A REVERSIONARY INTEREST
Although Dorothea could assume on occasions so bright an exterior as I
have in a previous chapter endeavoured to describe, her normal state
was undoubtedly that which is best conveyed by the epithet "grimy."
Old Mr. Bargrave, walking serenely into his office at eleven, and
meeting this handmaiden on the stairs, used to wonder how so much
dirt could accumulate on the human countenance, when irrigated, as
Dorothea's red eyelids too surely testified, by daily tears. Yes, she
had gone about her work of late with a heavy heart and a moody brow.
Hers was at best a dull dreary life, but in it there grew a noxious
weed which she was pleased to cherish for a flower. Well, it was
withering every day before her eyes, and all the tears she could shed
were not enough to keep it alive. Ah! when the ship is going down
under our very feet I don't think it much matters what may be our rank
and rating on board. The cook's mate in the galley is no less dismayed
than the admiral in command. Dorothea's light, so to speak, was only
a tallow-candle, yet to put it out was to leave the poor woman very
desolate in the dark. So Mr. Bargrave ventured one morning to ask if
she felt quite well; but the snappish manner in which his inquiries
were met, as though they masked a load of hidden sarcasm and insult,
caused the old gentleman to scuffle into his office with unusual
activity, much disturbed and humiliated, while resolved never so to
commit himself again.
Into that office we must take the liberty of following him, tenanted
as it is only by himself and Tom Ryfe.
The latter, extremely well dressed, wears a posy of spring flowers at
his buttonhole, and betrays in his whole bearing that he is under some
extraneous influence of an unbusinesslike nature. Bargrave subsides
into his leather chair with a grunt, shuffles his papers, dips a pen
in the inkstand, and looks over his spectacles at his nephew.
"Waste of time, waste of capital, Tom," says he, with some irritation.
"Mind, I washed _my_ hands of it from the first. You've been at work
now for some months; that's _your_ look-out and it's been kept apart
and separate from the general business--that's _mine_."
"I've got Tangle's opinion here," answered Tom; "I won't ask you to
look at it, uncle. He's dead against us. Just what you said six months
back. There's no getting over that trust-deed, nor through it,
nor round it, nor any way to the other side of it. I've done _my_
d----dest, and we're not a bit better off than when we began."
He spoke in a cheerful, almost an exulting tone, quite unlike a man
worsted in a hard and protracted struggle.
"I'm sorry for the young lady," observed Bargrave; "but I never
expected anything else. It's a fine estate, and it must go to the male
heir. She has but a small settlement, Tom, very inadequate to her
position, as I told poor Mr. Bruce many a time. He used to say
everything would be set right by his will, and now one of these girls
is left penniless, and the other with a pittance, a mere pittance,
brought up, as I make no doubt she was, to believe herself an
heiress."
"One of them!" exclaimed Tom. "What do you mean?"
"Why, that poor thing who was born a few weeks too soon," answered
Bargrave. "She's totally unprovided for. With regard to Miss Bruce,
there is a settlement. Two hundred a year, Tom, for life; nothing
more. I told you so when you undertook the job. And now who's to pay
your costs?"
"Not you, uncle," answered Tom flippantly, "so don't distress yourself
on that score."
"I don't, indeed," observed Bargrave, with emphasis.
"You've had your own time to work this, on the understanding, as you
know, that it was to be worked at your own risk. I haven't interfered;
it was no affair of mine. But your costs will be heavy, Tom, I can't
help seeing that. Tangle's opinion don't come so cheap, you see,
though it's word for word the same as mine. I would have let _you_
have it for nothing, and anybody else for six and eightpence."
"The costs _will_ be heavy," answered Tom, still radiant. "I should
say a thou. wouldn't cover the amount. Of course, if we can't get them
from the estate, they must come out of my pocket."
Bargrave's eyebrows were raised. How the new school went ahead, he
thought. Here was this nephew of his talking of a thousand pounds with
an indifference verging on contempt. Well, that was Tom's look-out;
nevertheless, on such a road it would be wise to establish a
halting-place, and his tone betrayed more interest than common while
he asked--
"You won't take it into Chancery, Tom, will you?"
The younger man laid his forefinger to the side of his nose, winked
thrice with considerable energy, lifted his hat from its peg, adjusted
his collars in the glass, nodded to his uncle, muttering briefly,
"Back in two hours," and vanished.
Old Bargrave looked after him with a grim, approving smile. "Boy or
man," said he aloud, "that chap always knew what he was about. Tom can
be safely trusted to take care of Number One."
He was wrong, though, on the present occasion. If Mr. Ryfe did indeed
know what he was about, there could be no excuse for the enterprise on
which he had embarked. He was selfish. He would not have denied his
selfishness, and indeed rather prided himself on that quality; yet
behold him now waging a contest in which a man wastes money, time,
comfort, and self-respect, that he may wrest from real sorrow and
discomfiture the shadow of a happiness which he cannot grasp when he
has reached it. There is much wisdom in the opinion expressed by a
certain fox concerning grapes hanging out of distance; but it is a
wisdom seldom acquired till the limbs are too stiff to stretch for an
effort--till there is scarce a tooth left in the mumbling jaws to be
set on edge.
Tom Ryfe had allowed his existence to merge itself in another's.
For months, as devotedly as such natures can worship, he had been
worshipping his ideal in the person of Miss Bruce. I do not say that
he was capable of that highest form of adoration which seeks in the
first place the unlimited sovereignty of its idol, and which, as being
too good for them, women constantly undervalue; but I do say that he
esteemed his fair client the most beautiful, the most attractive, and
the most perfect of her sex, resolving that for him she was the only
woman in the world, and that in defiance of everything, even her own
inclinations, he would win her if he could.
In Holborn there is always a hansom to be got at short notice.
"Grosvenor Crescent," says Tom, shutting the half-doors with a bang,
and shouting his orders through the little hole in the top. So to
Grosvenor Crescent he is forwarded accordingly, at the utmost speed
attainable by a pair of high wheels, a well-bred "screw," and a
rough-looking driver with a flower in his mouth.
There are several peculiarities, all unreasonable, many ridiculous,
attending the demeanour of a man in love. Not the least eccentric
of these are his predatory instincts, his tendency to prowl, his
preference for walking over other modes of conveyance, and inclination
to subterfuge of every kind as to his ultimate destination. Tom Ryfe
was going to Belgrave Square; why should he direct his driver to set
him down a quarter of a mile off? why overpay the man by a shilling?
why wear down the soles of an exceedingly thin and elaborate pair of
boots on the hot, hard pavement without compunction? Why? Because he
was in love. This was also the reason, no doubt, that he turned red
and white when he approached the Square railings; that his nose seemed
to swell, his mouth got dry, his hat felt too tight, and the rest
of his attire too loose for the occasion; also that he affected an
unusual interest in the numbers of the doors, as though meditating a
ceremonious morning call, while all the time his heart was under
the laburnums in the centre of the Square gardens, at the feet of a
haughty, handsome girl, dressed in half-mourning, with the prettiest
black-laced parasol to be found on this side of the Rue Castiglione,
for love--of which, indeed, as the gift of Mr. Ryfe, it was a type--or
money, which, not having been yet paid for, it could hardly be said to
represent.
That heart of his gave a bound when he saw it in her hand as she
sailed up the broad gravel-walk to let him in. He was almost happy,
poor fellow, for almost a minute, not distressing himself to observe
that the colour never deepened a shade on her proud, pale cheek; that
the shapely hand, which fitted its pass-key to the lock, was firm as
a dentist's, and the clear, cold voice that greeted him far steadier
than his own. It is a choice of evils, after all, this favourite game
of cross-purposes for two. To care more than the adversary entails
worry and vexation; to care less makes a burden of it, and a bore.
"Thank you so much for coming, Miss Bruce--Maud," said Tom
passionately. "You never fail, and yet I always dread, somehow, that I
shall be disappointed."
"I keep my word, Mr. Ryfe," answered the young lady, with perfect
self-possession; "and I am quite as anxious as you can be, I assure
you. I want so to know how we are getting on."
He showed less discouragement than might have been expected. Perhaps
he was used to the _sang-froid_, perhaps he rather liked it, believing
it, in his ignorance, a distinctive mark of class, not knowing--how
should he?--that, once excited, these thoroughbred ones are, of all
racers, the least amenable to restraint.
"I have bad news," he said tenderly. "Miss Bruce, I hardly like to
tell you that I fear we cannot make our case enough to come into
court. I took the opinion of the first man we have. I am sorry to
say he gives it against us. I am not selfish," he added, with real
emotion, "and I am sorry indeed, for your sake, dearest Miss Bruce."
He meant to have called her "Maud"; but the beautiful lips tightened,
and the delicate eyebrows came down very straight and stern over the
deep eyes in which he had learned to read his fate. He would wait for
a better opportunity, he thought, of using the dear, familiar name.
She took small notice of his trouble.
"Has there been no mismanagement?" she asked, almost angrily; "no
papers lost? no foul play? Have you done your best?"
"I have, indeed," he answered meekly. "After all, is it not for my own
interest as much as yours? Are they not henceforth to be in common?"
She ignored the question altogether; she seemed to be thinking of
something else. While they paced up and down a walk screened from the
Square windows by trees and shrubs already clothed in the tender,
quivering foliage of spring, she kept silence for several seconds,
looking straight before her with a sterner expression than he could
yet remember to have seen on the face he adored. Presently she spoke
in a hard, determined voice--
"I _am_ disappointed. Yes, Mr. Ryfe, I don't mind owning I am bitterly
and grievously disappointed. There, I suppose it's not your fault, so
you needn't look black about it; and I dare say you did the best
you could afford at the price. Well, I don't want to hurt your
feelings--your _very_ best, then. And yet it seems very odd--you were
so confident at first. Of course if the thing's really gone, and
there's no chance left, it's folly to think about it. But what a
future to lose--what a future to lose! Mr. Ryfe, I can't stay with
Aunt Agatha--I can't and I won't! How she could ever find anybody to
marry her! Mr. Ryfe, speak to me. What had I better do?"
Tom would have given a round sum of money at that moment to recall one
of the many imaginary conversations held with Miss Bruce, in which
he had exhausted poetry, sentiment, and forensic ardour for the
successful pleading of his suit. Now he could find nothing better to
say than that "he had hoped she was comfortable with Mrs. Stanmore;
and anybody who didn't make Miss Bruce comfortable must be brutal
and wicked. But--but--if it was really so--and she could be
persuaded--why, Miss Bruce must long have known----" And here
the voice of Tom, the plausible, the prudent, the self-reliant,
degenerated to a husky whisper, because he felt that his very heart
was mounting to his throat.
Miss Bruce cut him exceedingly short.
"You remember our bargain," she said bitterly. "If you don't, I can
remind you of it. Listen, Mr. Ryfe; I am not going to cheat you out of
your dues. You were to win back my fortune from the next of kin--this
cousin who seems to have law on his side. You charged yourself with
the trouble--that counts for nothing, it is in the way of your
business--with the costs--the expenses--I don't know what you call
them--these were to be paid out of the estate. It was all plain
sailing, if we had conquered; and there was an alternative in the
event of failure. I accepted it. But I tell you, not till every
stratagem has been tried, every stone turned, every resource
exhausted, do I acknowledge the defeat, nor--I speak plain English,
Mr. Ryfe--do I pay the penalty."
He turned very pale. "You did not use this tone when we walked
together through the snow in the avenue at Ecclesfield. You promised
of your own accord, you know you did," said poor Tom, trembling all
over; "and I have got your promise in writing locked up in a tin box
at home."
She laughed a hard, shrill laugh, not without some real humour in it,
at his obvious distress.
"Keep it safe in your tin box," said she, "and don't be afraid, when
the time comes, that I shall throw you over. Ah! what an odd thing
money is; and how it seems able to do everything!" She was looking
miles away now, totally unconscious of her companion's presence.
"To me this five or six thousand a year represents hope, enjoyment,
position--all that makes life worth having. More, to lose it is to
lose my freedom, to lose all that makes life endurable!"
"And you _have_ lost it," observed Tom doggedly. He was very brave,
very high-minded, very chivalrous in any way; but he possessed the
truly British quality of tenacity, and did not mean to be shaken off
by any feminine vagaries where once he had taken hold.
"Et je payerais de ma personne," replied Miss Bruce scornfully. "I
don't suppose you know any French. You must go now, Mr. Ryfe; my
maid's coming back for me from the bonnet-shop. I can't be trusted,
you see, over fifty yards of pavement and a crossing by myself. The
maid is walking with me now behind these lilac-bushes, you know. Her
name is Ryfe. She is very cross and silent; she wears a well-made
coat, shiny boots, rather a good hat, and carries a nosegay as big
as a chimney-sweep's--you can give it me if you like--I dare say you
bought it on purpose."
How she could twist and turn him at will! three or four playful words
like these, precious all the more that her general manner was so
haughty and reserved, caused Tom to forget her pride, her whims, her
various caprices, her too palpable indifference to himself. He offered
the flowers with humble gratitude, ignoring resolutely the presumption
that she would probably throw them away before she reached her own
door.
"Good-bye, Miss Bruce," said he, bowing reverently over the slim hand
she vouchsafed him, and "Good-bye," echoed the young lady, adding,
with another of those hard little laughs that jarred so on Tom's
nerves, "Come with better news next time, and don't give in while
there's a chance left; depend upon it the money's better worth having
than the client. By the bye, I sent you a card for Lady Goldthred's
this afternoon--only a stupid breakfast--did you forget it?"
"Are you going?" returned Tom, with the clouds clearing from his brow.
"Perhaps we shall, if it's fine," was the reply. "And now I can't wait
any longer. Don't forget what I told you, and do the best you can."
So Tom Ryfe departed from his garden of Eden with sundry misgivings
not entirely new to him, that the fruit he took such pains to ripen
for his own gathering might but be gaudy wax-work after all, or
painted stone, perhaps, cold, smooth, and beautiful, against which he
should rasp his teeth in vain.
The well-tutored Puckers, dressed in faded splendour, and holding a
brown-paper parcel in her hand, was waiting for her young lady at the
corner of the Square.
While thus engaged she witnessed a bargain, of an unusual nature, made
apparently under extraordinary pressure of circumstances. A ragged
boy, established at the crossing, who had indeed rendered himself
conspicuous by his endeavours to ferry Puckers over dry-shod, was
accosted by a shabby-genteel and remarkably good-looking man in the
following vernacular--
"On this minnit, off at six, Buster; two bob an' a bender, and a three
of eye-water, in?"
"Done for another joey," replied Buster, with the premature acuteness
of youth foraging for itself in the streets of London.
"Done," repeated the man, pulling a handful of silver from his pocket,
and assuming the broom at once to enter on his professional labours,
ere Puckers had recovered from her astonishment, or Buster could
vanish round the corner in the direction of a neighbouring mews.
Though plying his instrument diligently, the man kept a sharp eye on
the Square gardens. When Tom Ryfe emerged through the heavy iron gate
he whispered a deep and horrible curse, but his dark eyes shone and
his whole face beamed into a ruffianly kind of beauty, when after a
discreet pause, Miss Bruce followed the young lawyer through the same
portal. Then the man went to work with his broom harder than ever. Not
Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak at the feet of his sovereign
mistress lest they should take a speck of mud could have shown more
loyalty, more devotion, than did Gentleman Jim sweeping for bare life,
as Miss Bruce and her maid approached the crossing he had hired for
the occasion.
Maud recognised him at a glance. Not easily startled or surprised, she
bade Puckers walk on, while she took a half-crown from her purse and
put it in the sweeper's hand.
"At least it is an honest trade," said she, looking him fixedly in the
face.
The man turned pale while he received her bounty.
"It's not that, miss," he stammered. "It's not that--I only wanted to
get a look of ye. I only wanted just to hear the turn of your voice
again. No offence, miss, I'll go away now. O! can't ye give a chap a
job? It's my heart's blood as I'd shed for you, free--and never ask no
more nor a kind word in return!"
She looked him over from head to foot once more and passed on. In that
look there was neither surprise, nor indignation, nor scorn, only a
quaint and somewhat amused curiosity, yet this thief and associate of
thieves quivered, as if it had been a sun-stroke. When she passed out
of sight he bit the half-crown till it bent, and hid it away in his
breast. "I'll never part with ye," said he, "never;" unmindful of poor
Dorothea, going about her work tearful and forlorn. Gentleman Jim,
uneducated, besotted, half-brutalised as he was, had yet drunk from
the cup that poisons equally the basest and noblest of our kind. A
well-dressed, good-looking young man, walking on the other side of
the Square, did not fail to witness Tom Ryfe's farewell and Maud's
interview with the crossing-sweeper. He too looked strangely
disturbed, pacing up and down an adjoining street, more than once,
before he could make up his mind to ring a well-known bell. Verily
Miss Bruce seemed to be one of those ladies whose destiny it is to
puzzle, worry, and interest every man with whom they come in contact.