FACE TO FACE.
Signor Pagliadini, on saying good-night to the company assembled at
Ladywell, demanded a private interview with the master of the house.
Phil watched his host’s face closely whilst he made known his wish, and
saw that an expression of uneasiness passed over it, although Tor’s
manner was as frank and pleasant as possible.
He saw, too, a sharp look of inquiry in Miss Marjory’s keen eyes, and
felt more than ever convinced that this dangerous little woman was the
confidante and accomplice of his former friend.
But every moment now was of value to him, and he could not linger to
watch or think. He had a good ten minutes’ start of his host, and he
meant to make the most of it.
Dashing up to his own room, he locked the door, and flung off the dark,
Italian-looking wig, leaving exposed to view his own dusky-brown hair,
which was so like Maud’s in colour and growth. Then out came a sharp
razor, and after five minutes’ rapid shaving the black, Vandyke beard
had vanished, and the heavy moustache, with its long, pointed ends, was
reduced to the ordinary dimensions accorded to Phil’s.
Next, the padded coat was discarded, and an old blue smoking-jacket
donned, which displayed the true proportions of the slightly-built
figure. Some colourless fluid from a stoppered bottle removed a little
of the intense blackness from eyebrows and moustache, and robbed the
face and hands of some of their olive tinting; and Phil, glancing at
himself in the glass, saw that, save for the slight swarthiness of
complexion that could not be at once removed, his old self was entirely
restored. The transformation was complete.
Then he unlocked the door, and waited with a beating heart for the
arrival of his host. He could not decide how to meet him, nor what to
say; he could not even think connectedly, so great was his excitement
and agitation now that the supreme moment had come, when he and his
false, treacherous friend should stand for the first time face to face.
There was a firm footfall outside, a hand was laid upon the handle
of the door; Phil stood still in the middle of the room, and gave
permission to enter.
The door opened.
‘Now, Signor——’
There was a sudden pause, and for ten seconds utter silence reigned in
the room.
‘PHIL!’ shouted Tor; and with one stride he had reached his friend and
grasped him by both hands, in a strong, warm clasp that seemed as if it
would never relax. ‘Phil himself, by all that’s wonderful! Phil it is,
by the powers! though how you got here passes my comprehension! Phil,
my dear old fellow, I can’t tell you how thankful I am to see you. Oh,
this is glorious!’
With an almost boyish gesture of delight Tor flung Phil’s hands
from him, and walked round and round him with a laugh of intense
appreciation.
Phil stood aghast. He had pictured this meeting day by day for weeks,
and never in the wildest flights of his imagination had he heard
himself greeted thus.
Tor did not even observe his friend’s silence in his own gladness of
heart.
‘Phil, you rascal, tell me how you came here? How did you escape from
your vessel without my knowledge? I can’t conceive how you came, but
it’s such an immense relief to have you back that I don’t care for
anything else. Did that Italian fellow smuggle you in? By-the-bye,
where is he?’
Tor looked round him with a comical air of perplexity; and then, seeing
the coat and wig lying on the bed, and the shaving apparatus upon the
washstand, the true meaning of the situation dawned upon him.
He sprang upon Phil, and smacked him upon the back with all the force
of his strong right arm.
‘Phil, you scamp! you don’t mean to say it was you all the time!’
And then he flung himself into a chair, and laughed till the tears
stood in his eyes.
Phil stood gazing at him, feeling more and more like one who dreams,
not knowing what to say, or what line of conduct to assume.
‘You young villain!’ cried Tor, as soon as he could speak, and he shook
his fist at Phil with an expression that defies description. ‘You young
villain! you dare play me such a trick as that! You deserve to be hung,
drawn, and quartered; and I’d string you up in two seconds if I weren’t
so glad to see you back. What have you got to say for yourself, you
scamp!—worrying honest folks almost out of their senses with your dark
sayings and sinister looks? And to think it was Phil Debenham all the
time! Ye gods! What will Miss Marjory say? I shall be a laughing-stock
to her for evermore. Phil, you rascal, I’ll never forgive you!’
And Tor laughed again more heartily than before; and after a long
effort at dignified composure and coldness, old habit triumphed, and
Phil’s gravity gave way. He sat down opposite Tor and laughed with him
until both were fairly tired.
‘Tor, old man,’ he said at last, ‘I can’t understand things yet; but
it’s borne in upon me that I’ve been a most infernal fool.’
‘It’s a way you have, dear boy, when left to your own devices,’
answered Tor genially. ‘I’d never have believed you could have played
any game long, which I shouldn’t detect; but how could I guess, when
I believed you safe on board the _Medusa_? I can’t make out how you
did it, nor why. Phil, my boy, if you only knew how I’ve longed for
you, and worried myself nearly into a fever, you’d never be able to
say enough of my goodness and generosity! Why did you keep me a moment
longer in such a position than was necessary? I should feel inclined to
shake the life out of you, only this makes up for everything.’
‘Tor,’ said Phil, ‘I’ve been such a consummate ass that I don’t know
how to tell you.’
‘Let’s come downstairs and smoke,’ said Tor. ‘I’m sure we shan’t have
done talking this side midnight. I’ll mix some whisky punch, and we’ll
make a night of it. I’ll do the honours of your house for this one
night, old boy; and to-morrow, thank goodness, I’ll resume my own
personality and my humble name. Phil,’ and he seized his friend’s hand
and shook it nearly off, ‘you can’t have a notion how glad I am to see
you again!’
They went down to Tor’s ‘den.’ On the way thither, Tor took the
opportunity to slip a piece of folded paper under Miss Marjory’s door.
The paper bore these words:
‘It’s all right. Phil has come back. Look out for larks to-morrow
morning.—T. T.’
‘What a comfort it is to sign one’s own name again!’ he thought, as he
wrote the two T’s.
‘This is like old times,’ said Tor, a quarter of an hour later, as the
two sat together with pipes and punch. ‘Well, Phil, how do you feel in
your capacity as monarch of all you survey? Are you as glad to reign as
I am to abdicate?’
‘I may like it in time, when I don’t feel such an egregious fool as I
do now,’ remarked Phil, as he smoked his pipe and looked at Tor, whose
face expressed a sublime satisfaction.
‘Well, what is it you’ve done?’ asked the other. ‘You’d better make a
clean breast of it, as it seems so to weigh upon your mind.’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘I should be sorry to try. There are a vast variety of ways in which a
man can make a fool of himself, and you always had a special aptitude
in doing so.’
‘Do be serious, Tor. You’ll be serious enough when you hear.’
‘Shall I? I don’t feel overwhelmed with gravity so far. I can’t get
over the fact that you really made a fool of me, for once. To think
that you and Signor Pagliadini were one and the same, and that you
could meet me time after time, and I not find you out! I shall never be
able to look Miss Marjory in the face again!’
And Tor broke anew into laughter.
‘You’re incorrigible, Tor!’ cried Phil. ‘I must tell you, if you can’t
see for yourself. I came in disguise because I was afraid to come
otherwise.’
‘Afraid!’ laughed Tor; ‘that’s good. Afraid of what?’
‘Of you.’
‘Of me! Good heavens! why?’
‘Now just be serious a moment, and put yourself in my place. I knew
you had adopted my name, passed yourself off as my great-uncle’s heir,
and obtained possession of Ladywell. What could I think but that you
intended to keep it?’
‘Keep it!’ shouted Tor; ‘keep Ladywell! Be Phil Debenham all the rest
of my natural life! No, thank you, my boy; not at any price! My dear
old fellow, you never were very practical or very wise; but you don’t
mean to tell me you thought such a deception as that would be possible
for any length of time?’
‘I did,’ said Phil. ‘I suppose I was an ass for my pains. Perhaps my
head was stupider than usual, but I thought it could be done, and that
you could do it, if you had a mind.’
Tor opened his great grey eyes, and looked steadily at Phil.
‘And did you think I had the mind?’
‘What could I think? You had got possession of all that was mine. Why
should you take it if you didn’t mean to keep it?’
‘Of course you couldn’t understand why I should take such a step,
without seeing some of the papers I must show you, now that you have
come back; but Phil, have we lived ten years together, and known each
other since childhood, and have you so little confidence in me as that?’
Phil’s eyes fell.
‘I’m afraid I’ve been an awful fool—a fool and a brute both. I ought to
have known.’
‘Yes, Phil, you ought to have known. I’m not a saint, as you know, and
I’ve never set up for being better than my fellow-men; but I don’t
think I’ve ever given you cause to think me a blackguard. Could you
really believe in cold blood, that I should deliberately set about to
rob you of your inheritance?’
‘Old fellow, I’m awfully sorry. It must have been that sunstroke that
muddled me. Don’t be in a rage—don’t cast me off. If you only knew how
I feel now, you would see how much I am to be pitied.’
Tor smiled. He could not be angry with Phil—with the man who would
always be a boy to him, whose oracle and king he had ever been, and
whose allegiance could never be seriously shaken.
‘You deserve a thorough good licking for being such a confounded
muff; but you never do get your deserts in the way of chastisement.
Phil, I have answered, and would answer, for your trust in me with my
life; and _you_ could believe this of me—you, my chosen companion and
comrade—mine own familiar friend.’
‘I have been punished,’ said Phil slowly. ‘I have not distrusted you
without more pain than you can easily imagine. Can you forgive it and
forget it?’
‘To be sure. We will only think of the comic side of the question, for
it is infinitely comic. After all, you had cause for bewilderment—only
you might have trusted me. Come, Phil, tell me your tale. I can’t still
understand how you escaped without my hearing of it.’
So Phil told, graphically enough, the story of his awakening.
‘The little wretch—so he played me false!’ cried Tor, as Dr.
Schneeberger’s share in the conspiracy became known. ‘I’d have sworn
he was too deeply buried in the human brain to have risen to any kind
of conspiracy. Why couldn’t he have kept his word to me? I should like
to punch his head so well, that his own brain should become an object
of immediate solicitude.’
‘Don’t abuse him too much,’ said Phil. ‘He was loyal to you until I
painted you so black that he couldn’t well trust in you. When he was
won over, he made a famous ally. It was he who devised the fiction of
the sea-voyage, so as to account for my absence from his roof, should
you chance to come over.’
Tor’s eyes opened wide.
‘Phil, you villain!’ he said slowly, ‘you don’t mean to say you had
come to your senses that last time I saw you in Germany?’
Phil looked at him, smiling deprecatingly.
‘Well, that beats all! What a confounded ass you were not to have it
out, then and there!’
‘I would have done so, if you had only called me “Phil.” Why did _you_
keep up the fiction, Tor?’
‘I—I like that! As if I could possibly be two people at once, or
betray myself to anyone! As if I wasn’t playing a risky enough game
as it was, for the sake of your interests, without being expected to
let others see what I was at. _I was_ Phil Debenham when I went to
Germany. You were Tor. A nice thing it would have been if I had gone
and reversed positions!’
‘But why were you Phil, and why was I Tor? and why were you so bold and
defiant when I—Signor Pagliadini—told you that you were Torwood? It was
enough to make anybody believe you meant to hold what you had got. Miss
Marjory Descartes as good as told me that you would fight to the death.’
‘Phil, you are a greater fool than I took you for! What else could I
say or do until you came to claim your own? So long as you remained
insensible and beyond my reach, I had to stick to my story like grim
death; or I should have had the Belassis faction at my throat, and
should have tasted all the sweets of prosecution for forgery and fraud.’
‘Good heavens, Tor! What a risk you ran!’
‘I did; and if I’d half realized the risk, I doubt if I should ever
have run it, even for your sake.’
‘For my sake!’
‘Yes; you don’t suppose I’ve put myself in a false position, and nearly
got myself into a convict’s cell, for my own amusement?’
‘But what good could it do me?’
Tor rose, unlocked a drawer, and took out two letters: one from old
Maynard, and one from Maud.
‘Read those,’ he said briefly; ‘perhaps then you will understand
better.’
Phil read in silence, and looked up at Tor for further enlightenment.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well? Can’t you see? These letters and the lawyer’s, which you have
seen, came whilst you were hopelessly insensible. Here was the lawyer,
urging immediate return of the heir; Maud, begging and imploring her
brother to come and release her from an uncongenial home. There were
hints that Belassis was not to be trusted in the management of the
estate, that you ought at once to come and take matters into your own
hands. Then there was this marriage of Maud’s to stop. You see how
old Maynard wrote—and he wrote with sense as well as cynicism; and
the important birthday was said to be imminent, though the date was
not revealed. It seemed most urgent that some one should go over and
look to things; and there were you, lying like a log, and with every
probability of remaining in that state for weeks, perhaps for longer.
You could not act yourself, you could not even empower me to act. If I
had gone over as your friend, I should have had no power; and Belassis,
as next of kin, lawyer, executor, guardian (under your father’s will,
I mean), would have had all his own way. For aught I knew, before you
recovered, Maud would have been bullied into marrying his son; and you
might have fallen so completely into his power, that he would serve you
as he has served your father.’
Phil looked impressed and interested.
‘You thought all that?’
‘I did. You know what we have always said of Belassis between
ourselves. I distrusted him then, though without the same ground, no
less than I do now that I have had the honour of his acquaintance.
I don’t know what first put the notion into my head. It seemed to
come all in a moment; and at first, I confess, my chief thought was
that it would be a fine practical joke to play upon your people, just
to personate you until you could come over and take up the _rôle_
yourself. I knew nobody had seen you since you were a small boy, and
I felt that I could play the part quite naturally and well for a few
weeks, and rather enjoyed the idea of being the first to bring Belassis
to see that his power had reached its zenith. I felt that that task
would come easier to me than to you, old chap.’
Phil nodded.
‘Go on. I begin to see.’
‘I should hope you do. Well, I’ve about told you all now. Of course,
once the irrevocable step taken, I began to see that it was something
more than a joke; and I had to be very careful to leave no clue which
could tell against me, in case a suspicion were raised. I believed
every precaution had been taken, for that _you_ would ever turn against
me, never once entered my head, and even then I should not have thought
you clever enough to overturn all my carefully laid plans. I had got on
very well, on the whole, and weathered several threatened storms before
you turned up; but, when you appeared, I knew there was danger ahead,
and I sent for my only ally and confidante, Miss Marjory Descartes. I
think she gave you a taste of her tongue on one or two occasions, did
she not?’
‘Yes, she scared me half out of my senses. Who is she, Tor?’
‘An old friend of my father’s—a very clever woman. You will like her,
Phil.’
‘If she doesn’t make me nervous. How came you to confide in her, Tor?’
‘I had to; she gave me no choice. She knew me from my likeness to my
father; but I never regretted it; she has taken my part boldly.’
‘She has. You ought to make her Mrs. Torwood.’
‘I might do worse, if I were thirty years older; but, Phil, old fellow,
my young affections are bespoken elsewhere.’
‘I know.’
And poor Phil’s face clouded suddenly.
‘Do you? You have sharp eyes if you do. Think, Phil, what I have had to
put up with for your sake—to pretend to be her brother all the time,
and dispassionately to await her acceptance or rejection of other
suitors. It’s not many men who would have been so patient as I have
been.’
‘What are you talking about?’ cried Phil eagerly. ‘Whom is it you want
to marry?’
‘Maud—my sister up till to-night—your sister henceforward, thank
goodness! Have you any objection?’
‘Maud!’ cried Phil ecstatically. ‘Maud, is it? Oh, Tor, old fellow,
what could be more to my mind? Oh, if I had only known! And I have been
so madly jealous, thinking it was Roma!’
‘Ah!’ and Tor’s eyes suddenly opened wide. ‘So you and Roma have fallen
a prey to one another, have you?’
‘Yes, we understand one another; but she tells me, and her father tells
me, she is engaged to you.’
‘Roma knows that it is merely a fiction, our engagement, just to humour
her father, who was very ill when he desired our betrothal—too ill
to bear the irritation of a refusal. She could not explain this, but
she knows it, and has, I hope, bestowed upon you the affections which
certainly have never been mine. She will be glad enough, and so shall
I, to be released from the bond. I am more tired than I can express of
the continual fetter of a false position.’
‘But Mr. Meredith——’
‘He will not care, the old egotist! It was not me at all whom he wanted
for his daughter; it was your father’s son. He has always flattered
his stupid old self that his will would bring about such a marriage.
Now that you, the real son, have opportunely fallen in love with Roma,
all will be well. He will transfer his affections, and those of his
daughter, to you with perfect equanimity, and wonder the more at the
magic power of his will. He is an old fool, but he is blind, and her
father, so we must bear with him; but you need not fear opposition in
that quarter.’
Phil drew a long breath of relief.
‘Tor,’ he said, ‘yesterday I never thought I could be so happy as this
again. If only I hadn’t been such a brute as to doubt you!’
‘Well, it’s over now, and won’t be likely to occur again; this makes
up for all. Tomorrow, Phil, we’ll go over the accounts together, and
you’ll see that I’ve not robbed you. I’ve spent a few hundreds of the
money you were supposed to owe me, and a good deal of my own; but with
yours I’ve merely kept the house going, and defrayed the expenses which
you would have incurred in any case. I’ve quite turned into a business
man, under stress of circumstances, and you’ll find all as plain as a
pikestaff. You’ll never keep accounts like that yourself, my boy, not
if you live till Doomsday. And now I can look the whole world in the
face, and snap my fingers at the whole of the Belassis party. They’re
on the right scent now, and, but that we shall forestall them, might be
nasty; but they are helpless so long as you stand by me, Phil, and say
that all I have done has your sanction and approval. I suppose I may
count on so much—eh, old boy?’
There was so much to say, now that the friends had once come together,
so many jokes to enjoy together, so many episodes to laugh over, that
it was two in the morning before they separated.
Phil’s mercurial spirits had risen to the highest pitch of enjoyment.
‘I say, Tor, we must have a lark out of this to-morrow.’
‘All right. How?’
‘I’m like Maud, am I not?’
‘As like as two peas, and the image of your father, too.’
‘Then introduce me at breakfast as your friend Mr. Torwood, and be
Philip Debenham yourself, and see what they all say!’
‘All right,’ answered Tor, with a grin; ‘I will.’