CAPTAIN VERINDER AND HIS VISITOR
While the events bearing on the life-story of Ethel Thursby, as
narrated in the last few chapters, were duly working themselves out,
certain other events destined to exercise an important influence on her
future, the chief factors in which were two people of whose very
existence she was unaware, were in process of evolution.
It was eleven o’clock on a bright May morning, and Captain Verinder,
who had only lately risen and had but just finished his breakfast,
which this morning had consisted of nothing more substantial than a
tumbler of rum and milk, was engaged in a rueful examination of the
pockets of the suit of clothes he had been wearing the previous
evening.
“Not a stiver more,” he said, with a grimace, as he tossed his
waistcoat across the room; and with that he turned and counted for the
second time the little pile of silver and coppers which he had
previously extracted from his pockets and placed on the chimney-piece.
“Seven shillings and elevenpence-ha’penny, all told,” he muttered; “and
there’s seventeen days yet to be got through before the end of the
month.”
It was not the first time by many that he had found himself “cornered,”
but the process became none the pleasanter through repetition.
He turned away with a shrug, and began to charge his meerschaum with
the strong tobacco he was in the habit of smoking.
“When we find ourselves in a hole of our own digging, or in a scrape,
the result of our own folly, we have a way of telling ourselves that
the truest philosophy is to grin and bear it. Of course there’s nothing
else to be done, but it’s only cold pudding at the best.” He spoke
aloud as he had a way of doing when alone. “Verinder, my dear boy, if
there was ever any man who sold himself cheap, you were that one last
night. Let us hope you will take the lesson to heart, and not carry
your nose quite so high in the air in time to come.”
Having lighted his pipe, he drew his shabby dressing-gown about him and
seated himself in a somewhat dilapidated easy-chair by his open window
in Tilney Street, Soho—a narrow thoroughfare of tall, old-fashioned
houses that had seen better days.
For anything beyond a small assured income of eighty pounds a year,
Captain Verinder had to trust to the exercise of his wits. At this time
he was a man of sixty, rather below the medium height, but still slim
and upright for his years, and with something that might be termed
semi-military in his appearance and carriage. The mental exercise in
question took the form of billiards. Although far from being a fine
player, his natural aptitude for the game had been cultivated by long
practice, till he had attained a degree of proficiency at it which he
found to answer his purpose very well indeed. That purpose was neither
more nor less than to haunt the public rooms within a wide radius of
his lodgings, on the lookout for those simpletons with more money than
sense, of whom there is an unfailing supply in big cities, who can only
be convinced at the expense of their pocket that in the art of
billiard-playing they have not yet got beyond their apprenticeship. The
Captain regarded it as a very poor week indeed at the end of which he
did not find himself in pocket to the extent of fifty shillings, or
three pounds—or rather, would have found himself that sum in pocket but
for his ineradicable propensity for treating himself and others to
innumerable “drinks” and cigars. When perfectly sober, he was one of
the stingiest of mortals, but after his third glass he began to thaw,
and, a little later, the veriest stranger would have been welcome to
share his last shilling. It is a by no means uncommon trait.
On the evening of the day prior to the one with which we are now
concerned, the Captain, in the course of his rounds, had encountered a
sheep-faced, but gentlemanly-looking young fellow, in whom he thought
he saw an easy prey.
What, then, was his rage and amazement when at the end of the evening
the Captain’s eyes opened to the fact that it was a case of the biter
being bitten, and that the sheep-faced provincial, instead of being the
greenhorn he looked, was, in reality, a graduate in the same school as
himself.
Small wonder, then, was it that his thoughts this morning were bitter,
when, after emptying his pockets, he realised that the absurdly
inadequate sum of seven and elevenpence-halfpenny was all that was left
him to exist on till the next quarterly payment of his income should
fall due, which would not be till between a fortnight and three weeks
hence.
He was still smoking moodily when he heard his landlady’s shuffling
footsteps on the stairs, and, a moment later, her head was protruded
into the room. “If you please, Captain, here’s a lady asking for you,”
said Mrs. Rapp, a Londoner born and bred.
“A lady asking for me? Impossible!” exclaimed the Captain as he started
to his feet.
“Not at all impossible, Uncle Augustus,” said a full rich voice, and
thereupon, following close upon the heels of Mrs. Rapp, there advanced
into the room a tall and stately female figure, attired in black.
Pausing in the middle of the floor, she raised the veil which had
hitherto partially shrouded her features.
The captain stared for a moment or two, and then from his lips broke
the one word, “Giovanna!”
“Yes, it is I—your niece Giovanna—come all the way from Italy to see
you.”
Mrs. Rapp discreetly withdrew.
Notwithstanding her years, which now numbered not far short of forty,
Giovanna was still a very handsome woman, with a large and generous
style of beauty which would have made her a striking figure anywhere.
Although she called the Captain uncle, there was no blood relationship
between the two, her mother having been merely Augustus Verinder’s
stepsister by a previous marriage. They had never met but once before,
when the Captain had spent a month at the _osteria_ of Giuseppe
Rispani, Giovanna being at that time a girl of sixteen. Ever since her
desertion of her husband in America she had passed as a widow—la
Signora Alessandro. She had not been without offers of marriage
meanwhile, but had not seen her way to accept any of them. As to
whether her husband was alive or dead, she had no knowledge.
Giuseppe Rispani had recently died, and Vanna, having realised the
small fortune bequeathed her by him, had now come to England, which she
had long wished to visit.
In the course of the confidential talk that ensued between Vanna and
her uncle she was induced by the latter to relate to him all about her
marriage, the details of which were quite new to him.
She began by telling him of the arrival of the young Englishman, Mr.
Alexander, at Catanzaro; of his long stay at the _osteria_ of the
Golden Fig; of the coming of two other Englishmen, one of whom proved
to be the father of Mr. Alexander, and of their departure next day.
Then she proceeded to recount how the young Englishman proposed to her,
how she accepted him, and how she did not learn till her marriage-day
that her husband’s full name was John Alexander Clare. She made no
mention of her father’s discovery by means of the peephole in the
ceiling, but simply said, “I knew before my marriage that my husband’s
father, on the occasion of his visit, had given him six thousand pounds
in English money.” Then she went on to tell of the departure of her
husband and herself for America, of the death of their child; and of
their subsequent separation, which she made out to have been a matter
of mutual arrangement; and wound up by saying, “From that day to this I
have heard no tidings of my husband.”
“Neither, I’ll wager, have you ever made any effort to find out who the
father was that could afford to give his son six thousand pounds in
order to get rid of him,” remarked the Captain when she had come to the
end of her narrative.
“No. What business was it of mine?” demanded Vanna with a stare.
“Ah, that’s just the point which you have never thought it worth your
while to test. Yet, who can say that it might not have proved to be
very much your business indeed?”
Then to himself he added: “This seems to me a little matter which may
be worth inquiring into. But, good gracious! to think that there should
be such imbeciles in the world as this niece of mine!”