James had barely disposed of his master and Mr. Leyton, and left them
to the ministrations of two of his underlings, before he was confronted
with one of those difficult problems that it was part of his functions
to solve. The porter informed him that a young lady had just driven up
in a carriage ostensibly to see Mr. Rushbrook, and James, descending to
the outer vestibule, found himself face to face with Miss Grace
Nevil. Happily, that young lady, with her usual tact, spared him some
embarrassment.
“Oh! James,” she said sweetly, “do you think that I could see Mr.
Rushbrook for a few moments IF I WAITED FOR THE OPPORTUNITY? You
understand, I don't wish to disturb him or his company by being
regularly announced.”
The young girl's practical intelligence appeared to increase the usual
respect which James had always shown her. “I understand, miss.” He
thought for a moment, and said: “Would you mind, then, following me
where you could wait quietly and alone?” As she quickly assented, he
preceded her up the staircase, past the study and drawing-room, which
he did not enter, and stopped before a small door at the end of the
passage. Then, handing her a key which he took from his pocket, he said:
“This is the only room in the house that is strictly reserved for Mr.
Rushbrook, and even he rarely uses it. You can wait here without anybody
knowing it until I can communicate with him and bring you to his study
unobserved. And,” he hesitated, “if you wouldn't mind locking the door
when you are in, miss, you would be more secure, and I will knock when I
come for you.”
Grace Nevil smiled at the man's prudence, and entered the room. But
to her great surprise, she had scarcely shut the door when she was
instantly struck with a singular memory which the apartment recalled.
It was exactly like the room she had altered in Rushbrook's villa at Los
Osos! More than that, on close examination it proved to be the very same
furniture, arranged as she remembered to have arranged it, even to the
flowers and grasses, now, alas! faded and withered on the walls. There
could be no mistake. There was the open ebony escritoire with the
satin blotter open, and its leaves still bearing the marks of her own
handwriting. So complete to her mind was the idea of her own tenancy in
this bachelor's mansion, that she looked around with a half indignant
alarm for the photograph or portrait of herself that might further
indicate it. But there was no other exposition. The only thing that had
been added was a gilt legend on the satin case of the blotter,--“Los
Osos, August 20, 186-,” the day she had occupied the room.
She was pleased, astonished, but more than all, disturbed. The only man
who might claim a right to this figurative possession of her tastes
and habits was the one whom she had quietly, reflectively, and
understandingly half accepted as her lover, and on whose account she had
come to consult Rushbrook. But Somers was not a sentimentalist; in
fact, as a young girl, forced by her independent position to somewhat
critically scrutinize masculine weaknesses, this had always been a point
in his favor; yet even if he had joined with his friend Rushbrook to
perpetuate the memory of their first acquaintanceship, his taste merely
would not have selected a chambre de garcon in Mr. Rushbrook's home for
its exhibition. Her conception of the opposite characters of the two men
was singularly distinct and real, and this momentary confusion of them
was disagreeable to her woman's sense. But at this moment James came to
release her and conduct her to Rushbrook's study, where he would join
her at once. Everything had been arranged as she had wished.
Even a more practical man than Rushbrook might have lingered over the
picture of the tall, graceful figure of Miss Nevil, quietly enthroned in
a large armchair by the fire, her scarlet, satin-lined cloak thrown over
its back, and her chin resting on her hand. But the millionaire
walked directly towards her with his usual frankness of conscious but
restrained power, and she felt, as she always did, perfectly at her
ease in his presence. Even as she took his outstretched hand, its
straightforward grasp seemed to endow her with its own confidence.
“You'll excuse my coming here so abruptly,” she smiled, “but I wanted
to get before Mr. Leyton, who, I believe, wishes to see you on the same
business as myself.”
“He is here already, and dining with me,” said Rushbrook.
“Ah! does he know I am here?” asked the girl, quietly.
“No; as he said you had thought of coming with him and didn't, I
presumed you didn't care to have him know you had come alone.”
“Not exactly that, Mr. Rushbrook,” she said, fixing her beautiful eyes
on him in bright and trustful confidence, “but I happen to have a fuller
knowledge of this business than he has, and yet, as it is not altogether
my own secret, I was not permitted to divulge it to him. Nor would I
tell it to you, only I cannot bear that you should think that I
had anything to do with this wretched inquisition into Mr. Somers's
prospects. Knowing as well as you do how perfectly independent I am, you
would think it strange, wouldn't you? But you would think it still
more surprising when you found out that I and my uncle already know how
liberally and generously you had provided for Mr. Somers in the future.”
“How I had provided for Mr. Somers in the future?” repeated Mr.
Rushbrook, looking at the fire, “eh?”
“Yes,” said the young girl, indifferently, “how you were to put him in
to succeed you in the Water Front Trust, and all that. He told it to
me and my uncle at the outset of our acquaintance, confidentially, of
course, and I dare say with an honorable delicacy that was like him,
but--I suppose now you will think me foolish--all the while I'd rather
he had not.”
“You'd rather he had not,” repeated Mr. Rushbrook, slowly.
“Yes,” continued Grace, leaning forward with her rounded elbows on her
knees, and her slim, arched feet on the fender. “Now you are going
to laugh at me, Mr. Rushbrook, but all this seemed to me to spoil any
spontaneous feeling I might have towards him, and limit my independence
in a thing that should be a matter of free will alone. It seemed too
much like a business proposition! There, my kind friend!” she added,
looking up and trying to read his face with a half girlish pout,
followed, however, by a maturer sigh, “I'm bothering you with a woman's
foolishness instead of talking business. And”--another sigh--“I suppose
it IS business for my uncle, who has, it seems, bought into this Trust
on these possible contingencies, has, perhaps, been asking questions
of Mr. Leyton. But I don't want you to think that I approve of them, or
advise your answering them. But you are not listening.”
“I had forgotten something,” said Rushbrook, with an odd preoccupation.
“Excuse me a moment--I will return at once.”
He left the room quite as abstractedly, and when he reached the passage,
he apparently could not remember what he had forgotten, as he walked
deliberately to the end window, where, with his arms folded behind his
back, he remained looking out into the street. A passer-by, glancing
up, might have said he had seen the pale, stern ghost of Mr. Rushbrook,
framed like a stony portrait in the window. But he presently turned
away, and re-entered the room, going up to Grace, who was still sitting
by the fire, in his usual strong and direct fashion.
“Well! Now let me see what you want. I think this would do.”
He took a seat at his open desk, and rapidly wrote a few lines.
“There,” he continued, “when you write to your uncle, inclose that.”
Grace took it, and read:--
DEAR MISS NEVIL,--Pray assure your uncle from me that I am quite
ready to guarantee, in any form that he may require, the undertaking
represented to him by Mr. John Somers. Yours very truly,
ROBERT RUSHBROOK.
A quick flush mounted to the young girl's cheeks. “But this is a
SECURITY, Mr. Rushbrook,” she said proudly, handing him back the paper,
“and my uncle does not require that. Nor shall I insult him or you by
sending it.”
“It is BUSINESS, Miss Nevil,” said Rushbrook, gravely. He stopped, and
fixed his eyes upon her animated face and sparkling eyes. “You can send
it to him or not, as you like. But”--a rare smile came to his handsome
mouth--“as this is a letter to YOU, you must not insult ME by not
accepting it.”
Replying to his smile rather than the words that accompanied it, Miss
Nevil smiled, too. Nevertheless, she was uneasy and disturbed. The
interview, whatever she might have vaguely expected from it, had
resolved itself simply into a business indorsement of her lover, which
she had not sought, and which gave her no satisfaction. Yet there was
the same potent and indefinably protecting presence before her which she
had sought, but whose omniscience and whose help she seemed to have lost
the spell and courage to put to the test. He relieved her in his abrupt
but not unkindly fashion. “Well, when is it to be?”
“It?”
“Your marriage.”
“Oh, not for some time. There's no hurry.”
It might have struck the practical Mr. Rushbrook that, even considered
as a desirable business affair, the prospective completion of
this contract provoked neither frank satisfaction nor conventional
dissimulation on the part of the young lady, for he regarded her calm
but slightly wearied expression fixedly. But he only said: “Then I shall
say nothing of this interview to Mr. Leyton?”
“As you please. It really matters little. Indeed, I suppose I was rather
foolish in coming at all, and wasting your valuable time for nothing.”
She had risen, as if taking his last question in the significance of a
parting suggestion, and was straightening her tall figure, preparatory
to putting on her cloak. As she reached it, he stepped forward, and
lifted it from the chair to assist her. The act was so unprecedented, as
Mr. Rushbrook never indulged in those minor masculine courtesies, that
she was momentarily as confused as a younger girl at the gallantry of a
younger man. In their previous friendship he had seldom drawn near her
except to shake her hand--a circumstance that had always recurred to her
when his free and familiar life had been the subject of gossip. But she
now had a more frightened consciousness that her nerves were strangely
responding to his powerful propinquity, and she involuntarily contracted
her pretty shoulders as he gently laid the cloak upon them. Yet even
when the act was completed, she had a superstitious instinct that the
significance of this rare courtesy was that it was final, and that
he had helped her to interpose something that shut him out from her
forever.
She was turning away with a heightened color, when the sound of light,
hurried footsteps, and the rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the
hall. A swift recollection of her companion's infelicitous reputation
now returned to her, and Grace Nevil, with a slight stiffening of her
whole frame, became coldly herself again. Mr. Rushbrook betrayed neither
surprise nor agitation. Begging her to wait a moment until he could
arrange for her to pass to her carriage unnoticed, he left the room.
Yet it seemed that the cause of the disturbance was unsuspected by Mr.
Rushbrook. Mr. Leyton, although left to the consolation of cigars and
liquors in the blue room, had become slightly weary of his companion's
prolonged absence. Satisfied in his mind that Rushbrook had joined
the gayer party, and that he was even now paying gallant court to the
Signora, he became again curious and uneasy. At last the unmistakable
sound of whispering voices in the passage got the better of his sense of
courtesy as a guest, and he rose from his seat, and slightly opened the
door. As he did so the figures of a man and woman, conversing in earnest
whispers, passed the opening. The man's arm was round the woman's
waist; the woman was--as he had suspected--the one who had stood in the
doorway, the Signora--but--the man was NOT Rushbrook. Mr. Leyton drew
back this time in unaffected horror. It was none other than Jack Somers!
Some warning instinct must at that moment have struck the woman, for
with a stifled cry she disengaged herself from Somers's arm, and dashed
rapidly down the hall. Somers, evidently unaware of the cause, stood
irresolute for a moment, and then more silently but swiftly disappeared
into a side corridor as if to intercept her. It was the rapid passage of
the Signora that had attracted the attention of Grace and Rushbrook in
the study, and it was the moment after it that Mr. Rushbrook left.