THE ELDER BROTHER.
Oliver turned round sharply, with an air of visible impatience. He knew
the voice well enough, and the moon-light left him no doubt as to the
lineaments of a face with which he was quite familiar. Francis Trent was
not unlike either Rosalind or Oliver; but of the two he resembled his
sister rather than his younger brother. True, he did not possess her
beauty, but he had her sleepy eyes, her type of feature, her colorless
skin, and jetty hair. The colorlessness had degenerated, however, into
an unhealthy pallor, and the stubbly beard which covered his cheeks and
chin did not improve his appearance. Besides he was terribly out at
elbows; his coat was green with age, his boots were broken, and his
cuffs frayed and soiled. His hat was unnaturally shiny, and dented in
two or three places. Altogether he looked as unlike a brother of the
immaculate Oliver and the exquisitely-dressed Rosalind as could possibly
have been found for either in the world of London.
Oliver surveyed him with polite disgust, and waved him back a little.
"You have been drinking coarse brandy, Francis," he said, coolly; "and
you have been smoking bad tobacco. I wish you would consult my
susceptibilities on those points when you come to interview me. You
would really find it pleasanter in the end."
"Where am I to find the money to consult your susceptibilities with?"
asked the man, with a burst of what seemed like very genuine feeling.
"Will you provide me with it? If you don't, what remains for me but to
drink British brandy and smoke strong shag? I must drink something--I
must smoke something. Will you pay the piper if I go to more expense?"
"Not if you talk so loudly as to attract the attention of every passing
policeman," said Oliver, dryly. "If you want to talk to me, as you say
you do, keep quiet please."
Francis Trent growled something like an imprecation on his brother below
his breath, and then went on in a lowered tone.
"It's easy for you to talk. You are not saddled by a wife and a lot of
debts. _You_ haven't to keep out of the way for fear you should be
wanted by the police--although you have not been very particular about
keeping your hands clean after all. But you've been the lucky dog and I
the unlucky one, and this is the result."
"If you are going to be abusive, my good friend," said Oliver, calmly,
"I shall turn round and go home again. If you will keep a civil tongue
in your head I don't mind listening to you for five minutes. What have
you got to say?"
The man was evidently in a state of only half-repressed irritation. His
brows twitched, he gnawed savagely at his beard, he looked at Oliver
with furtive hate from under his heavy dark brows. But the younger man's
cool tones seemed to possess the power of keeping him in check. He made
a visible effort to calm himself as he replied,
"You needn't be so down on me, Oliver. You must allow for a fellow's
feeling a little out of sorts when he's kept waiting about here for
hours. I am convinced that Rosalind saw me this afternoon; I'm certain
that you saw me to-night. If I had not caught you now I would have gone
to the front door and hammered at it till one of you came out."
"And you think that you would have advanced your cause thereby?"
"Why, hang it all, Oliver, one would think that I was not your own flesh
and blood! Have you no natural affection left?"
"Not much. Natural affection is a mistake. You need not count on that
with me."
"You always were a cold-blooded, half-hearted sort of a fellow. Not one
to help a friend, or even a brother," said Francis, sullenly.
"Suppose you come to the point," remarked Oliver. "It is getting on to
eleven o'clock. I really can't stand here all night."
"It is nothing to you that I have stood here for hours already."
"No, it is not." There was a touch of sharpness in his tone. "I am in no
mood for sentiment. Say what you have to say and get done with it, or I
shall leave you."
"Well," said Francis, after a pause, in which he was perhaps estimating
his own powers of persuasion against his brother's powers of resistance,
and coming to the conclusion that it was not worth his while to contend
with him any longer, "I have come to say this. I am hard up--devilish
hard up. But that's not all. It is not enough to offer me a five-pound
note or a ten-pound note and tell me to spend it as I please. I want
something definite. You seem to have plenty of money: I have none. I
want an allowance, or else a sum of money down, sufficient to take Mary
and myself to the Colonies. I don't think that is much to ask."
"Don't you?"
The icy tone which Oliver assumed exasperated his brother.
"No, be hanged if I think it is!" he said vehemently, though still in
lowered tones. "I want two hundred a year--it's little enough: or two or
three thousand on the nail. Give me that, and I'll not trouble you or
Rosy any more."
"And where do you suppose that I'm to get two or three thousand pounds,
or two hundred a year?"
"I don't care where you get it, so long as you hand it over to me."
"Very sorry I can't oblige you," said Oliver, nonchalantly "but as your
proposition is a perfect impossibility, I don't see my way to saying
anything else."
"You think I don't mean it, do you?" growled his brother. "I tell you
that I will have it. And if I don't have it I'll not hold my tongue any
longer. I'll ruin you."
"Don't talk in that melodramatic way," said Oliver, quietly. But his lip
twitched a little as if something had touched him unpleasantly. "You
know very well that you have no more power of ruining me than you have
of flying to yonder moon. You can't substantiate any of your stories.
You can blacken me in the eyes of a few persons who know me, perhaps;
but really I doubt your power of doing that. People wouldn't believe
you, you know; and they would believe me. There is so much moral power
in a good hat and patent leather boots."
"Do you dare to trifle with me----" the man was beginning, furiously,
but Oliver checked him with a slight pressure on his arm, and went on
suavely.
"All this threatening sort of business is out of date, as you ought to
know. One would think that you had been to the Surrey-side Theatres,
lately, or the Porte St. Martin, and taken lessons of a stage villain.
'Beware! I will be revenged,' and all that sort of thing. It doesn't go
down now, you know. The fact is this--you can't do me any harm, you can
only harm yourself; and I think you had better be advised by me and hold
your tongue."
Francis was silent for a minute or two. He was evidently impressed by
Oliver's manner.
"You're right in one way," he said, in a much more subdued tone. "People
wouldn't listen to me because I am so badly dressed--I look so poor. But
that could be remedied. A new suit of clothes might make all the
difference, Oliver. And then we could see whether _some_ people would
believe me or not!"
"And what difference will it make to me if people did believe you?" said
Oliver, slowly.
The man stared at him open-mouthed. Oliver was taking a view of things
which was unknown to Francis.
"Well," he answered, "considering that you and most of my relations and
friends have cut me for the last ten years because I got into trouble
over a few accounts at the bank--and considering the sorry figure I cut
now in consequence--I don't know why you should be so careless of the
possibility of partaking my downfall! I should say that it would be
rather worse for you than it has been for me; and it hasn't been very
nice for _me_, I can assure you!"
Oliver's face grew a trifle paler, but his voice was as smooth as ever
when he began to speak.
"Now, look here, Francis," he said, "I'll be open and plain with you. Of
course, I know what you are alluding to; it would be weakness to pretend
that I did not. But I assure you that you are on the wrong track. In
your case you were found to have embezzled money, falsified accounts,
and played the devil with old Lawson's affairs generally. You were
prosecuted for it, and the whole case was in the papers. You got off on
some technical point, but everybody knew that you were guilty, and
everybody cut you dead--except, you will remember, your brother and
sister, who continued to give you money, and were exceedingly kind to
you. You were publicly disgraced, and there was no way of hushing the
matter up at all. I am sorry to be obliged to put things so
disagreeably----"
"Go on! You needn't apologize," said Francis, with a rather husky laugh.
"I know it all as well as you do. Go on."
"I wish to point out the difference between our positions," said Oliver,
calmly. "I did something a little shady myself, when I was a lad of
twenty--at your instigation, mind; I signed old Romaine's name in the
wrong place, didn't I? Old Romaine found it out, kept the thing quiet,
and said that he had given me the money. I expressed my regret, and the
matter blew over. What can you make out of that story?"
He spoke very quietly, but there was a watchfulness in his eye, a slight
twitching of his nostril, which proved him to be not entirely at his
ease. His elder brother laughed aloud.
"If that were all!" he said. "But you forget how base the action would
seem if all the circumstances were known! how black the treachery and
ingratitude to a man who was, after all, your benefactor. Rosalind never
knew of that little episode, I believe? And she has a good deal of
respect for her husband's memory. I should like to see what she would
say about it."
"She would not believe you, my dear boy."
"But if I could prove it? If I had in my possession a full confession
signed by yourself--the confession that Romaine insisted on, you will
remember? What effect would that have upon her mind? And there was that
other business, you know, about Mary's sister, whom you lured away from
her home and ruined. _She_ is dead, but Mary is alive and can bear
witness against you. How would you like these facts blazoned abroad and
brought home to the mind of the pretty girl whom I saw you kissing a
little while ago on the steps of a house in Upper Woburn Place? She is a
Miss Kenyon, I know: an actress; I have heard all about her. Her brother
is a doctor; and she has twenty thousand pounds in her own right."
"You do seem, indeed, to know everything," said Oliver, with a sneer.
"I make it my business to know everything about you. You've been so
confoundedly mean of late that I had begun to understand that I must put
the screw on you. And I warn you, if you don't give me what I ask, or
promise to do so within a reasonable time, I shall first go to Rosalind,
and then to these Kenyon people, and Caspar Brooke, and all these other
friends of yours, and see what they will give me for your secrets."
"They'll kick you out of the house, and you'll be called a fool for your
pains," said the younger man, furiously.
"No, I don't think so. Not if I play my game properly. You are engaged
to Miss Kenyon, are you not?" Oliver stood silent.
"I tell you that she shall never marry you in ignorance of your past
unless you shut my mouth first. And you are the best judge of whether
she will marry you at all or not, when she knows what we know."
Then the two brothers were both silent for a little while. Oliver stood
frowning, tracing a pattern on the pavement with the toe of his polished
boot, and gazing at it. He was evidently considering the situation.
Francis stood with his back to the railings, his eyes fixed, with a
somewhat crafty look, upon his brother's face. He was not yet sure that
his long-cherished scheme for extracting money from Oliver would
succeed. He believed that it would; but there was never any counting
upon Oliver. Astute as Francis considered himself (in spite of his
failure in the world), Oliver was astuter still.
Presently Oliver looked up and met Francis' fixed gaze. He started a
little, and made an odd grimace, intended to conceal a nervous twitch of
the muscles of his face. Then he spoke.
"You think yourself very clever, no doubt. Well, perhaps you are. I'll
acknowledge that, in a certain sense, you might spoil my game for me.
Not quite in the way you think, you know; but up to a certain point. As
I don't want to have my game spoilt, I am willing to make a bargain with
you--is that plain?"
"Fair sailing, so far," said Francis, doggedly. "Go on. What will you
give?"
"Nothing just now. The sum you named on the day when I marry Ethel
Kenyon, on condition that you give me back that confession you talk
about, swear not to mention your wife's sister, and take yourself off to
Australia."
"Hm!" said Francis considering. "So I have brought you to terms, have I?
So much the better for you--and perhaps for me. Are you engaged to Miss
Kenyon?"
"I asked her to-night to marry me, and she consented."
"You always were a lucky dog, Oliver," said Francis, with almost a
wistful expression on his crafty face. "I never could see how you
managed it, for my part. If that pretty girl"--with a laugh--"knew all
that I knew----"
"Exactly. I don't want her to know all you do. Are you going to agree to
my terms or not?"
"I should have said they were _my_ terms," said the elder brother, "but
we won't haggle about names. Say two thousand five hundred pounds down?"
"No, two thousand," said Oliver, boldly. "That will suit me better than
two hundred a year."
"Ah, you want to get rid of me, don't you? How soon is it likely to be?"
"Oh, that I can't tell you. As soon as she fixes the day."
"I swear by all that I hold sacred," said Francis, with sudden energy,
"that I won't wait more than six months, and then I'll take two
thousand."
"Six? Make it twelve. The girl may want a year's freedom."
"I won't wait twelve. I swear I won't. I'm tired of this life. I can't
get any work to do, though I've tried over and over again. And I'm
always unlucky at play. There's Mary threatening to go out to work
again. If we were in another country, with a clear start, she should not
have to do that."
Oliver meditated. It did not seem to him likely that Ethel would refuse
to marry him in six months' time, but of course it was possible. Still
he was pretty sure that he could get the money advanced as soon as his
engagement was noised abroad. It was rather a pity that he would have to
publish it so soon--especially when his projects respecting Lesley
Brooke had not been carried out--but it could not be helped. The
prospect of ridding himself of his brother Francis was most welcome to
him. And--if he could quiet him by promises, it might perhaps not be
necessary to pay him the money after all.
"Well," he said, at last, "I promise it within six months, Francis. On
the conditions I named, of course."
"And you will keep your word?" said Francis, looking suspiciously into
his brother's smooth, pale face.
"If not," answered Oliver, airily, "you have the remedy in your own
hands, you know. You can easily bring me to book. And now that this
interesting conversation is ended, perhaps you will kindly allow me to
go home? The night is fine, but I am a good deal chilled with
standing----"
"And what am I, then? I've been waiting for you, off and on, for hours.
And I haven't got a shilling in my pocket, either. Haven't you got a
pound or two to spare, Oliver? For the sake of old times, you know."
Some men would have found it pitiful to hear poor Francis Trent, with
his broken-down, cringing, crafty look, thus sueing for a sovereign. For
he had the air of a ruined gentleman, not of an ordinary beggar, and the
signs of refinement in his face and bearing made his state of abasement
and destitution more apparent. But Oliver was not touched by any such
sentimental considerations. He looked at first as if he were about to
refuse his brother's request; but policy dictated another course. He
must not drive to desperation the man in whose hands lay his character
and perhaps his future fortune. He put his hand into his pocket, brought
out a couple of sovereigns, and dropped them into Francis' greedily
outstretched palm. Then he crossed the road towards his sister's house,
while the elder brother slunk away with an air of anything but triumph.
It was sad to see him so depressed, so broken-spirited, so hopeless. For
he had been meant for better things. But his will was weak, his
principles had never been settled, and with his first lapse from honesty
all self-respect seemed to leave him. Thenceforth he went down hill, and
would long ago have reached the bottom but for the one helping hand that
had been held out to stay him in his mad career. That hand belonged to
none of his kith and kin, however. It was seamed and roughened and
reddened by honest toil; but the toil had at least been honest and the
toiler's love for the fine gentleman for whom she worked was loving and
sincere. To cut a long story short, Francis Trent had married a
dressmaker of the lower grade, and a dressmaker, moreover, who had once
been a ladies'-maid.
While he slouched away to his poverty-stricken home, and Oliver solaced
himself with a novel and a cigar, and Miss Ethel Kenyon sank to sleep
in spite of a tumult of innocent delight which would have kept a person
of less healthy mind and body wide awake for hours, Lesley Brooke, who
was to influence the fate of all these three, lay upon her bed bemoaning
her loneliness of heart, and saying to herself that she should never be
happy in her father's house. It was not that she had met with any
positive unkindness: she could accuse nobody of wishing to be rude or
cold, but the atmosphere was not one to which she was accustomed, and it
gave her considerable discomfort. Even the Mrs. Romaine of whom her
father spoke as if she would be a friend, was not very congenial to her.
Rosalind's eyes remained cold, despite their softness, and Lesley was
vaguely conscious of a repulsion--such as we sometimes feel on touching
a toad or a snake--when Mrs. Romaine put her hand on the girl's listless
fingers. No, what it was Lesley could not tell, but she was sure of
this, that she could never like Mrs. Romaine.
And she cried herself to sleep, and dreamed of the convent and the sunny
skies of France.