THE CAPTAIN TAKES A LITTLE JOURNEY
The more Captain Verinder turned over in his mind the chief points of
the story told him by his niece, the more convinced he became that it
was indeed, as he had remarked to himself at the time, a matter worth
inquiring into.
The Captain, when once he had made up his mind to any particular course
of action, was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. His
first proceeding was to seek out a certain billiard-room acquaintance
of the name of Tring—a man who had got through two fortunes in his time
and was now reduced to earning a scanty livelihood by literary hackwork
at the British Museum. Having given him the particulars of the
information he required, the Captain met him by appointment a couple of
days later.
“The only person I can find,” said Tring, “of the name specified by you
that seems likely to answer to your requirements, is a certain Sir
Gilbert Clare, of Withington Chase, Hertfordshire, the representative
of one of the oldest titles in the kingdom.”
Captain Verinder, having taken a note of the name and address in his
pocket-book and paid the other for his trouble, went his way. His next
step, the following morning, was to call on Giovanna with a request for
the loan of ten pounds.
“’Tis not for myself I ask it,” he said with one of the grandiloquent
airs in which he sometimes indulged. “It will be expended to the last
farthing in your service, my dear. I refrain from saying more at
present, save that in the course of a few days I hope to be the bearer
of news that will—well, that will astonish you very considerably.”
Vanna raised no objection to lending her uncle the amount he asked for,
although by this time she had seen enough of him to feel pretty sure
that she would never see a shilling of it back.
In the course of the following day Captain Verinder booked himself by
train to Mapleford, which station he had ascertained to be the nearest
to the point he was bound for. His object was to try to discover
whether the John Alexander Clare whom his niece had married so many
years before was in any way related to, or connected with, Sir Gilbert
Clare of Withington Chase.
The Captain having located himself at the best hotel, and partaken of a
dinner such as had been altogether beyond his means for a long time
past, proceeded to take a quiet stroll about the little town, which,
however, had nothing of interest to offer for his inspection. Later on
he found his way into the coffee-room of the hotel, which place, as he
had expected it would, drew to itself in the course of the evening a
round dozen or more of the better class of tradespeople and others, all
of whom, it was evident, were in the habit of frequently meeting there.
Here he found no difficulty in ascertaining everything about Sir
Gilbert that it concerned him to know. Thus, he learnt that Sir
Gilbert’s son by his first marriage had left England, after a quarrel
with his father, more than twenty years before, and that, a few years
later, news had come to hand that he had lost his life through some
accident abroad, only, nobody seemed to know either the nature of the
accident in question, or where it had happened. Further, the Captain
learnt that the second Lady Clare and her three sons were all dead, and
that Sir Gilbert, a broken, childless old man of seventy-four, was
living at the Chase in a seclusion that was rarely broken by any
visitor from the outside world.
It was on a Friday that the Captain went down to Mapleford, and the
following Monday saw him back in town. He had stayed in the country
over Sunday in order that he might be present at morning service at the
church, just beyond the precincts of the Chase, which Sir Gilbert made
a point of attending, and where several generations of his progenitors
were buried.
The Captain wanted to see for himself what kind of man Sir Gilbert was.
The latter arrived in due course, alone and on foot, and from the place
where he sat Verinder had an unimpeded view of him. When service was
over the Captain took a stroll round the church, pausing to look at
every monument and to read every inscription commemorative of dead and
gone members of the Clare family. One inscription, and one only, had
any special interest for him. It was that which recorded the death of
“John Alexander Clare, eldest son of Sir Gilbert Clare, who was
accidentally killed abroad” on such and such a date. “I would wager a
hundred pound note to a fiver—if I had one,” said the Captain with
emphasis, “that this tablet refers to Vanna’s husband and to no one
else. It’s altogether out of the question that there should have been
two John Alexander Clares living at the same time. And to think that
the young man has been dead for seventeen years and that his widow has
known nothing about it? What a fortunate thing it is for her that she
has got a man of the world like me at her back! From this day forward
her interests and mine are identical.”
A jubilant man was Captain Verinder when he went back to London next
day.
About midday on Tuesday he called on Giovanna at the boarding-house—one
largely frequented by foreigners—at which she had located herself for
the time being. That the news of which he was the bearer was a great
surprise to her hardly needs to be stated. It was both a surprise and a
shock, for although she had never really cared for Alec as a wife
should care for her husband, and had left him of her own accord and
under most cruel circumstances, through all the years which had
intervened since then his image had been often in her thoughts, but it
was as a man still living and in the prime of life that he had dwelt in
her memory. Consequently, to be told suddenly that he had met with a
violent death seventeen years before, which pointed to a time almost
immediately after her desertion of him, was enough to thrill her
through every fibre of her being.
Well, whatever uncertainty she might heretofore have felt with regard
to her husband’s fate had no longer any room for existence. She had
been a widow all these years without knowing it.
Before long the Captain went on to speak of Sir Gilbert, and to detail
all that he had heard in reference to him. He had always been rather
clever as an amateur sketcher, and could catch a likeness better than
most people, and he now took pencil and paper and with a few bold
strokes drew an outline portrait of the baronet. Pushing it across the
table to Vanna, he said: “Does that in any way resemble the English
_milor_ who travelled all the way to Catanzaro to see the Mr. John
Alexander who became your husband a little later?”
“Yes, that is the man,” said Vanna quietly when she had examined the
sketch.
“Ah; I thought as much,” remarked her uncle drily.
“And now that you have found out all this about Sir Gilbert Clare, in
what way does it, or can it, affect me?” queried Vanna presently.
The Captain regarded her with a pitying smile, as he might a child who
had asked him some utterly preposterous question.
“Cannot you see that the fact of your father-in-law being a rich and
childless man may be made—I say _made_—to affect your fortunes very
materially—very materially indeed? That is,” he added a moment after,
“if you only know how to put the knowledge thus acquired to a practical
use.”
Giovanna shook her head. It was evident that she could not in the least
comprehend what her uncle was driving at.
The Captain’s shoulders went up nearly to his ears. “What a very
fortunate thing it is, my dear, that at such an important crisis of
your life you have by your side a thorough man of the world like
myself—and one so completely devoted to your interests! Were you my own
child I could not entertain a greater regard and affection for you than
I do.”
Vanna sat grandly unmoved, her statuesque features betraying no
slightest trace of emotion.
“As cold as a marble goddess,” muttered the Captain under his breath as
he produced his cigar case, for he was a man who regarded smoking as
one of the necessaries of existence.
For a little space he smoked in silence; then all at once he said, as
if it were an echo of some thought he had been revolving in his mind:
“What a pity, what an enormous pity it is, that your child did not live
till now!”
A sudden spasm, gone almost as soon as it had come, contracted the
muscles of Vanna’s face; her teeth bit hard into her underlip; but
never a word answered she.
“Come,” said the Captain a few minutes later; “put on your things and
let us go for a stroll in the Park. It’s a lovely afternoon, and there
will be no end of swells in the Row.”
Nothing loth was Giovanna to comply. As yet she had seen hardly
anything of London, and what she had seen had not impressed her over
favourably. It had been one of the dreams of her life to see Hyde Park
in the height of the season, and now her dream was about to be
fulfilled. In ten minutes she was ready to set out.
The Captain chartered a hansom—it was the first time his niece had been
in one—telling the driver to take his time and go by way of Regent
Street and Piccadilly. Here at length was London as Vanna had imagined
it to be.
As the Captain had prophesied, the Row was crowded. They strolled about
for a while in the warm sunshine, and then found a couple of chairs
whence they could take in the varied features of the passing show at
their leisure. A proud man was Captain Verinder that day. In all that
gay and fashionable throng there were not, in his opinion, more than
three or four women who in point of looks were fit to be matched with
the one by his side—that is to say (to compare one thing with another),
if a rose may be considered to be in the perfection of its beauty when
it is fully blown, and not when it is merely a blushing bud of
undeveloped possibilities. Although nearing her fortieth birthday,
Giovanna—unlike the majority of her countrywomen, who age early—was
remarkably young-looking for her years. But then she was English on her
mother’s side, and that may have had something to do with the matter.
She was wearing a charming half-mourning costume, with bonnet to match,
which she had bought since her arrival in London. Many were the glances
of admiration of which she was the recipient, many the heads that were
turned for a second look at her tall figure, so stately and yet so
graceful, with her pale classic features, clear-cut as some antique
gem, as she threaded her way through the crowd with the proud composed
air of one “to the manner born.” Well might Captain Verinder feel proud
of his charge.
“Do you see that _blasé_-looking man driving that pair of splendid
chestnuts?” he said to Vanna a few minutes after they had sat down. “He
is Lord Elvaston, one of the greatest _roués_ about town. He used to
know me well enough before he came into his fortune a score of years
ago, when he was not above borrowing a five-pound note from anybody who
would lend him one. Now, of course, he passes me as if he had never set
eyes on me in his life. But such is the way of the world, more
especially of the world of fashion.”
Then a few minutes later, “Note that painted woman in the too palpable
wig being driven slowly past in her yellow chariot. That is Lady Anne
Baxendale. Her father was only a country rector on three hundred a
year. The rectory grounds adjoined those of the house where I was born.
Your mother, when a girl, and little Nan Cotsmore were great friends.
I’ve seen them play skipping-rope by the hour together.”
But Verinder had another motive in view in thus introducing his niece
to one of the most striking spectacles which the metropolis has to
offer for the delectation of the strangers within its gates. He wanted
to excite in her bosom a feeling which should be compounded in about
equal measure of envy and discontent—envy of those who, although, for
the passing hour, she seemed as one of themselves, were yet as far
removed from her by their wealth and position as if she and they were
inhabitants of two totally different spheres (which, indeed, in one
sense, they were); and discontent with the humble and prosaic
surroundings of her own obscure existence. If he had read Giovanna
aright, it seemed to him that it ought not to be a difficult matter to
foment within her the very undesirable sentiments in question.
“Are you sorry, my dear, that I brought you here this afternoon?” he
asked, after a longer pause than common.
“Sorry! oh no, how could I be? It is a beautiful sight. Nay, it is more
than beautiful, it is magnificent. This is London as I used to dream of
it.”
“But never, I’ll wager, with any thought that it might possibly one day
become a reality to you.”
“A reality, you mean, as far as it can become such to one who, like
myself, is a mere looker-on.”
“When I spoke of its becoming a reality to you, I did not mean merely
as a spectator, but as an actor in the show—a recognised actor in it
and acknowledged as one of themselves by the ‘smartest’ people here.”
Giovanna turned two deep wondering eyes on the Captain.
“You talk in riddles, Uncle,” she said quietly.
“You seem to forget, my dear—or rather, perhaps, I ought to say that
you fail sufficiently to realise in your thoughts—the position which
is, or ought to be, yours by right of your marriage with the late John
Alexander Clare. You are the widow of the heir of Withington Chase, the
daughter-in-law of a wealthy baronet of ancient family. As such, your
proper position is there—there, as one of the glittering throng passing
and repassing before our eyes. You ought to be riding in your own
brougham or barouche, with your own coachman and footman. You ought to
be wearing the family diamonds—who has so much right to them as
you?—and where is there another woman who would show them off to better
advantage? You ought to have your own little establishment in town,
with your own servants—say, a flat of six or seven rooms somewhere in
Belgravia, where you could invite your old uncle to come and see you as
often as you might feel inclined for his company. I repeat, that all
these things ought of right to be yours.”
Giovanna’s nostrils dilated, a hard cold glitter came into her eyes,
her bosom began to rise and fall more quickly than it was wont to do;
there was a chord in her somewhat lymphatic nature which responded to
her uncle’s words. Her own diamonds, her own carriage, her own
establishment in London, and, above all, to be transformed from a
nobody into a Somebody, and to have the great world of rank and fashion
recognise her as one of themselves! Oh, it was too much! The vision was
too dazzling. A low cry, half of pain, half of pleasure, broke from
her. The Captain was watching her out of a corner of his eye. But
presently a chill struck her and her face blanched a little. Turning to
Verinder, she said:
“But you seem to have forgotten, Uncle, that Sir Gilbert Clare does not
so much as know of my existence—nay, the chances are that he was not
even aware that his son was ever married.”
“But I mean him to be made aware both of one fact and the other before
he is very much older,” responded the Captain with a sinister smile.
“Ah! a spot or two of rain. We had better be moving.” Then, as they
rose: “There is only one course open to us, Vanna _mia_,” he whispered
meaningly, “and that is, to _find_ Sir Gilbert an heir.”