TWELVE SILVER SPOONS.
Lady Alice was not long in finding out that Maurice Kenyon, her
husband's chief friend, was the man of whom Lesley had spoken in her
letters, and also the doctor who had interested her at the hospital. She
did not speak to Lesley about him: she took a little time to accustom
herself to her husband's circle before she made any remarks upon its
members. But she was shrewd enough to see very quickly that Mr. Kenyon
took even more interest in her daughter than in her husband, and from
Lesley's shy looks she fancied that the interest was reciprocated. She
had a twinge of regret for her favorite, Harry Duchesne, and then
consoled herself by saying that after all Lesley was too young to know
her own mind, and that probably she would change before she was
twenty-one.
She did not come particularly into contact with Maurice, however, until
the Sunday after she had taken up her abode in Woburn Place. And then
she saw a good deal of him. For Lesley went to sit with Ethel as was her
wont, and Maurice came to dine at Mr. Brooke's. After the early dinner,
Lady Alice noticed that there was some parleying between the guest and
his host.
"I am going," said Maurice in an urgent undertone. To which Caspar
returned a cheerful answer.
"All right, old man; but I am going too." And then Mr. Kenyon knitted
his brows and looked vexed.
Caspar at once noted his wife's glance of inquiry. "Has Lesley told you
nothing about our Sunday meetings at the Club? We generally betake
ourselves to North London on a Sunday afternoon. Mr. Kenyon thinks I had
better stay with you, and--I don't."
From Maurice's uncomfortable looks, Lady Alice gathered that there was
something doubtful in the proceeding. "Will you let me go with you?" she
said, by way of experiment.
There was an exchange of astonished and rather embarrassed looks all
round. Caspar elevated his eyebrows and clutched his beard: Miss Brooke
made a curious sound, something like a snort; and Maurice flushed a deep
and dusky red; indications which all annoyed Lady Alice, although she
did not quite know what they signified. She rose from her chair and took
the matter into her own hands; but all without the slightest change in
the manner of graceful indifference which had grown natural to her of
late years.
"That is the place where Lesley used to go," she said. "She tells me she
sings to the people sometimes. I cannot sing, but I can play the piano a
little, if that is any good. Sophy is going, is she not? And I should
like to go too."
"There is no reason why you should not," said Mr. Brooke rather
abruptly. But the gleam in his eye told of pleasure. "There are some
very rough characters at the club sometimes, you know. And perhaps the
reception they give me to-day will not be of the pleasantest."
Lady Alice looked at her husband with a mixture of wonder and
admiration. The calm way in which he sometimes alluded to his present
circumstances, without a trace of bitterness or fretfulness, amazed her.
In old days she would have put it down to "good breeding--good manners,"
some superficial veneer of good society of which she thoroughly
approved; but she had seen too much of the seamy side of "good society"
now to be able to accept this explanation of his calmness. It was not
want of sensitiveness, she was sure of that: he was by no means obtuse:
it was simply that his large, strong nature rose above the pettiness of
resentment and complaint. The suspicion under which he labored was a
grave thing--a trouble, a blow; but it had not made him sour, nor borne
him to the earth with a conviction of the injustice of mankind.
His wife looked and marveled, but recollected herself in time to say
after only a minute's hesitation:
"I know a little more about rough characters than I once did. We saw a
good many at the East End hospital, did we not, Mr. Kenyon?"
It was the first time that she had shown that she remembered Maurice's
face. Caspar pricked up his ears.
"_You_ at a hospital, Alice? Why, what were you doing there?"
"Visiting some of the patients," she answered, with a little blush.
"Visits which were much appreciated," put in Maurice, "although we found
that Lady Alice was too generous."
"Until I was warned by one of the patients that the others abused my
kindness and traded on it," said Lady Alice, laughing rather nervously,
"and then I drew in a little."
"What patient was that?"
"The name I think was Smith--the man who lost his memory in that curious
way."
"Ah yes, I remember." And then Maurice knitted his brows and became very
thoughtful: he looked as if a thoroughly new idea had been suggested to
him.
Miss Brooke remarked that it was almost time to set out if they were to
go to the club that afternoon, and Lady Alice went to her room for her
cloak. She was before the looking-glass, apparently studying the
reflection of her own face, when a knock at the door, to which she
absently said "Come in," was followed by Caspar's entrance. She,
thinking that it was her maid, did not look round, and he came behind
her without being perceived. The first token of his presence was
received by her when his arm was slipped round her waist, and his voice
said caressingly and almost playfully in her ear, "I don't know that I
want my dainty piece of china carried down into the slums."
"Am I nothing more to you than that?" said Lady Alice reproachfully.
He made no answer, but as he looked at the fair face in the glass, and
as their eyes met, she thought that she read a reply in his glance.
"I have been nothing more--I know," she said, with sudden humbleness,
"but if it is not too late--if I can make up now for the time I have
lost----"
The tears trembled in her eyes, but he kissed them away with new
tenderness, saying in a soothing tone--
"We will see, my dear, we will see. I was only in jest."
And she felt that he was thinking not only of the lost years, but of the
possible gulf before him--that horror of darkness and disgrace which
they might yet have to face.
She went downstairs to the cab that was waiting, with a new and subduing
sensation very present to her mind: a sense of something missed out of
her own life, a sense of having failed in the duty that had once been
given her to do. Hitherto she had been buoyed up by a certain confidence
in her own conscientiousness and power of judgment, as most rather
narrow-minded women are; but it now occurred to her that she might have
been wrong--not only in a few details, as she had consented to
admit--but wrong from beginning to end. She had marred not only her own
life but the lives of her husband and her child.
This consciousness kept her very quiet during the drive to Macclesfield
Buildings. But nobody spoke much, except Doctor Sophy, who made
interjectional remarks, half lost in the rattling of the cab, by way of
trying to keep up everybody's spirits. Caspar sitting opposite his wife,
with his arms folded and his long legs carefully tucked out of the way,
had an unusually serious and even anxious expression. Indeed it struck
Lady Alice for the first time that he was looking haggard and ill. The
burden was weighing upon him even more than he knew. Maurice, too,
seemed absorbed in thought, so that the drive was not a particularly
lively one.
They got out at the block of buildings which had once struck Lesley as
so particularly ugly. Perhaps their ugliness did not impress Lady Alice
so much. At any rate she made no remark upon it. Her fingers were
lightly pressed upon Caspar's arm: her thoughts were occupied by him.
At the door of the block in which the club-rooms were situated, a little
group of men were standing in somewhat aimless fashion, smoking and
talking among themselves. Caspar recognized several of the club members
in this group. "Ah," he said quietly to his wife, "they thought that I
should not come." She made no answer: as a matter of fact she began to
feel a trifle frightened. These rough-looking men, with their pipes, who
nudged each other and laughed as she passed, were of a kind unknown to
her. But Caspar walked through them easily, nodding here and there, with
a cheery "Good-afternoon."
Lady Alice did not know it, but the room presented an unusual sight to
her husband's eyes that afternoon. The fire was burning, and the gas was
lighted, for the day was cold and damp: the comfortable red-seated
chairs were as inviting as ever, and the magazines and newspapers lay
in rows upon the scarlet table-cloth. There were flowers in the vases,
and a piece of music on the open piano. Lady Alice exclaimed in her
pleasure, "How pretty it is! how cosy!" and wondered at the gloom that
sat upon her husband's brow.
The room was cosy and pretty enough--but it was empty.
Caspar looked round mutely, then glanced at his companions. Miss Brooke
paused in the act of taking off one woollen glove, and opened her mouth
and forgot to shut it again. Maurice stood frowning, twitching his brows
and biting his lips in the effort to subdue a torrent of rage that was
surging up in his heart. He would have sworn, he said afterwards, if
Lady Alice had not been there--he did not mind Doctor Sophy so much. All
that he did now, however, was to mutter "Ungrateful rascals," and make
as if he would turn to flee.
But he was stopped by Caspar's clutch at his arm. Maurice saw that his
purpose--that of haranguing the men outside--had been divined and
arrested. He turned to his friend and saw for the first time on Caspar's
face that the shaft had gone home. He had shown scarcely any sign of
suffering before.
"I don't deserve this from them," said Brooke quietly, and Maurice could
tell that he had gone rather white about the lips. Then in a still lower
voice, "Don't let her know. You were right, Maurice; I had better not
have come."
"I'll just go and look outside: I won't speak to them, don't be
afraid--you talk to Lady Alice," said Maurice breaking from him. But
when he got into the dark little entry, he did not look outside for
anything or anybody: he only relieved himself by exclaiming. "Oh, d--n
the fools!" and shaking his first in a very reprehensible way at some
imaginary crowd of auditors. For Maurice was half an Irishman, and his
blood was up, and on his friend's behalf he was, as he would just then
have expressed it, "in a devil of a rage." While he was executing a sort
of mad war-dance on the jute mat in the passage, relieving his mind by
some wild gesticulation and still wilder objurgation of the world, Mr.
Brooke had turned back to his wife with a pleasant word and smile.
"I must show you the photographs," he said. "We are very proud of them.
There will be plenty of time, for the members seem to be a little late
in getting together to-day. Possibly they thought I was not coming."
"It is scarcely time yet," said Miss Brooke heroically. She knew it was
ten minutes past, but she was quite prepared to sacrifice truth for the
maintenance of her brother's dignity.
"That's a good one of the Parthenon," said Caspar negligently, putting
his hand within his wife's arm, and leading her from one picture to
another. "The Coliseum you see: not quite so clear as it might be. These
frames were made by one of the men in the buildings--given as a present
to the club. Not bad taste, are they? And this statuette----".
He broke off suddenly. He had been going on hurriedly and feverishly,
filling up the time as best he might, trying to forget the embarrassing
situation into which he had brought his wife and himself, when the sound
of heavy footsteps fell upon his ear. A sound of shuffling, the creak of
men's boots, a little gruff whispering in the doorway--what was it all
about? Were the men whom he had helped and guided going to turn against
him openly--to give him in his wife's presence some other insult beside
the tacit insult of their absence? He turned round sharply, with the
feeling that if he was brought to bay the men would have a bad time of
it. He certainly looked a formidable antagonist. The hair had fallen
over his forehead, his brows were knotted, his eyes gleamed rather
fiercely beneath them, his under lip was thrust out aggressively. "As
fierce as a lion," said one of the observers, afterwards. But even while
his eyes darted flame and fury at the men who had deserted them, his
body kept its half-protecting, half-deferential pose with respect to
Lady Alice; and the hand that held her arm was studiously gentle in its
touch.
Lady Alice turned round, amazed. There was a little crowd in the
passage: the room was already half full. Men and women too were there,
and more crowded in from behind. There must have been nearly fifty, when
all were seen, and there were more men than women. But they did not sit
down: they stood, they leaned against the walls; one or two mounted on
the benches at the back and stood where they could get a good view of
the proceedings. Caspar's scowl remained fixed, but it was a scowl of
astonishment. He looked round for Maurice, whom he presently saw
beckoning to him to take his usual place near the piano. He said a word
to his wife, and brought her round with him towards his sister and his
friend. The men still stood, and crowded a little nearer to him as he
reached his place. There was very little talking in the room, and the
men's faces looked somewhat solemn: it was evidently a serious occasion.
"Is this--this--what usually goes on?" queried the puzzled Lady Alice.
"This? Oh no!" said Maurice, to whom she had addressed herself, with a
sudden happy laugh, and a perfectly beaming face. "_This_ is--a
demonstration. Here, Caspar, old man, you've got to stand here. _Now_,
Gregson."
Lady Alice accepted the chair offered to her, and Miss Brooke another.
Caspar began to look utterly perplexed, but a little relieved also, for
his eye, in straying over the crowd, had recognized two or three faces
as those of intimate friends who seemed to be mingling with the men, and
he felt sure that they had no inimical purpose towards him. All that he
could do was to look down and grasp his beard, as usual, while Jim
Gregson, the man who had once spoken to Lesley so warmly of her father,
being pushed forward by the crowd as their spokesman, addressed himself
to Caspar.
"Mr. Brooke--Sir: We have made bold to change the order of the
proceedings for this 'ere afternoon. Instead of beginning with the
music, we just want to say a few words; and that's why we've come in all
at once, so as to show that we are all of one mind. We think, sir, that
this is a very suitable opportunity for presenting you with a mark of
our--our gratitude and esteem. We have always found you a true friend to
us, and an upright man that would never allow the weak to be trampled
on, nor the poor to be oppressed, and we wish to show that whatever the
newspapers may say, sir, we have got heads on our shoulders and know a
good man when we see him." This sentence was uttered with great
emphasis, to an accompaniment of "Hear, hear," from the audience, and
considerable stamping of feet, umbrellas and sticks. "What we wish to
say, sir," and Mr. Gregson became more and more embarrassed as he came
to this point, "is that we respect you as a man and as a gentleman, and
that we take this opportunity of asking you to accept this small tribute
of our feelings towards you, and we wish to say that there's not a
member of the club as has not contributed his mite towards it, as well
as many poor neighbors in the Buildings. It's a small thing to give,
but that you will excuse on account of the shortness of the notice, so
to speak: the suggestion having been made amongst ourselves and by
ourselves only three days ago. We beg you'll accept it as a token of
respect, sir, from the whole of the Macclesfield Buildings Working Men's
Club, of which you was the founder, and which we hope you'll continue
for many long years to be the president _of_." And with a resounding
emphasis on the preposition, Mr. Gregson finished his speech. A
tremendous salvo of applause followed his last word, and before it had
died away a woman was hastily dragged to the front, with a child--a
blue-eyed fairy of two or three years old--in her arms. The child held a
brown paper parcel, and presented it with baby solemnity to Mr. Brooke,
who kissed her as he took it from her hands. And then, under cover of
more deafening applause, Mr. Brooke turned hurriedly to Maurice and
said, in a very unheroic manner--
"I say, I can't stand much more of this. I shall make a fool of myself
directly."
"Do: they'll like it, the beggars!" returned Maurice in high glee.
But he had more sympathy in his eyes than his words expressed, and the
grip that he gave his friend's hand set the audience once more
applauding enthusiastically. An audience of Londoners with whom a
speaker is in touch, is one of the most sympathetic and enthusiastic in
the world.
While they applauded, the parcel was opened. It contained a morocco
case, lined with dark blue satin and velvet--an unromantic and prosaic
expression of as truly high and noble feeling as ever found a vent in
more poetic ways--and on the velvet cushion lay--twelve silver spoons!
There was an odd little touch of bathos about it, and an outsider might
perhaps have smiled at the way in which the British workman and his wife
had chosen to manifest their faith in the man who had been in their eyes
wrongfully accused; but nobody present in the little assembly saw the
humorous side of it at all, not even a young gentleman who was hastily
making a sketch of it for the _Graphic_, for he blew his nose as
vigorously as anybody else. And there was a good display of
handkerchiefs and some rather troublesome coughing and choking in the
course of the afternoon, which showed that the donors of the spoons did
not look on the gift exactly in the light of a joke.
Mr. Brooke was a practised speaker; and when he opened his lips to
reply, his sister dried her eyes and put down her handkerchief with a
gratified smile as much as to say, "Now we shall have a treat." And she
settled herself so that she could watch the effect of the speech on Lady
Alice, who had forgotten to wipe her tears away, and sat with eyelashes
wet and cheeks slightly flushed, looking astoundingly young and pretty
in the excitement of the moment. But Miss Brooke was doomed to be
disappointed. Caspar began once, twice, thrice--and broke down
irrevocably. The only intelligible words he got out were, "My dear
friends, I can't tell you how I thank you." And that was quite true: he
couldn't.
But there was all the more applause, and all the more kindly feeling for
that failure of his to make a speech; and then one or two other men
spoke of the good that Mr. Brooke had done in that neighborhood, and of
the help that he had given them all in founding the club, and of the
brave and encouraging words that he had spoken to them, and so on; and
the young artist for the _Graphic_ sketched away faster and faster, and
said to himself, "My eye, there'll be a precious row if they try to hang
him after this, whatever he's done." But the sensation of the afternoon
was yet to come.
"I can only say once more, my friends," said Caspar, as the hour wore
away, "that I thank you for this expression of your confidence in me,
and that I have never had a prouder moment in my life than this, in
which you tell me of your own accord that you believe in my innocence of
the crime attributed to me. Of that, however, I will not speak. I wish
only, before we separate, to introduce you to my wife, who has never
been here before, and whom I am sure you will welcome for my sake."
There was a moment of astonishment. Every one knew something of the
story of Caspar's married life, and was taken aback by the appearance of
his wife. But when Maurice Kenyon led the way by clapping his hands
vigorously, someone took up the word, and cried, "Three cheers for Mrs.
Brooke." And Lady Alice started at the new title, and thought that it
sounded much better than the one by which she was usually known.
"Shall I say any more?" said Caspar, smiling as he stooped down to her.
But suddenly she rose to her feet and put her hand within his arm. "No,"
she said, "I am going to do it myself."
The storm of clapping was renewed and died away when it was perceived
that Lady Alice was about to speak. She was a little flushed, but
perfectly self-possessed, and her clear silvery voice could be heard in
every corner of the room.
"I wish to thank you, too," she said, "for your kindness to my husband
and myself. I hope I shall know more of his work here by and by, and in
the meantime I can only tell you that you are right to trust him and
believe in him--as _I_ trust him and believe in him with all my heart
and soul!"
She turned to him a little as she spoke, her eyes shining, her face
transfigured--the faith in her making itself manifest in feature and in
gesture alike. There was not applause so much as a murmur of assent when
she had done; and Caspar, laying hold of her hand, looked down at her
with a new warmth of tenderness, and said half wonderingly,
"Why, Alice!"
"Do you think I could let them go without telling them what you are to
me?" she said, with a kind of passion in her voice which reminded him of
Lesley. But there was no time to say more, for every person in the room
presented himself or herself to shake hands with Caspar and his wife,
and to admire the spoons, which had been purchased only the night
before.
"Very glad to see you amongst us, Mrs. Brooke, mum; and hope you'll come
again," was heard so often that Lady Alice was quite amazed by the
warmth of the greeting. "And the young lady too--where's she? she ought
to have been here as well," said one woman; to which Maurice Kenyon
responded in a pleased growl--
"Yes, confound your blundering, so she ought; and so she would have
been, if you hadn't nearly made such a blessed mull of the whole
affair."
He did not think that anybody heard him, and was rather taken aback when
Lady Alice smiled at him over her shoulder. "What do you mean, Mr.
Kenyon?" she said.
Maurice was on his good behavior immediately. "Oh, nothing, Lady Alice;
only that Miss Brooke might have been here if we had only had a hint
beforehand, and it is a pity she should have missed it."
"A great pity," said Lesley's mother; and she looked quite complacently
at the twelve silver spoons, which she was guarding so jealously, as if
she feared they would be taken away from her.
Outside the doors, when the assembly had reluctantly dispersed, after an
improvised collation, given by Caspar, of hot drinks and plum cake, a
little crowd of men and boys cheered the departing hero of the day so
valiantly that Lady Alice was almost glad to find herself once more
driving through the dusky London streets with her husband at her side.
Miss Brooke and Maurice had elected to walk home.
"There's one thing," said Caspar, rather later in the day, as a history
of these experiences was unfolded to Lesley; "we quite, forgot to tell
the good folks your mother's name and title. She was applauded to the
echo as 'Mrs. Brooke.'"
"Oh, you must never tell them," said Lady Alice, hastily. "I do not want
to be anything else, please--now."
"I wish they had let one know beforehand," said Maurice, "they kept it a
dead secret--even from me."
"All the greater surprise for us," said Mr. Brooke. Then he looked at
Maurice for a moment, and smiled. But it was long before they mentioned
to each other what both had thought and felt in that heart-breaking
minute of suspense when they believed that Caspar was deserted in the
hour of need.
"Well," said Caspar Brooke, at length, "whatever may happen now"--and he
made a pause which was fraught with graver meaning than he would have
cared to put into words--"I can feel at any rate that 'I have had my
say.' And you, Alice--well, my dear, you will always have those silver
spoons to look at! So we have not done badly after all."
Like Sir Thomas More, he would have joked when going to the scaffold;
but jokes under such circumstances have rather a ghastly sound in the
ears of his family.