PATRICIAN AND PROLETARY.
It was deep mid-winter, and Colonel Orpington was at home at his
house in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. Miss Orpington was at home
too, temporarily. She had just come up from one of the charming
country-houses where she and her chaperone had been spending Christmas,
and in a week's time she was about to rush off to another charming
country-house, where she would meet the same people, and they would all
do the same things, and thoroughly enjoy themselves. This forthcoming
one is the last visit she will pay before her marriage. Early in the
ensuing spring the Yorkshire baronet with money is to claim Miss
Orpington for his own; meantime the interval between the two visits is
spent by the young lady in shopping and visiting during the day, and
making her father take her to the theatre at night.
Colonel Orpington accepts the position with his usual complacency. He
has lived long enough in the world to allow very few things indeed to
ruffle him. Even the fact of his not having had any answer from Fanny
Stafford does not annoy him.
"A younger man," he says to himself, "would fret and fume, and get in
a deuce of a stew. What would be the good of that? It would not make
the answer come any quicker, and it would not have any effect upon the
girl's decision when she had made up her mind to send it. I am not at
all sure that this delay is not rather good than otherwise. My heart
does not beat quite so quickly as it did five-and-twenty years since,
nor does the blood tingle in my veins to such an extent as at that
period, and I can afford to wait. And even if the young lady should
make up her mind to decline my proposition, I should certainly not
commit suicide, though I confess I hope she may accept it for more
reasons than one.
"I expect that this house will be deuced dull after Emily marries.
I should have to get a clergyman's widow, or somebody of that kind,
to come and be housekeeper. That would be horribly dull, and I don't
see why I should have all the expense of keeping this place up. All
the people I want to entertain I could have at the club; and if it
is necessary for me to give a couple of ladies' dinners during the
season--well, they can be done at Greenwich or Richmond, by Hart or
Ellis, at less expense and without any trouble. I think I should have
chambers in Piccadilly, or somewhere thereabouts; and then that other
little arrangement would suit me admirably, provided the Paradise which
I propose to establish was situated within an easy drive of town.
"I shall have to lay out a new line of life for myself, I think. I
confess I don't see my way to what Emily said the other night about my
being constantly with them. She is a very nice girl, and Hawker's a
good fellow in his way; but his place is a deuced long way off, and I
am getting a little too old to like to be 'braced', as they call it, by
that infernally keen air that sweeps over the Yorkshire moors. Besides,
they'll be having children, and that kind of thing; and it would be
a confounded nuisance to have to be called 'Grandpapa!' Ridiculous
position for a man of my appearance! So that, except when they are in
town, and one can go to dinner, or to her box at the opera, or that
kind of thing, I don't expect I shall see much of them. Grandpapa! by
Jove, that would be positively awful!"
And the Colonel rises from his seat, and looks at himself in the glass,
and poodles his hair, and strokes his moustache, and is eminently
satisfied with his appearance.
It is in the breakfast-room that the Colonel makes these remarks to
himself. Miss Orpington has not yet come down. She has announced by her
maid that she has a headache, she supposes from the close atmosphere
of the theatre the previous evening, and is taking her breakfast in
bed. The Colonel has finished his meal, and is wondering what he will
do with himself. He strolls to the window, and looks into the street,
which is thick with slush. There has been a little snow early in the
morning, and it has melted, as snow does nine times out of ten in
London, and has been left to lie where it melted, as it always is in
London, and the result is a universal pool of slush and mud, a couple
of inches deep. The Colonel shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders,
and turns away. He had some notion of going for a ride, but he doesn't
see the fun of being splashed up to his eyes, and of having to hold
damp and slippery reins with aching fingers. So he thinks he will
stroll down to the club and look through the papers, and have a chat
with anybody who may be available.
At that moment Miss Orpington enters the room. She walks up to
her parent, who is standing on the hearthrug, and turning her
head, presents to him the lobe of her ear. The Colonel bestows an
affectionate embrace on this portion of his daughter's anatomy, and
inquires after her headache.
He is reassured at hearing it is better. Then Miss Orpington inquires,
"Who is the person in the hall?"
"Person in the hall!" The Colonel has not the smallest idea.
"There is a person in the hall," Miss Orpington avers. "A
tradesman-looking person--bootmaker, or something of that kind, she
should think from his appearance."
Then the Colonel gives a little start, and remembers that something had
been said to him about half an hour ago about somebody wishing to see
him.
The bell is rung, and inquiries are made from the servant about the
person in the hall.
A mysterious stranger, who declines to give his name, but is extremely
anxious to see Colonel Orpington, and will take no refusal. Had been
waiting there half an hour, and seemed inclined to wait on.
Miss Orpington says, "How very odd!" The Colonel raises his eyebrows,
and ejaculates, "Deuced!" then tells the servant to show the mysterious
person into the library; and after the lapse of a few minutes he
himself proceeds thither.
On entering the room Colonel Orpington perceives the stranger to be a
tall, good-looking young man belonging to the middle-classes, and with
a curious expression on his face which reminds the Colonel of someone
of his acquaintance whom he cannot immediately recollect. The man, who
is standing, bows at the Colonel's entrance, but declines to take the
seat to which he is motioned.
"You wish to speak to me, I believe?" said the Colonel, stiffly.
He had committed a stretch of courtesy by inviting a young man
obviously in the commercial interest to take a seat, and was somewhat
outraged at finding his civility not appreciated.
"You are Colonel Orpington?" said the visitor.
"I am. I understand you decline to give your name."
"For the present, yes. When you have heard my business, if you do not
by that time guess who I am, I shall be happy to tell you."
"Deuced polite of you, I'm sure," said the Colonel with a grin.
"Perhaps you'll tell me what your business is. Some account to be
settled, I suppose? If so, I am not in the habit of discussing such
matters. If the money is due, you can have it and go."
"There is an account to be settled," said the visitor; "but it is not
of the nature that you suppose."
He spoke very quietly but very earnestly; so earnestly that the Colonel
leaned forward in his seat and looked at him with an attention which he
had hitherto not bestowed upon him.
"Is this a plant?" said the wily old warrior to himself. "My friend
here looks very much of the outraged-brother order; but I have had
nothing of that kind on hand for years." Then aloud, "What is your
business, then?"
"I have come here, Colonel Orpington, to appeal to your feelings as a
gentleman and a man of honour."
"Monstrous good of you to take the trouble, I'm sure," said the
Colonel, with the old grin.
"Hear me out first, and then say what you please," said the visitor.
"Depend upon it, I should not have come here on the chance of
submitting myself to miscomprehension and indignity, if I had not some
adequate motive."
Again the Colonel noticed the likeness to someone in this man's face,
and again he failed to trace it to its original.
"There is no need to make a long story of what I have to say; it
can be very shortly told. You will understand me at once, Colonel
Orpington, when I tell you that my name is Merton, and that I am the
brother of a young woman with whom you have been for some time past in
communication."
"It is the outraged-brother business, after all," said the Colonel
to himself. "This man has found his sister was in the habit of
occasionally coming to chambers; perhaps has learned that I
occasionally give her money; and he jumps at once to a wrong
conclusion."
Then looked up and said, "Well, sir!"
"You have made my sister a tool for a most dishonourable purpose. You
have caused her to aid you in a plot against one of her own sex, her
friend, and situated much as she might have been herself."
"By Jove," muttered the Colonel beneath his breath, "I was wrong; he is
on the other tack!"
"I do not presume to understand how you had the audacity----"
"Sir!" cried the Colonel.
"I repeat the word--the audacity to attempt to induce my sister to
become a spy, and something worse than a spy! You must have had greater
powers of perception than I gave you credit for to comprehend that you
could offer her such a post, and that she would accept it. Of her part
in the transaction I have nothing to say, nor indeed of yours so far as
she is concerned."
"That being the case, Mr.---- Mr.--I beg your pardon--Merton, perhaps
we had better bring this interview to an end," said the Colonel,
rising to his feet. "I am not going to pick words with you as to the
expression which you have chosen to apply to the commission which your
sister executed for me. She executed and was paid for it, and there's
an end of it."
"Not yet," said John Merton. "You don't imagine that I should come
here, in the present day, when all these things are taken for granted,
to endeavour to wring your conscience by proving to you that you
tempted a young girl to do a dishonest, disloyal, and dishonourable
act? You don't imagine I am quixotic enough to think that even if you
listen to me patiently, what I said to you would have one grain of
effect a moment after the door had closed upon me? You don't think I
am a missionary from the lower classes come to prate to the upper of
decency and honour?"
He spoke in a loud high key, his eyes were flashing, and his whole face
was lit up with excitement.
"What my sister did for you is done and ended so far as she is
concerned, and I will not give you the excuse for a smile by telling
you that she is sorry for it now, and sees her conduct in a light in
which she did not before perceive it. You _do_ smile, and I know why:
you think it is easy to profess repentance when the deed has been
done and the reward paid. You paid to my sister at various times sums
amounting to thirty pounds. In this envelope," laying one on the table,
"are three ten-pound notes. So far, Colonel Orpington, we are quits."
The Colonel sat still, with his eyes intently fixed on his visitor. As
he remained silent, John Merton proceeded:
"I wish the other matter could be as easily settled. But in this I meet
you on even terms; in the other I come as a suppliant."
The Colonel's face became a little more hard, and he sat a little more
erectly in his chair, as he heard these last words.
"Through my sister's aid, directly or indirectly, you made the
acquaintance of Miss Stafford. Well," he continued, as he noticed
a motion of protest on the Colonel's part, "you may not actually
have made her acquaintance--that, I believe, commenced at the place
where she was employed--but it was through my sister's aid that you
knew of her, that you learned all about her, and that you found out
she was likely to swallow the gilded bait by which even now you are
endeavouring to secure her. When a man in your position pays attention
to a girl in hers, it can be but with one meaning and intention.
Whether Miss Stafford knew that or not, during these last few months in
which you have been constantly hanging about her, I cannot say: but she
knows it now; for you yourself have placed it before her in language
impossible to be misunderstood."
"Look here, sir!" cried the Colonel, starting forward.
"Wait and hear me, sir," said John Merton; "you must, you shall! I
told you I was prepared to submit to indignity, to endure your sneers
and sarcasms. I would not have put myself in the way of them for my
sister's sake; but I would for Fanny Stafford."
"Ah, ha!" said the Colonel to himself, "a lover instead of brother;
greater virtuous indignation, infinitely more savage, but with less
claim to show it."
"I have known her," continued John Merton, "for some years, and it is
not too much to say that I have loved her all the time."
"Exactly," said the Colonel complacently.
"I told you I was prepared for sneers," said John; "I shall not shrink
from avowing to you even that mine has been a hopeless passion; that,
after bearing it a long, long time in silence, I took courage to speak
to Miss Stafford, and received a definite and unmistakable dismissal.
You will glory in that avowal, because you will think it increases the
chances that the answer for which you are waiting will be a favourable
one. I know you are waiting for such an answer. You see I know all."
"You seem to be devilish well posted up," growled the Colonel,
"certainly."
"I don't think that her rejection of me would influence Miss Stafford
one way or the other in this matter; I put myself entirely out of the
question. Though her answer will have a certain effect on my future
life, I by no means come here as a desponding lover to implore any
leniency towards himself from his rival----"
"I should think not," observed the Colonel parenthetically.
"The leniency I would implore must be exercised towards her. I come to
you, not as a Christian man to show you the sin you contemplate, and
to implore you to avoid its commission; for I have not the right to do
so, nor would it be of the least avail; I know that perfectly. I simply
come to ask you to spare her, just to spare her."
"Not a bad idea, Mr. Merton," said the Colonel, with his baleful grin.
"You are the young warrior who rescues the damsel from the giant's
castle, and in gratitude the damsel--though she did not care for him
before--of course bestows her hand on him, and they live happy ever
after."
"No, by my solemn soul, no! In all human probability I shall never
set eyes upon Miss Stafford again; but I should like to know that
some honest man's home was cheered by her presence, some honest man's
children called her mother, although such happiness is not in store for
me."
"Look here, Mr. Merton," said the Colonel. "I have let you run on to a
certain length without interrupting you, because you explained at once
that you wished to talk off straight away. But I think now I must pull
you up, if you please. You have made out a very pretty story, hanging
well together, and that kind of thing; and I have not contradicted you
because I am not in the habit of lying, and I don't choose to stoop
even to what is called prevarication. So, supposing we take all this
for granted, I say to you, 'Why don't you speak to the young lady
herself? The matter rests with her; it is she who has to decide it.' I
shall not appear in George Street with a band of freebooters to carry
her off, nor will she be seized upon by any men in black masks as she
walks home to her lodgings. This is the latter half of the nineteenth
century, when such actions are not common. A simple Yes or No is all
she has to say, and the affair is entirely in her hands."
"I told you at once that I did not deny your perspicacity in reading
character. You showed it in your selection of my sister as your agent;
you show it further in your selection of Miss Stafford"--here John
Merton's voice sank to a whisper, and he spoke through his teeth--"to
be what you propose to make her. You know that you have exactly gauged
the mind and temperament of this girl; that, strong-minded in some
things, she is weak in others; vain, too sensitive and too refined
for the people with whom she is brought into contact, and longing for
luxuries which, while they are denied to her, she sees other people
enjoy."
"I must reciprocate your compliment about the knowledge of character,
Mr. Merton," said the Colonel; "your description of Miss Stafford
appears to me quite exact."
"Knowing this, you know equally well," continued John Merton, "that she
is the style of person to be caught by the temptations which you have
thought fit to offer her; you know perfectly well that her hesitation
in deciding on your proposition is simply caused by the small remnants
of the influence of proper bringing-up and self-respect struggling with
her wishes and inclinations."
"If Miss Stafford's wishes and inclinations prompt her to do what I
am asking her to do, I really cannot see why I should be expected to
consent to thwart them and upset my own plans."
"Colonel Orpington," said John Merton, sternly, "I have told you that
I would not pretend to thrust the religious side of this question
upon you; and in return I have a right to call upon you to drop this
society jargon, and let us talk this matter out as men. I will make
this concession to your vanity: I will tell you I fully believe that
Miss Stafford's future fate is in your hands; that if you choose to
persist in the offer which you have made to her, or rather if you do
not actually withdraw it, she will become something so degraded that I,
who love her so, would sooner see her dead."
"Look here, my good sir," interrupted the Colonel, impatiently; "you
were good enough to talk about my using 'society's jargon;' I must
trouble you to drop the language of the penny romances. What the deuce
do you mean by 'something so degraded?' If Miss Stafford accepts my
propositions, she will have everything she wants."
"Will she?" said John Merton, quickly. "Will she have your name? or,
even supposing she makes use of it, will she have any lawful right to
do so? Will she have the companionship of honest women, the friendship
of honest men?"
"She will have, what is a deuced sight better, the envy of pretty
women, and the companionship of pleasant fellows," said the Colonel.
"You meet my earnestness with flippancy," said John Merton. "I know
Fanny Stafford, and, with all her vanity and all her love of luxury,
I know that after a time the life would be insupportable to her. Her
proud spirit would never brook the stares which would greet her, and
the whisperings which would follow her progress. No amount of money at
her command would make up to her for that."
"I still think that this is a matter for Miss Stafford's decision,"
said the Colonel. "You really cannot expect me to place before her all
the disadvantages of my own offer in the strong light in which you
review them."
John Merton paused a moment; then he said:
"I will not take up more than five minutes more of your time, Colonel
Orpington, but I should like just to discuss this question perhaps
rather more from your point of view. What I have hitherto mentioned,
you say concerns Miss Stafford; but now about yourself. Supposing
events to follow as you have proposed----"
"As I have every expectation they will," said the Colonel, pleasantly
smiling.
"You have a right to that expectation," said John. "Well, supposing
they so fall out, you are too much a man of the world to expect that
your--well, what you are pleased to call your love for Miss Stafford
will last for ever."
"It will be uncommonly unlike any other love if it did," said the
Colonel.
"Exactly; it will run its course and die out, as similar passions have,
I should imagine, expired in previous years. What do you propose to do
then?"
"I decline to anticipate such a state of affairs," said the Colonel;
"sufficient for the day-----"
"Exactly," said John Merton; "only in this case the evil once done
would be sufficient for the rest of your days on earth. Do you imagine
that a girl of Fanny Stafford's proud temperament would condescend to
accept anything at your hands, when she knew that your feelings for
her had died out, and that you were probably spreading for another
woman exactly the same nets into which she had been entrapped? I know
her well enough to be certain that under such circumstances she would
refuse, not merely to be supported by you, but even to see you. What
would become of her then? She would take to suicide, the usual resort
of her class."
"Most likely she would take to suicide," said the Colonel.
"If she did," said John Merton, very sternly, taking a step in advance,
and bringing down his hand upon the table at which the Colonel was
sitting, "I don't suppose her death would lie heavily upon your soul;
but I would make you answer for it, so help me God!"
"By George, do you threaten me, sir?" said the Colonel, springing to
his feet. The next instant he sank easily back into his chair, saying,
"Pshaw! the thing is too preposterous; you don't imagine I could fight
_you?_"
"I had no such idea, Colonel Orpington; but what I threatened just now
I would carry out. If this girl becomes your victim, and if that result
which I have just foreshadowed, and which seems to me inevitable,
should ensue, I will take care that your name is dragged before the
public as the girl's seducer and the cause of her ruin. These are not
very moral times, but the gay Lothario stamp of man is rather laughed
at nowadays, especially when he has not the excuse of youth for his
folly; and when mixed up with his folly there are such awkward episodes
as desertion and suicide, people no longer laugh at him, they cut him.
The newspapers write articles about him; and his friends, who are doing
the same thing themselves, but do not labour under the disadvantage of
being found out, shake their heads and are compelled to give him up.
From all I have heard of you, Colonel Orpington, you are far too fond
of society and too great a favourite in it to risk being treated in
such a manner for such a temporary amusement."
"If you have heard anything of me, sir," said the Colonel, rising in a
rage, "you may have heard that I never brook confounded impertinence,
and I'm d--d if I stand it any longer! I will trouble you to leave
this house at once, and never let me set eyes on you again," he added,
ringing the bell.
"I trust I shall never have occasion to come across you, Colonel
Orpington," said John Merton firmly; "whether I do or not entirely
rests upon yourself. Depend upon it, that I shall hold to everything I
have said, and that I shall not shrink from carrying out what I have
fully made up my mind to do on account of any menaces."
He bowed slightly to the Colonel, turned round, and slowly walked from
the room.
Left to himself, the Colonel took to pacing up and down the library
with great strides. He was evidently labouring under great annoyance;
he bit his lips and tossed his head in the air, and muttered to himself
as he walked up and down.
"That fellow struck the right note at last," he said. "Insolent brute!
All that palaver about honest man's fireside, and children calling her
mother, and that kind of thing, one has heard a thousand times; but if
all happened as he prophesied--and I confess it is the usual ending to
such things--and he made a row as he threatened, it would be deuced
unpleasant. He is right about the Lothario business being over; and
more than right about people grinning at you when you are mixed up in
such matters at fifty years of age. And if it were to come to what
he suggested, death and that kind of thing, there would probably be
a great row. Those infernal newspaper paragraphs about the heartless
seducer--they don't like those things at the Court or the Horse Guards;
and then one would have to run the gauntlet of the clubs and that kind
of thing. By Jove, it's worth considering whether the game is worth the
candle, after all!"
At that moment Miss Orpington entered.
"Who was that person, papa?" said she. "I thought I heard you speak
quite angrily to him."
"Very likely, my dear," said the Colonel; "he was a very impertinent
and unmannerly person from--from those confoundedly troublesome
slate-quarries and lead-mines in South Wales."