ALBAN KENNEDY DINES
Silas Geary led the way through the hall and thence to the winter
garden. Here the display of plants was quite remarkable and the building
one that had cost many thousands of pounds. Designed, as all that
Richard Gessner touched, to attract the wonder of the common people and
to defy the derision of the connoisseur, this immense garden had been
the subject of articles innumberable and of pictures abundant. Vast in
size, classic in form, it served many purposes, but chiefly as a gallery
for the safe custody of a collection of Oriental china which had no
rival in Europe.
"It is our patron's hobby," said the curate, mincingly, as he indicated
the treasures of cloisonne and of porcelain; "he does not frivol away
his money as so many do, on idle dissipations and ephemeral pleasures.
On the contrary, he devotes it to the beautiful objects--"
"Do you call them beautiful, sir?" Alban asked ingenuously. "They seem
to me quite ugly. I don't think that if I had money I should spend it on
plates and jars which nobody uses. I would much sooner buy a battle ship
and give it to the nation." And then he asked, "Did Mr. Gessner put up
all this glass to keep out the fresh air? Does he like being in a
hot-house? I should have thought a garden would have been better."
Silas Geary could make nothing of such criticism as this.
"My dear lad," he protested, "you are very young and probably don't know
what sciatica means. When I was your age, I could have slept upon a
board and risen therefrom refreshed. At fifty it is otherwise. We study
the barometer then and dust before we sit. This great glass house is Mr.
Gessner's winter temple. It is here that he plans and conceives so many
of those vast schemes by which the world is astonished."
Alban looked at him curiously.
"Is the world really astonished by rich men?" he asked.
Mr. Geary stood still in amazement at the question.
"Rank and birth rule the nation," he declared vehemently; "it is fit and
proper that it should be so. Our aristocracy is rightly recruited from
those who have accumulated the wealth necessary to such a position.
Riches, Kennedy, mean power. You will know that some day when you are
the master of riches."
Alban walked on a little way without saying anything. Then almost as one
compelled to reply he exclaimed:
"In the East End, they don't speak of money like that. I suppose it is
their ignorance--and after all it is a very great thing to be able to
compel other people to starve for you. Some day, I'll take you down to
the sweating-shops, Mr. Geary. You'll see a lot of old china there, but
I don't think it would be worth much. And all our flowers are for
sale--poor devils, we get little enough for supper if we don't sell
them."
The curate expressed no profound desire to accept this promising
invitation, and desiring to change so thorny a subject entered a
delightful old-world garden and invited Alban's attention to a superb
view of Harrow and the Welsh Harp. In the hall, to which at last they
returned, he spoke of that more substantial reality, dinner.
"I am sorry to say that I have a Dorcas meeting to-night and cannot
possibly dine with you," he explained to the astonished lad. "I shall
return at nine o'clock, however, to see that all is as Mr. Gessner
wishes. The servants have told you, perhaps, that Miss Anna is in the
country and does not return until to-morrow. This old house is very dull
without her, Kennedy. It is astonishing how much difference a pretty
face makes to any house."
"Is that Miss Anna's portrait over the fireplace, sir?"
"You know her, Kennedy?"
"I have seen her once, on the balcony of a house in St. James' Square.
That was last night when I was on my way to sleep in a cellar."
"My poor, poor boy, and to-night you will sleep in one of the most
beautiful rooms in England. How wonderful is fortune, how
amazing--er--how very--is not that seven o'clock by the way? I think
that it is, and here is Fellows come to show you your room. You will
find that we have done our best for you in the matter of
clothes--guesswork, I fear, Kennedy, but still our best. To-morrow
Westman the tailor is to come--I think and hope you will put up with
borrowed plumes until he can fit you up. In the meantime, Fellows has
charge of your needs. I am sure that he will do his very best for you."
The young butler said that he would--his voice was still raised to a
little just dignity, and he, in company with Silas Geary, the
housekeeper and the servants' hall had already put the worst
construction possible upon Alban's reception into the house. His
determination to patronize the "young man" however received an abrupt
check when Alban suddenly ordered him to show the way upstairs. "He
spoke like a Duke," Fellows said in the kitchen afterwards. "There I was
running up the stairs just as though the Guv'ner were behind me. Don't
you think that you can come it easy with him--he ain't the sort by a
long way. I tell you, I never was so astonished since the Guv'ner raised
my wages."
Alban, of course, was sublimely unconscious of this. He had been
conducted to an enormous bedroom on the first floor, superbly furnished
with old Chippendale and excellent modern Sevres--and there he had been
left to realize for the first time that he was alone and that all which
had happened since yesterday was not a dream but a hard invincible truth
so full of meaning, so wonderful, so sure that the eyes of his brain did
not dare to look at it unflinchingly. Boyishly and with a boy's gesture
he had thrown himself upon the bed and hidden his face from the light as
though the very atmosphere of this wonder world were insupportable. Good
God, that it should have happened to him, Alban Kennedy; that it should
have been spoken of as his just right; that he should have been told
that he had a claim which none might refute! A hundred guesses afforded
no clue to the solution of the mystery. He could not tell himself that
he was in some way related to Richard Gessner, the banker; he could not
believe that his dead parents had any claim upon this foreigner who
received him coldly and yet would hear nothing of his departure. Pride
had little share in this, for the issues were momentous. It was
sufficient to know that a hand had suddenly drawn him from the abyss,
had put him on this pinnacle--beyond all, had placed him in Anna
Gessner's home as the first-born, there to embark upon a career whose
goal lay beyond the City Beautiful of his dreams.
He rose from the bed at length, and trying to put every thought but that
of the moment from his head, he remembered that he was expected to dine
alone in the great room below, and to dress himself for such an ordeal
in the clothes which the reverend gentleman's wit had provided for him.
Courageous in all things, he found himself not a little afraid of all
the beautiful objects which he touched, afraid to lift the Sevres
pitcher, afraid to open the long doors of the inlaid wardrobe, timid
before the dazzling mirror--a reluctant guest who, for the time being,
would have been thankful to escape to a carpetless floor and glad to
wash in a basin of the commonest kind. When this passed, and it was but
momentary, the delusion that a trick was being played upon him succeeded
to it and he stood to ask himself if he had not been a fool to believe
their story at all, a fool thus to be made sport of by one who would
relate the circumstance with relish to-morrow. This piece of nonsense,
however, was as quick to give way to the somewhat cynical common sense
with which, Alban Kennedy had rightly been credited as the other. He
turned from it impatiently and began to dress himself. He had last
dressed in black clothes and a white waistcoat for a school concert at
Westminster when he was quite a little lad--but his youth had taught him
the conventions, and he had never forgotten those traditions of what his
dead father used to call the "decent life." In his case the experience
was but a reversion to the primitive, and he dressed with every
satisfaction, delighted to put off the shabby old clothes and no less
content with his new appearance as a mirror revealed it to him.
The dining room at "Five Gables" was normally a little dark in the
daytime, for it looked upon the drive where ancient trees shaded its
lofty latticed windows. At night, however, Richard Gessner's fine silver
set off the veritable black oak to perfection, and the room had an air
of dignity and richness neither artificial nor offensive. When Alban
came down to dinner he perceived that a cover had been set for him at
the end of a vast table, and that he was expected to take the absent
master's place; nor could he forbear to smile at the solemn exercises
performed by Fellows the young butler, and two footmen who were to wait
upon him. These rascals, whatever they might say in the kitchen
afterwards, served him at the table as though he had been an eldest son
of the house. If they had expected that the ragged, shabby fellow, who
entered the house so stealthily an hour ago, would provide food for
their exquisitely delicate sense of humor, they were wofully
disappointed. Alban ate his dinner without uttering a single remark.
And last night it had been supper in the caves! There must be no charge
of inconsistency brought against him if a momentary shudder marked this
recollection of an experience. A man may bridge a great gulf in a single
instant of time. Alban had no less affection for, no less interest
to-night in those pitiful lives than yesterday, but he understood that a
flood of fortune had carried him for the time being away from them, and
that his desire must be to help but not to regret them. Indeed, he could
not resist, nor did he wish to resist a great content in this
well-being, which overtook him in so subtle a manner. The sermons of the
old days, preached by many a mad fanatic of Union Street, declared that
any alliance between the rich and the poor must be false and impossible.
Alban believed it to be so. A mere recollection of the shame of poverty
could already bring the blood to his cheeks, and yet he would have
defended poverty with all the logic of which his clever brain was
capable.
So in a depressing silence the long dinner was eaten. Methodically and
with velvet steps the footmen put dish after dish before him, the butler
filled his rarely lifted glass, the whole ceremony of dining performed.
For his own part he would have given much to have escaped after the fish
had been served, and to have gone out and explored the garden which had
excited Mr. Geary to such poetic thoughts. Not a large eater (for the
East End does not dare to cultivate an appetite), he was easily
satisfied; and he found the mere length of the menu to be an ordeal
which he would gladly have been spared. Why did people want all these
dishes, he asked himself. Why, in well-to-do circles, is it considered
necessary to serve precisely similar portions of fish and flesh and fowl
every night at eight o'clock? Men who work eat when they are disposed.
Alban wondered what would happen if such a custom were introduced into
the House of the Five Gables. A cynical reverie altogether--from which
the butler's purring voice awakened him.
"Will you have your coffee in the Winter Garden, sir? Mr. Gessner always
does."
"Cannot I have it in the garden?"
"Oh, yes, if you like, sir. We'll carry out a chair--the seats are very
damp at night, sir."
Alban smiled. Was he not sleeping on the reeking floor of the caves but
twenty hours ago.