_Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder_
The brooding man was still standing in the middle of the great studio
when the butler entered, with catlike tread, and handed him a card on a
silver salver.
Pangbutt took the card without looking at it.
“Take away the tray, Dukes,” he said.
He pointed with a trace of disgust to the broken meats, and, as he
watched the silent servant gathering up the relics of the hurried
feast, all that shabby Bohemian life, the very thought of which he
had banished for years, came flooding back with disgust across the
threshold of his splendid home.... How he loathed it!... But--the
strange irony of it all! That the brilliant ones of the time of
his pupillage should have gone under!... He himself had been the
commonplace one, the near to dullard--he smiled--but here was he, and
there were they!... Strange how the promise of youth is unfulfilled!...
The Baddlesmeres gone under! God! they of all people!... Whilst for
him? Fame, stretching out a vast glittering prospect as he topped the
hill of endeavour.... He had left no smallest effort unmade to advance
his own interests--and he stood at last in view of the promised land
where hang the glittering prizes. By heavens! they were within hand’s
reach----
He was roused by the butler’s voice, as the old servant opened the door
to depart:
“And this gentleman downstairs, sir?” said he.
“Ah, yes.” Pangbutt glanced at the card in his fingers:
“Eustace Lovegood!” he murmured in surprise. “H’m--he sends up his
card--evidently all goes well with Eustace Lovegood!”
He turned to Dukes:
“All right--show him up.”
The old servant vanished, the door stealthily closing after him.
Pangbutt’s face was scarred with a self-satisfied smirk: “They find me
in rather altered circumstances.”
There was no mistaking the comfort of the reflection.
He was about to stride towards the fireplace and take up a baronial
attitude, but put his hands behind his back instead, and stared at the
floor, pondering. He tried to rouse his memory:
“But--let me see--Lovegood made rather a mark? What was it?”
The door opened, and Eustace Lovegood strode tragically into the room,
the old black cloak swinging at his back.
Pangbutt turned: “O lord!” he growled into his beard, “another of the
failures!”
He eyed Lovegood cynically until he halted; and, seeing that he would
have to speak, he said:
“You asked to see me, Mr. Lovegood.”
Lovegood put his heels together and bowed.
Pangbutt had to speak again.
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked.
Eustace Lovegood strode up to him, put his strong hand on his shoulder,
and looked him in the face:
“Nothing,” he said in his deep bass--“nothing ... except to remember
that we were once friends.”
Pangbutt, in spite of a biting desire to play the swaggering lord, at
once took the defensive. This man made him feel diffident even on his
own elaborate carpet.
“Why do you choose to remind me of that to-night?” he asked sullenly,
trying to assert himself.
Eustace took his hand from his shoulder, and fixed his gloomy eyes upon
him:
“As I stood in the shadows of your hall just now,” said he slowly,
“Anthony Baddlesmere passed out.”
Pangbutt uttered a light cynical laugh:
“What?” said he--“without nodding to you?”
Lovegood’s great brows met in a black frown:
“His eyes were on a broken career.... But I saw that he had not yet
become a good beggar.”
A sneer curled the bearded lips of the other:
“And you?” he asked flippantly.
“I am better practised.... I have come to beg for him.”
Pangbutt’s lips curled into a deeper contempt:
“Yes,” said he--“you were always a good borrower, Eustace Lovegood.”
“I have not grown rich upon it.”
“So I see.”
Lovegood smiled grimly:
“Do I owe you anything?” he asked.
Pangbutt hesitated:
“N-no,” he said; “I am bound to confess--not for yourself.”
“Perhaps your confession involves by implication that there may be
virtue even in borrowing--for those in need!”
“I cannot deny it.”
“Then I have grown virtuous--I have come to borrow.... Nay, man--to ask
you to pay back.... Anthony Baddlesmere--did he want help?”
“He did not ask for help,” said the painter lamely.
The eyes of the great tragic man before him saw into the nakedness of
his very conceit; and Paul Pangbutt realized that his chief weapon,
his cold pride of egoism, was useless against the truth-seeking eyes of
Eustace Lovegood--was without awe to him. He recoiled under the calm
eyes of this big gentle fellow as he spoke:
“Paul--you never could see the soul in a man.... You could only value
what part of him could be bought in shops, or whittled into shapes
in the academies. The man who was here to-night is almost destitute.
Anthony and Caroline Baddlesmere--who were the Bountifuls to all of us
in Paris--destitute!”
“I am not the cause of it,” Pangbutt answered sullenly.
An ugly frown came over the big man’s eyes:
“No, but he helped you to this.” He swept his hand round the room
slowly. “He gave you a footing at the Embassy in Paris.... I need not
go into details.... The rest is here. And you could let him leave your
house ashamed to ask for help!”
Pangbutt made an effort to take the domineering careless attitude; but
he realized that his play-acting was worse than lost on this man’s grim
regard.
“I did not grasp that it was so serious, Lovegood.... I will--drop in
one day--and--see if something cannot be done----”
He saw the smile of contempt move the pale heavy features of Eustace
Lovegood as he shrugged his huge shoulders, and, with an exhaustive
snort of disgust, strode slowly out of the room.
The door closed after him with a loud resounding slam, rattled on its
hinges, and was still.
Pangbutt stood brooding with frowning eyes fixed upon it:
He shrugged his shoulders:
“Lovegood never loses the grand manner,” he thought, “even when he has
no necktie. Damnation! the Past seems never to be buried.... We think
the day is dead because we blowout the candle and lie down at night.
We forget the world’s the same--’tis we that sleep. Tush! the Past is
never dead--until it’s our winding-sheet----”
He saw himself reflected in a large mirror. He gazed at the
well-groomed man of the world that stood there in the mirrored
make-believe room, solid as he; and he laughed bitterly as it
came to him that this dandified spruce shadow that mimicked his
magnificence had thought to shake off at a wish the years of sordid
striving together with the Things that had been Done and Rejected
and--Forsaken!... Tshah; he had been congratulating this spruce fellow
upon it only a few minutes gone by--thanking his most gentlemanly star
that he had done with the whole gang. And to-day--they were pushing
stealthily at his doors, creeping into his magnificent home, nay,
bursting into his life again--thrusting jeering faces into his, whether
he would or not. Indeed, his smug shadow sneered at him--for behind
the well-bred silence of his old comrades was the knowledge of his low
origin--and he had no pride in aught but hiding what had been to a
bigger man his source of pride.
Perhaps he ought to help--for decency’s sake; but----
Strange--these were the very people who had given him his chance in
life. But for them, he had still been a mediocrity in Paris.
But why should he have the whole crew “hail-fellow”?
If a man is to rise above the crowd he must stand alone--be rid of
encumbrances----
He started:
A door slammed below.
There was the loud noise of a gathering tumult without. It was coming
up the stairs--his stairs!
“Curse it! is all Bedlam abroad to-night?” said he.
He strode angrily towards the uproar beyond the great folding doors;
but they were flung open, and there entered a gust of loud laughter and
the shuffle of many feet upon the stairs.