JOHN SALTRAM.
The offices of Fenton and Co. in Great St. Helens were handsome,
prosperous-looking premises, consisting of two large outer rooms, where
half-a-dozen indefatigable clerks sat upon high stools before ponderous
mahogany desks, and wrote industriously all day long; and an inner and
smaller apartment, where there was a faded Turkey-carpet instead of the
kamptulicon that covered the floor of the outer offices, a couple of
capacious, red-morocco-covered arm-chairs, and a desk of substantial and
somewhat legal design, on which Gilbert Fenton was wont to write the more
important letters of the house. In all the offices there were iron safes,
which gave one a notion of limitless wealth stored away in the shape of
bonds and bills, if not actual gold and bank-notes; and upon all the
walls there were coloured and uncoloured engravings of ships framed and
glazed, and catalogues of merchandise that had been sold, or was to be
sold, hanging loosely one on the other. Besides these, there were a great
many of those flimsy papers that record the state of things on 'Change,
hanging here and there on the brass rails of the desks, from little hooks
in the walls, and in any other available spot. And in all the premises
there was an air of business and prosperity, which seemed to denote that
Fenton and Co. were travelling at a rapid pace on the high-road to
fortune.
Gilbert Fenton sat in the inner office at noon one day about a week after
his return from Lidford. He had come to business early that morning, had
initialed a good many accounts, and written half-a-dozen letters already,
and had thrown himself back in his easy-chair for a few minutes' idle
musing--musing upon that one sweet dream of his new existence, of course.
From whatever point his thoughts started, they always drifted into that
channel.
While he was sitting like this, with his hands in his pockets and his
chair tilted upon its hind legs, the half-glass door opened, and a
gentleman came into the office--a man a little over middle height,
broad-shouldered, and powerfully built, with a naturally dark complexion,
which had been tanned still darker by sun and wind, black eyes and heavy
black eyebrows, a head a little bald at the top, and a face that might
have been called almost ugly but for the look of intellectual power in
the broad open forehead and the perfect modelling of the flexible
sensitive mouth; a remarkable face altogether, not easily to be forgotten
by those who had once looked upon it.
This man was John Saltram, the one intimate and chosen friend of Gilbert
Fenton's youth and manhood. They had met first at Oxford, and had seldom
lost sight of each other since the old university days. They had
travelled a good deal together during the one idle year that had preceded
Gilbert's sudden plunge into commerce. They had been up the Nile together
in the course of these wanderings; and here, remote from all civilized
aid, Gilbert had fallen ill of a fever--a long tedious business which
brought him to the very point of death, and throughout which John Saltram
had nursed him with a womanly tenderness and devotion that knew no
abatement. If this had been wanting to strengthen the tie between
them--which it was not--it would have brought them closer together. As it
was, that dreary time of sickness and peril was only a memory which
Gilbert Fenton kept in his heart of hearts, never to grow less sacred to
him until the end of life.
Mr. Saltram was a barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his
habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly
to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added
to his income by writing for the press in a powerful trenchant manner,
with a style that was like the stroke of a sledge-hammer. In spite of
this literary work, for which he got very well paid, Mr. Saltram
generally contrived to be in debt; and there were few periods of his life
in which he was not engaged more or less in the delicate operation of
raising money by bills of accommodation. Habit had given him quite an
artistic touch for this kind of thing, and he did his work fondly, like
some enthusiastic horticulturist who gives his anxious days to the
budding forth of some new orchid or the production of a hitherto
unobtainable tulip. It is doubtful whether money procured from any other
source was ever half so sweet to this gentleman as the cash for which he
paid sixty per cent to the Jews. With these proclivities he managed to
rub on from year to year somehow, getting about five hundred per annum in
solid value out of an income of seven, and adding a little annually to
the rolling mass of debt which he had begun to accumulate while he was at
Balliol.
"Why, Jack," cried Gilbert, starting up from his reverie at the entrance
of his friend, and greeting him with a hearty handshaking, "this is an
agreeable surprise! I was asking for you at the Pnyx last night, and Joe
Hawdon told me you were away--up the Danube he thought, on a canoe
expedition."
"It is only under some utterly impossible dispensation that Joseph Hawdon
will ever be right about anything. I have been on a walking expedition in
Brittany, dear boy, alone, and have found myself very bad company. I
started soon after you went to your sister's, and only came back last
night. That scoundrel Levison promised me seventy-five this afternoon;
but whether I shall get it out of him is a fact only known to himself and
the powers with which he holds communion. And was the rustic business
pleasant, Gil? Did you take kindly to the syllabubs and new milk, the
summer sunrise over dewy fields, the pretty dairy-maids, and prize pigs,
and daily inspections of the home-farm? or did you find life rather dull
down at Lidford? I know the place well enough, and all the country round
about there. I have stayed at Heatherly with Sir David Forster more than
once for the shooting season. A pleasant fellow Forster, in a dissipated
good-for-nothing kind of way, always up to his eyes in debt. Did you
happen to meet him while you were down there?"
"No, I don't think the Listers know him."
"So much the better for them! It is a vice to know him. And you were not
dull at Lidford?"
"Very far from it, Jack. I was happier there than I have ever been in my
life before."
"Eh, Gil!" cried John Saltram; "that means something more than a quiet
fortnight with a married sister. Come, old fellow, I have a vested right
to a share in all your secrets."
"There is no secret, Jack. Yes, I have fallen in love, if that's what you
mean, and am engaged."
"So soon! That's rather quick work, isn't it, dear boy?"
"I don't think so. What is that the poet says?--'If not an Adam at his
birth, he is no love at all.' My passion sprang into life full-grown
after an hour's contemplation of a beautiful face in Lidford church."
"Who is the lady?"
"O, her position is not worth speaking of. She is the adopted niece of a
half-pay captain--an orphan, without money or connections."
"Humph!" muttered John Saltram with the privileged candour of friendship;
"not a very advantageous match for you, Gilbert, from a worldly point of
view."
"I have not considered the matter from that point of view."
"And the lady is all that is charming, of course?"
"To my mind, yes."
"Very young?"
"Nineteen."
"Well, dear old follow, I wish you joy with all heartiness. You can
afford to marry whom you please, and are very right to let inclination
and not interest govern your choice. Whenever I tie myself in the bondage
of matrimony, it will be to a lady who can pay my debts and set me on my
legs for life. Whether such a one will ever consider my ugly face a fair
equivalent for her specie, is an open question. You must introduce me to
your future wife, Gilbert, on the first opportunity. I shall be very
anxious to discover whether your marriage will be likely to put an end to
our friendship."
"There is no fear of that, Jack. That is a contingency never to arise. I
have told Marian a great deal about you already. She knows that I owe my
life to you, and she is prepared to value you as much as I do."
"She is very good; but all wives promise that kind of thing before
marriage. And there is apt to come a day when the familiar bachelor
friend falls under the domestic taboo, together with smoking in the
drawing-room, brandy-and-soda, and other luxuries of the old, easy-going,
single life."
"Marian is not very likely to prove a domestic tyrant. She is the
gentlest dearest girl, and is very well used to bachelor habits in the
person of her uncle. I don't believe she will ever extinguish our cigars,
Jack, even in the drawing-room. I look forward to the happiest home that
ever a man possessed; and it would be no home of mine if you were not
welcome and honoured in it. I hope we shall spend many a summer evening
on the lawn, Jack, with a bottle of Pomard or St. Julien between us,
watching the drowsy old anglers in their punts, and the swift outriggers
flashing past in the twilight. I mean to find some snug little place by
the river, you know, Saltram--somewhere about Teddington, where the
gardens slope down to the water's edge."
"Very pleasant! and you will make an admirable family man, Gil. You have
none of the faults that render me ineligible for the married state. I
think your Marian is a very fortunate girl. What is her surname, by the
way?"
"Nowell."
"Marian Nowell--a very pretty name! When do you think of going back to
Lidford?"
"In about a month. My brother-in-law wants me to go back to them for the
1st of September."
"Then I think I shall run down to Forster's, and have a pop at the
pheasants. It will give me an opportunity of being presented to Miss
Nowell."
"I shall be very pleased to introduce you, old fellow. I know that you
will admire her."
"Well, I am not a very warm admirer of the sex in general; but I am sure
to like your future wife, Gil, if it is only because you have chosen
her."
"And your own affairs, Jack--how have they been going on?"
"Not very brightly. I am not a lucky individual, you know. Destiny and I
have been at odds ever since I was a schoolboy."
"Not in love yet, John?"
"No," the other answered, with rather a gloomy look.
He was sitting on a corner of the ponderous desk in a lounging attitude,
gazing meditatively at his boots, and hitting one of them now and then
with a cane he carried, in a restless kind of way.
"You see, the fact of the matter is, Gil," he began at last, "as I told
you just now, if ever I do marry, mercenary considerations are likely to
be at the bottom of the business. I don't mean to say that I would marry
a woman I disliked, and take it out of her in ill-usage or neglect. I am
not quite such a scoundrel as that. But if I had the luck to meet with a
woman I _could_ like, tolerably pretty and agreeable, and all that kind
of thing, and weak enough to care for me--a woman with a handsome
fortune--I should be a fool not to snap at such a chance."
"I see," exclaimed Gilbert, "you have met with such a woman."
"I have."
Again the gloomy look came over the dark strongly-marked face, the thick
black eyebrows contracted in a frown, and the cane was struck impatiently
against John Saltram's boot.
"But you are not in love with her; I see that in your face, Jack. You'll
think me a sentimental fool, I daresay, and fancy I look at things in a
new light now that I'm down a pit myself; but, for God's sake, don't
marry a woman you can't love. Tolerably pretty and agreeable won't do,
Jack,--that means indifference on your part; and, depend upon it, when a
man and woman are tied together for life, there is only a short step from
indifference to dislike."
"No, Gilbert, it's not that," answered the other, still moodily
contemplative of his boots. "I really like the lady well enough--love
her, I daresay. I have not had much experience of the tender passion
since I was jilted by an Oxford barmaid--whom I would have married, by
Jove. But the truth is, the lady in question isn't free to marry just
yet. There's a husband in the case--a feeble old Anglo-Indian, who can't
live very long. Don't look so glum, old fellow; there has been nothing
wrong, not a word that all the world might not hear; but there are signs
and tokens by which a man, without any vanity--and heaven knows I have no
justification for that--may be sure a woman likes him. In short, I
believe that if Adela Branston were a widow, the course would lie clear
before me, and I should have nothing to do but go in and win. And the
stakes will be worth winning, I assure you."
"But this Mr. Branston may live for an indefinite number of years, during
which you will be wasting your life on a shadow."
"Not very likely. Poor old Branston came home from Calcutta a confirmed
invalid, and I believe his sentence has been pronounced by all the
doctors. In the mean time he makes the best of life, has his good days
and bad days, and entertains a great deal of company at a delightful
place near Maidenhead--with a garden sloping to the river like that you
were talking of just now, only on a very extensive scale. You know how
often I have wanted you to run down there with me, and how there has been
always something to prevent your going."
"Yes, I remember. Rely upon it, I shall contrive to accept the next
invitation, come what may. But I can't say I like the idea of this
prospective kind of courtship, or that I consider it quite worthy of you,
Saltram."
"My dear Gilbert, when a fellow is burdened with debt and of a naturally
idle disposition, he is apt to take rather a liberal view of such means
of advancement in life as may present themselves to him. But there is no
prospective courtship--nothing at all resembling a courtship in this
case, believe me. Mrs. Branston knows that I like and admire her. She
knows as much of almost every man who goes to Rivercombe; for there are
plenty who will be disposed to go in against me for the prize by-and-by.
But I think that she likes me better than any one else, and that the
chances will be all in my favour. From first to last there has not been a
word spoken between us which old Branston himself might not hear. As to
Adela's marrying again when he is gone, he could scarcely be so fatuous
as not to foresee the probability of that."
"Is she pretty?"
"Very pretty, in rather a childish way, with blue eyes and fair hair. She
is not my ideal among women, but no man ever marries his ideal. The man
who has sworn by eyes as black as a stormy midnight and raven hair
generally unites himself to the most insipid thing in blondes, and the
idolater of golden locks takes to wife some frizzy-haired West Indian
with an unmistakable dip of the tar-brush. When will you go down to
Rivercombe?"
"Whenever you like."
"The nabob is hospitality itself, and will be delighted to see you if he
is to the fore when you go. I fancy there is some kind of regatta--a race
or two, at any rate--on Saturday afternoon. Will that suit you?"
"Very well indeed."
"Then we can meet at the station. There is a train down at 2.15. But we
are going to see something of each other in the meantime, I hope. I know
that I am a sore hindrance to business at such an hour as this. Will you
dine with me at the Pnyx at seven to-night? I shall be able to tell you
how I got on with Levison."
"With pleasure."
And so they parted--Gilbert Fenton to return to his letter-writing, and
to the reception of callers of a more commercial and profitable
character; John Saltram to loiter slowly through the streets on his way
to the money-lender's office.
They dined together very pleasantly that evening. Mr. Levison had proved
accommodating for the nonce; and John Saltram was in high spirits, almost
boisterously gay, with the gaiety of a man for whom life is made up of
swift transitions from brightness to gloom, long intervals of
despondency, and brief glimpses of pleasure; the reckless humour of a man
with whom thought always meant care, and whose soul had no higher
aspiration than to beguile the march of time by such evenings as these.
They met on the following Saturday at the Great Western terminus, John
Saltram still in high spirits, and Gilbert Fenton quietly happy. That
morning's post had brought him his first letter from Marian--an innocent
girlish epistle, which was as delicious to Gilbert as if it had been the
_chef-d'oeuvre_ of a Sevigné. What could she say to him? Very
little. The letter was full of gratitude for his thoughtfulness about
her, for the pretty tributes of his love which he had sent her, the books
and music and ribbons and gloves, in the purchase whereof he had found
such a novel pleasure. It had been a common thing for him to execute such
commissions for his sister; but it was quite a new sensation to him to
discuss the colours of gloves and ribbons, now that the trifles he chose
were to give pleasure to Marian Nowell. He knew every tint that
harmonised or contrasted best with that clear olive complexion--the
brilliant blue that gave new brightness to the sparkling grey eyes, the
pink that cast warm lights upon the firmly-moulded throat and chin--and
he found a childish delight in these trivialities. There was one ribbon
he selected for her at this time which he had strange reason to remember
in the days to come--a narrow blue ribbon, with tiny pink rosebuds upon
it, a daring mixture of the two colours.
He had the letter in the breast-pocket of his coat when he met John
Saltram at the station, and entertained that gentleman with certain
passages from it as they sped down to Maidenhead. To which passages Mr.
Saltram listened kindly, with a very vague notion of the writer.
"I am afraid she is rather a namby-pamby person," he thought, "with
nothing but her beauty to recommend her. That wonderful gift of beauty
has such power to bewitch the most sensible man upon occasion."
They chartered a fly at Maidenhead, and drove about a mile and a half
along a pleasant road before they came to the gates of Rivercombe--a low
straggling house with verandahs, over which trailed a wealth of flowering
creepers, and innumerable windows opening to the ground. The gardens were
perfection, not gardens of yesterday, with only the prim splendours of
modern horticulture to recommend them, but spreading lawns, on which the
deep springy turf had been growing a hundred years--lawns made delicious
in summer time by the cool umbrage of old forest-trees; fertile
rose-gardens screened from the biting of adverse winds by tall hedges of
holly and yew, the angles whereof were embellished by vases and peacocks
quaintly cut in the style of a bygone age; and for chief glory of all,
the bright blue river, which made the principal boundary of the place,
washing the edge of the wide sloping lawn, and making perpetual music on
a summer day with its joyous ripple.
There was a good deal of company already scattered about the lawn when
John Saltram and his friend were ushered into the pretty drawing-room.
The cheerful sound of croquet-balls came from a level stretch of grass
visible from the windows, and quite a little fleet of boats were jostling
one another at the landing by the Swiss boat-house.
Mrs. Branston came in from the garden to welcome them, looking very
pretty in a coquettish little white-chip hat with a scarlet feather, and
a pale-gray silk dress looped up over an elaborately-flounced muslin
petticoat. She was a slender little woman, with a brilliant complexion,
sunny waving hair, and innocent blue eyes; the sort of woman whom a man
would wish to shelter from all the storms of life, but whom he might
scarcely care to choose for the companion of a perilous voyage.
She professed herself very much pleased to see Gilbert Fenton.
"I have heard so much of you from Mr. Saltram," she said. "He is always
praising you. I believe he cares more for you than anyone else in the
world."
"I have not many people to care for," answered John Saltram, "and Gilbert
is a friend of long standing."
A sentimental expression came over Mrs. Branston's girlish face, and she
gave a little regretful sigh.
"I am sorry you will not see my husband to-day," she said, after a brief
pause. "It is one of his bad days."
The two gentlemen both expressed their regret upon this subject; and then
they went out to the lawn with Mrs. Branston, and joined the group by the
river-brink, who were waiting for the race. Here Gilbert found some
pleasant people to talk to; while Adela Branston and John Saltram
strolled, as if by accident, to a seat a little way apart from the rest,
and sat there talking in a confidential manner, which might not really
constitute a flirtation, but which had rather that appearance to the eye
of the ignorant observer.
The boats came flashing by at last, and there was the usual excitement
amongst the spectators; but it seemed to Gilbert that Mrs. Branston found
more interest in John Saltram's conversation than in the race. It is
possible she had seen too many such contests to care much for the result
of this one. She scarcely looked up as the boats shot by, but sat with
her little gloved hands clasped upon her knee, and her bright face turned
towards John Saltram.
They all went into the house at about seven o'clock, after a good deal of
croquet and flirtation, and found a free-and-easy kind of banquet, half
tea, half luncheon, but very substantial after its kind, waiting for them
in the long low dining-room. Mrs. Branston was very popular as a hostess,
and had a knack of bringing pleasant people round her--journalists and
musical men, clever young painters who were beginning to make their mark
in the art-world, pretty girls who could sing or play well, or talk more
or less brilliantly. Against nonentities of all kinds Adela Branston set
her face, and had a polite way of dropping people from whom she derived
no amusement, pleading in her pretty childish way that it was so much
more pleasant for all parties. That this mundane existence of ours was
not intended to be all pleasure, was an idea that never yet troubled
Adela Branston's mind. She had been petted and spoiled by everyone about
her from the beginning of her brief life, and had passed from the
frivolous career of a school-girl to a position of wealth and
independence as Michael Branston's wife; fully believing that, in making
the sacrifice involved in marrying a man forty years her senior, she
earned the right to take her own pleasure, and to gratify every caprice
of her infantile mind, for the remainder of her days. She was supremely
selfish in an agreeable unconscious fashion, and considered herself a
domestic martyr whenever she spent an hour in her husband's sick-room,
listening to his peevish accounts of his maladies, or reading a _Times_
leader on the threatening aspect of things in the City for the solace of
his loneliness and pain.
The popping of corks sounded merrily amidst the buzz of conversation, and
great antique silver tankards of Badminton and Moselle cup were emptied
as by magic, none knowing how except the grave judicial-looking butler,
whose omniscient eye reigned above the pleasant confusion of the scene.
And after about an hour and a half wasted in this agreeable indoor
picnic, Mrs. Branston and her friends adjourned to the drawing-room,
where the grand piano had been pushed into a conspicuous position, and
where the musical business of the evening speedily began.
It was very pleasant sitting by the open windows in the summer twilight,
with no artificial light in the room, except the wax candles on the
piano, listening to good music, and talking a little now and then in that
subdued confidential tone to which music makes such an agreeable
accompaniment.
Adela Branston sat in the midst of a group in a wide bay window, and
although John Saltram was standing near her chair, he did not this time
engage the whole of her attention. Gilbert found himself seated next a
very animated young lady, who rather bored him with her raptures about
the music, and who seemed to have assisted at every morning and evening
concert that had been given within the last two years. To any remoter
period her memory did not extend, and she implied that she had been
before that time in a chrysalis or non-existent condition. She told Mr.
Fenton, with an air of innocent wonder, that she had heard there were
people living who remembered the first appearance of Jenny Lind.
A little before ten o'clock there was a general movement for the rail,
the greater number of Mrs. Branston's guests having come from town. There
was a scarcity of flys at this juncture, so John Saltram and Gilbert
Fenton walked back to the station in the moonlight.
"Well, Gilbert, old fellow, what do you think of the lady?" Mr. Saltram
asked, when they were a little way beyond the gates of Rivercombe.
"I think her very pretty, Jack, and--well--yes--upon the whole
fascinating. But I don't like the look of the thing altogether, and I
fancy there's considerable bad taste in giving parties with an invalid
husband upstairs. I was wondering how Mr. Branston liked the noise of all
that talk and laughter in the dining-room, or the music that came
afterwards."
"My dear fellow, old Branston delights in society. He is generally well
enough to sit in the drawing-room and look on at his wife's parties. He
doesn't talk much on those occasions. Indeed, I believe he is quite
incapable of conversing about anything except the rise and fall of Indian
stock, or the fluctuations in the value of indigo. And, you see, Adela
married him with the intention of enjoying her life. She confesses as
much sometimes with perfect candour."
"I daresay she is very candid, and just as shallow," said Gilbert Fenton,
who was inclined to set his face against this entanglement of his
friend's.
"Well--yes, I suppose she is rather shallow. Those pretty pleasant little
women generally are, I think. Depth of feeling and force of mind are so
apt to go along with blue spectacles and a rugged aspect. A woman's
prettiness must stand for something. There is so much real pleasure in
the contemplation of a charming face, that a man had need rescind a
little in the way of mental qualifications. And I do not think Adela
Branston is without a heart."
"You praise her very warmly. Are you really in love with her, John?" his
friend asked seriously.
"No, Gilbert, upon my honour. I heartily wish I were. I wish I could give
her more by-and-by, when death brings about her release from Michael
Branston, than the kind of liking I feel for her. No, I am not in love
with her; but I think she likes me; and a man must be something worse
than a brute if he is not grateful for a pretty woman's regard."
They said no more about Mrs. Branston. Gilbert had a strong distaste for
the business; but he did not care to take upon himself the office of
mentor to a friend whose will he knew to be much stronger than his own,
and to whose domination he had been apt to submit in most things, as to
the influence of a superior mind. It disappointed him a little to find
that John Saltram was capable of making a mercenary marriage, capable
even of the greater baseness involved in the anticipation of a dead man's
shoes; but his heart was not easily to be turned against the chosen
friend of his youth, and he was prompt in making excuses for the line of
conduct he disapproved.