Produced by Peter Vachuska, Julia Miller, Martin Pettit
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net
PEOPLE OF POSITION
[Illustration: LALAGE]
PEOPLE OF POSITION
BY
STANLEY PORTAL HYATT
Author of "Little Brown Brother," "End of the Road," etc.
_With a Frontispiece by H. RICHARD BOEHM_
NEW YORK
WESSELS & BISSELL CO.
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
WESSELS & BISSELL CO.
_September_
THE PREMIER PRESS
NEW YORK
PROLOGUE
Grierson refilled the magazine of his rifle carefully--when you are
dealing with South American patriots it is better to take no chances,
even though the enemy has retreated--then he wiped a couple of
half-dried blood spots off his cheek, and, after that, went over to
where lay the body of the man from whom that same blood had spurted.
For a full minute he stood very still, gazing with sombre eyes at the
kindly face which seemed to be smiling back at him even in death; then
he knelt down, and, with infinite gentleness, smoothed the ruffled hair,
arranged the collar so as to hide the bullet hole in the bronzed throat,
and crossed the hands on the breast. When he got up again his face was
twitching strangely, seeing which, the American officer, who had come up
behind him, suddenly became busy with his men.
It was one of those stories which seldom get into the newspapers,
possibly because they are so utterly unimportant in themselves--a ragged
band of half-breeds robbing and murdering in the name of liberty; a
landing party of marines from the nearest warship, which happened to be
American; and a futile little fight ending, as usual, in the defeat of
the brigands. Only this time, an Englishman, who had gone out with the
marines, had been killed; and now Grierson, his friend, was trying to
realise the fact.
"He was awfully good to me, the whitest man that ever stepped. I met him
down the coast a year ago--my luck was right out--and he brought me
along with him. I hadn't had a proper meal for days, much less a smoke,
and he'd only my word for who I was. Yet he risked it, and I've been
here ever since." Grierson, who had been walking in silence beside the
marine officer, spoke suddenly.
The American nodded sympathetically. "It was hard luck to be killed by a
rotten Dago outfit like that. Whenever you get a coloured man talking
about liberty you know he's just prospecting round for a chance to break
the Eighth Commandment."
Grierson muttered a curse; then, as if he wanted to confide in someone,
possibly as a relief to his own feelings, "His partner will be here in a
week's time; he was on his way already. When he comes I shall clear out
and go home."
Captain Harben nodded again. "Meaning England?" he asked.
"Yes, England--London. I've had ten years knocking about the
world--China, India, Australia, and all round this forsaken continent;
and the sum total of what I've got to show for it is the fever and a
couple of knife scars in my back--patriots again, one Hindu, one
Peruvian. So I think I had better go home and begin afresh--if I can."
And he gave a bitter little laugh.
The American glanced sharply at the tall, thin figure and haggard face.
When they had started out that morning to drive the saviours of their
country out of the spirit stores they were looting, Grierson had struck
him as a keen youngster with a rather infectious laugh, and his
appreciation had been increased by the way in which the other had
dropped a running insurgent at four hundred yards' range; now, however,
the captain found himself wondering whether, after all, it was not too
late for his companion to talk of beginning life afresh.
At dinner that night he expressed his doubts to the Consul, who shook
his head. "Locke, the man they killed to-day, told me young Grierson had
been through a pretty rough time, touched rock bottom. He was going into
the British Army, but had to throw it up, and went out to the Orient for
some Company which failed soon after, leaving him stranded. Since then
everything he had been in has turned out wrong; and now this has
gone.... Queer how some men do get the cards dealt them that way....
He's clever, writes very well, and might have done something at it.
Locke's death will be an ugly blow to him." Being a kindly man and none
too successful himself, he sighed in sympathy, then mixed another whisky
and soda, and passed on to official matters.
A little later Captain Harben harked back to the former question. "He's
got plenty of pluck. He was all there when it came to a fight. I like
him."
"So do I," the other answered, "only I guess pluck of that sort won't
help him much in England, and you know, or at least I know, that a
fellow who's knocked about a lot doesn't suit civilisation, or
civilisation doesn't suit him--put it which way you like, the result is
the same. His nerves go under, somehow, and it ends so," nodding towards
the whisky bottle.
Meanwhile Grierson was sitting on the verandah of his dead employer's
house staring out into the night, and trying to make plans for the
future.
"Whatever happens, I don't mean to starve again," he muttered.
PEOPLE OF POSITION
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Marlow flicked a crumb off her dress with rather unnecessary care.
"I've had a most annoying letter from Jimmy to-day. It came by the
second post, after Henry had gone to the City, and quite upset me. His
employer, Mr. Locke, has been killed in some disgraceful riot, and now
Jimmy himself is coming home. Of course, in a way, I shall be glad to
see him, and so will the rest of the family; but I know he's got no
money, and no profession to fall back upon, and I cannot see what he is
going to do for a living. If I asked him to do so, I have no doubt Henry
would make a place for him in the office; but I am not going to have my
husband burdened with my brother. Henry is too generous as it is; and
the Stock Exchange is in such a fearful state now that it is difficult
to make a bare living." She sighed heavily, and glanced round the
expensively furnished drawing-room, as if wondering whether that
abominable tendency towards suspicion on the part of the public, which
was causing it to eschew all sorts of speculation, might not result in
her losing the few luxuries she did possess.
Her visitor, Mrs. Grimmer, wife of the junior partner in the well-known
City firm of Hornaday, Grimes, and Grimmer, dried fruit brokers, nodded
with an affectation of sympathy which she did not feel--the Marlows had
a touring car and a motor-brougham, whilst she had only a one-horse
carriage--and held out her cup to be refilled. She had known her hostess
for a good many years, over thirty in fact, ever since she and May
Marlow, who was then May Grierson and had thick flaxen plaits tied with
blue ribbon, had met at their first children's party. Walter Grierson,
the eldest of the family, now a City solicitor, had been eleven at that
time, whilst May had been seven and Ida five; but Jimmy had not arrived
until three summers later.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Grierson belonged to eminently solid families, whose
forebears for generations had looked to the City for their living. To
them, the Square Mile stood for Respectability, just as the West End
typified Laxity and Luxury; whilst outside these limits there was
nothing but the Lower Classes. They ignored the Underworld, possibly
because they knew nothing of it, more likely because it had no place in
their Scheme of Things, the two main articles of their creed being that
every man must choose an occupation early and abide by his choice, and
that every good woman must stay at home. The logical result of these
Grierson ancestors and their kind was the Victorian age, the exaltation
of the Supremely Bad in Art and the Supremely Proper in mankind. Mrs.
Grierson had been Victorian in the fullest sense of the word, and she
had lived and died with all her principles intact, believing in the
Evangelical Church, the respectability of wealth, and the evil
tendencies of modern thought. On the other hand, some alien strain had
crept into Mr. Grierson, and he had not accepted the family traditions
in their entirety; in fact, both his own relatives and those of his wife
had found much to criticise in his ideas. Had he been able to shake
himself free of the family, he would have liked nothing better than to
possess a ranch in America or a sheep station in New South Wales. All
his life, he longed, in secret, for open air, and freedom, and the
society of men whose interests did not stop at Temple Bar; but, in the
end, Fate, in the form of a business bequeathed him by his father, sent
him to the City, and he resolutely put his dreams on one side. The
inevitable happened. He was essentially an honourable man, and, not
understanding the meaning of Commercial Morality, he imagined that
other men in the City were the same; consequently, he met the fate of
he who of old went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, though there was no
Samaritan to sympathise; rather otherwise, in fact, for his fellows
shook their heads scornfully over his failure, whilst admiring the
business capacity of those into whose hands his capital had passed.
The process of Mr. Grierson's ruin had been a comparatively slow one,
the law requiring certain decencies to be observed in these matters; and
his wife was dead, and his three elder children grown up and married,
before the day when he discovered his own ruin, and took the quickest
way out of the troubles of this world. He was mad, of course; everyone
agreed on that point: not the least of the proofs being the fact that
the only message he left was a letter for Jimmy, who was then at
Sandhurst. The coroner had read the letter, and handed it back with a
remark that it had no bearing whatsoever on the case; but no one else
had seen it, nor had Jimmy given a hint of its contents to any of the
family. It concerned him alone, he said. He would have to leave
Sandhurst now and wanted to go abroad, and the others let him go, if not
gladly, at least without any great regrets. They were all provided for;
Walter was partner in a growing firm of solicitors; May had married
Henry Marlow, a stockbroker; whilst Ida's husband was, if not actually
in the City, at least very respectable, being a Northampton boot factor.
They were very fond of Jimmy, genuinely fond of him, both from the
purely correct point of view, as being their brother, and for his own
happy disposition; but, none the less, there had always been a certain
jealousy of their father's evident preference for him, a jealousy
mingled with surprise, or even resentment, Jimmy being essentially
unpractical, and almost unconventional. Moreover, they had never liked
the idea of his going to Sandhurst. None of the family had been in the
Service before; and it was a matter of common knowledge that no man
could make financial headway in the Army. So, when, through Mr. Marlow's
influence, the boy obtained a billet in China, the family heaved sighs
of relief, and though, throughout the next ten years, his sisters kept
up as regular a correspondence as his wanderings allowed, their home
concerns and increasing families inevitably weakened their interest in
him. They had their own circles, in which he had no part, though, on the
other hand, when he did think of England, which was often during those
years of hardship and disappointment, Jimmy always looked on them as
essentially his own people, to whom, one day, he would return, having no
one else....
Mrs. Grimmer sipped her tea slowly, and asked for further particulars
concerning the absent wanderer.
"Does he say what he proposes to do?"
Mrs. Marlow shook her head. "No, only that he's sick of knocking about,
and thinks he will try his luck at home. It's very selfish of him,
because he has never been a credit to us; and, of course, naturally,
everyone will know he's our brother."
"What has he done that wasn't--wasn't quite the thing?" the visitor
asked.
Mrs. Marlow looked a little puzzled. "Well, I don't know that there's
anything, exactly--at least that way. Only, Luke Chapman and her husband
met him in Calcutta three years ago--Mr. Chapman has a branch there, you
know--and Luke told me that he was doing nothing, and living at a queer
sort of hotel, where ships' officers and those sort of people stay, not
at all the thing. Then, you see, he's done no good. He's just as poor as
when he went out ten years ago."
"So he's done no harm and no good. Then you can keep an open mind about
him, May. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should try and find him a wife
with money. He's sure to be interesting, you know. Men who travel
usually are. Let me know when he comes back, as I should like to meet
him again. Well, good-bye, dear, and don't worry too much about your
black sheep. The colour may come off, or you may be able to get him
whitewashed."
"Edith Grimmer was very flippant about it," Mrs. Marlow complained to
her husband that evening, after she had shown him Jimmy's letter and had
heard his remarks thereon. "I didn't like her tone at all. She has grown
rather coarse lately, since they have got into that new set. They dine
in town a good deal now, and I'm sure they can't afford it. She's taken
to smoking cigarettes, too."
Her husband, a small man with a waxed moustache and the most perfect
fitting clothes, frowned heavily. There had been girls, in fact there
were still some, who might blow whole clouds of cigarette smoke in his
face and only evoke a laugh from him; but they had nothing to do with
his home life. Where the latter was concerned, he was very careful; and
he fully agreed with May's prejudices. Such things injured one's
position in the neighbourhood. "Edith is a very foolish woman," he said
severely. "And Grimmer is little more sensible. He was talking a great
deal of nonsense about South African mines when we were coming down in
the train this evening. Crossley and Merchant were in the carriage, and
I am sure they were pleased when I took him up sharply. I do not know
whether he is aware that I was interested in the promotion of the
Umchabeze Gold Dredging Syndicate; if so, his remarks were positively
insulting. It seems he lost money over it. So did other people; but I
can't help that." He threw his cigar end into the fire with a rather
vicious gesture.
His wife came across to his chair, put her hands on his shoulders, and
kissed him gently on the forehead. "Never mind, dear. You mustn't let
these silly people annoy you. I'm sorry now I worried you to-night about
my brother, Jimmy. I might have left it until the morning, when you
weren't tired."
He drew her face down to his and returned her kiss. She was perfectly
content for him to be away all day, even for several days when he went
golfing, and he was content to go; yet, in a sense, they were lovers
still, after the fashion of those whose way through life has been easy.
"You were quite right to mention it, dear," he said. "Of course we must
do what we can for him, have him to stay here when he lands, and so on.
I daresay he will be quite presentable, after all. Why, a man I know at
the club, Heydon, Amos Heydon, was in the East for twelve years, in a
bank I think, and you would never imagine he had been out of the City.
He's got all our ways."
Mrs. Marlow sighed. "I hope you're right, Henry. You usually are, and
you've had so much experience. But I wish we knew what he intended to do
for a living. He is thirty now, or nearly that, and ought to be in a
better position. The whole thing is most annoying. I must take care he
does not tell the children stories which will make them dream at
nights--Harold is sure to ask him for some, and you know what a memory
the boy has. Then, too, we don't want Jimmy proposing to any of the nice
girls we know, like Laura Stephens or May Cutler; for then we should
have to confess that he had no means of any sort, and it would be
horribly humiliating. See how well those young Cutlers have got on in
their father's office. Of course, Edith Grimmer knows that Jimmy is a
failure; but she won't talk about it."
Yet, at that very moment, Mrs. Grimmer was retailing the story of May's
troubles to her husband and a couple of guests who had been dining with
them.
"Jimmy always was a nice boy, not a bit of a prig. But he's not what you
can call a success; and I fancy the Marlows won't want to exhibit him.
Still, I shall have him to dinner and get some nice girls to meet him."
Grimmer laughed. He had not forgotten what had passed between Marlow and
himself in the train, and he was far from forgiving his loss over the
gold dredging syndicate. "Have him by all means, Edith, if you think it
will annoy those people. Besides, a Grierson who was interesting would
be quite a show animal."