Christian discovered that he was not sorry to be alone. Cora’s company
had been amusing and vivifying, no doubt, but it was even better now to
have his own thoughts. He observed with relief that others in the stalls
were smoking; tobacco as a rule had not very much meaning for him,
but now he lit a large cigar from the dinner-case in his pocket, and
stretching himself in his chair, proceeded to enjoy it. He kept his
glance, in an indolent fashion, upon the stage, but his mind roamed far
and wide.
Cora, in returning to explain that it would not be possible for her to
stay till the time for Covent Garden, had ingenuously sat on for nearly
another hour, cheering him with her lively prattle. She asked him many
questions about himself, his diversions, his tastes, his relations with
Lord Julius and Emanuel. He wondered now if these queries had been quite
as artless as they seemed at the time. There rose up before him, in
retrospect, certain occasional phases of her manner which suggested
something furtive. She had watched the stage, and the doorway leading
from it, with a kind of detached uneasiness on which he now languidly
speculated. It occurred to him again to wonder if her husband was really
in the building. Christian found himself thinking of this cousin of his
almost with compassion. Poor devil! Was his fate not even more tragic
than that of the others who were merely dead? He regretted now that
he had not asked Cora point-blank as to his presence. His mood was so
tolerant to-night that even the unforgivable insult to his father lost
its sharp outlines, and became only a hasty phrase, the creature of
imperative provocation.
In her final leave-taking, Cora had genially proffered her services if
he desired to know any or all of the young ladies--and he had begged
to be excused. Dicky Westland came down to the stalls later on, and
shamefacedly linked a similar offer to his apologies for his prolonged
neglect of his guest. But Christian protested that he was enjoying
himself thoroughly. He was never less sleepy in his life; he did not
want a drink; he would not dream of wishing to go until his friend was
entirely ready. “You cannot realize,” he concluded, with his persuasive
smile, “how strange and interesting this all is to me.”
But when Dicky had returned again to the stage, Christian paid less
attention than ever to the diverting spectacle. His thoughts reverted
obstinately to Captain Edward--? and to that portion of the family of
which he was the congenital type. Was not that really the sort of man
who should have the title? There seemed a cloud of negative reasons, but
were these not sentimental abstractions? Should the duke not be a rough,
hard sportsman, a man with a passion for horses and dogs and gunpowder
saturating his veins? One who loved the country for its rude, toilsome
out-of-door sports, and who liked best in town the primitive amusements
of the natural man? He figured Edward in his mind’s eye most readily as
puffing and cursing over a rat-hole with his terriers--or as watching
with a shine of steel in his blue eyes the blood-stained progress of
a prize-fight. And truly, were these not the things that a duke of
Glastonbury of right belonged to?
He could not think of Lord Julius and of Emanuel as being Torrs at all.
The older man had the physical inheritance of the family, it was
true, but he was almost as much estranged from its ideals as that
extraordinary son of his. They both were grotesquely out of the picture
of English aristocratie life, whether in country or town. And he
himself--how absolutely he also was out of the picture!
The immensity of the position which his grandfather’s death would
devolve upon him had been present in his mind, it seemed sleeping as
well as waking, for half a year. At the outset he had thrilled at the
prospect; sometimes still he was able to reassure himself about it, and
to profess to himself confidence that when the emergency came, he
would be equal to it. But more often, in these latter days, the outlook
depressed him. Of course nothing grievous would happen to him, in any
event. He would be assured of an excellent living to the end of his
days, with an exceptional amount of social deference from those about
him, and relative freedom to do what he liked. He could marry and rear
a family of lords and ladies; he could have his speeches in the House
of Lords or elsewhere printed in the “Times”; if he looked about in
America, he could secure a bride with perhaps millions to her dower.
There was, in any case, the reasonable likelihood that he would be, to
some extent, the heir of Lord Julius and Emanuel, in the latter part
of his life. Thus he could go on, when he set himself to the task,
piling-up reasons why he ought to view the future with buoyant
serenity--to count himself among the happiest of men.
But then--was his not all self-deception? Did he not know in his heart
that he was not happy?--that this gilded and ornate career awaiting
him really repelled all his finer senses? To-night as he followed his
thoughts behind the transparent screen of whisking dresses and jolting
figures upon which his outer vision rested, the impulse to escape the
whole thing rose strong within him. Already he had sworn that he would
no longer weary himself with the meaningless and distasteful routine of
social obligations in London. Why should he not plunge boldly forward
beyond that, and say that he would make no further sacrifices of any
sort to the conventions of mediocrity?
He lit another cigar and, rising, walked about a little by himself at
the side of the stalls, his hands deep in his pockets, his brows knitted
in formative introspection.
First of all, it was clear that Emanuel’s hopes about his taking up the
System were doomed. It was not in him to assume such a part. He had
not the capacity for such work; even if he had, he lacked both the
tremendous driving energy and the enthusiasm.
But when Emanuel learned this, then he would be angry, and he would
cover over no more money to that account at the bank. Eh bien! It
couldn’t be helped. Christian recalled that he had still at that blessed
bank more than sixty thousand francs!--truly a prodigious sum, when one
thought of it soberly. The question whether this sum ought not to be
given back to Emanuel, under certain circumstances, seemed to have
settled itself. When it had first occurred to him that afternoon, it had
suggested a good many moral difficulties. But it was really simplicity
itself, as he considered it now. There were all those lean and
poverty-stricken years of his youth and childhood to be remembered--and,
stretching back beyond that, those other years of his father’s exile
before he was born--nearly forty in all. The intelligent thing was to
regard the three thousand pounds as a sort of restitution fund, to be
spread out over the whole of that long period. Viewed in this light,
the annual fraction of it was a paltry matter. Besides, Emanuel had
expressly declared that no conditions whatever were attached to the
money. Christian saw that he could make his mind quite easy on that
score.
So then, there were sixty thousand francs! With that he might live
admirably, even luxuriously, on the Continent, until his grandfather’s
death. That event would of course alter everything. There would then
come automatically to him--no matter where he was or what he did--a
certain fixed income, which he understood to be probably over rather
than under seventy-five thousand francs a year. This--still on the
Continent--would be almost incredible wealth! There was really no limit
to the soul-satisfying possibilities it opened before him. He would
have a yacht on the Mediterranean; he would have a little chateau in
the marvelous green depths of the Styrian Mountains--of which a boyhood
friend had told him with such tender reverence of memory. He would see
Innsbruck and Moscow, and, if he liked, even Samarkand and China. Why,
he could go round the world in his yacht, if he chose--to remote spice
islands and tropical seas! He could be a duke when, and as much, as it
pleased him to be one. Instead of being the slave to his position
and title, he would make them minister to him. He would do original
things--realize his own inner fancies and predilections. If the whim
seized him to climb Mount Ararat, or to cross the Sahara with a caravan
of his own servants--that he would do. But above all things--now and
henceforth forever, he would be a free man! He laughed grimly as he
thought how slight was the actual difference between the life of pauper
bondage he had led up to last October, and the existence which polite
England and London had imposed upon him ever since. The second set of
chains were of precious metal--that was all. Well, hereafter there would
be no fetters of any description!
“I’m quite ready to go now, old man, if you are,” Dicky Westland said at
some belated stage of this reverie. He had approached without being seen
by his friend, and he had to pull at Christian’s sleeve to attract his
attention. “I fancy you’ve been walking in your sleep,” he laughed, in
comment upon this.
Christian shook himself, and, blinking at Dicky, protested that he had
never been more wide awake in his life. “I go only if you’re entirely
ready,” he said. “Don’t dream of leaving on my account I have been
extremely interested, I assure you.”
“Every fellow has his own notions of enjoyment,” reflected Westland,
with drowsy philosophy, as they went up the stairs toward the stage. “I
tried to explain your point of view to some of the girls up here, but
I’m not sure they quite grasped it. They were dying to have me bring you
up and make you dance, you know. By George, I had a job to keep Dolly
Montressor from coming down and fetching you, off her own bat.”
“How should they know or care about me?” asked Christian. “I didn’t
expect to be pointed out.”
“My dear man,” retorted Dicky, sleepily, “no one pointed you out. They
all know you by sight as well as they do George Edwards. It isn’t too
late, still, you know--if you really would like to be introduced.”
Christian shook his head with resolution, as they halted at the wings.
“Truly, no!” he repeated. “But I should like a glass of wine and a
sandwich, if we can get past the stage. I’m not an atom sleepy, but I’m
hungry and thirsty.”
On their way through a narrow, shadowed defile of huge canvas-stretched
frames of deal, they passed two young men, one much taller than the
other, who had their heads bent together in some low-voiced, private
conversation. Christian glanced at them casually, and was struck with
the notion that they observed him in turn, and exchanged comment upon
his approach. He looked at them with a keener scrutiny as he went
by--and it seemed to him that there was something familiar in the face
of the larger man--who indeed looked away upon the instant their eyes
met.
“Did you see those men?” he asked Westland, in an undertone, a moment
later. “Do you know them?”
“Those we just passed?” Dicky looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know
the thin chap, but the other fellow is Gus Torr--why, of course--your
cousin. Somehow, I never think of you as belonging to that lot--I mean,
being related to them. Of course--that was his sister-in-law you were
sitting with. Why did you ask if I knew him?”
“Nothing--I was not sure if it was he--I’ve seen him only once,”
Christian replied, with an assumption of indifference. “I remember
having noticed then how much he looked like his brother.”
“Yes--poor devils!” commented Dicky, as they entered the manager’s room.
Apparently it was in his mind to say more, but the place was crowded,
and the problem of getting through the throng to the food and drink
monopolized his attention.
Some minutes later, while Christian stood in another corridor, waiting
for his friend to bring their hats and coats from the mysteriously
elusive spot where he had left them, he overheard the mention of his
name. Two women’s voices, wholly unknown to him, came from behind an
improvised partition of screens near at hand, with great distinctness.
One of them said: “He spells his name ‘Tower,’ you know. I understand
the idea is to make people forget who his father was.”
“Good job, too!” replied the other voice.
Christian turned abruptly, and strode off in the direction whither Dicky
had disappeared. “After forty years!” he murmured hotly to himself.
“After forty years!” and clenched his fists till the nails hurt his
palms.
*****
The two young men walked homeward, arm in arm, through silent streets
over which the dawn was spreading its tentative first lights. It was
colder than they had thought, and the morning air was at once misty and
fresh. In Leicester Square the scent of lilacs came to them; beside the
pale, undefined bulk of the squat statue they caught the lavender splash
of color which was sister to the perfume.
“By Jove, it’s spring!” said Dicky. He pointed out the flowers, and
then, still drawing Christian’s arm to turn his attention to the
square, recalled to him as they moved that this was the oldtime haunt
of foreigners in London. “Dickens’s villain in ‘Little Dorrit,’ you
know--the fellow whose mustache went up and his nose went down--I never
can remember his name--he lived here. In those days, all that sort of
chappies lived here--the adventurers and jailbirds who had made their
own countries too hot to hold them.”
Westland’s insistence upon this theme had no purpose other than to
divert Christian’s attention while they passed the Empire. He was tired,
and profoundly disinclined to any renewal of the discussion about the
promenade. He encountered with vague surprise, therefore, the frowning
glance which Christian, half halting, bent upon him. The young man’s
displeasure was marked, but Dicky for the life of him could not imagine
why. He tightened his hold on the other’s arm and quickened their pace.
But Christian, after a few yards, suddenly withdrew his arm altogether.
“I do not like to walk so fast,” he said, with a sharp note in his
voice.
Dicky regarded him with puzzled apprehension. “What’s up, old man?” he
asked, almost pleadingly. “Has anything gone wrong?”
Christian, still with knitted brows, parted his lips to speak. Then
he seemed to reconsider his intention, and let his face soften as he
paused. “No--nothing at all,” he replied, after a moment. He smiled
a little to reassure the other. “It was nothing at all,” he repeated.
“Only I am nervous and excited to-night--this morning, I should say--and
my head is full of projects. It is twelve hours since you came to
me--and the whole world has changed meanwhile. I see everything
different. I am not altered to your eyes--but none the less, I am not
at all, in any respect, the man you took to dine with you. You have not
observed anything--but it is a revolution that has occurred under your
very nose, Mr. Dicky Westland.”
“I’m too sleepy to observe anything,” the other declared. “I couldn’t
tell a revolution from a--from a hot-potato can.”
The comparison had forced itself upon Westland’s jaded mind through the
medium of his weary eyes. There before them, by the curb at the corner,
stood the dingy wheeled-oven of the streets, the sullen red glow of
its lower door making a strange patch of fiery light upon the ragged
trousers of the man in charge. He was a dirty and undersized creature,
and he looked up at the two young gentlemen in evening dress with a
speculative, yet hardly hopeful, eye.
Christian stopped short. “Ah, this is very good,” he said, with a
brightening face. “I have never eaten a potato from a can.”
Dicky sighed, but resigned himself with only a languid protest: “You
have to eat so much else besides the potato,” he commented dolefully.
The man opened an upper door, and then drew from under the machine a
twisted wad of old newspaper, which, being unwound, revealed a gray heap
of salt. “How many, cap’n?” he demanded, briefly.
Christian had been glancing across the Circus meanwhile--to where, in
the misty vagueness of dawn, Piccadilly opened between its tall, shapely
corners, and beyond, the curved yellowish sweep of Regent Street began.
The dim light revealed some lurking figures to his eyes.
“Can you call over those women?” he asked the potato-man.
A tall, fresh-faced young policeman came upon the group round the
Criterion corner. Although the pounding of his thick boots on the
pavement had been audible long before his appearance, he regarded them
with the slightly dramatic air of one who has deftly surprised a group
of conspirators. The potato-man looked from Christian to the officer and
made no reply.
Christian drew some silver from his pocket, shaking off the restraining
hand Westland tried to lay on his arm. “Is there any objection,
constable,” he inquired, “to my buying potatoes for those friends of
ours over there? It is a cold morning.”
The policeman’s glance ranged from the white ties of the young gentlemen
to the coins in Christian’s palm. His official expression relaxed. “I
dare say it’ll do no ’arm, sir,” he replied with courtesy. He even
lent himself to the enterprise by stooping down and beating a certain
number of strokes with his baton on the pavement.
“How many times did he strike?” Dicky made whispered inquiry. “That’s a
new dodge to me.”
New or old, it was efficient. Forlorn shapes began to emerge from the
shadows of the big streets opposite, and move forward across the empty
open space. Others stole noiselessly in from the byways of Leicester
Square. There were perhaps a dozen in all when the potato-man made his
census--poorly dressed, fagged, bold-faced, furtive-eyed women. They
spoke in monotonous, subdued tones among themselves. There were to be
heard German, French, Belgian French, cockney English, and Lancashire
English. Two of them pulled at the sleeve of the potato-man to make him
hurry.
Christian, regarding his motley guests, found himself neither touched
nor entertained. They seemed as stupid as they were squalid. With a
gesture of decision he gave the money to the policeman.
“Pay for it all,” he directed, “and if more come, give them a look-in,
too--and keep what is left for yourself.”
“Now then, Frenchy!” broke in the constable, sharply. “Mind what you’re
at! Pass Germany the salt!” With an abrupt change to civility, he turned
to Christian. “Right you are, sir!” he said.
Dicky laughed drowsily. “It’s like the Concert of Europe,” he declared.
“Shall we go on?”
They moved down the broad pavement, again arm in arm, breathing in
slowly the new, keen air, and observing in a silence which was full of
tacit comment the beautiful termination of the street before them: the
dark figures of the Crimean monument standing in grim relief against
the morning light, the stately palace beyond, with its formal portals
of club buildings, its embowered statues, its huge column towering
ponderously above the pale green of spring in the park--all gray and
cool and, as it were, thoughtfully solemn in the hush of daybreak.
“Ah, yes--this wonderful London!” sighed Christian, as they halted at
the Continental corner. He spread his hand to embrace the prospect
before them. “How right you were! I have not learned to know it at all.
But I begin now! If you will walk through the square with me--there is
something I wish to say.”
This something did not get itself said till they halted within this
somber, slate-colored square. Christian paused before a big, pretentious
house of gloomy, and even forbidding aspect--a front of sooty stucco,
with cornices of ashen-hued stone, and many windows masked with sullen
brown shades.
“This was our town house a hundred years ago,” he said meditatively. “My
father was born here. My grandfather sold it when the entail was broken.
Until this afternoon, it was my fixed resolve to buy it back again. I
said always to myself: ‘If I am to have a house in London, it must be
this old one of ours in St. James’s.’ But that is all changed now. At
least, it is no longer a resolve.”
Dicky gazed at him with sleepy eyes. “How do you mean?” he asked,
perfunctorily.
“Wake up now, and I will tell you!” Christian, with a lingering glance,
as of renunciation, at the mansion, began to walk again. “This is it.
You said you were eager to be some colonial official’s secretary--to
have three hundred pounds--and the yellow fever. To obtain this, you
expend all your energies, you and your relations. Well, then--why will
you not be my secretary instead? You shall have more than three hundred
pounds--and no yellow fever.”
Westland had roused himself, and looked inquiringly now into the other’s
face. “What do you need of a secretary?” he objected, half jestingly.
“If you want to talk about it after you’ve come into the thing--I don’t
say that I shouldn’t be glad-to consider it. But the deuce of it is----”
“No--I wish it to begin now, this morning, this hour--this minute!”
Christian spoke peremptorily.
Dicky, pondering, shook his head. “No, you mustn’t insist on
settling anything now,” he decided. “It isn’t regular, you know. If
you--really--want to propose something immediate--why, I’ll call and
talk with you to-morrow--or, that is to say, this afternoon. But I
couldn’t possibly let you commit yourself to anything of that sort now.”
Christian frowned at his friend. “You speak of what you will let me do!”
he said.
“In your opinion--I see it!--you think I have not sober command of
myself, am not responsible--is that it?”
“Nonsense! I’ve said nothing of the sort,” protested the other. “Of
course, you’re perfectly all right--but we’re both tired and sleepy, and
you’re not so accustomed to go home by daylight as I am--and it wouldn’t
be at all the thing for me to close a bargain with you now. Can’t you
see what I mean? I wouldn’t play threepenny écarté with you at this
hour in the morning--and I’m damned if I’m going to let you in for three
hundred a year for the rest of my life. Shall I come round, say, at
luncheon time?”
“I shall not be in,” said Christian, curtly. He looked at his companion,
and then past him at the trees in the square, in vexed rumination. “What
I have it in my mind to do”--he continued, vaguely, after a pause--“it
is not a thing for delay. It is in my blood to do it at once. It was my
impulse to make you my comrade in it--but of course, since you have your
reservations and doubts, there need be nothing more said about it.”
The shrug of the shoulders which emphasized these last words nettled
Westland, and at the same time helped him to repress his annoyance. It
lent to the whole episode just that savor of foreign eccentricity which
appealed to the amiable tolerance of the islander.
“My dear man,” he urged, gently, “I haven’t the slightest notion what it
is that you’re so keen about--but whatever it is, do go home and sleep
on it, and make up your mind calmly after breakfast. It’s no good
deciding important questions, and striking out new lines, and all that
sort of thing, at this hour in the morning. Nobody ever does it, you
know. It simply can’t be done.”
“Good-night!” said Christian, proffering his hand. “You are right; it is
high time for those who are sleepy to go to bed I won’t drag you round
to Duke Street.”
Dicky looked at him doubtfully. “You do wrong to be angry, you know,” he
said.
“But that is your error--I am not in the least angry--I beg you to
believe it,” cried Christian. His eyes beamed genially in proof of his
assertion, and he put heartiness into his voice. “For a minute I was
disappointed--shall I say vexed?--but not any more. How should I quarrel
with you for not beholding things through my eyes? To me, something is
a giant; you perceive that it is a windmill. Eh bien! We do not convince
each other--but surely we do not quarrel.”
“Oh, I am game enough to play Sancho to your Don,” expostulated Dicky,
with a readiness which Christian had not looked for, “but I draw the
line at starting out on an empty stomach, and when we’re too sleepy to
stand. Well, what shall it be?” He took the hand offered him, and strove
to signify by his cordial grasp that no trace of a misunderstanding
remained. “Shall I look you up, say, at two o’clock?”
“I do not think I shall be there. Goodnight!” responded Christian, and
the two parted.