side in silence, gazing out at the dim outline of
the distant hills beyond the river.
“Are you not sorry to leave it all?” Mamie asked.
“Very sorry,” he answered, as though not knowing what he said. Then he
stooped, and kissed her small white face, and they both went in.
That night George sat up late in his room, looking over the manuscript
that had grown under his hand during the summer months. It was all but
finished and he intended to write the last chapter in New York, but it
interested him to look through it before leaving the surroundings in
which it had been written. What most struck him in the work was the care
with which it was done. It was not a very imaginative book, but it was
remarkable for its truth and clearness of style. He wondered at the
coldness of certain scenes, which in his first conception of the story
had promised to be the most dramatic. He wondered still more at the
success with which he had handled points which in themselves seemed to
be far from attractive to the novelist. His conversations were better
than they had formerly been, but the love scenes were unsatisfactory,
and he determined that he would re-write some of them. The whole book
looked too truthful and too little enthusiastic to him, now, though he
fancied that he had passed through moments of enthusiasm while he was
writing it. On the whole, it was a disappointment to himself, and he
believed that others would be disappointed likewise. He asked himself
what Johnson would think of it, and made up his mind to abide by his
opinion. Vaguely too, as one sometimes longs to see again a book once
read, he wished that he might have Constance’s criticism and advice,
though he was conscious at the same time that it was not the sort of
story she would have liked.
Two days later, he found himself once more in his little room in his
father’s house. The old gentleman received the news of the engagement in
silence. He had guessed that matters would terminate as they had, and
the prospect had given him little satisfaction. He thought that the
alliance would probably cut him off from his son’s society, and he was
inwardly hurt that George should seem indifferent to the fact. But he
said nothing. From the worldly point of view the marriage was a
brilliant one, and it meant that George must ultimately be a rich man.
His future at least was provided for.
George found Johnson hard at work, as usual, and if possible paler and
more in earnest than before. He had taken a week’s holiday during the
hottest part of the summer, but with that exception had never relaxed in
his astounding industry since they had last met.
“How particularly sleek you look,” he said, scrutinising George’s face
as the latter sat down.
“I feel sleek,” George answered with a slight laugh. “I believe that is
what is the matter with the book I have been writing since I saw you. I
am not satisfied with it, and I want your opinion. I sat up all last
night to write the last chapter in my old den. I think it is better than
the rest.”
“That is a pity. It will look like a new silk hat on a beggar—or like a
wig on a soup-tureen, as the Frenchmen say. But I daresay you are quite
wrong about the rest of it. You generally are. For a man who can write a
good story in good English when he tries, you have as little confidence
as I ever saw in any one. The public does not write books and does not
know how they are written. It will never find out that you wrote the
beginning in clover and the end in nettles.”
“Oh—the public!” exclaimed George. “One never knows what it will do.”
“One may guess, sometimes. The public consists of a vast collection of
individuals collected in a crowd around the feet of four great beasts.
There is the ignorant beast and the learned beast, the virtuous beast
and the vicious beast. They are all four beasts in their way, because
they all represent an immense accumulation of prejudice, in four
different directions and having four different followings, all pulling
different ways. You cannot possibly please them all and it is quite
useless to try.”
“I suppose you mean that the four beasts are the four kinds of critics.
Is that it?”
“No,” Johnson answered. “That is not it at all. If we critics had more
real influence with the public, the public would be all the better for
it. As it is, the real critic is dying out, because the public will not
pay enough to keep him alive. It is sad, but I suppose it is natural.
This is the age of free thought, and the phrase, if you interpret it as
most people do, means that all men are to consider themselves critics,
whether they know anything or not. Have you brought your manuscript with
you?”
“No. I wanted to ask first whether you would read it.”
“You need not be so humble, now that you are a celebrity,” said Johnson
with a laugh. “You do not look the part, either. What has happened to
you?”
“I am going to be married,” George answered. “I am to marry my cousin,
Miss Trimm.”
“Not Sherrington Trimm’s daughter!”
“The same, if it please you.”
“I congratulate you on leaving the literary career,” said Johnson with a
sardonic smile. “I suppose you will never do another stroke of work.
Well—it is a pity.”
“I have to work for my living as I have done for years,” George
answered. “Do you imagine that I would live upon other people’s money?”
“Do you really mean to go on working?”
“Of course I do, as long as I can hold a pen. I should if I were rich in
my own right, for love of the thing.”
“Love of the thing is not enough. Are you ambitious?”
“I do not know. I never thought about it. To me, the question is whether
a thing is well done or not, for its own sake. The success of it means
money, which I need, but apart from that I do not think I care very much
about it. I may be mistaken. I value your opinion, for instance, and if
I knew other men like you, I should value theirs.”
“You will never succeed to any extent without ambition,” Johnson
answered with great energy. “It is everything in literature. You must
feel that you will go mad if you are not first, if you are not
acknowledged to be better than any one else during your lifetime. You
must make people understand that you are a dangerous rival, and you must
have the daily satisfaction of knowing that they feel it. Literature is
like the storming of a redoubt, you must climb upon the bodies of the
slain and be the first to plant your flag on the top. You must lie awake
all night, and torment yourself all day to find some means of doing a
thing better than other people. To be first, always, all your life,
without fear of competition, to be Cæsar or to be nothing! I wish I
could make you feel what I feel!”
“I think I would rather not,” said George. “It must be very disturbing
to the judgment to be always comparing oneself with others instead of
trying to do the best one can in an independent way.”
“You will never succeed without ambition,” Johnson repeated confidently.
“Then I am afraid I shall never succeed at all, for I have not a spark
of that sort of ambition. I do not care a straw for being thought better
than any one else, nor for being a celebrity. I want to satisfy myself,
my own idea of what is a good book, and I am afraid I never shall. I
suppose that is a sort of ambition too.”
“It is not the right sort.”
George knew his friend very well and was familiar with most of his
ideas. He respected his character, and he valued his opinion more than
that of any man in his acquaintance, but he could never accept his
theories as infallible. He felt that if he ever succeeded in writing a
book that pleased him he would recognise its merits sooner than any one,
and but for the necessity of earning a livelihood he would have
systematically destroyed all his writings until he had attained a
satisfactory result. That a certain amount of reputation might be gained
by publishing what he regarded as incomplete or inartistic work was to
him a matter of indifference, except for the material advantages which
resulted from the transaction. Such, at least, was his belief about
himself. That he was able to appreciate flattery when it was of a good
and subtle quality, only showed him that he was human, but did not
improve his own estimation of his productions.
A week later, Johnson returned the manuscript with a note in which he
gave his opinion of it.
“It will sell,” he wrote. “You are quite mistaken about yourself, as
usual. You told me the other day that you had no ambition. Your book
proves that you have. You have taken the subject treated by Wiggins in
his last great novel. It made a sensation, but in my opinion you have
handled it better than he did, though he is called a great novelist. It
was a very ambitious thing to do, and it is wonderful that, while taking
a precisely similar situation, there should not be a word in your work
that recalls his. After this, do not tell me that you have no ambition,
for it is sheer nonsense. As for the last chapter, I should not have
known that it was not written under the same circumstances as all the
rest.”
George laughed aloud to himself. He knew the name of Wiggins well
enough, but he had never read one of the celebrated author’s books, and
if he had he would assuredly not have taken his plot.
“But Johnson could not know that,” he said to himself, “and I have
written just such stuff about other people.”
The book went to the publisher and he thought no more of it. During the
time that followed, his days were very fully occupied. Between making
the necessary preparations for his approaching marriage, and the
pleasant duty of spending a certain number of hours with Mamie every
day, he had very little time to call his own, although nothing of any
importance happened to vary the course of his life. At the beginning of
November Constance Fearing and her sister returned to town, and at about
the same time he was informed by Sherrington Trimm that it would be
necessary for him to visit Mr. Thomas Craik, as he was about to become
that gentleman’s nephew by marriage.
“Of course, I know all about the old story, George,” said Sherry. “But
if I were you I would at least try and be civil. The fact is, I have
reason to know that he is haunted by a sort of half-stagey, half-honest
remorse for what he did, and he is very much pleased with the marriage,
besides being a great admirer of your books.”
“All right,” said George, “I will be civil enough.”
Sherry Trimm had conveyed exactly the impression which he had desired to
convey. He had made George believe by his manner that he was himself
anxious to keep his relations with Mr. Craik on a pleasant footing,
doubtless on account of the money, and he had effectually deterred
George from quarrelling with his unknown benefactor, while he had kept
the question of the will as closely secret as ever.